Sunday, November 15, 2015

Paris, je t'aime (2006)

As of this writing, the recent terrorist attacks in Paris have claimed over 100 lives and left over 300 people injured. Pols and pundits have already come out of the woodwork to use this tragedy as an excuse to spread their own agendas, to spread otherization and hate. But as Martin Luther King famously said, “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” More to the point, by hating Muslims, we give ISIS exactly what they want. Like any person with an ounce of humanity, my heart goes out to the victims, their families, and the city of Paris (as well as the victims of the bombings in Beirut). In that spirit, let’s counter that hate with love, as embodied in the anthology film Paris, je t’aime.


76 Links of Muslims Denouncing Terrorism

Update: I’ve already had people respond with something to the effect of, “Only 73?! What about all the other billion plus Muslims?” Several of these include lists of other Muslims speaking out. But more to the point, I shouldn’t have to provide literally over a billion links to almost every single Muslim in the world to make you understand the wrongness of bigotry and why you don’t get to pay back tragedy with genocide.


Muslims hear it all the time.

“Why haven’t Muslims condemned these attacks?”
“Why have Muslims remained silent?”
“Why haven’t Muslim leaders said anything?”

For expediency, let’s ignore the bigoted undercurrents inherent in presuming over 1.5 billion people as guilty unless they actively denounce the actions of less than 100,000 others who claim to share their faith. Let’s also ignore that ISIS has killed mostly Muslims who don’t share their opinions. Let’s then also ignore that ISIS has explicitly stated that they do what they do in the west to turn westerners against Muslims in the hopes of driving up ISIS’s numbers. So to actually answer these questions…