Re-boot required

The Islamist atrocities in Paris this weekend leave me feeling a mixture of things, disgust, sadness, anger, outrage, helplessness and, lets not forget that most Islamic of emotions, offence. It seems likely that now that ISIS is beginning to lose ground in Syria and Iraq they are turning their attention to softer targets, i.e. us Europeans.

Let's face it, this kind of response is hardly surprising, the west is pounding ISIS fighters from the air and the hapless "troops" themselves containing large numbers of disaffected loosers and nut-jobs that are either too stupid or too gullible to make a good life for themselves as European Muslims and/or escape the clutches of religious radicals peddling the most ridiculous, medieval and asinine theology. It stands to reason that these European rejects will now turn and bite the hand that once fed them. They can't beat the Peshmerga, they've shagged their way through most of the 12 year olds in Northern Iraq and have decapitated almost all the unarmed and helpless aid workers in the region. With the ideas running out faster than the money and a backward religious ideology that constrains them to a boring and sterile existence devoid of culture and art, what else can they do to make themselves feel like real men?

I can't help feeling that the key question is not if ISIS is destroyed but when, and the critical point for Europeans is that the quicker this happens then probably fewer of our kids are going to get gunned down on European streets by pubescent religious retards. We have to face reality IMO, we're not going to defeat an idea (i.e. Islamism) with bombs alone; we have to make more of an effort to expose the ideology for what it is, i.e. corrupt, manipulative and misguided. For me this means moderate Muslims must spend less time being offended at cartoons and more time being offended at their fellow Muslims being eviscerated and enslaved by ISIS, particularly the rich Muslims in the gulf states who are conspicuous by their silence. Liberals the world over should lose the chips on their shoulders about faux racism and stand up for liberal values like freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We all need to realise that hating ideas and hating people are not the same thing, and we need to better support Muslims who risk everything by speaking out against the extremism within their own traditions and communities. On the thorny issue of whether this is a majority or a few bad apples we need to engage with the facts and stop burying our head in the sand, for example, after the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January a poll of Muslims in the UK showed that over a quarter had sympathies with the assassins, this is a huge problem for the cohesiveness of our society, it will be impossible to sustain dissonance like this. The left need to understand that these barbaric acts do indeed have everything to do with Islam, but obviously not everything to do with every Muslim, our politicians and media should spend as much time condemning, criticizing and mocking the ideas, texts and myths that are used to justify violence as the violence itself.

As I write this and whilst the choir still sings hymns at Notre Dame, the Twitter stream is alight with rumors that Raqqa (Syria) is being heavily bombarded by French fighter jets, this is surely a messed up world, I can only hope that we can find some way to reboot and rid ourselves of these death cults and mind viruses.