Increasingly strong, increasingly insane. Recep Tayyip Erdogan enthroned himself as the “second conqueror” of Hagia Sophia after Mehmet II in 1453. He proclaimed it in his “message to the nation” broadcast on television on that funeral day – July 10, 2020 – when Ataturk’s 1934 decree transforming the building into a museum was rescinded. Mustapha Kemal had given back to humanity the basilica, jewel of Christianity for 916 years, then flagship mosque of the Ottoman Empire for five centuries. He wanted to put an end to the Islam-Western divide and ease conflicts. Erdogan, on the other hand, is turning them back on.
To paraphrase the Michel Audiard of Les Tontons flingueurs, we can say that collaborators dare to do anything. While the jihadist cutthroats are still shedding blood on France, a black flight of peremptory crows is descending on the plateaus and squatting in the newspaper columns. The poisonous honeyed platforms charged with rewriting reality follow one another as if nothing had happened. In any case not what had upset us to the core of our souls: this aftershock of previous earthquakes, five years after the massacre of Charlie Hebdo’s journalists, the attacks on the Bataclan and the Hypercacher.
In an open letter addressed to President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Jean Castex and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, 22 French personalities, including elected officials, intellectuals, researchers and a lieutenant general, called for the dissolution of the organisation “French Muslims” (formerly UOIF), the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood described as a “secret brotherhood that advocates a political and totalitarian Islam” whose “thinkers have inspired worldwide jihadism”.
Multiple French flags and effigies of President Emmanuel Macron have been burnt all over Pakistan in the last couple of days as Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government encouraged political parties, radical Islamic groups, lawyers and students’ associations to come out to the streets in thousands against the perceived Islamophobia in France.
In rapid succession, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Britain’s leading Muslim NGO, was forced to get rid of two of its key leaders. The first for antisemitic writings, the next for singing the praises of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
On September 2, the trial of the January 2015 terror attack at the Charlie Hebdo office and the Hyper Cacher of Porte de Bagnolet in Paris commenced at the Paris Criminal Court. The same day, the Charlie Hebdo magazine re-printed the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that had made those who worked in the magazine target of lslamist terrorists. When questioned during his visit to Lebanon, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not intervene against the reprint of these cartoons, as the press in France enjoys freedom of expression and even the freedom to blaspheme. While Mr. Macron’s statement was well received in France and in most countries around the world, it sparked strong opposition in some countries in the Muslim world.
Let’s say it outright, the only difference between the brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS is the method. The end remains the same: to apply the Islamiya Sharia, the Islamic law, and to re-establish the caliphate, by appointing a caliph in the Islamic way, without a vote. Once this is done, they work on Islamising the existence and dominating the world. Thus, two fundamentalist entities do each other favours often consciously, sometimes unconsciously.
