Emmanuel Macron is right. France is under attack

National Post, 30 October 2020

The mass murder and beheading in Nice was unusual only in the severity of the attack; that a church in France would be attacked is a part of daily life.

It is unimaginable that a 60-year-old woman, praying quietly in the historic cathedral of Notre Dame in Nice, France, would be beheaded by a bloodthirsty jihadist.

Except that is not unimaginable, but now to be expected. The three people killed by an Islamist extremist screaming praise of Allah were only the latest. Alongside the beheaded woman, the killer stabbed to death the 55-year-old sacristan, a father of two, and a Brazilian-French woman, 44, the mother of three.

The suspect in the murders is a 21-year-old Tunisian, Brahim Aouissaoui, who arrived at the Italian port of Lampedusa last month, was admitted to Italy and then entered France illegally. Police on the scene shot him while he continued shouting “Allahu Akbar!”

It has been less than five years since 85-year-old Father Jacques Hamel had his throat slit by two Islamist killers while he was at the altar offering the Holy Mass. His murder took place in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, France. It was a grave offence against life, a wicked perversion of the natural order, with the young and strong turning against the old and weak, and an abomination in the house of God.

Earlier this month, French teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by an 18-year-old Islamist from Chechnya. He was killed on the street in broad daylight, his body mutilated and photos posted on social media. The killer claimed he had “avenged the prophet;” Paty was a figure of controversy for teaching about the cartoons that had occasioned the 2015 massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office in Paris.

Back in 2015, France was shaken to its core. Some two million people, including more than three dozen world leaders, rallied in Paris against jihadist terror. “Je suis Charlie,” the world said.

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