Matt Vespa:
This is CNN. The network known for asking an alleged Bill Cosby victim why she didn’t she bite his penis, hypothesizing that black holes were responsible for the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, and not knowing the difference between semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms (and these are just the most recent forays into the bizarre) has a new observation: the situation French Muslims face in France is just like Ferguson, Missouri.
No, I’m not kidding. CNN’s religion editor, Daniel Burke, said this:
“I think it’s kind of like what we saw in Ferguson. That this was a kind of, in some ways, the tinder that lit the spark, but the embers were already burning. There is a prevailing feeling in France among many Muslims that they are not treated as part of the state at large. France has a very proud, very long secular history, and it’s not always done the best of integrating any of its religious minorities, French Muslims included.”
CNSNews.com’s Curtis Kalin pretty much took this to the woodshed:
First off, the contention that an Al-Qaeda directed, sponsored, and funded terrorist attack was somehow the fault of France is absurd. It is another in a long line of attempts to blame the victims of violence for the acts perpetrated upon them. In some ways, this statement is worse than those expressed blaming the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for their own deaths. Burke lays blame for an act of foreign terrorism on an entire country.
Second, the nonsensical comparison with the events of Ferguson, Missouri underlines the lack of understanding Burke seems to have for the Michael Brown case itself. He shifts blame from looters and rioters in an American suburb to the town itself just as he blames France for the Paris attacks.
While it can be said that discontentment exists along racial lines in Ferguson and religious lines in France, to jump to the conclusion that the communities themselves share more blame than the actual perpetrators of a terrorist attack or looting and rioting is intellectually perilous and simply wrongheaded.
Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen claimed responsibility for the shootings today.
There have been some really wacky statements made in the horrific aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris. We had the Washington Post publish one of the most entertaining pieces in recent memory; questioning why didn’t France’s stringent gun control laws save them.
Yep, some folks are questioning why terrorists don’t follow the law: [emphasis mine]:
Well, why not?
Look at the list of some of those groups that have been creating protests in and around Ferguson:
St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee,
Organization for Black Struggle,
U.S. Palestinian Community Network,
Muslims for Ferguson,
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,
Council on American Islamic Relations – St. Louis, Palestinian BDS National Committee,
National Students for Justice in Palestine,
Palestinian Youth Movement,
American Muslims for Palestine and African Americans for Justice in the Middle East and North Africa
Goals:
Muhammad Sankari, a youth organizer with the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network, argued that black and Latino minorities should look to Muslims as the “gatekeepers of policing” in the United States because anti-terrorism efforts had provided police with greater arsenals that, he claimed, were now being turned on those communities.
He said “justice” could only be found “in the streets,” and not in “marble halls and marble buildings.”
Muslims are looking to cause conflict to justify instituting Shariah Law state by state, city by city across the US.
Lisa Fithian, who served as a human shield in actions conducted by the International Solidarity Movement in the Palestinian cities of Jenin and Nablus:
“create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.”