The truth about Islamism in a French newspaper

Please read (if you speak French) this absolutely amazing column in Le Monde, no less, about fundamentalist Islam, the silence in the Muslim world over decapitations and mutilations by the Taliban and others, and relations between America and the Muslim world. The Google Translate version is better than nothing if you don't speak French. We at SOS are in agreement that it is one of the best columns ever published on this issue.

Some highlights (our translation):

When Pope Benedict XVI glosses over the intrinsic antagonism in Islam between faith and reason, or when a caricaturist dares to mock a prophet frozen in fossilized sacredness, the entire Islamic world, from Cairo to Islamabad via Paris and London, reacts with defensive, vindictive hysteria. [...] But when a young girl of 17 in northwest Pakistan is whipped by the despicable Taliban in the name of the primitive and nauseating Shari'ah, the voice of Islam becomes inaudible and Islamic pride becomes minuscule. Everyone holds their tongue: the intelligentsia and world leaders join the fundamentalists in almost universal silence.

[...]

Yet, looking closer, which is more damaging to God and more degrading for Islam: Talibanesque barbarism, pouring all of its hate and sexual frustration onto the body of a defenseless young girl, or the drawing of a Danish caricaturist? Which is more shocking for a religion worthy to be called as such, the ink of an irreverent journalist or writer or the blood of innocents that are flogged, mutilated, and decapitated, not to mention the victims torn to pieces by suicide attacks?

There is much more along these lines, some of which is included (in translation) below. Send the link to all of your friends who speak French. It's very rare for something like this to come out in a mainstream publication, especially in France.

All mobilize to denounce western Islamophobia and the multiple crusades lead to discredit and disparage Islam. And with reason: supporting Islam, speaking out for the superiority of its doctrine over other religious and philosophical systems and for the excellence of its morals is a religious obligation.

Wherever he or she is, the duty of every Muslim - in addition to proselytism - is to take up the cause of their religion and their coreligionists against the enemies and plotters. "Support your brother in Islam, be he victim or perpetrator," stipulates a hadith attributed to the prophet. Undeniably, this obligation finds various theological justifications in the corpus of the Qur'an and Sunna. From there to misusing these same excuses for terrorist purposes is just one step that candidates for martyrdom have quickly taken.

[...]

Sending additional French and American troops to Afghanistan, as Obama desires, would contribute paradoxically to the acceleration of this process of "un-demonization" and normalization of fanaticism...Hillary Clinton is already invoking the necessity to have dialogue with the "moderate Taliban"! And a great French daily (Le Figaro) opens its columns to the former foreign minister of the Taliban government, a "fine and brilliant" diplomat, close advisor of Mullah Omar, to rehabilitate this Talibanism so poorly understood by the West.

[...]

Has the time not finally come to free Islam from the fundamentalist straightjacket, rather than accuse others of deliberately confusing Islam, Islamism and terrorism? But who is at the center of this mixture? Those who describe it or those who embody it with their fanaticism? Thus, the question that every Muslim should ask his- or herself is the following: the defenders of Islam, the fundamentalists and the terrorists, are they not in fine its worst gravediggers?