Islam Is Killing Us

Anxiously counting the days until November 4th and the US elections results doesn’t cancel or even slow down the vortex of other matters that call for attention and sometimes bring us much anger and sorrow. As reflected in the news, Paris where I live is once more under Islamist attack. The assassination and decapitation on October 16 of a high school teacher who, discussing freedom of expression with his class showed as illustrations the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad (which, in 2015, had caused bloodshed with 15 deaths) causes, again, immense indignation, and more fear that this Western democracy where the separation of state and church or secularism (laïcité) has been law since 1905 will have to adopt strict measures that go against its culture and principles.

Notre-Dame de Paris, Point Zero

(Version française ci-après)

Our lives are filled with moment after moment of routine or happening or boredom, of bright days offset by dull or disappointing ones, of times great and not so great.

Then there are those events that from the instant they occur dig deep into our psyche and will remain there forever. Whenever something brings them back to mind, we find them intact, stored minute by minute, emotion by emotion, the flow of events, should we wish to recall them, intact as on day they occurred. There are personal, striking ones, then there are universal ones, often tragic as we seem to recall tragedy more than happiness. In 2019, most people except the very young remember September 11. Older generations will not forget the Kennedy assassination, how they heard the stunning news, what happened in the moments, hours, days, after the first shock. Now, with the fire at Paris’s Notre-Dame Cathedral, we have another extraordinary event that we will never forget.