LETTER TO NEW YORK TIMES:
Visiting professor Paul Vallely says Father Hamel should not be martyred because the jihadists also have a notion of martyrdom and that therefore we would somehow "play into the hands of the extremists" if he were martyred.
This is surely morally-relativist appeasement. A version of the "nothing to do with Islam" trope.
Visiting professor Valley gives away why he's an appeaser in a later paragraph. He quotes approvingly a "Parisian churchgoer" who said "it's not a Muslim who killed a Catholic. It is simply evil".
Evil, yes. But also religious. It was indeed a Muslim who killed a Catholic.
There's clear and profuse doctrinal justification for Muslims to kill non-believers, Jews and Christians chief amongst them.
[I surely don't need to quote here the Koran, the Hadith, the Sirah, the Umdat al-Salik, Islamic law, etc.... There's plenty readily searchable].
As long as we delude ourselves that we are just facing, to quote Vallely, "the pathology of a perverse minority of extremists with distorted notions of holy war and martyrdom", instead of a doctrinally-mandated jihadist war against the "Infidel" west we have no hope of defeating this terrorist threat.
None of the tribe of "nothing to do with Islam" ever tell us how the killers are allegedly "distorting" Islamic doctrine on jihad and martyrdom.
I'm an atheist so I'm not much bothered by the notion of martyrdom, Islamic or otherwise. But to allow a "martyrdom veto" by jihadists cannot be good for our society, believers or atheists. It just serves the appeasers.
Shame in Visiting professor Vallely.
(And shame on the NYT for promoting this tired trope).
PF
