Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

It’s all kicking off in the Islamic world. Nothing at all to do with Islam, of course

Everywhere you look there is outrage and fury and screaming and violence

They have been burning churches and murdering Christians again in Niger. You’d think that they’d have more immediately pressing concerns than worrying about a cartoon, Niger regularly winning the award for being the worst country anywhere on God’s earth, and the poorest. But nope, it’s kill-a-kuffar time once more. Some 45 churches set alight and at least five people killed and 50 injured. Adherents of the Religion of Peace (© all UK politicians) included in their pyromania a Christian orphanage, which was thoughtful of them. There have also been massed rallies and protests and the usual effigy-burning business in the vast and dusty Islamic desert rat-holes next door, Mali and Algeria. Not to mention Senegal, and the fragrant delight which is Sudan, plus Niger’s red-hot rival for the worst-country-on-earth award, Mauritania.

Death to France! Death to infidels! Death to Christians! And that’s just Africa. There was more effigy and flag-burning plus the requisite homicidal screeching in good old Pakistan, and next door in Afghanistan, and of course in Iran. Even the Chechens got in on the act — a massed rally in the central square of Grozny with an estimated 800,000 people howling their loathing of France and cartoonists and the West in general, protests which spread over the border into another backwards enclave which the Soviet Union, to its immense credit, succeeded in briefly civilising, Ingushetia. Oh, and there was still more fury in the Philippines, the usual howling at the moon from the country’s Islamic minority whose political wing, the MNLF, was habituated to kidnapping and murder in the Sulu peninsula and Mindanao.

NIGER-FRANCE-ATTACKS-CHARLIE-HEBDO-DEMO
Smoke billows in a street as people demonstrate near the grand mosque in Niamey, Niger Photo: Getty

Everywhere you look in the Islamic world there is outrage and fury and screaming and violence.

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