Two days ahead of the Bihar Assembly Election 2020’s second phase of polling, Bharatiya Janata Party’s National President JP Nadda talks about the prospects of a stable National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by current Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in the poll-bound state. Nadda said the number of soldiers being deployed to protect public places across the country would rise from 3,000 to 7,000. But while speaking on the France attack, he said terrorists have no religion. On the other hand, the BJP has always believed in communal violence to make believe that the Hindu in India is not safe and they have a threat from Islam. A big part of the terror attack was done in French (with Arab origins), who left for Syria and came back to attack us (I’m French). So why are there so many French joining ISIS? The Muslim population is marginalized? Muslims and people with Arab origins, even 4-5th generation descendants, born and raised in France, who never set foot in another country, with only the French nationality, are still often considered as foreigners, not French.

Well! Thursday’s attack has echoes of another assault earlier this month near a school north-west of Paris. Samuel Paty, who was a teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, was beheaded days after showing controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to some of his pupils. The murder has heightened tensions in France and the government’s attempt to crack down on what Macron described as “Islamist separatism” has angered Turkey and other countries. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was among those calling for a boycott of French goods. The situation worsened after a cartoon on Erdogan appeared in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Estrosi compared the attack to the recent murder of teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded close to his school outside Paris earlier this month.

All three were attacked inside the basilica on Thursday morning before the first Mass of the day. Two died inside the church: a 60-year-old woman who was “virtually beheaded”, and a 55-year-old man whose throat was cut. The male victim was a lay member of staff responsible for the upkeep of the church. He reportedly had a wife and two children. Another woman, aged 44, managed to flee to a nearby cafe after being stabbed several times but died later. It later emerged that a witness had managed to raise the alarm with a special protection system set up by the city. Chloe, a witness who lives near the church, told the news channel that the people were shouting in the street.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he respected Muslims who were shocked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad but that was no excuse for violence, as his officials ramped up security after a knife attack in a French church that killed three people this week. An assailant shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in Nice on Thursday, in France’s second deadly knife attack in two weeks with a suspected Islamist motive. It is just like attacking someone chanting God’s name in India. Still, terrorists have no religion and are made to believe. Well! The suspected assailant, a 21-year-old from Tunisia, was shot by police and is now in critical condition in a hospital. Another person was taken into custody in connection with the attack. That person joins three others already in custody on suspicion of contacts with the attacker. Macron has deployed thousands of soldiers to protect sites such as places of worship and schools, and ministers have warned that other Islamist militant attacks could take place.

The Nice attack, on the day Muslims celebrated the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, came amid growing Muslim anger across the world over France’s defence of the right to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet. Protesters have denounced France in street rallies in several Muslim-majority countries, and some have called for boycotts of French goods. France, on edge in anticipation of more possible attacks, was jolted on Saturday evening when a Greek Orthodox priest was shot and wounded in his church in the south-eastern city of Lyon. But officials gave no indication that terrorism was suspected. In an effort to rectify what he said were misapprehensions about France’s intentions in the Muslim world, Macron gave an interview to Arabic television network Al Jazeera that broadcasted on Saturday.

In it, he said France would not back down in the face of violence and would defend the right to free expression, including the publication of cartoons. But he stressed that did not mean he or his officials supported the cartoons, which Muslims consider blasphemous, or that France was in any way anti-Muslim. There are frequent terror attacks in France because Islam as a religion is extremely backward and is at extreme loggerheads with the fiercely liberal mindset of Western Europe. You will not see such attacks in the US, why? The reason is that there aren’t many of Charlie Hebdo’s in the US. Charlie Hebdo is just one of the many realisations of the liberal mindset of the Europeans, for whom ignoring stupid religious ideas is not enough, they must be derided publicly. And why are most of their targets, Muhammad? Hindus, Christians, and Jews don’t care much about those age-old ideas. Sure, someone here or there might protest or leave an abusive comment, but these people don’t come to blows just because you sketched a God in their religion. Not the Islamists though. They are so religiously backward and still stuck in the 6th century that the concept of liberty, debate, and protest doesn’t make sense to them. They are still bound to the mentality of “see picture, kill Kaffir”. Lastly, are the Islamists so dim only in France? No. They are so in India as well. But why don’t you see too many such reports coming out of India? The reason Indians are not lily-livered like the French. We don’t try to cover up for these Islamists crying, “oh poor lost victim of colonialism”.

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