France had just come out of the fifth anniversary of the massacre at its satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo than it was plunged into a similar case. On January 18, Mila O., a 16-year-old French girl, made insulting comments about Islam during an Instagram livestream.
“During her livestream, a Muslim boy asked her out in the comments, but she turned him down because she is gay. He responded by accusing her of racism and calling her a ‘dirty lesbian’. In an angry follow-up video, streamed immediately after she was insulted, Mila responded by saying that she ‘hates religion'”.
Mila continued, saying among other things:
“Are you familiar with freedom of expression? I didn’t hesitate to say what I thought. I hate religion. The Koran is a religion of hatred; there is only hatred in it. That’s what I think. I say what I think… Islam is sh*t… I’m not a racist at all. One cannot simply be racist against a religion… I say what I want, I say what I think. Your religion is sh*t. I’d stick a finger up your god’s a**h*le…”
What she said might be considered a bit raw, but does she have the right to say it? After all, Jews are called the descendants of pigs and apes without the speech police having a stroke.
Following her statements, Mila was targeted on social networks, where the video was widely shared; she received numerous death threats, and her name, address and the name of her school were made public. Mila was forced to leave school for her own safety.
Now under police protection, Mila is in such danger that no French school can, for the time being, accommodate her. “I can’t set foot in my high school anymore and I can’t even change schools because the whole of France is out to get me”, she said. For not having understood what is clear to everyone – that Islam is a “religion of peace” – she is threatened with death, rape and having her throat cut.
“Are we in France or Pakistan?“, asked French intellectual Jacques Julliard. Welcome to the France of 2020, where magazines run headlines such as: “Mila, 16 years old, threatened with death for criticizing Islam”. Islamism is becoming pervasive among French Muslims. Since France has not fought it, its hold over France can only increase.
“Let’s get to the point: the progressive intelligentsia wants to believe in multicultural living together, even when reality denies it and reveals a society where diversity is translated into social and identity fragmentation”, wrote the Canadian philosopher, Mathieu Bock-Côté. When multiculturalism turns into threats to free speech, multiculturalists dangerously take the side of the Islamists. The case of Mila represents all the cracks in the disintegration of French society. According to the French journalist, Dominique Nora:
“A few weeks after the commemoration of the massacre at Charlie [Hebdo], the ‘Mila affair’ shows the disturbing asymmetry that reigns in France regarding freedom of expression, or more precisely, blasphemy.”
Mila’s story could have ended with the death threats — as the death threats against Salman Rushdie could have ended 31 years ago — if all the state authorities had immediately rushed to support Mila, and if the France as a society had condemned with one voice the barbaric aggression against the schoolgirl. The opposite happened. Avoiding “the stigmatization of Muslims” has become the official excuse used by the politicians to justify abandoning the victims of violent Islamist threats, such as Mila.
Not one, but two investigations were opened, one for the death threats received by Mila and the other against Mila for “provoking religious hatred” (later dismissed). The controversy redoubled when the general delegate of the French Council for Muslim Worship, Abdallah Zekri, said that the girl had “looked for” trouble: “She must bear the consequences of what she said. Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind”. Islamists are daily testing the resilience of our democratic societies.
Read more: gatestone institute
