France

“PLACES OF WORSHIP ARE POTENTIAL TARGETS”: FOR CHRISTMAS, INCREASED SECURITY IN CHURCHES

Gérald Darmanin asked the prefects to strengthen the security of the churches on Thursday and Friday. A presence that reassures the parishioners, feeling “safe thanks to them”.

In addition to the health crisis, places of worship are still under vigilance for an attack threat to its maximum. For this Christmas day, like the day before, the security system has been reinforced around the churches. The goal? Reassure the parishioners and impose a “dissuasive” presence.

It’s practically a Christmas tradition in France. Note Google translate used.

“A fundamental problem with Macron’s renewal program lies in a difference between Islam and Christianity, namely that the very idea of secularity is alien to Islam. The principle of the separation of church and state rests on biblical foundations. It was noteworthy that Marine Le Pen quoted a phrase of Jesus Christ in her recent speech against Islamism, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17). Nothing like this exists in Islam: everything is Allah’s, and the core of Islam is about the exertion of power in service of Allah. As Bernard Lewis repeatedly pointed out, classical Arabic did not even have the language to make the distinction between church and state, sacred and profane, spiritual and temporal, and ecclesiastical and secular. Such terms entered Arabic via the writings of Arabic-speaking Christians.”

Islam does not do integration.

A terrorist whose plan to carry out a massacre on a packed high-speed international train was foiled by the heroic actions of a group of passengers has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a French court.

Ayoub El-Khazzani, 31, opened fire with an assault rifle on the Amsterdam-to-Paris Thalys train in August 2015. Having shot two passengers, Khazzani was wrestled to the ground and restrained by three US tourists, two of them off-duty servicemen, and a British traveller.

French General Pierre de Villiers, the former chief of staff of the French armed forces, has warned that France could be heading for civil conflict, due to Islamist radicals and growing urban violence.

General de Villiers, who made headlines by quitting as armed forces chief of staff in 2017 over clashes on army budget cuts with President Emmanuel Macron, warned of a variety of factors that could see France heading to potential civil conflict.

I maintain my prediction: We will see France cede territory to the Islamists in our lifetime.

October 29. Nice, the main city on the French Riviera. A man in the Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption decapitates a woman and murders two other people while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is the greatest!”]

This is the second beheading in France by an extremist Muslim in less than a month. Two weeks earlier, on October 16, a middle school teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded in the suburbs of Paris after showing his students some Mohammad cartoons during a discussion on freedom of speech.

One of three Americans hailed as heroes for overcoming a gunman on a train travelling to Paris has told a French court his main aim was to survive.

Spencer Stone, a 28-year-old ex-serviceman, described via video from the US how he and his friends saw Ayoub El Khazzani pick up a Kalashnikov rifle and prepare to open fire.

He counted three separate attempts the gunman made to try to kill him.

Mr Stone was one of two people wounded in the August 2015 Thalys train attack.