A young man of Tunisian descent who had jihadi images on his computer attempted to ram a group of French soldiers who were guarding a mosque:
French investigators found jihadist propaganda material on Saturday in the computer of a man who drove his car into troops guarding a mosque in southern France on New Year's Day but said it did not prove he had links with any terrorist groups.
The man shouted "Allah is great!" as part of his attack on French troops who were guarding a mosque.
What Islamophobic bastards!
Let me repeat, the troops the young wannabe jihadi attacked were guarding a mosque. You know, in case the Dread Backlash took place.
Yet in the fullness of nuance that the French seem to have pioneered, the man is not being charged with terrorism:
"He explained that when he parked his car in front of the mosque and saw the soldiers, he got the urge to ram into them because French troops are killing civilians in Syria," Valence prosecutor Alex Perrin told Reuters.
"He doesn't claim to be part of an Islamist movement," the prosecutor said. "On the face of it, this seems like an isolated act."
Ah yes, an isolated act from another member of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves, as Mark Steyn puts it. The mystery of why the man snapped right then and there will remain unsolved.
You know, I was foolish enough to believe the French after the November Paris Massacre that this time was different. This time the French would wage war mercilessly without fooling themselves about who and what they fought.
But as emotions have settled and victims are buried, nuance reasserts itself:
Saturday the French ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud downplayed the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic facilities in Iran. Following the execution of controversial Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Iranian mobs surely backed by the clerical regime set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and the kingdom's consulate in Iran's second-largest city, Mashad. In response to the destruction of diplomatic missions, the chief of France's diplomatic mission in Washington wrote that "Iran was obliged to react. Burning an embassy is spectacular but not war."
Never mind.
Yes, Iran is Shia and mostly Persian rather than Sunni Arab, but the ability to understand is pan-Islamic appropriate, no?
And while the ambassador did backtrack, that "understanding" was his first impulse.
I don't even want to hear you ask, "Why do they hate us"
What doesn't set them off?
Seriously, make a new year's resolution not to go along with that self-loathing crap. Why do we hate us?
