Last evening a 31-year-old Frenchman of Tunisian descent named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck into a crowded Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France, and killed at least 84 people before being shot dead by police. He was yelling Allahu Akbar, which is the 21st century way of saying ‘have a nice day’ in Arabic according to our president and the US Department of Homeland Security. Obviously it would be unfair to draw inferences about the motive of the man by considering his culture, his name, and his last words. He could very well have been just a fed up driver. Indeed, who among us has not felt the urge to ram a crowd of pedestrians?
This is actually not a new means of jihadi attack in France.
French investigators say they have found “jihadist propaganda material” in the computer of a man who drove his car into troops guarding a mosque in southern France on New Year’s Day.
Alex Perrin, the prosecutor, said however that it did not prove he had links with “terrorist groups”.
He said the 29-year-old French citizen of Tunisian descent appeared to have acted alone as he rammed his car into four soldiers guarding a mosque in the southeastern city of Valence.
A deliveryman who French security officials say once had links to radical Islamist groups drove his truck into an American-owned chemical plant near Lyon on Friday, set off an explosion and, in a macabre twist, mounted his boss’s severed head on the plant’s gate.
Flags were placed on either side of the gruesome display, French officials said.
The next day, a driver with a history of mental illness deliberately ran down pedestrians in several different locations in the eastern city of Dijon, also crying out “Allahu Akbar”, and injuring 10 people in the rampage.
And on Monday, a man ploughed his van through a crowded Christmas market in the western city of Nantes, killing one person and injuring nine, before repeatedly stabbing himself with a knife.
Prosecutors swiftly described the last two incidents as “isolated”, ruling out a terrorist link. Still, the government called an emergency cabinet meeting for Tuesday morning, while urging the public not to panic.
How much longer will France tolerate an atmosphere of rabid islamophobia and crowd otherwise peaceful muslims into ghettos where it is easier to get a truck than a book or computer?
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