Robert Redeker

Robert Redeker, 52, a teacher of philosophy at a high school in Toulouse, France, wrote a column criticizing Islam after the Muslim outrage over critical remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI. The column was published in Le Figaro, a major French newspaper, in Paris on September 19, 2006 under the title, "What should the free world do while facing Islamist intimidation?"

Muslims, believing their Islam to be above criticism, responded with death threats by email, phone, and on the Internet. An online Islamist Web site known as Al Hesbah, affiliated with Al Qaeda, published photos of Redeker, his cellphone number, his home address, directions to his home. Egypt and Tunisia banned that day's issue of Le Figaro. Al Jazeera Tv denounced him. Redeker described the kind of Muslim threats he received: "You will never feel secure on this earth. One billion, three hundred thousand Muslims are ready to kill you."

Redeker and his wife were forced into hiding by the violent Muslim intimidation. One of his three children was forced to move, another is safe in a boarding school. Said Redeker, "I can’t work, I can’t come and go and am obliged to hide. ... "So in some way, the Islamists have succeeded in punishing me on the territory of the republic as if I were guilty of a crime of opinion."

Le Figaro caved into the Muslim pressure immediately, as you might expect the French to do. Pierre Rousselin, the editor in chief of Le Figaro, made a craven apology to Muslims on Al-Jazeera TV for publishing the article, saying it was a mistake and did not express the paper's opinion. Redeker's op-ed was removed from the Figaro website.

Redeker's employer, the Ministry for National Education, abandoned him, too. Gilles de Robien, the education minister, declared "solidarity" with Redeker, but timidly retreated after that token lip service, saying that "a public employee should be prudent and moderate in all circumstances." Especially with Muslims.

The French government has no stomach for standing up for freedom of speech against Muslim thugs. Redeker is on his own, staying on the run at his own expense, having to constantly "find a place to sleep at night or live for a day or two." Redeker complains that he has become "homeless in the French republic, while all I did was exercise my constitutional right to freely express my opinion on a religion."

The Islamists on the Al Hesbah website continue to spit threats at Redeker: "It is impossible that this day pass without the lions of France punishing him. ... May God send some lion to cut his head." The Muslim thugs of Al Hesbah want the "pig" Hedeker slaughtered like Muslim assassin Muhammad Bouyeri murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh after he made a film critical of Islam.

Here is the op-ed Redeker wrote that prompts the bloodthirsty Islamists to call for his murder:

"The reactions caused by Benedict XVI’s analysis of Islam and violence highlight the underhanded maneuver carried out by Islam to stifle what the West values more than anything, and which does not exist in any Moslem country: freedom of thought and expression.

Islam tries to impose its rules on Europe: opening of public swimming pools at certain hours reserved exclusively for women, ban on caricaturing this religion, demands for special diets for Muslim children in school cafeterias, struggle to impose the veil at school, accusations of Islamophobia against free spirits.

How can one explain the ban on the wearing thongs on Paris-Beaches (Paris-plages) this summer? The reasoning put forth was bizarre: women wearing thongs would risk “disturbing the peace”. Did this mean that bands of frustrated youths would become violent while being offended by displays of beauty? Or were the authorities scared of Islamist demonstrations by “virtue squads” near Paris-Beaches?

However, the authorization of the veil on the street is more disturbing to public peace than wearing a thong, because it invites complaints against the upholding the oppression of women .This ban represents an Islamization of sensibilities in France, a more or less conscious submission to the diktats of Islam. At the very least it is the result of the insidious Muslim pressure on the minds: even those who protested the introduction of a “Jean Paul II Square” in Paris would not be opposed to the construction of mosques. Islam is trying to force Europe to yield to its vision of humanity.

As in the past with Communism, the West finds itself under ideological watch. Islam presents itself, like defunct Communism, as an alternative to the Western world. In the way of Communism before it, Islam, to conquer spirits, plays on a sensitive string. It prides itself on a legitimacy which troubles Western conscience, which is attentive to others: it claims to be the voice of the oppressed of the planet. Yesterday, the voice of the poor supposedly came from Moscow, today it originates in Mecca! Again, today, western intellectuals incarnate the eye of the Koran, as they have incarnated the eye of Moscow. They now excommunicate people because of Islamophobia, as they did before because of anti-communism.

This opening to others, specific to the West, is a secularization of Christianity that can be summarized thus: the other person must come before me. The Westerner, heir to Christianity, is that who exposes his soul bare. He runs the risk of being seen as weak. With the same ardor as Communism, Islam treats generosity, broadmindedness, tolerance, gentleness, women’s liberty and freedom of manners, democratic values, as marks of decadence. They are weaknesses that it seeks to exploit, by means of useful idiots, self-righteous consciences drowning in nice feelings, in order to impose the Koranic order on the Western world itself.

The Koran is a book of unparalleled violence. Maxime Rodinson states, in Encyclopedia Universalis, some truths that in France are as significant as they are taboo. On one hand: “Mohammed revealed in Medina unsuspected qualities as political leader and military chief (…) He resorted to private war, by then a prevalent custom in Arabia (….) Mohammed soon sent small groups of partisans to attack the Meccan caravans, thus punishing his unbelieving compatriots and simultaneously acquiring the booty of a wealthy man.”

There is more: “Mohammed profited from this success by eradicating the Jewish tribe which resided in Medina, the Quarayza, whom he accused of suspect behavior.” And: “After the death of Khadija, he married a widow, a good housewife, called Sawda, and in addition to the little Aisha, barely ten years old. His erotic predilections, held in check for a long time, led him to ten simultaneous marriages.”

A merciless war chief, plunderer, slaughterer of Jews and a polygamist, such is the man revealed through the Koran.

Oh, the Catholic Church is not above reproach. Its history is strewn with dark pages, for which it has officially repented. The Inquisition, the hounding of witches, the execution of the philosophers Giordano Bruno and Vanini, those wrong-thinking Epicureans, in the 18th century the execution of the knight of La Barre for impiety, do not plead in the church’s favor. But what differentiates Christianity from Islam is obvious: it is always possible to go back to true evangelical values, the peaceful character of Jesus as opposed to the deviations of the Church.

None of the faults of the Church have their roots in the Gospel. Jesus is non-violent. Going back to Jesus is akin to forswear the excesses of the Church. Going back to Mahomet, to the contrary, reinforces hate and violence. Jesus is a master of love, Mahomet is a master of hatred.

The stoning of Satan, each year in Mecca, is not only an obsolete superstition. It not only sets the stage for a hysterical crowd flirting with barbarity. Its imports anthropological. Here is a rite, which each Muslim is invited to submit to, that emphasizes violence as a sacred duty in the very heart of the believer.

This stoning, accompanied each year by the accidental trampling to death of some of the believers, sometimes up to several hundreds, is a rite that feeds archaic violence.

Instead of getting rid of this archaic violence, and thus imitating Judaism and Christianity (Judaism starts when it abandons human sacrifice, and enters civilization; Christianity transforms sacrifice through the Eucharist), Islam builds a nest for this violence, where it will incubate. Whereas Judaism and Christianity are religions whose rites spurn violence, by de-legitimizing it, Islam is a religion that exalts violence and hatred in its everyday rites and sacred book.

Hatred and violence dwell in the book with which every Muslim is brought up, the Koran. As in the Cold War, where violence and intimidation were the methods used by an ideology hell bent on hegemony, so today Islam tries to put its leaden mantel all over the world. Benedict XVI’s cruel experience is testimony to this. Nowadays, the West has to be called the “free world” in comparison to the Muslim world; likewise, the enemies of the “free world”, the zealous bureaucrats of the Koran’s vision, swarm in the very center of the free World."

Redeker was forced out of his house into hiding immediately after his op-ed hit the streets. Redeker wrote to a friend:

"I am now in a catastrophic personal situation. Several death threats have been sent to me, and I have been sentenced to death by an organizations of the al-Qaeda movement. [...] On the websites condemning me to death there is a map showing how to get to my house to kill me, they have my photo, the places where I work, the telephone numbers, and the death pronouncement. [...] There is no safe place for me, I have to beg, two evenings here, two evenings there. [...] I am under the constant protection of the police. I must cancel all scheduled conferences. And the authorities urge me to keep moving. [...] All costs are at my own expense, including those of rents a month or two ahead, the costs of moving twice, legal expenses, etc. It's quite sad. I exercised my constitutional rights, and I am punished for it, even in the territory of the Republic. This affair is also an attack against national sovereignty – foreign rules, decided by criminally minded fanatics, punish me for having exercised a constitutional right, and I am subjected, even in France, to great injury."

After a few weeks on the run, it hasn't gotten any better for Redeker:

"I don’t have the right to put my nose outside. And this continues for almost four weeks. The man, who was acknowledged to be the author of threats against me, has been set free, under legal control. And I, his victim, I live under conditions of quasi-detention. I don’t have the right to leave, I am not free to do anything, except sending e-mails and telephoning. I do not even have the right to open the shutters. And one of the culprits is given freedom; he has the rights of which I have been deprived. It’s horrible to live."

This is the world the Muslims intend to impose upon us.

Resist.