French and Arab intellectuals: Charlie Hebdo massacre must not be turned into a war on Islam

What Muslims were afraid of actually happened. The Paris Mosque received threats saying “we will slaughter you all.” Many mosques have been attacked.

French intellectual people who were part in islamophobia and Arabs who did not play their role are held responsible.

People who are against describing Islam as a terror religion shouted the “nous sommes tous Charlie Hebdo” slogan to defend freedom of expression. Yet, they rejected the freedom of offending French Muslims and Arabs in the name of the fight against terrorism.

French intellectual people who have Arab origins condemned the criminal attack on the French magazine. Of them, the chairman of the World Forum for Religions and Peace, Ghaleb Ben Cheikh, the son of the Paris Mosque second dean, philosophe Abdenour Beddar, Dr. Hadi Ben Mansour, a specialist in contemporary Arab and Muslim world’s history, former cultural official at the Paris Mosque, critic Belnouar Bedah, Algerian-Belgian novelist Malika Madi and novelist Tahar Ben Djeloune.

Belnouar told Echorouk France has great writers but it also has thinkers who believed in colonization which brought civilization to undeveloped peoples.

“Intentioned amalgamation between Islam and terrorism is not something new. It has an old ideological and media background,” he added.