The French press refuses to see a clear case of Islamic terrorism.

Imagine No Religion

by Theodore Dalrymple

It is not only in the United States that some people want to kill policemen: such people exist in France, and no doubt elsewhere too. In a suburb of the city of Tours called Joué-lès-Tours, a 20 year-old man, Bertrand Nzohabonayo, born in Burundi and a recent convert to Islam (who thenceforth called himself Bilal), entered a police station Saturday and attacked three policemen with a knife. He nearly killed one of them by slashing him in the neck; he cut the tendons of the hand of another and the face of a third, after which a fourth shot him dead. According to the police, he was shouting “Allah akbar!” during the attack.

Nzohabonayo was reported by his associates to have been a calm and friendly man, who went quietly to the mosque for several years. After his conversion, he grew an Islamic-style beard with a shaved upper lip. He was also a fan of rap music and video games, and was an amateur wrestler. He was involved in petty crime and drug-trafficking. Trained as a central-heating boiler engineer, he did not much care for this work and it is likely that he was maintained at the expense of the French taxpayer to whom, however, he was probably not very grateful.

Monday, the left-leaning newspaper, Libération, carried the following headline: JOUÉ-LÈS-TOURS: “THIS AFFAIR HAS NOTHING RELIGIOUS ABOUT IT.”The story went on to say that those close to Nzohabonayo do not believe his motive was terrorism.

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