by Douglas Murray
The Spectator
Back in November I wrote a cover story for The Spectator arguing that the trend in North Africa for those countries which had thrown off their dictators appeared to be more in the direction of Winter than that of Spring. Since then there have been many developments, including the first round of the Egyptian Presidential elections where the field is led by the Muslim Brotherhood candidate. And now, in a new development reported by Raymond Ibrahim over at the Gatestone Institute, we learn about the first beheading of an ‘apostate’ convert to Christianity over in Tunisia
I recommend you don’t watch the video that he links to in his blog. His summary is enough:-
‘A young man appears held down by masked men. His head is pulled back, with a knife to his throat. He does not struggle and appears resigned to his fate. Speaking in Arabic, the background speaker, or “narrator,” chants a number of Muslim prayers and supplications, mostly condemning Christianity, which, because of the Trinity, is referred to as a polytheistic faith: “Let Allah be avenged on the polytheist apostate”; “Allah empower your religion, make it victorious against the polytheists”; “Allah, defeat the infidels at the hands of the Muslims”; “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”
‘Then, to cries of “Allahu Akbar!”—or, “God is great!”—the man holding the knife to the apostate’s throat begins to slice away, even as the victim appears calmly mouthing a prayer. It takes nearly two minutes of graphic knife-carving to sever the Christian’s head, which is then held aloft to more Islamic cries and slogans of victory.’
There will be many who say in response to this that the beheading of one Christian does not make an Islamic winter. I dearly hope so. Perhaps the governing Muslim Brotherhood party of Tunisia, Ennahda, will now do everything they can to track down the killers. Perhaps the years the leadership of Ennahda spent in the UK preparing to take over Tunisia will turn out to have been time well spent in other ways. Perhaps some great British traditions rubbed off on them and they have gone back to Tunisia with a great devotion to the principles of free expression – and a ruthless aversion to the idea of decapitating people who disagree with your theology. We shall see.
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