Last Thursday, three French citizens were brutally killed in a church in Nice, one of them a woman whose throat was slit. This gruesome act, coming barely two weeks after the beheading of Samuel Paty, a history teacher who showed his class cartoons from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to illustrate the concept of freedom of speech, has reawakened France to the reality of Islamist terrorism. Since 2012, more than 260 people of all backgrounds have died in terrorist attacks: in a Jewish school, at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, in a concert hall, in the streets of Nice, in churches, and in police street patrols.
Yet when looking at some of the coverage of the most recent attacks in the United States, and the reaction from leaders like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the culprit is France itself. French President Emmanuel Macron’s vow to fight “Islamist separatism” has been treated as its own act of barbarism. Most French citizens, however, aware of the reality on the ground, recognize this fight as necessary and overdue.
