FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant 658 30/11/15 LOVE AND DEATH: Letter to President Hollande

FRENCH LOVE OF LIFE WILL OVERCOME ISIS DEATH CULT, PRESIDENT HOLLANDE CLAIMS. RIGHT OR WRONG?
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Monsieur le President,

‘ISIS has the cult of death…we have the love of life’, you piously intoned, commemorating the Paris victims of terrorism. True or false?

The jihadists have killed 130 innocent people. A crime that makes them into vile assassins but… into a death cult? Gallic love of logic, of Cartesian ‘clear and distinct ideas’ and of linguistic precision demand your rhetoric should be scrutinised.

ISIS’ declared aim is to establish an Islamic state, a caliphate. A polity ruled by a caliph, a political and religious statesman. A successor of the Prophet Muhammad. Unlike Plato’s Republic, the caliphate concept is no celestial utopia. Its many historical embodiments include the last caliphate, the Ottoman Empire. It lasted over 600 years. A tad longer than your glorious French republic.

A caliphate is a living, organised and fully functioning community. Its law is sharia, the holy code of Islam - a universal religion followed by over a billion people. A caliphate is a vast social multitude engaged in buying and selling, eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, reading and studying, praying and playing, making war and peace, getting married, having children, , going on pilgrimages, holidaying…and so on. You have to be alive to do any of those things. How then can you say caliphate advocates are a death cult?

You mean perhaps ISIS’ nasty way to go about its political-theological goal? Murderous and despicable. Terrorism pure and simple, like in the Paris attack. Yes, terrorism…wait a minute. Terrorisme... Isn’t that originally a French creation? Harking back to the radical Jacobins who during the French revolution terrorised and murdered innocent Frenchmen not enamoured of lofty republican slogans such as ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’? Makes you think…

Regardless, means and ends are distinct ideas. ISIS’ end, however atrocious its means, is not death but victory. Nor are jihadis irrational or nihilistic, despite bonehead Western commentators. Their hideous massacres and beheadings serve a clear, rational purpose. They wish to provoke Western nations to intervene directly into the Middle East. Not just by bombing but by a full ground offensive. By putting boots on the ground. So that they can appeal to the whole Arab and Islamic world: ‘O Muslims! See? The crusaders are back! To Jihad!’ A very intelligible and clever plan, no?

Love of death you contrast with the ‘love of life’. Alas, the jihadis love life, too. A stern, grim and unlovely type of life, to be sure, but still life. Moreover, they believe in a life beyond this life. In another world. A supernatural existence beyond this merely earthly one. A belief they share with all their fellow Muslims. Indeed, also with two billions Christians - though of course I hold that their crimes will doom them to post-mortem chastisement. Now, as a self-confessed atheist you do not believe in an afterlife. Only in this life. It follows that death is your ultimate destination, the final and absolute story’s end, the extinction of human life for good. It would be unfair to say that you practice a death cult but…isn’t that a bottom what atheism logically imply? That being so, aren’t the Jihadis, however ‘meprisables’, more life-loving than you?

In your secular oration, you lyrically praised French bonheur de vivre, relish of living, love of songs, music, concerts and shows. Other nations love them, and so do I. (Certainly not the cacophonous Eagles of Death Metal rock band. Jinxes by any definition!) But you also rejected any reference to ‘eternal France’. Why? Do you hate the ancient history of your country so much? The France of Clovis, the Frankish monarch who first accepted baptism, the France of Martyr King St Louis…France, the first Christian kingdom of Europe, the France of wonderful saints like Joan of Arc, Vincent de Paul, Francis de Sales, Bernadette Soubirous, Therese de Lisieux and a whole luminous cloud of witnesses…but how naive of me! You are an atheist. All those stupendous Christian men and women loved life beyond the grave. Eternal life. You don’t. For you there is only the grave. Natural you should dislike them.

ISIS has slaughtered and maimed and wounded in the name of ‘a betrayed God’, you said. What?! That really pulled me up. An elliptic reference to Allah, presumably. The jihadis have played false to him, you claim. But how do you know? Who gives you the authority to say that? You understand about Islam as much as I understand about entomology, I bet. The jihadis can quote chapter and verse of the Qur’an, plus cite prophetic hadiths to justify their deeds. As well as the theological reasons for the many wars undertaken to spread their faith. Can you? Hence you have no right to speak of a betrayed Allah.

It was worse than ignorance. It was also a cheek. Because it is you, Monsieur le President, who is guilty of betrayal. You have betrayed God. The God of your ancestors, the God of ‘la France eternelle’. The God for whom so many brave Frenchmen lived and died in centuries past. You in your boasted atheism have forsaken and betrayed Jesus Christ. To blame jihadis for betrayal is like ‘le moque de la charite noir’. A case of the pot calling the kettle black. How pathetic!

‘Long live the Republic! Long live France!’ you proclaimed at the speech’s end. I love your country, so am happy to boom out ‘Vive la France’! But, with an inept President like you, I will NOT say ‘Vive la Republic’.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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