Charlie Hebdo heroes were Muslims themselves: ‘Madness has neither colour nor religion’
Twitter"He
was straightforward, modest, super kind. He was adorable … Everyone
liked him,” a friend says of police officer Ahmed Merabet, who was
killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks on Wednesday.
As
Parisians gathered in solidarity against the deliberate terrorist
targeting of cartoonists, editors and Jews, details started to emerge of
acts of heroism amid the carnage.
Two of those heroes especially put the lie to the terrorist notion that last week’s attacks represented vengeance for insulted Muslims, because two of the most inspiring characters — the police officer who first confronted the Kouachi brothers at the Charlie Hebdo office, and the grocery clerk who sheltered Jewish shoppers at the grocery — were themselves Muslim.
That fact appears to have at least partly inspired some of the most unusual condemnation of the terror rampage, from leaders of terrorist groups.
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, for example, said that takfiri — Muslims who accuse others of apostasy — “have distorted Islam, the Koran and the Muslim nation more than Islam’s enemies… who insulted the Prophet in films… or drew cartoons of the Prophet.”
The comment fits with his recent denunciation of ISIS as a threat to Islam, but stands in contrast to his chilling remarks during the 2006 Danish cartoons controversy, which he said would not have happened if someone had carried out the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
Hamas, likewise, released a statement in French saying “Differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder.”
“Madness has neither colour nor religion,” said Malek Merabet, brother of Ahmed Merabet, the police officer, at a moving press conference after his funeral, in remarks he addressed to the “racists, Islamophobes and anti-Semites.”
He denounced reprisal attacks on all sides as an insult to the memory of victims. “You are attacking people. It won’t bring back our dead, and it won’t appease our families,” he said.
“My brother was a Muslim, and he was killed by people who pretend to be Muslims,” Mr. Merabet said. “They are terrorists, that’s it.”
The death of Mr. Merabet inspired declarations of “Je suis Ahmed” to parallel the popular statement of defiance and grief, “Je suis Charlie.” He was killed like the staff of Charlie Hebdo, execution style at point-blank range, by one of the Kouachi brothers, although which one is not clear.
One of the attackers fired several times at him on the street outside the magazine offices, hitting him in the leg or groin, and causing him to fall. As one of the attackers approached, he said, “Did you want to kill us?” Mr. Merabet replied with his hand raised, as if for mercy, “No, it’s OK friend,” he said. He was shot in the head the next second.
In the panic that followed, as a manhunt spread across Paris, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, carried out a rampage of his own, killing a policewoman before attacking a kosher supermarkert, Hyper Cacher, near the Porte de Vincennes in the east of Paris.
As shoppers gathered their final supplied before sundown, he stormed
in shooting, prompting a Muslim employee, Lassana Bathily, 24, an
immigrant from Mali, to hustle patrons downstairs to a walk-in freezer.
“I told them to calm down, not to make a sound, because if they heard us they could come and take us,” Mr. Bathily said. He then turned off the lights and fridges.
“I was heading for the check-out with the goods in my hand when I heard a bang — very loud. I thought it was a firecracker at first. But turning I saw a black man armed with two Kalashnikov rifles and I knew something bad was happening,” French media reported, quoting a hostage who gave his name as Mickael B.
“I grabbed my son by the collar and fled to the back of the store. There, with other customers, we ran down a spiral staircase into the basement. We all piled into one of two cold rooms — our door wouldn’t close. We were terrified.”
“You stay quiet there, I’m going back out,” Mr. Bathily said, according to the videotaped interview.
He then snuck out through a freight elevator and fire escape and approached police, who first thought he was the attacker and forced him to the ground and handcuffed him. After they realized their mistake, he gave them the key to the supermarket’s metal grill, which allowed police to make their final assault without forcing through it, freeing the surviving hostages.
Police thanked him. “C’est la vie,” Mr. Bathily said in the interview.
Another man, as yet unidentified, showed similar bravery that cost him his life.
Quoting Mickael B, French media reported Coulibaly set a gun on the counter as he made a sandwich, and a customer grabbed it, not knowing Coulibaly had left it there because it malfunctioned. The man tried to shoot Coulibaly, but the gun jammed again. Coulibaly “turned and shot at the customer, who died on the spot,” Mickael B said.
The dead at the supermarket were named as Yoav Hattab, 21, Yohan Cohen, 22, Philippe Braham, 40, and François-Michel Saada, 60.
Two of the rescued shoppers, Sarah Bitton and her one-year-old son, are close relatives of Albert Guigui, chief rabbi of Brussels, who said, “They were saved thanks to the Muslim employee of the supermarket. He pushed them towards the back of the shop and down to the cellar. It’s thanks to him that they were saved.”
Two of those heroes especially put the lie to the terrorist notion that last week’s attacks represented vengeance for insulted Muslims, because two of the most inspiring characters — the police officer who first confronted the Kouachi brothers at the Charlie Hebdo office, and the grocery clerk who sheltered Jewish shoppers at the grocery — were themselves Muslim.
That fact appears to have at least partly inspired some of the most unusual condemnation of the terror rampage, from leaders of terrorist groups.
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, for example, said that takfiri — Muslims who accuse others of apostasy — “have distorted Islam, the Koran and the Muslim nation more than Islam’s enemies… who insulted the Prophet in films… or drew cartoons of the Prophet.”
The comment fits with his recent denunciation of ISIS as a threat to Islam, but stands in contrast to his chilling remarks during the 2006 Danish cartoons controversy, which he said would not have happened if someone had carried out the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
Hamas, likewise, released a statement in French saying “Differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder.”
“Madness has neither colour nor religion,” said Malek Merabet, brother of Ahmed Merabet, the police officer, at a moving press conference after his funeral, in remarks he addressed to the “racists, Islamophobes and anti-Semites.”
He denounced reprisal attacks on all sides as an insult to the memory of victims. “You are attacking people. It won’t bring back our dead, and it won’t appease our families,” he said.
“My brother was a Muslim, and he was killed by people who pretend to be Muslims,” Mr. Merabet said. “They are terrorists, that’s it.”
The death of Mr. Merabet inspired declarations of “Je suis Ahmed” to parallel the popular statement of defiance and grief, “Je suis Charlie.” He was killed like the staff of Charlie Hebdo, execution style at point-blank range, by one of the Kouachi brothers, although which one is not clear.
One of the attackers fired several times at him on the street outside the magazine offices, hitting him in the leg or groin, and causing him to fall. As one of the attackers approached, he said, “Did you want to kill us?” Mr. Merabet replied with his hand raised, as if for mercy, “No, it’s OK friend,” he said. He was shot in the head the next second.
In the panic that followed, as a manhunt spread across Paris, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, carried out a rampage of his own, killing a policewoman before attacking a kosher supermarkert, Hyper Cacher, near the Porte de Vincennes in the east of Paris.
AP photoThis
image made from a video posted online by militants on Sunday shows
slain hostage-taker Amedy Coulibaly, who shot a policewoman and four
hostages at a kosher grocery in Paris, with a gun in front of an Islamic
State emblem as he defends the Paris attacks. At one point in the
video, Coulibaly says Charlie Hebdo will be attacked "tomorrow" and that
he and the (Said and Cherif Kouachi) brothers were coordinating.
“I told them to calm down, not to make a sound, because if they heard us they could come and take us,” Mr. Bathily said. He then turned off the lights and fridges.
“I was heading for the check-out with the goods in my hand when I heard a bang — very loud. I thought it was a firecracker at first. But turning I saw a black man armed with two Kalashnikov rifles and I knew something bad was happening,” French media reported, quoting a hostage who gave his name as Mickael B.
“I grabbed my son by the collar and fled to the back of the store. There, with other customers, we ran down a spiral staircase into the basement. We all piled into one of two cold rooms — our door wouldn’t close. We were terrified.”
“You stay quiet there, I’m going back out,” Mr. Bathily said, according to the videotaped interview.
He then snuck out through a freight elevator and fire escape and approached police, who first thought he was the attacker and forced him to the ground and handcuffed him. After they realized their mistake, he gave them the key to the supermarket’s metal grill, which allowed police to make their final assault without forcing through it, freeing the surviving hostages.
Police thanked him. “C’est la vie,” Mr. Bathily said in the interview.
ScreengrabMany outlets called Lassana Bathily a hero for his actions
Quoting Mickael B, French media reported Coulibaly set a gun on the counter as he made a sandwich, and a customer grabbed it, not knowing Coulibaly had left it there because it malfunctioned. The man tried to shoot Coulibaly, but the gun jammed again. Coulibaly “turned and shot at the customer, who died on the spot,” Mickael B said.
The dead at the supermarket were named as Yoav Hattab, 21, Yohan Cohen, 22, Philippe Braham, 40, and François-Michel Saada, 60.
Two of the rescued shoppers, Sarah Bitton and her one-year-old son, are close relatives of Albert Guigui, chief rabbi of Brussels, who said, “They were saved thanks to the Muslim employee of the supermarket. He pushed them towards the back of the shop and down to the cellar. It’s thanks to him that they were saved.”
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