The French socialist group Lutte Ouvrière has responded to the murder on 16 October of school teacher Samuel Paty, targeted because he let students view the famous âMohammed cartoonsâ in a lesson on freedom of expression.
âAn 18-year-old fanatic, influenced by the fascists of the Muslim world (called Islamists), has killed a school teacher who had displayed the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Because of those lowlifes who want to impose their moral order on us, Muslims will be singled out. Dividing us is their ultimate goal. These types feed on each other. Other fascists have been seen attacking mosques.
âThey have only one goal, to impose their domination on us, and to that end they want to divide us by religion or by nation. We workers are and will remain in solidarity to change this world where it is more and more barbarians who for the moment hold the stage.â
The Workersâ Liberty website has a longer response from Algerian socialist feminist Marieme Helie Lucas:
âOne of the many problems in the analysis of crimes such as the one committed... in France against a history teacher whose only crime was to teach the official curriculum on freedom of expression is the lack of an adequate vocabulary to name the perpetrators. We need to qualify them in political terms, not in religious ones as is currently done in France.
âThe crimes and violations we witnessed in Algeria during the nineties, which are still currently perpetrated today in so many predominantly âMuslimâ countries, could not possibly be defined as perpetrated by âMuslimsâ in our contexts; we were forced to identify them as political forces of the extreme right.
âNaming these political forces is essential. This is the conceptual blessing I wish for France and for Europe, if we donât want to face here as we did in Algeria, another âwar against the civiliansâ. That is why I say, we have to stand up and be counted, now."
