Situation Report: Violence Continues in France as Islamists Urge Jihad against Free Expression

Continued violence out of France as an attacker armed with a knife yelled Allahu Akbar (Arabic for God is Greatest) before murdering three people inside a Catholic church in Nice, France. The attacker was reportedly identified as a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant Brahim Aoussaoui. Another knife attack took place outside the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia shortly afterwards. That attack injured a consulate security guard.

This attack follows in the aftermath of the murder of Samuel Paty, a schoolteacher beheaded after having shown cartoons of the prophet Mohammad to his class during a discussion on free expression. The trial of several conspirators of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre which killed 12 people is currently ongoing in France, bringing these issues once more to the forefront.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron ordered an increase to troops in the street to prevent attacks, and particularly deployed soldiers around France’s churches. In a social media message to Catholics Macron wrote:

Catholics, You have the support of the whole Nation. Our country is our values, that everyone can believe or not believe, that each religion can be exercised. Our determination is absolute. Actions will follow to protect all of our fellow citizens.

Macron is in the middle of a campaign to counter the growth of what the French president calls “Islamic separatism,” in France and has taken recent steps to shutter Islamist groups including a Pro-Hamas organization, and an “anti-Islamophobia” collective with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the Muslim and Arab world, Islamist leaders, led by Turkey and Qatar, have orchestrated a growing boycott against French products and called for violence against France in response to the display of the Prophet Mohammad Cartoons. While the campaign clearly echoes the explosive 2006 Danish Cartoon Controversy, which resulted in over 200 deaths amid riots in multiple Islamic countries, this campaign is somewhat muted by comparison a result of major gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates increasingly opposing Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist networks they see as aligned with their opponents in Doha and Ankara.