One of the vicious animals who inspired the Friday acts of terror in Paris told the terrorists to kill all Americans and Europeans they can, and “especially the filthy French.” [Note the word “filthy.”] The ISIS press release on the attack insistently linked France with prostitution.
When we all started asking ourselves why France keeps being hit by terrorists, the answers that came to mind reflected our own way of understanding the world: they hit France because it was bombing ISIS in Syria, they hit France because there are many grandchildren of Algerian immigrants from the 1960s, they hit France because there are Syrian refugees there, etc.
The mentality of the terrorists is very different, though. They talk of the “especially filthy French” and target France because of the 18th-19th-century stereotype of France as a place of sexual libertinage. This is not the first time that ISIS betrays a very late 18th – early 19th-century mentality*. There is a lot to study here, but our understanding is often clouded by the need to imagine everybody in the world as mirror images of ourselves.
*People say ISIS represents medieval Islam but I’m not seeing that at all. The Caliphate of Córdoba they are trying to recreate was the polar opposite of what they are actually doing.
Clarissa's Blog 
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