How strange appears the demand of the abductors of three Anglo-Saxon men, who would be killed were three (or two, according to discrepant accounts...) female Iraqi inmates not to be immediately released! Yet this stangeness abates, once we recall the global context pertaining to the abduction of two French journalists, just a month ago.
We should remember that the hostage takers - and, even more recently, some Islamist blogs - were warning French authorities to respect the right of young French Moslem girls to wear headscarves (or veils).
Maybe this spot represents a strategic point for certain weird Islamist "lovers" (protectors? defenders?) of the opposite sex.
Maybe these men wish to have themselves depicted as heroic Islamic warriors; showing concern for the freedom and welfare of their female brethren, they garnish their reprehensible behavior with ... sex appeal. They toy with symbols and emotions, in a stealthy attempt to catch and capture hearts of not minds.
How would they dare ask for these foolish things in such a strange way, if they hadn't a remote and secret goal, such as striking the imagination and paralyzing the intellect of their fellow fanaticized Allah worshippers; isn't making oneself noticed half the pleasure?
And were they to slay the hostages, this might be depicted and portrayed as a sort of love sacrifice, in which they would have shown no weakness and great backbone as regards the sacred freedom of women according to the so-called Islamic human rights so stalwartly advocated by the heroes of our time.
Step by step, facts give way to dreams that are dreadful, but the nightmare is not confined to the film or TV screen, as the murderers draw out a subliminal horror plot in the mind, the better to "legitimize" the homicides soon to be shown in major motion picture theaters throughout the world...
They endeavor to embroider their perverse gesture not only with religious raiments, but also with full-dress psychological clothing; just think of how, at the battle of Badr (624 AD), a few hundred Mohammeadans got the better of a numerically superior enemy. In the Sunna framework, which is a way of perfectly miming the Prophet's conduct, they take the symbolic road, appeal to popular opinion, and thereby propagate sympathy for the "holy" Cause.
If the assassins succeed, their killings will be transformed into a gift fostering the beauty of Islamic women! Can't you already sense a spatio-temporal shift, a paradigmatic change permeating the signs of the times? The Islamist groups are learning how to render their advertising not simply frightening, but also oddly appealing and seductive.
Text by LSA Oulahbib written in English, reviewed and reworked by Jeffrey Robert Arsham
