Omar Khayyam, Orlando & Magnanville

We had a rough and sad week around the world. It started last weekend with the horrible Orlando shooting in a gay nightclub. It went on with the couple of French cops being slaughtered in front of their 3 year-old son by a Islamic terrorist in their own home during 3 hours. It continued with the Children hospital in Paris having its windows shattered by a bunch of extremists (not the same as the demonstrators). It ended with a bunch of senseless baboons (also called hooligans) fighting each other in the streets of Marseille, Lille and another French city after football matches of the Euro cup.

The last one of these three events is obviously not comparable in terms of gravity and horror with the first two. The first one is an an attack of a terrorist (no matter how mentally unstable he may be) against a gay nightclub, somebody who felt compelled to kill innocent people because of who they are. We know how radical Islam works. It’s not just the women they fear and oppress. It’s the Jews. It’s the Christians. It’s all the non-Muslims. It’s all the Muslims they don’t deem to be obedient enough to their own made-up creed and rules du jour. And of course it’s the Gays. And anybody who drinks alcohol. Anybody who has fun. Anybody who represents what they hate (in the case of the two cops, they represent France, its society and its History) . The price is never too high for them. A decerebrated scumbag cutting the throat of a woman in front of her 3 year-old child for three hours seems acceptable to them.

Today is Father’s Day. I’m pretty sure that raising a kid, a boy especially, get a lot of fathers thinking about the kind of values and behaviour they want to impress on and pass on to their boy(s) no matter what their culture is. And today I’m not just wondering about what I should do to raise Vallerand so that he never falls into the abyss of extremism and terrorism (we usually don’t expect that) but so that he never becomes one of these senseless baboons I was referring to above. I hope he never becomes someone like that. Of course, education has limits and there comes a time when it’s clear any individual should bear his or her own responsibility. Even so it is a challenge we, the people who are supposed to be celebrated today must pay attention to.

I will end this post by quoting two passages of the famous Iranian poet and philosopher Omar Khayyam. I’m sure it won’t fly very well with the people who think it’s acceptable to attack anything and anyone who’s not them but so be it.

“Drink wine. This is life eternal. This is all that youth will give you. It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”

“As far as you can avoid it, do not give grief to anyone. Never inflict your rage on another. If you hope for eternal rest, feel the pain yourself; but don’t hurt others.”