"SOYONS ensemble des derniers a pleurer"- "Let us be the last to weep" - the beautiful words uttered by the communist mayor, Hubert Wulfranc, speaking after the gruesome murder of Fr Jacques Hamel.
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the words of Monsieur Wulfranc will be heeded by the madness that seems to infect part of the Islamic world.
What possesses teenagers to storm into a place of worship and callously slit the throat of an octogenarian priest?
It’s hardly a heroic act. Words fail to express either the full horror or insanity of these actions.
And it is a form of insanity or sickness because these young men are preyed upon and poisoned by the hatred and bile fed to them by radical jihadists.
Fr Hamel’s murderers tried to video their slaughter and manically marched around the altar apparently relishing in their deed.
Within a short time they were dead. These young men weren’t even twenty years old. The two dead were French born.
So once again this was an act of home grown terrorism, something which the French and Belgian authorities are struggling to comprehend. There can be nothing worse than being the parents of these young men.
The mother of one of them is reported as saying ‘my son is not a monster.’ Many mothers would not recognise their sons if they were guilty of slashing the throat of a pensioner.
However, at some time and somewhere, whether his mother chooses to believe it or not, Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean did become a monster.
That he believed that the actions of him and his friends was in some way a righteous or holy thing to do is even more stomach churning.
The Islamic faith is underwritten by five pillars that include Faith, Prayer, Charity, Fasting and Pilgrimage. Carnage, murder, slaughter, mayhem and brutality are not part of those pillars.
The notion that killing is a legitimate part of the Islamic faith is as blasphemous as it is twisted.
Naturally the Quran like the Bible has more than its fair share of barbaric deeds, nonsensical references to punishments and vengeful acts but the thought that anyone in the 21st century should interpret it in a literal sense is a form of insanity too.
In many parts of the world Christians are increasingly becoming the focus of attacks by radical Islamists, whether its Nigeria, Egypt, Yemen or Malaysia.
The Pope has referenced this several times and has said that the persecution of Christians is both real and on the rise.
The whataboutery brigade say this is payback for pogroms against Muslims in medieval Spain or the Crusades but it’s an argument that carries little weight.
The events of five or six hundred years ago were wrong then and now. It’s certainly not a justification for suicide bombers in bus stations or rock concerts.
Or hacking commuters with an axe on a train. These are acts of terror designed in perverse thought and executed with savage brutality with the intention of creating fear, division and suspicion. And it’s working.
Look closely behind the Brexit referendum and you will see that the anti EU zeal was a thin veneer of cover for the more fundamental societal failure to deal with the integration of Islamic and white working class communities in Britain.
The unspoken fear was the threat of terrorism and the perceived influx of genuine refugees from the middle east. Look too at the anti-Islamic rhetoric of Donald Trump in the US.
That a presidential candidate could go far politically by demonising one of the world’s great faiths is unnerving.
France is on the verge of a far right take over with the Elysee Palace well within the sights of Marie Le Pen and her National Front.
Every lone wolf jihadist converts a thousand votes to the parties and voices of the extreme in the West.
The fact that so many of these jihadists are homegrown or indigenous to the West fosters fear and distrust of the wider Islamic community.
Unfortunately countering it with soft and compassionate sentiments does little to provide the reassurance that a wary public so desperately seeks.
Yet somehow we can’t allow ourselves to be sucked into the very sectarian hate war so desired by radical Islamists like ISIL, the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The murderers of Fr Hamel set out to wage a holy war but in sacrificing him they diminished their own faith and made him a martyr for all faiths.
