Syrian airmen held by rebels after crash
needs to remain ever-vigilant for “intruders” who try to seduce wayward youths with the promise of identity and belonging through extreme religiosity. “They say: ‘Why don’t you wear a beard? It would look great on you’,” said Lakhdar Taddani, a suit-and-tie-attired 69-year-old who immigrated to France from Morocco in the early 1970s.
“I’m as scared of what these extremists are doing as any other Frenchman. It’s breaking my heart.” The mosque, Taddani said, is a key part of the solution, a community force that can dispel the myths propagated by Islamic State and its supporters.
Not everyone sees it that way, however. France’s far-right National Front party has capitalised on anti-Muslim sentiment – and fed it – with calls to shutter mosques and deport their leaders if they carry the whiff of radicalism. The party finished a strong second in local elections on Sunday, early results and exit polls showed, and its leader, Marine le Pen, has gone from fringe candidate to prospective president in a contest due in 2017. The party’s hardline stance on immigrants broadly, and on Muslims in particular, is seen as a critical factor in its success.
“Not every Muslim is a terrorist, thank God,” said Gilles Parmentier, a blue-eyed 21-year-old university student who is running for Vincennes’s regional council on a National Front ticket. “But every terrorist is a Muslim.”
Parmentier said France needs to slash immigration to the bare minimum and encourage even skilled workers in poor nations such as Algeria to stay home. “Algeria needs doctors,” he said. “They should develop their own countries.”
That wasn’t an option for Bessalem, the Vincennes doctor who left his native Algeria because of a war that had its roots in French colonialism – the history of which France has been deeply reluctant to confront.
Coming to France a quarter-century ago allowed Bessalem to launch a successful practice – one he shares today with two other doctors, one Jewish and the other Catholic. But he’s acutely aware that young Muslims growing up now in some of the rough-and-tumble neighbourhoods that ring Vincennes may not have the same opportunities.
“French Muslims are really lucky to be living in a free country, one where you’re allowed to follow any religion you want,” he said. “But the problem is justice. When you don’t have justice, people will react.” – Washington Post-Bloomberg BEIRUT: Syrian insurgents captured several government airmen after their helicopter crashed in a rebel-held area of northwestern Syria on Sunday, activists said.
The Idlib Media Center and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the helicopter went down near Jabal al-Zawiya, about 10km north of the town of Maarat alNuman in Idlib province.
The aircraft experienced a technical malfunction and made an emergency crash-landing, said the Observatory.
Syria’s state news agency confirmed that a helicopter had crashed in Idlib after a mechanical problem and said the authorities were looking for the crew.
Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman said opposition fighters, including from the alQaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had taken four crew members prisoner. Another airman survived the crash, but was reportedly killed by his captors, and the fate of a suspected sixth airman is unknown, said Abdurrahman.
A video and photographs that were posted online showing armed fighters inspecting the wreckage and at least two airmen in rebel custody, appeared genuine and corresponded to Associated Press reporting.
The Syrian military often uses helicopters to drop crude barrel bombs on rebel-held towns and neighbourhoods. – Sapa-AP