Police have named 42-year-old Muslim policeman Ahmed Merabet as one of the two officers killed in Wednesday’s attack on a satirical magazine in Paris. He is survived by his wife.
Merabet was seen in videos being killed point-blank on the sidewalk by the Muslim terrorists, after begging for his life. He was a patrolman assigned to the 11th arrondissement– the Paris neighborhood where Charlie Hebdo’s office is located.
Islam explicitly condemns killing other Muslims. Many Islamist groups justify their indiscriminate attacks on fellow believers by claiming that those living in the West, or otherwise not advancing their group’s radical cause, have betrayed “true Islam” and are therefore apostates.
Muslims compose 5 to 10 percent of France’s population, compared to less than 1 percent in the United States. Writing after the attacks, scholar Juan Cole pointed out that “French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world,” and that al-Qaida tries to benefit from provoking “non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims.”
But Islamist attacks in France have ticked up in recent years, with schools, soldiers and civilian crowds attacked. Additionally, reports indicate that more than 1,000 Muslims living in France have left to join ISIS.
The other officer killed in the attack, whose identity has not yet been confirmed, was a 49-year-old officer assigned to protect Charlie Hebdo’s editor, Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier.
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