"One month after the terrorist attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris, journalist Zvika Klein of the NRG Hebrew language news website took a walk across the French capital while wearing tzitzit (fringes) and a kippah.
The walk, during which Klein was and accompanied by a bodyguard and a cameraman, proved to be an intimidating one.
“For 10 hours I quietly walked down the streets and suburbs of Paris, with photographer Dov Belhassen documenting the day using a GoPro camera hidden in his backpack. Given the tensions in Paris, which is still reeling from a wave of terrorist attacks (including the murder of Charlie Hebdo magazine journalists), I was assigned a bodyguard,” recalled Klein.
“At times it was like walking in downtown Ramallah. Most women were wearing a veil or a hijab, most men appeared to be Muslim, and Arabic was prevalent everywhere. We decided ahead of time that I was to walk through these areas quietly, without stopping anywhere, without speaking to anyone, without so much as looking sideways. My heart was pounding and negative thoughts were running through my head. I would be lying if I said I was not afraid,” he continued.
“Walking into a public housing neighborhood, we came across a little boy and his hijab-clad mother, who were clearly shocked to see us. ‘What is he doing here Mommy? Doesn’t he know he will be killed?’ the boy asked.”
Klein recalls walking into a marketplace in one of the mostly Muslim neighborhoods, and one merchant yelled, “Look at him! He should be ashamed of himself. What is he doing walking in here wearing a kippa?!"
“Is this what life is like for Paris' Jews? Is this what a Jew goes through, day in and day out, while walking to work or using public transportation?” wonders Klein. “The majority of French Jews do not flaunt their religion, as the Jewish community leaders have urged them to wear hats as they walk to and from work, or go bareheaded. But what about nighttime? Well, Jews prefers to stay inside in the evening. It is safer at home.”
_________________
Islam, as Hilaire Belloc reminds us, "began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of Christian doctrine. Its vitality and endurance soon gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its rise saw it for what it was - not a denial, but an adaptation and a misuse, of the Christian thing." (The Great Heresies, p. 42).
This perversion of Christian doctrine, which denies that Jesus is the Christ and that He died on the cross to atone for our sins, makes the claim that it alone is destined to become the religion of all mankind. Islam divides the world into two camps: those who are lost and those who are the elect, the Dar al-Harb and the Dar al-Islam respectively.
As one website puts it: "The world is divided into the House of Islam and the House of War, the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-harb. The Dar al-Islam is all those lands in which a Muslim government rules and the Holy Law of Islam prevails. Non-Muslims may live there on Muslim sufferance. The outside world, which has not yet been subjugated, is called the "House of War," and strictly speaking a perpetual state of jihad, of holy war, is imposed by the law. The law also provided that the jihad might be interrupted by truces as and when appropriate. In fact, the periods of peace and war were not vastly different from those which existed between the Christian states of Europe for most of European history.
The law thus divides unbelievers theologically into those who have a book and profess what Islam recognizes as a divine religion and those who do not; politically into dhimmis, those who have accepted the supremacy of the Muslim state and the primacy of the Muslims, and harbis, the denizens of the Dar al-harb, the House of War, who remain outside the Islamic frontier, and with whom therefore there is in principle, a canonically obligatory perpetual state of war until the whole world is either converted or subjugated."
