Samuel Paty, martyr

The fact that an 18-year-old man slit the throat of Samuel Paty, history teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in the outskirts of Paris, for showing his teenage students some caricatures of Mohammed is a failure for the human species, Homo sapiens.

It is a failure for Europe and the entire so-called Western society and its civilization.

More directly, it is a resounding failure of islamism, convinced that killing a blasphemer honors Allah.

But it is also a disastrous failure of Islam which, mostly, still thinks that an ink-and-paper caricature is a blaspheme that dishonors and angers God. What a caricature of God!

It is a cultural and social failure of the great monotheisms, Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular, which still read the Bible literally and continue to believe its dogmas word for word, unable to asume freedom of expression, a plurality of beliefs, the principle of secularism.

Poor humanity! Poor islamism! Poor Islam! Poor Churches! All of them victims of themselves!

Poor Samuel Paty and his broken family, victims of intolerance and fanatism so close to Paris! May the Spirit of Life console and comfort you amidst such barbarity!