Can people be insane? Absolutely. But we surely have reason to be weary of insanity as an excuse for antisemitic acts. Yet, France’s court—la Cour d’Appel—ruled on 5 January 2010 that, by reason of insanity, a young Muslim by the name of Adel Amastaibou is not guilty of murdering a French Jew by the name of Sebastien Selam. Amastabaibou claimed the following: “I am content that he is dead, the Jew bastard, the dirty whore Jew, the dirty Jew . . . . I killed Sebastien as Allah wanted”. Needless to say, the Court’s ruling is about as implausible as it would be to claim that all Muslims are children of Satan.
Hate is not a form of insanity. The expression of hate is not a form of insanity. And if there is anything that France’s Cour d’Appel should know, it is the two truths that I have just articulated. The Court’s ruling is stupefying in light of (a) the two truths just articulated and (b) Adel Amastaibou’s behavior. If mere hatred and its expression entailed insanity, then it would follow that the horrendous antisemitism of Nazi Germany is excusable by reason of insanity. No one thinks that. Not even France’s Cour d’Appel.
If Amastaibou were indeed insane, there would signs of it independent of his killing of Sabastien Salem. And there are no such signs at all. Amastaibou’s desire to kill Salem did not in any way interfere with Amastaibou’s daily activities or judgments about himself and others. Indeed, there was not anything remotely self-destructive about his behavior. So for instance there was no undue paranoia or suspicion of others on Amastaibou’s part. Why, Amastaibou was not even under the delusion that Salem or some other “dirty Jew” wanted to kill him (Amastaibou).
Now, what is particularly disturbing about the Court’s ruling are the implications that it has for other horrendous forms of behavior. If a so-called uncontrollable desire is all it takes to excuse a person from murder, then such a desire should also excuse child sexual abuse and a man’s rape of a woman. After all, individuals who commit such acts are typically driven by very intense sexual desire.
Of course, it is just so much nonsense to say that such desires are uncontrollable. Child sexual abusers never even attempt to abuse a child sexually right in plain sight of every one. These abusers always exercise enough restraint to lure the child out of public view. Likewise for those who commit rape.
I cannot imagine that the France’s Cour d’Appel would excuse child sexual abuse or rape in the absence of incontrovertible evidence of insanity. This is why the Court’s excusing of Amastaibou’s behavior is so disconcerting and so utterly inexcusable and so very incomprehensible. One can only wonder “What was the Court thinking?”
Equally disconcerting is the absence of public outcry. In fact, France’s premiere newspaper, Le Monde, does not even report the ruling of the Cour d’Appel’s regarding Amastaibou. A full search of the newspaper does not turn up a single entry; and this is with regard to a decision made by France’s highest court that was made 11 days ago—a decision that has enormous implications. In fact, I came to learn of the Court’s decision by way of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the United States. This would be rather like learning in France about a very important decision that had been rendered in the United States—say the Supreme Court’s decision against the death penalty in the case of child rape.
This brings me, finally, to the issue of antisemitism in France. I hold a very simple view, namely that people generally do what they believe that they can get away with doing. In the Old South, whites sometimes lynched blacks—in fact, even blacks sometimes lynched blacks (see p. 4 of my essay “Atrocities” in the Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience)—because, among other things, they knew that they could get away with doing so. There would have been no lynching by anyone had everyone very good reason to believe that such behavior would be roundly reported to the local authorities and that there would be widespread protests against such behavior.
France has a very large Muslim population (about 10% of France’s 60 million people), and while no all Muslims dislike Jews, there most certainly is significant antisemitic sentiment among the Muslims in France. The brutal murder in 2006 of young Jew by the name of Ilan Halimi stands as a most poignant reminder of that reality. Halimi was murdered by Youssouf Fofona, a Muslim.
It is not paranoia at all to notice the following pattern. A Muslim hates Jews and decides that killing this or that Jew would please Allah. This was essentially the line of thought on the part of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Muslim who was apprehended during the Northwest flight to the United States on 25 December 2009.
Political correctness would have us—and no doubt the French—say that it is just as likely that a Jew or a Christian or a Buddhist might commit a senseless act of murder in the name of his or her religious beliefs as it is that a Muslim would. The only problem with this politically correct point of view is that has no basis whatsoever in reality. The issue is not whether all Muslims are would-be-terrorists. Of course not. That is a silly view. I have taught a number of Muslim students; and it no more occurs to me to think that they are would-be-terrorists than it does to think that airplanes are submarines.
Just so, the reality is that with quite high frequency terrorists turn out to be Muslim.
The decision rendered by France’s Cour d’Appel reveals something that is most troubling, namely that whether we are in the air (travelling by airplane) or on the ground, we are all increasingly becoming hostages to terrorism—terrorism committed not just by anyone, but terrorism committed by Muslims in the name of Allah. Once this simple truth is borne in mind, then it is so very easy to understand the decision by France’s Cour d’Appel that to claim that it is by reason of mental illness the Muslim Amastaibou is not guilty of murdering the Jew Selam. Only someone who believes in the tooth fairy could think that decision by France’s Cour d’Appel had anything to do with Amastaibou’s lack of mental health.