Thread by @dikgaj

1) The central issue in Samuel Paty's beheading is the demand by a section of Muslims for non-Muslims to accept claimed Muslim right to physically torture and liquidate the person whose words or creations are deemed offensive by Muslims. If we don't deal with this, we will fail.

2) Islamist practice of seeking to physically liquidate critical voices, especially "poets" of both gender who were deemed critical of Islam or its founder, is attested to from the earliest Islamic narratives. How Islamist commentators have dealt with these stories reveal a lot.

3) There are many cases, like Kaab of Yathrib (renamed as Medina to bury non-Islamic place name as in Islamist "conquests")- but we look at Asma bint Marwan, also of Yathrib - as she was a "mixed race" female poet who throws Islamist apologists in a tizzy from Bukhari's times.

4) The earliest sources on the conflicts and conquests during foundation of Islam - Ishaq's history, (cut&sanitized by Hisham) ascribes to the founder of Islam the call to "get rid of Marwan's daughter[Asma]", Umayr Adiy al-Khatmi undertook the job.

5) Umayr entered Asma's house by stealth at night, reportedly found her suckling her baby - pulled the baby away and knifed her through the heart. This is where the story starts to reveal the central issue around Samuel Paty's beheading.

6) Umayr reports his deed: but interestingly even in the Islamist narration, Umayr is shown as aware that hat he had done wrong. He explicitly asks the founder of Islam if any guilt accrued by the act. Founder dismisses it as "two goats wont butt their heads on her".

7) lets take up Asma's "guilt" first: we don't hv anything from Asma's side, so all we have is the Islamist claim that she either "mocked" the founder& Islam, or "incited" fellow Yathribians to rise against the militant band who had killed local leaders who dared criticize them.

8) Even by admission of killings/assassinations by Islamists in Yathrib or around prior to Asma's alleged "incitement", Islamic narratives are actually saying that Asma reacted to prior provocation by Muslims with her society at peril of being overrun by murderous bullies.

9) This where Asma's story becomes a timeless story thats repeated over history of Islam and the latest example being Samuel: Islamist assassination/liquidation is targeted at those protesting/exposing prior Muslim provocation or behaviour towards non-Muslim targets.

10) per Ishaq, Umayr went to the 5 just-bereaved children of Asma the next day and taunted them that he had killed Asma - daring them to come and challenge him. Umayr knew that the militant band of Islam wd now support him after the founder's open assurance of support.

11) while Asma's tribe had been unable to prevent this murder - was proof enough that they wr either too much in shock, fear, or giving excuses of this as a "stray incident" or "not judge all muslims by the act of one" and there was no serious risk of Umayr losing his own head.

12) in Umayr we see the arrogance and its source in the Islamist killer, torturer: its a shrewd calculation of disbelief and denial of reality by target populations& lack of retaliation that would strike at the heart of the confidence: the community's ideological structures.

13) Lets take up Islamist foxtrot over Asma: while the earlier narrators had no hesitation in citing the story in all its gory details, after the defeat and fall of the "Maghreb" schools - Cordoba and Kayrawani, the later Islamists began to doubt "authenticity" of Asma's story.

14) there are two excuses forwarded by apologists of the founder of Islam on Asma: either that the founder was not directly responsible for the "call" and it was "lone wolf" initiative or that she "mocked" Islam and "incited" to rise against Muslim rule.

15) While the earlier version shows what we would expect in reality, "guilt" in a bully and its negation by a "charismatic" leader who absolves of guilt thereby taking share in guilt if any: the later Islamists see the problem in the contradiction to character claimed for founder

16) Also the later authors have experienced setbacks to Islamist expansion, have had to give up the early hope of a quick subjugation of the rest of the world and Islam's stories having circulated, its darker strategic core& past could not be allowed to be exposed to non-Muslims.

17) the third excuse is possibly the most subtle - that of claiming Asma was a "Jew", hence both her resistance to Islam and the justification of killing her ruthlessly. Its a subtle Islamist positioning that incorporates both race and ideology in its structure of enmity.

18) the discourse on both sides of the issue thus has never changed from Asma bint Marwan's killing in 7th c to Samuel Paty's in 21st c. From Islam's side there is a permanent acute fear of critical voices, especially "creative" "intellectuals", writers, poets, painters.

19) Islamic fear of and seeking to liquidate critical intellect is not unique to Islam: it was historically shared by the church. The distinction from others is however the still persistent value in Islam that the critical voice must be silenced and made an example of by killing.

20) the thing that we can never give in on is that words, paintings if deemed offensive or insulting cannot be reacted to with physical harm or liquidation of the alleged offender: it should be reacted to with words, and paintings not violence.

21) secondly we cannot give in on the claim that there is no distinction between facts and observations about a culture or person and imagined or false ascriptions or abuse. But what category a disputed item belongs to must be settled by open debate not throat slitting.

22) when people depict Hindu goddesses as lesbian lovers or prostitutes or "sexy" etc, they need to show from narrative texts of the Hindu that such an ascription is supported. When they can't, Hindus openly argue and expose it but not ask for offenders throat to be slit.

23) we cannot give in on the Islamist demand that non-physical expression of deemed hostile ideas must be argued and countered non-physically, through ideas and arguments. Throat-slitting values are unacceptable. If any cult holds on to it then that cult must be derecognized.