(UnHerd) When two young men embellish a Toulouse FC replica shirt with the name of the city’s most notorious mass murderer, is it just a sick and provocative gag, or evidence of sympathy for the killer’s worldview? Earlier this month, the French courts decided it was “terrorism apologia” and handed out three- and four-month sentences to two men who posted a photo on Snapchat wearing a football shirt with the name of the delinquent jihadist, Mohammed Merah, across it, with the number seven — for the number he killed.
Mohammed Merah began his rampage in Toulouse on March 11, 2012, first executing a French-Moroccan paratrooper who nobly refused an order to lie down. He struck again on March 15, firing on three soldiers in Montauban — two were killed and another left paralysed. The murdered soldiers were all of North African Muslim descent. Then, on March 19, Merah pulled up outside the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school.
