AFP, "Jewish and Muslims denounce the use of the Toulouse drama" (Original in French)
“On Tuesday, the leaders of the Jewish and Muslim communities in France strongly cautioned against any politician’s attempt to use the recent murders in Toulouse, in the context of the election campaign, calling it ‘shameful.’
‘There is no comparison for the monstrosity of this act,” said the president of the council of Jewish institutions in France (Crif), Richard Prasquier, following a meeting with representatives of both communities with Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace.
‘The man who pulled the kid by the hair and put a bullet in her head didn't do this because he understood this or that point about ritual slaughter. We must stop making connections between these two events,” said Richard Prasquier [referring to the shootings in the Jewish school and the killing of three French soldiers earlier this month].
‘Although we are in an election campaign where some may be tempted to exploit [these events], I think it would be a shame for those who are running for office to do so," added the president of the French Muslim Council (CFCM), Mohammed Moussaoui.”
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
