Imam Hassan Guillet is a much better person than I am. From
his address at the funeral for the three shooting victims at his mosque:
Quote:
The society that could not protect them, the society that could not benefit from their generosity still has a chance. The hands that didn’t shake the hands of Khaled or Aboubaker or Abdelkrim or Azzedine or Mamadou or Ibrahima, that society can shake the hands of their kids.
We have 17 orphans. We have six widows. We have five wounded.
We ask Allah for them to get them out of the hospital as soon as possible.
Did I go through the complete list of victims? No.
There is one victim. None of us want talk about him.
But given my age, I have the courage to say it. This victim, his name is Alexandre Bissonnette.
Alexandre, before being a killer, he was a victim himself. Before planting his bullets in the heads of his victims, somebody planted ideas more dangerous than the bullets in his head.
This little kid didn’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Hey guys, instead of going to have a picnic or watching the Canadiens, I will go kill some people in the mosque.’ It doesn’t happen that way.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, certain politicians unfortunately, and certain reporters unfortunately, and certain media were poisoning our atmosphere.
We did not want to see it. We didn’t want to see it because we love this country, we love this society. We wanted our to society to be perfect. We were like parents; their kids [are] smoking or taking drugs and your neighbour says that your kid was taking drugs: “I don’t believe it; my son is perfect.”
We don’t want to see it. And we didn’t see it, and it happened.
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(via
Balloon Juice)