Words failed me yesterday evening and continue to do so today, oh I’ve got plenty to say about the moscow-born Chechen and others who stirred this all up on social media but non of it is printable here.
RIP monsieur le prof d’histoire 
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There’s a video on Sky News showing footage of Police trying to get the evil murdering scroat to give himself up to face justice but the coward refused so the Police did the right thing and removed him from this life. He died later in hospital - I hope with the maximum pain possible.
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We need to remember that the Chechens are the Islamic problem of Russia. For whatverb reason they are also the criinal underworld of that country - and into just about every evil one can imagine -drugs, murder, you name it.
Just when one is ready to accept moderate Islam, another of these creatures appears. Yet Islam wonders why non-Islamists find themselves suspicious of the creed.
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I think it is political rather than religious and individual Chechens are convenient instruments for people in Moscow seeking to make trouble.
However
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They turned up in Dijon earlier this year.
They seem to have a network they can call on to come and help them do their dirty deeds.
I think they all need sending back from wherever they have come .
Two of the best things about France is freedom of expression and no burquas.
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Everybody here I’m sure is stunned and upset by this murder - especially as it seems to have been motivated by the desire to curtail freedom of thought - but for you Véronique, as a teacher yourself, there must be additional considerations around professional practice, and safety.
I wonder what the feelings of you and your colleagues were yesterday?
It’s vital to remember though that there are millions of Muslims, and thousands of Chechens in France, the vast majority of whom, I’m sure, are very nice people.
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To restore to currency a well-known Trumpian phrase…? 
Putin solved the problem with the war in Chechen and now France has the problem! Luckily the killer is no longer among the breathing crowd, just wonder how many will want to take revenge!
It is sad when religion becomes opium for the people!!
This is true, but only in the sense that some individuals with absolutist tendencies interpret religion in absolutist terms. Religion per se provides millions of people with access to principles and archetypes of huge value in making sense of life’s imponderables, vicissitudes and tragedies.
Religion is not an opiate, the source of mental oblivion lies elsewhere, including compulsive consumerism, unbridled capitalism, and the unrealistic and pervasive hedonism it peddles to the masses.
Evidence of the fragility of the latter is to be found in the huge concern for the ‘hospitality industry’ and the ‘entertainment industry’, both of which have come to represent such an over-bloated and decadent component of the UK economy as to threaten to destroy it.
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Sorry for having ruffled your feathers!
To me the behaviour of extremely religious individuals is just very strange !!
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There’s a fascinating book Peter - Thinking the Twentieth Century, by Tony Judt - that argues (among other things) that it was capitalism’s gradual erosion of traditional communities and old social norms and relations that was a key cause of the feelings that fed fascism in 20th century Europe; reading it is a deeply worrying experience, because what was happening then seems so eerily close to what is happening now in many transitional economies in the middle-east and northern Africa.
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I wouldn’t want to take my chances with the ones we saw on the streets of Dijon earlier this year.
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I am angry, collectively we are a bit shaken - I have been teaching about the dangers of religious fundamentalism aggregated with politics, this year with reference primarily to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ since September but using all sorts of real present-day examples from around the world. I had my Afghan chaddri in class last week for a class to try on so we could discuss sumptuary laws, othering and dehumanisation.
Freedom of expression and laïcité must be upheld.
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When Marx wrote that, opium was a widely available cheap way for the masses to deaden sensations of unhappiness, stress, hunger etc, it wasn’t considered at all as we consider opium nowadays.
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ISTR that common remedies for all sorts of aches and pains contained opium - or laudanum - quite freely.
I suppose you could say that when Marx wrote his well known line opium was, in fact, the opium of the people.
Don’t fret, my feathers are as smooth, svelte and perfectly ordered as ever, bearing in mind their relative antiquity and decades of constant use to get my carcass aloft with the flock.
And I wasn’t at odds with your opinion. Religious dogmatism is sometimes dangerously extreme.
Exactly. It wasn’t considered particularly desirable but it was more socially acceptable than strong drink. Extraordinary. I suppose it helped with upset guts as well, like kaolin and morphine. They were all at it injecting cocaine etc, amazing the 19th century.
But what Marx actually wrote (originally in German, of course) is perhaps even more interesting in this context:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
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