How one grieving French mother is fighting back against the Islamist ideology

The paths of two French mothers, Madame Ibn Ziaten and Madame Merah, converged in a Paris court this week, at the start of the trial of one of their sons, Abdelkader Merah. In March 2012, another of Madame Merah’s sons, Mohammed, shot dead seven people in southern France in the first of the Islamist attacks that are now a routine feature of European life.

Even in France, which has suffered more than most countries from this wave of terror, Merah’s rampage continues to haunt people. It wasn’t just that he singled out three Jewish children for cold-blooded execution in their school playground but that he also filmed his murders before he was killed in a police shootout. The first to die was Imad Ibn Ziaten, selected for execution because he was a Muslim in the French army. Merah ordered the soldier to to lie on the ground. He refused. ‘You want to shoot?’ Ibn Ziaten told