Russell Brand has said devout Christians George Bush and Tony Blair represent Christianity no more than the Charlie Hebdo terrorists represent Islam.
In an uncharacteristically late blog on the killings in France that killed 17 people and three gunmen over three days, Brand said the "bewildered, pitiable" men who carried out the attacks "do not speak for Islam or Muhammed or Allah".
"These men of murder are the symptom of a creed that lies as far away from God as is possible to conceive and do not represent Islam anymore than George Bush, Tony Blair and Halliburton represented Christianity," he wrote. "Or ordinary, secular Europeans and Americans when they profited from the bombing of innocent Iraqis."
CHARLIE HEBDO
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One of the gunmen, who took hostages in a kosher grocery, pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a video released after his death, while the two who attacked the satirical newspaper's offices claimed to be from Al Qaeda, their rival Islamist extremists.
In his blog, Brand said: "How can any spiritual scripture be used as justification for mass murder?
"How can the tenet that The Prophet ought never be depicted ever override Islam’s most mundane greeting AsSalaam alaikum – “peace and mercy be upon you”? It can’t and it doesn’t.
"The young, bewildered, pitiable men that carry out these atrocities probably at the behest of older, power hungry men do not speak for Islam or Muhammad or Allah.
"This language has nothing to do with the God I believe in or the God any of the Muslims I know believe in."