In my experience, it is.

I had converted a Python code into G'MIC, and then some one else did a Python version of my own code. G'MIC is interpretative with JIT math parser. The results:

Reversing digits in a 1024x1024 RGB image.

Python: Without lookup table and numpy - 3+ minutes

Python: With lookup table and numpy - 6.5 s (Some one else machine, but it shouldn't take that long)

G'MIC: Without lookup table - .3 s

G'MIC: With lookup table - .005 s

And I did Lavander Binary Map on my machine, you can find code for Python version in github/gmic-community/include/reptorian.gmic:

Python: 3 s (Without lookup table)

G'MIC:.15 s (Without lookup table)

G'MIC: .05 s (With lookup table)

Honestly, I find Python pretty bad for image processing in general.