The people of England have had a pretty rough go of it lately. They’ve suffered multiple attacks on the citizens of their country in just the last few weeks, and they’re no doubt feeling fear just doing their daily activities.
Politically we try to sort out the reasons for attacks like this in the interest of keeping them from happening in the future. Unfortunately, knowing why someone killed your family member doesn’t bring them back or make the pain go away.
Each of these recent attacks has been ruled as terrorism, and before we go any further, I’d like to address exactly what terrorism is.
While we usually equate terrorism with the religion of Islam, and that’s because they’ve got a particular penchant for carrying it out, and they’ve been busy lately. The first several attacks on Manchester and London were done by professing Muslims who were out for “infidel” blood to appease their bloodthirsty master, but this last one was apparently in retaliation to those attacks.
Via New York Times:
LONDON — The authorities in Britain said on Monday that they were treating an early morning attack near a mosque in London as an act of terrorism directed toward Muslims, amid fears of retaliation for several recent assaults in the country attributed to Islamist extremists.
Shortly after midnight, a van rammed into a group of pedestrians near the Finsbury Park Mosque, in North London, and the imam of a nearby community center was credited with preventing an angry mob from attacking the driver after worshipers subdued him.
One person died at the scene and at least 10 were wounded, but the authorities said it was not immediately clear if the attack, which they said was carried out by a 47-year-old white man who was believed to be acting alone, was responsible for the death. The suspected driver, who has not been publicly identified, has been accused of terrorism offenses, the police said.
I want to be clear; any act of violence carried out by an individual citizen against other citizens (except in the case of immediate self-defense) is unacceptable. There is a little bit of difference here though; the first attacks were premeditated and the last was likely a crime of passion.
The people of London are having to think twice before they go sit at a cafe and consider whether their lives will be in danger. That’s a way in which the western world hasn’t had to live in a very long time because we worked hard to eradicate it. The attacks in Manchester and on the London Bridge were planned attacks to carry out vengeance for a god who they believe wants them to kill for him.
While what he did was still completely unacceptable, illegal and worthy of legal action, last night’s attacks seem to have been a crime of passion carried out by a man who was fed up with being forced to live in fear, victim to a religion that he had nothing to do with. It’s the difference between a hit man moving into the house next door to the target he’s been paid to take out, and then killing them, and my beating my neighbor to death because he ran my kid over with his car. Both involve someone killing someone else, both mean that someone was murdered, but one is cold blooded and one was someone being taken over by rage brought on by the fear of harm, or anger at harm already committed.
So yes, we would be remiss if we didn’t address the attacks that took place last night, however, to put it on par with an entire system that’s set up to destroy as many lives as possible would be an incorrect equivocation.
(Source: New York Times)