There is little in the world that is more saddening than what happened in Woolwich on Wednesday – the murder of an innocent man in the streets has both shocked and upset the nation, and to anyone who possesses even an ounce of empathy, so it should.
However, for the world in a wider sense – away from thinking about the family and friends of the murdered soldier, Lee Rigby – what is more saddening is the aftermath of this tragic event; the repercussions it has had in the media, on Twitter and on the very same streets on which Rigby was killed.
Hours after the event, the EDL marched through Woolwich spewing bile about Muslims in Britain. Twitter was filled with vitriolic racism and Islamophobia and every one of the national newspaper front pages (bar the Financial Times which led with a different story) was guilty of perpetuating the sort of false beliefs which partially lead to these attacks in the first place.
What was a crazed murder by two, it seems fair to say, unstable men, was labelled as terror. Because the two killers were Muslim and shouted what may have sounded like Muslim beliefs after killing Lee Rigby, is had been very strongly branded as the terrorist attack it was not rather than the murder it was.
These two killers do not represent Islam – extremists like these are as much a representation of what it is to be a Muslim as the EDL are of what it is to be English. By calling this terrorism all we are doing is strengthening already wholly inaccurate beliefs about the Islamic faith which are held by a horribly large portion of this country.
In printing a huge, blown up photo of one of the killers, bloody meat cleaver in hand on the front page of a newspaper and calling it a part of Islam’s “war on the west” all that happens is that more of the negativity that created such extremists in the first place is bred. The problem deepens. We become even more detached from what Islam really is – a fundamentally peaceful religion, and we blur the line further between Muslim and terrorist – a line that should not even exist.
For if this is terrorism, so is the killing of over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians by the Western world and its armies and so, certainly, is the EDL attempting to burn down mosques in ‘revenge’ for Rigby’s death on Wednesday night.
The mosque is not the symbolic home of these two murderers – they are not real Muslims. As Sikander Saleemy, secretary of the Braintree mosque, said: “We absolutely condemn what happened in Woolwich, but it had nothing to do with us.
“It was an appalling act of terror – but it wasn’t ‘Islamic’ in any way. I wish it wasn’t described like that, because sadly people will now start to blame Muslims.”
That is exactly what is happening, and that, even more than the murder itself, is the worst part about this whole tragedy.
We have been whipped up into a storm by the murder of one man because it was brutal, shocking and on our streets, and yet we seem to be able to remove ourselves so easily from the fact that is happened to hundreds and thousands of equally innocent victims in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Of course, this far from makes so called ‘revenge killings’ as this in any way acceptable or even understandable, but what we do have to understand is that there is another side to this story. We can see how angry the ‘English’ EDL have got over Lee Rigby’s murder; now consider how angry a similar, equally extreme ‘Muslim’ group were and still are about Afghanistan and Iraq.
The EDL is not England and extremist groups are not Islam. This is something that is vital is understood by every single person in the Western world, but instead, the reaction to one off events such as Woolwich is just further fuelling false flames and making things worse and worse.
True Muslims can in no way be to blame for this perpetuation – Islam is in no way responsible for this sort of extremism, it is the West who is at fault here. Until we understand that, nothing will ever improve.
The tone of this article is quite disgusting, and the author of this nihilistic perversion should be quite ashamed.
Let’s put this into perspective shall we?
Some idiots on twitter and in the street making racist comments is “what is more saddening” than a young soldier having his head hacked off in the street. Do you really mean that?!
“We have been whipped up into a storm by the murder of one man because it was brutal, shocking and on our streets, and yet we seem to be able to remove ourselves so easily from the fact that is happened [sic] to hundreds and thousands of equally innocent victims in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
What an utterly vacuous piece of moral relativism and self-hating bile. The men and women of our armed forces went to war to depose a dictator and a medieval style theocracy, and to give the people of those countries the freedoms we take for granted. And despite the bitching of the entitled upper-middle class liberal left, who’d never dare put themselves in danger for anything or anyone, we’ve succeeded by and large. Yet it is obvious that perhaps a few pounds from the millions we have pumped into educational systems of those countries should have been left behind for you, as you so obviously cannot see the difference between acts of just war, and the senseless killing in Woolwich.
By alluding to the wars in the Middle East and giving them as an example you give substance to the lies of the Islamists. Of course these men weren’t acting in the spirit of Islam, as you so patronising make clear. And no, the fault isn’t with Islam, although I always find it so curious when so few Muslim leaders turn out to condemn such acts. The fault is with our acceptance of multiculturalism and the systematic degradation of common values and ways of life by our government, the idea that now we’re bound together by nothing more than our payment of taxation and the coincidence that we reside on this island. The fault lies with our creation of a culturally relativist society, where we now believe in everything, and therefore nothing.
And we can so plainly see the results of the society we have created; on the one hand, the disaffected angry young men driven to murderous Islamism by its ability to offer something concrete in a society where everything is OK as long as it feels good. And on the other hand you, so ready to blame such attacks on the residue of a cultural homogeneity which used to bind this nation together, rather than the men who took a meat cleaver to the father of a young family, and spilled his blood in the name of whatever idea they could grasp onto, in a society where an idea, let alone a culture, is hard to come by.
Think you need to check your definition of terrorism. This was an act of terror. Murder requires actus reus and mens rea. The mens rea here wasnt to kill this specific man – it was to take the life of a soldier in the name of their faith. This can’t be classed as a murder at all.
The west are involved in legal wars – not terrorism.
Killing a civilian, not caring who he is, to “show that your government is wrong” isn’t murdering someone. Its an act of terror.
Like.
If you call it an act of terror, you’re giving them kudos and a cause for their actions (and the potential actions of others as a result)
I don’t really understand how this wasn’t terrorism. The article seems to make quite a lot of false assertions about people’s reaction to it.
Two men butchering a man in the street is murder, yes. But two men butchering a man in the street, loudly declaring their religious and political beliefs specifically so that people will be privy to their agenda is very obviously terrorism.
The attitude that it was ‘just two nutters’ seems to come from a fear of blaming religion. Fear of a reaction like the one you just made: that blaming religion tarnishes an entire group of people in the same light. It does not.
These men were clearly motivated by their faith. They said so themselves. It is the elephant in the room. To point this out does *not* mean that we are saying all Muslims are the same. They very obviously are not. The Muslim community is 1.7 billion strong and almost exclusively decent, loving people. Only idiots like the EDL would disagree with this. But stop branding people bigots for objectively pointing out a truth – these two people were motivated by politics which were, in turn, motivated by their faith.
As a side note, it also may be inaccurate to say that they were unstable, when we don’t yet know about their psychological state. A surprisingly high percentage of people who do awful things in the name of any religion are found completely 100% clinically sane – they just truly, sincerely hold beliefs that are awful to the rest of us.
“..and to give the people of those countries the freedoms we take for granted.”
We stuck flags in the Middle-Eastern tribal nomadic groups, drew lines across and allocated land to leaders we chose. We created the ‘states’ and forced the idea of democracy onto them, and if we’d just left them be they’d still be wandering tribes.
“cultural homogenity”
When have we ever been uniform, as a nation? Doesn’t the idea of uniformity contradict democracy?
Pretty sure the war in Iraq was pretty illegal…
“By calling this terrorism all we are doing is strengthening already wholly inaccurate beliefs about the Islamic faith which are held by a horribly large portion of this country.”
Lol I read that sentence wrong the first time.
Btw, everyone should have a listen to the radio 4 interview with a friend of the killer. It makes it pretty clear that this was an act of terrorism:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22664468
“pretty sure”?
It’s actually one of the most uncertain areas of international law going, with some on the side of Resolution 1441 being enough to justify, and others saying it wasn’t quite enough to justify use of military intervention.
So no, I highly doubt that you are “pretty sure”, given top legal academics aren’t even sure.
As for the general point, wars that involve nation vs nation are just in absolutely no way comparable to acts of terrorism or murder by individuals or extremist groups.
Indeed, making a statement that says “if this is terrorism, so is the killing of over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians by the Western world and its armies” is just so wholly false it beggars belief that it even made it into the article.
Unless of course, this article is suggesting that civilian casualties are actually war crimes by our armies? In which case, what a claim!
“What is more saddening is the aftermath of this tragic event; the repercussions it has had in the media, on Twitter…”
Yeah, that definitely saddened me more. I mean, stabbing someone to death and hacking their head off whilst shouting “Allahu Akbar” is a heat of the moment thing, whereas tapping out 140 characters of bigotry takes real malice aforethought.
“For if this is terrorism, so is the killing of over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians by the Western world and its armies…”
So I guess we had it coming, huh? Take that, Western civilisation!
Incidentally, the “over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians” killed by “the Western world and its armies” is actually 14,705.
But who needs facts, right?
“The men and women of our armed forces went to war to depose a dictator and a medieval style theocracy, and to give the people of those countries the freedoms we take for granted”
Erm, no they didn’t. That was not the original motive of the war, and arguably never has been. It was part of the War on Terror to oust Al-Qaeda, don’t you remember? This was achieved within a couple of months. We’ve since been occupying Afghanistan.
You can’t rewrite history, Curtis. Western-waged wars are never about democracy or ‘the freedoms we take for granted’.
If this is murder, blame mi5.
Terrorism? There is no such thing. This is just a word for governments to incite fear into its public to get behind them. Cameron’s clash of civilization rhetoric is enough to rebuke the use of such term.
Heck, according to even Shariah law rules of warfare he murdered the guy. So what is it with these people that want to insist in giving such people the political justification for their acts as they say “we shall never buckle!” Why are they trying to make it an us vs them? When this guy is no them? When this guy is our responsibility, that we claim “oh no he’s foreign, let’s ship him out”. What nonsense.
“what Islam really is – a fundamentally peaceful religion”
Where is the evidence of that? Almost all of the world’s current major conflicts, dozens of fatal acts of terrorism every year and, here in the UK since 7/7, at least 10 groups of domestic terrorists arrested and convicted – all in the name of Islam. Doesn’t sound all that fundamentaly peaceful to me, does it?
Where also is the evidence that the majority of Muslims are not supporting – at least morally – the terorists? All I hear is that they are applauding from the sidelines, excusing each outrage with irrelevant whataboutery and expounding ridiculous conspiracy theories.
As for whether the Woolwich murder should be called terrorism or not, I doubt whether the perps were evil psychopaths from birth. More lilely they were impressionable and vulnerable boys converted to suicidal murderers by the Islamic ideology. For that reason it simply has to be labelled terrorsm, and not just a crime.
The views of this original poster, and others like him, are just naive and dangerous.
Confused, you’re using legal terms but you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. “This can’t be classed as a murder at all” really? Really actually really?
What you’re doing is conflating the legal definition of something (and it was DEFINITELY murder, potential defenses aside. You don’t have to know the name and shoe size of the person you kill, or pick them out in advance, to have the mens rea for the crime) with the discussion that’s going on about the distinction between an act of terrorism and an act of isolated violence.
Terrorism and murder aren’t mutually exclusive.
Also “The west are involved in legal wars”. Heh. Hehehe. Oh, you.
“Pretty sure the war in Iraq was pretty illegal…”
@Confused > Care to explain in *legal terms* why it was illegal?
Here is why it was not:
First of all, people tend to forget that all arrangements between Saddam and the international community, after 1991, were based on a ceasefire, explicitly tied to Iraq’s disarmament. In particular Resolution 678, the legal basis for military action during the first Gulf war, and Resolution 687, which determined the conditions for the ceasefire between the UN and Iraq, were extremely important. Both were never revoked and authorisation to use force remained in being throughout the years and was also the legal basis for actions in 1993 and 1998.
So why not in 2003?
Furthermore, the legal advisor to the UN, Dr. Carl August Fleischhauer, confirmed that the original authority to use force in UNSCR 678 could revive, given the Security Council’s agreement that a violation of the ceasefire was in place.
This consideration was reflected in the drafting of UNSCR 1441. It not only confirmed that Saddam remained in “material breach” and gave him “a final opportunity to comply”, but also stated in operational paragraph 4, that a failure to comply unconditionally and immediately and fully with the inspectors was itself a further material breach. As a result, it authorised “serious consequences”, as indicated in operational paragraph 13. UNSCR 1441 was thus sufficient, in combination with previous UNSCRs, especially 678, but also 687, 660 and 1137, to lawfully take part in the invasion. Unanimously accepted, it was a legal refreshment.
Grossly exaggerated is also the significance of a second resolution, since it would have provided political legitimacy only. Not to forget that action was sanctioned by the British parliament, with 412 votes in favour to 149 opposed.
But Steve, you’re missing my point. The author is making the two mutually exclusive by the very nature of this article?
And this is 100% an act of terrorism and not simply a murder.
As for the war point – name me an illegal war (aside from the questions over Iraq).
While it is true that the vast majority of Muslims are as pleasant as anybody else, we are kidding ourselves if we pretend that there is nothing in Islam justifying or even demanding actions of this nature. This is true of most religions, of course, but it is also undeniable that the overwhelming majority of terrorist atrocities (which this was) that are performed today are carried out by people who have been indoctrinated with the more extreme elements of Islamic doctrine. One doesn’t have to be a member of the EDL to think that are problems in religions such as Islam that need addressing.
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This article is a horrendous piece of brainwashed rubbish. They have hacked a mans head off whilst shouting “Allah Akbar” and you think someone condemning this savagery on Twitter is worse.
When will you wake up to reality ?
What kind of brainwashing have you been subjected to ? The vast majority of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed by their fellow Muslims.
Your extremist left wing views are ,in reality, representative of less than one percent of the country. They are certainly not the views of normal working class Labour voters.( Although no one in their right mind should be voting for New Labour – certainly the worst government in the history of Britain.) I digress.
It is not ‘educated’ or ‘ informed’ to apologise for these animals.
Do you really believe that writing a comment on Twitter is worse than hacking a unarmed soldiers head off in the street.
Think about the extremist views you have been subjected to that have made you believe
that.
SO glad the views of the commenters here are not representative of the world as a whole..
Islam when practiced by normal people is not an advocacy for violence. I write this as a person from a Muslim background. To “Scott Tracy”, the idiot who claims Muslims morally support terrorism.. stop reading the Daily Mail, please. I have Muslim relatives who are, as well as being upstanding members of their communities and who donate to charity (an Islamic prerogative but not one you’ll have read about in the Mail, Scott) also compassionate human beings, just like you and me, who are fundamentally shocked by the violence that occured in London despite it not taking place in their country.
ALSO might I point out- when talking about Islam people always mention countries like Afghanistan and Iraq where extremism is common. What about Turkey?
I really can’t find words to adequately express how frustrating I find it reading comments from people generalising about Islam and its links to violence.
And Alex Finnis’ point about the murders(or terror act, whatever you want to brand them) being as representative of Islam as the EDL is of England is spot on.
“Russell Brand”, read what I actually wrote, not what you want to think I wrote. I did non claim Muslims support terrorism, or make any such vague and unprovable generalisation – I made a personal observation just like yours about your relatives.
As for my point on world conflicts, there is plenty of factual evidence. For example, Wikipedia lists 7 state-based conflics over the last 2 years and all 7 involve Muslim countries. It lists 6 non-state major ongoing conflicts of which 4 involve Muslim groups. It has other similar lists but I’m sure you get the theme.
Sadly, if you could ask the Woolwich murderers whether they were representing Islam, or the 7/7 murderers or the 9/11 murderers or the Boston Marathon murderers etc etc, then I’m sure you would get an affirmative response. Sometimes perception is reality.
Finally, please don’t call me an idiot. It’s not true and it’s very bad discussion forum etiquette.
Okay “Scott” let’s take a look at what you really wrote.
“Doesn’t sound all that fundamentally peaceful to me, does it?”
fun·da·men·tal·ly
/ˌfəndəˈmentl-ē/
Adverb
In central or primary respects: “two fundamentally different concepts of democracy”.
Used to make an emphatic statement about the basic truth of something.
Islam is fundamentally peaceful whether you like it or not. Whatever it “seems” to be to you, its precepts are peaceful. As you seem to be such a big fan of wikipedia, please check out their page on Islam, encapsulated in “Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, safeness and peace.” Read the whole article, it might relieve you of some of your misconceptions. And again, I am talking from the experience of having grown up as part of Muslim community, whereas from your comments you appear to have read about them in the Daily Mail.
Honestly, I was just trying to represent the rational side to all the people commenting like you who have a warped view of Islam. I also very strongly object to your saying: “All I hear is that they are applauding from the sidelines, excusing each outrage with irrelevant whataboutery and expounding ridiculous conspiracy theories.” If that’s all YOU hear maybe you should try to broaden your hearing range. “Sometimes perception is reality.” says it all: you’re pretty blinkered.
Please, be more open-minded about Islam. Be more tolerant. The few cases you mention, the Boston bombers, the 9/11 murderers, the Woolwich murderers- 8 people out of roughly 1.57 billion. Don’t assume the few cases represent the many.
So my dictionary defines ‘terrorism’ as “the unofficial or unauthorised use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”
Am I missing something?
@Russell Brand
Most Muslims may be peaceful but most terrorists are also Muslims. Regardless of what Islam ‘fundamentally is’, it’s clear where the problem lies.
Actually, according to fbi data, less than 10 percent of terror attacks on U.S soil from 1980 to 2005 were perpetrated by Muslims..
http://www.globalresearch.ca/non-muslims-carried-out-more-than-90-of-all-terrorist-attacks-in-america/5333619
America has very different issue to we have. Not relevant.
Regardless, Islam’s issues need to be addressed, but this can’t happen until people come to realise that criticising a minority group isn’t automatically racism… Political correctness has gone from being a bit of a joke to actual censorship.
Preventing the majority from voicing an opinion by automatically coining that opinion ‘racist’ is racist.