I Feel a Great Disturbance…

I’m still shocked by the events of Friday night, just as I was 41 years ago when it transpired that the muffled “thuds” I’d heard 3 miles or so away on 21st November 1974 were, in fact, the sound of the bombs in the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in The Town in Birmingham.

The terrorists of Paris, Beirut, Syria, Afghanistan, Jodan, Gaza, West Bank, Israel are no more representative of Islam, Christianity or Judaism than the IRA bombers were of the Irish, or Catholics, or the UDA/UDF were of Protestants.

How do we deal with the fanatics? The insane cowards who hide their acts behind the religious beliefs of millions? Not by bombing, that’s for sure, as it only swells the ranks of those warped individuals who believe that slaughtering fellow humans will somehow raise them to greatness in the eyes of their deity.

Jeremy Corbyn’s views on the killing of Bin Laden or “Jihadi John” have been taken out of context deliberately by the media. Anyone who really truly cares about freedom and justice will see the problem: How can we in the West expect others to adopt our systems of justice and democracy when it’s so easy to sweep away the process of law in order to exact revenge, to “do what needs to be done.” Rather than seek to flex their muscles and show how good they are at “taking out” the likes of Bin Laden and Emwazi, the UK and US forces should concentrate on capture, extraction and trial.

There are those in government who will seek to use these atrocities to further erode our freedoms “for national security.” If they do so, then the terrorists can claim another victory. It’s their intention to undermine our way of life because it doesn’t fit with their distorted, misogynistic view of the world.

Those suspected of Friday night’s horrors must be captured and brought to book, rather than made martyrs of.

Without wishing to appear glib or flippant, when I heard the news of what happened in Paris, this sprang to mind: