Sadly and perhaps ironically considering another post I have made I feel the need to speak on some news I recently read on the internet. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22633375. Needless to say what follows may be distributing for some. It is also very much a rant as I am struggling for time right now.
So here we have it a according to reports Muslim attacker. The victim potentially a British solider and or with links to help for heroes. It’s not fun, it’s not nice and it is something that as a society we should find abhorrent.
Backlash is another thing we should find abhorrent. We all all around the world backlash to groups after events like these be it in Asia or towards Muslims and Sikths for some reason after 9/11. Still the social media response has been… a little silly.
Image screenshotted from Ban Islam page on facebook to use as an example.
In previous posts I have talked slightly about the idea of there being a folk devil in part of a moral panic. In that there is a situation in which a group of people are targeted due to an attack. This is less the actions of a minority and more a case of the actions of a ‘nutter’. As one my friends put quite rightly “It’s only going to cause more drama”. Which can potentially cause those in this group to feel further connected from society making extremism something easier to push. So I would make the argument that you could potentially charge all of this sword rousing as making the situation worse.
I feel this links into a lot of my previous posts but also for the need of education. When a ‘black’ person stabs somebody while yelling Allah Akbar. Does not mean it is reasonable to make the jump to ‘Lets deport all these paki muslims”. Considering the accent of one of the attackers it’s even sillier.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22633269)
Sadly this is reflected in groups such as the BNP (previously talked about) and the English Defence League who take this and run with it. It takes advantage of those who are angry, ill informed and upset and just creates more hate. As Ghandi once brilliantly put. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. In this case it is very much true.
Sadly hate leads to more hate and this attack and the social media reaction is a brilliant example of such. Memes of this sort can easily be spread though hateful, ill informed and ignorant people it’s going to cause massive issues in the long run. Reading that we should ban an intolerant religion because we don’t like it seems stupefying to me. The ‘we should see all people like this hung vote’ is a bit of an issue I feel. I do partly blame tabloid paper mentality for this but surely out education system needs to leave people in a better position to think complicated issues out? Vile responses like this fail to allow us to make anything productive out of situations like this. It’s a shame and a travesty. Kids are prone to jumping to extreme ideas they are simpler but we as a species need to grow out of ideas such as “it’s simple lets hang them all”.
“From one facebook user: Big paki bastard wants fucking is head cut of the mug they all want sending back were they are from”
Ideas such as the above are worse than counter productive as is the far right making one religion something to fear and hate. As a tangential point this is the nature of religion sadly but people also hijack religion in order to justify what they wish.
So to conclude we should be shocked by these sorts of attacks and aim to prevent them. The same should also be said of such ill responses to these sorts of events. I now have to put up with an EDL rally in my home town soon. A bunch of ill educated or pseudo-intellectual hate mongers who want to prevent a religion they see as of hate? Oh if humans could see the hypocrisy more.
Mr Moose 
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