I was going to try to write some kind of reasoned discussion of the bombings in London this morning but have, instead, simply concluded that the people who commit horrors like this are nothing other than sick bastards.
I don’t care what or how just your cause is. I don’t care how justifiably angry you feel. If you figure you have to resort to blowing people to pieces you’ve entirely lost the plot, the argument and any semblance of humanity you may once have possessed. I might even agree with your cause but killing innocent people in its name still makes you a sick bastard in my eyes.
We still have no idea who committed this atrocity or what cause, if any, they see themselves as fighting for. George Galloway has decided that it was done as a protest against those other atrocities being performed in our name in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gorgeous George can’t resist, as usual, trying to make political capital out of a tragedy. George, you have a point but now is entirely the wrong time to make it. All you’ve done is appear to try to make excuses for a bunch of sickos.
If this abomination was executed by Islamists, and I have my doubts about that at the moment, it was not done in the name of any version of Islam practised by any of the Muslims who I know. Your interpretation of the Qur’an is twisted, sick and entirely different from my, admittedly limited, understanding of that text. If the Qur’an says nothing else it quite definitely urges you, above all else, to show respect and compassion for your fellow human beings. To interpret what you see as the received word of God as justifying the slaughter of so many makes you no better than your enemies who justify the killing of Muslims in the name of their distorted view of democracy and their greed for oil.
Posted 7 July 2005, 23:27 BST
