Comparing this to Islamic jihad is dishonest
Any violence carried out against innocent people is to be condemned and the Finsbury Park attack is no exception. But we must be honest in its evaluation compared to the recent Islamic attacks, and the history of global jihad.
You can be sure that the Islamic community will exploit this incident as ‘evidence’ of widespread hatred and ‘Islamophobia’ in Britain, when in fact, despite all of the Islamic terrorist atrocities carried out in Britain and the rest of the world, there has been almost zero ‘Islamophobia’ until now, a few childish bacon-related pranks aside.
It will also use this incident to enhance the victim status of Muslims and to silence criticism of Islam.
There has already been significant differences in the way in which this incident has been reported – the perpetrator has not been given any of the usual indulgences afforded to Islamic terror suspects: “mental health problems”, the first line defence whenever there is an Islamic attack, has barely been raised except in the context of the standard “mental health assessment” given to all such persons; “lone wolf” has also not been thrown around as much as one would usually expect.
In fact, whilst Islamic terrorists are immediately distanced from their religion by the media, in this case the opposite is true: the individual is being tied as closely as possible to the larger group in order to portray them as racist or Islamophobic.
The truth is that there will always be those who are motivated to commit criminal acts, for any number of reasons, but in the present case, there is no overarching ideology that inspired this act of violence. There is no religious text that exhorted him to go out and murder Muslims, no example of a religious leader who committed such acts to follow, no ideological framework which supports it.
This is an individual who, for his own reasons, has chosen to commit a violent, criminal act. It is disgusting, but it is not in any way comparable to jihad, and should not stop the important discussion about the threat of Islam to the West.
“You think they make this shit up? It’s all in the book. Their f***ing book. The only book they ever read. They read it all the time. They never stop. They’re there for one reason and one reason only. To die for the caliphate and usher in a world without infidels. That’s their strategy, and it’s been that way since the 7th century.” 