We’re in a terrible tangle over Islam

The carnage in Sri Lanka which left more than 300 dead may have been carried out by ‘Buddhists’, according to the BBC Today presenter Nick Robinson on the morning after those hideous bombings. We all grope slowly towards meaning, don’t we? We look for precedent, we search for clues. I did both when I heard of the murders and came to a different conclusion to Nick. Someone had attacked Christians and westerners in a series of suicide bombings: that gave me an inkling. Perhaps — just perhaps — it wasn’t Buddhists. Perhaps it was instead the fanatics responsible for the vast majority of terrorism outrages in the world (Global Terrorism Index, 2000-2013) and 92 per cent of all terrorism murders in the United States since 1992 (Cato Institute, 2017). Yes, I thought, it’s probably them again. I didn’t find it a terribly hard call to make.

Compare Nick’s reaction, and indeed the overwhelming reaction of the western world leaders and liberal media, to the murders in Sri Lanka and the murders in Christchurch. In the latter case, everybody was clear firstly that it was terrorism and that Muslim people had been targeted, and they were happy to say as much. But they did not stop there. With great alacrity they also identified the poisonous ideology behind the Christchurch attack: racism, Islamophobia and white supremacy. The far right. Many commentators over here, including LBC’s in-house cretin James O’Brien, went further and suggested that those of us who find certain aspects of Islam a little difficult to swallow were directly responsible for the murders. The ideology was seized upon and rightly eviscerated.

Now look at what happened in Sri Lanka, and how we reported it. Of 20 world leaders, ex-leaders (Obama) and hideously useless also-rans (Hillary) who took time to condemn the atrocity, only one — Xavier Bettel of Luxembourg — mentioned that the victims of the attack were Christians.