Jihad in Manchester

May 25, 2017 by

by Tim Dieppe, Christian Concern:

The attacker Salman Abedi, only 22 years old, must have believed that he was doing a service to God in killing and maiming so many people. How deceived. We are told that he was known to the security services, but not viewed as high risk. He is likely to have been acting with others. Bomb makers are regarded as too valuable to blow themselves up.  He was born in Manchester, and recently returned from a trip to Libya. French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb has said that he probably travelled to Syria and had proven links with Isis. Isis has claimed responsibility for the attack.

I wrote last week about Tom Holland’s Channel 4 documentary about Isis. Holland was brave enough to ask what motivates Isis, and honest enough to conclude that they self-consciously draw on Islamic scriptures, texts and episodes from Muhammad’s life to justify what they are doing. The attack at a concert in Manchester is reminiscent of the attack in the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015. Strict Muslims believe that music is haram, or forbidden in Islam, citing multiple texts to prove the point. Therefore, an attack at a music concert does not risk killing any devout Muslims and provides a useful target to kill or maim lots of people. The same sort of logic would apply to the Orlando shooting at a gay nightclub last year.

Who is the enemy?

Today thousands of armed soldiers are deployed on our streets, but no one wants to admit that we are at war. No one that is, except for Isis and those with their ideology. Politicians refer to ‘terrorism’ as if that is the enemy. As I have said before, terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology. To say we are fighting terrorism is a bit like saying we are fighting bombs. The other enemy that politicians will name is ‘extremism’. This is also vacuous and meaningless. Are we fighting ‘extreme’ tolerance? Well perhaps that is the problem.

We are facing an ideology that seeks nothing less than to turn Britain into an Islamic state ruled by sharia law. This ideology is Islam. Not all Muslims will seek to achieve this by violent means, in fact the vast majority will not. But those that do have plenty of texts and the example of Muhammad to justify their actions. They may also be supported by larger numbers who sympathise with the goal, if not the means.

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