By Atul Hatwal
Manchester isn’t the first and is unlikely to be the last. As the shock slowly subsides, action is needed, but not of the kind yapped out in the hot takes of some on the left and right.
On the left, there are too many whose efforts to explain, blur into a case to excuse.
Talk of the iniquities of the Prevent strategy, marginalisation of Muslim communities and British foreign policy, is irrelevant.
Just as it is irrelevant to talk about poverty or cultural anxiety when explaining the radicalisation of Thomas Mair, the man who killed Jo Cox last year.
There is no explanatory leap that connects life in Britain today to ideologies such as Islamism or Nazism.
Inflicting terror on innocents is always an unacceptable means to an end, but sometimes it is used in the service of a cause which can be understood, if not agreed with.
The IRA, PLO, ETA and Irgun would all fall into this broad category. The presence of justice in the cause is an essential prerequisite for a route to eventual peace – it is the underpinning for a rational discourse between opponents.
But Islamism, like Nazism, advocates slaughter of the impure as an intrinsic part of the cause.
There can be no understanding or engagement with this.
No wittering about context is required. We don’t need a sociology debate. This is a matter of winning or losing.
