Saturday 10 January 2015

Lest we forget

After the murder of Lee Rigby, a British soldier, on the streets of south London in May 2013, I made a list of some previous acts of politically-inspired killing that had nothing to do with Islam or any perverted interpretation of it. Perhaps this is a good time to republish it.

In 1971, Robert Campbell killed 15 people in a bomb attack on McGurk's bar in Belfast. He was not a Muslim. 

In 1984, the then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by two of her security guards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. They weren't Muslims either.

In 1991, a suicide bomber named Thenmozhi Rajaratnam blew herself up and killed Indira Gandhi's son and heir apparent, Rajiv.  She was not Muslim.

In 1994, Baruch Goldstein opened fire in a mosque in Hebron, in the West Bank, and killed 29 Palestinian worshippers. As you might have guessed, he wasn't a Muslim.

In 1998, 29 people were killed in a bomb attack in Omagh, in northern Ireland. Not one of the bombers was Muslim.

No, I haven't forgotten 9/11, or Bali 2002, Madrid 2004, London 2005, or Mumbai 2008.

Nor have I forgotten Anders Breivik (Oslo 2011) or Adam Lanza (Newtown, Connecticut, 2012).

Murder is murder.

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