We'll find a way to fight it. We always have.

[lokifan]

This latest attack has hit closer to home than any attack before. I have students at Finsbury Park mosque; I have a student living on Seven Sisters Road; it’s two tube stops from me. There were friends-of-friends on Facebook whose mums go to that mosque and hadn’t heard from them yet; an old National Union of Students LGBTQ acquaintance goes there. Today has not been my best day ever. And given that both ISIS-inspired dickheads and Islamophobic terrorists seem to love attacking during Ramadan I am worrying a bit about Eid.

I keep thinking about the imam there, Mohammed Mahmoud. He’s just thirty years old, and he heard the crash and ran out. By then a group of men had the suspect pinned down, and they were beating him - incredibly scary, but understandable, given they’d just seen him mow people down. (And specifically mow down people who had circled round an elderly man having a medical emergency, wanting to help. I don’t understand.) And the imam yelled at them - don’t hurt him, just wait for the police. Then he and a group of others stayed there, protecting this person they’d just seen gleefully murder people they knew, for what must have been an endless eight minutes until the police arrived.

A few hours earlier I’d been watching Cursed Child again with two good friends.

HARRY: She’s a murderer, and we’re not.

HERMIONE: We have to be better than them.

RON: It’s really annoying but it’s what we learnt.

Comments

[alafaye]

:(

We shall overcome.

[lokifan]

We've been blown up by a better class of bastards than this.

[alafaye]

Oh lord. But I am morbid enough to say that we god damn deserve a better class if we're meant to be blown up at all. Ignore me.

*raises glass*

[lokifan]

Yeah, I mean that darkness is a big part of the joke :D It's a really standard British one - it's something a Blitz survivor said after he got caught up in an IRA bombing in the late 80s.

[sherylyn]

We need more people like the Iman and the others who helped him, and far fewer like the bastard who hurt others. And the thing is (and this is my optimism, I suppose), there ARE far more people like the Iman/others, and it helps, knowing that, but sometimes, the bastards just cause so much pain and hurt and it's really, really hard to get away from thinking about them :(

[lokifan]

I definitely agree there are more good & heroic people. But yeah, it's easier to destroy than create so bastards have the advantage.

[selenak]

Yes to all of this. People like the Iman and those who helped him are what separates us from the dystopia just around the corner the killers and hatemongerers want to drive us into.

[lokifan]

Absolutely.

what separates us from the dystopia just around the corner

Eek.

[secretsolitaire]

♥

[lokifan]

♥ ♥ ♥