The Manchester Arena terrorist attack was the more disgusting because it was inevitable that many of the victims would be young fans who had been attending a teenybopper pop concert by the US singer Ariana Grande.
Among the 22 killed by the suicide bomber was an eight year-old girl. Of the 64 largely young people injured, 20 are in critical condition and have life-changing wounds.
It is, therefore, no surprise that the morally bankrupt Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) was quick to claim credit for this abhorrent crime. In their sick minds, they measure what they see as their success by the degree of outrage they can cause.
President Donald Trump hit the nail on the head when he described them as “evil losers in life”. However, it is their purpose not simply to kill and maim but also to create other losers in life - specifically the Muslim communities that live peacefully and productively in non-Muslim societies.
Daesh’s sick ambition is to stoke Islamophobia in the West to the point where naïve young people believe that terrorism is the only way to fight back. They want xenophobic clampdowns. Racist bigots like the Dutch politician Geert Wilders are their greatest allies, with insane calls for mosques to be shut down and Muslims who will not abandon their traditions, to be thrown out of the country.
The British voted to leave the EU largely because of fear of a tide of immigrants - some 300,000 last year alone. Even though most of these arrivals were from Europe, there is a sad strain of Islamophobia with some white Britons complaining that cities like Bradford, Luton and Bedford have been transformed by the arrival of Muslims, largely from Pakistan.
Manchester boasts a large Arab minority, almost all of them Libyans who fled the Gaddafi dictatorship. That community is now in shock because Monday night’s suicide bomber, 22-year-old Salman Abedi, was born in Manchester of Libyan parents. His crime is compounded by the horror that he chose to attack the very country that gave his family shelter in their days of need.
The British police and intelligence have moved swiftly to round up suspects. Indeed it is said that the security forces are on average detaining one terrorist suspect every single day. This is evidence of the tight communications monitoring the UK runs along with information from the world’s largest network of closed-circuit security cameras.
Nevertheless, Theresa May’s government has just raised the terror threat to “critical”, indicating that further attacks are considered to be imminent. It has also appealed for calm, meaning that bigots should not be listened to when they seek to stir up Islamophobia. And, indeed, it has been notable that among those who have come out in silent vigils to deplore Monday’s enormity, have been many ordinary Muslims and their imams.
Of equal significance has been the British decision to carry on with all public events. The UK always refuses to ransom its nationals kidnapped abroad. Despite the high probability of a fresh attack and the deployment of troops at major venues, this is surely absolutely the right reaction. As here in the Kingdom, when terrorists do their gross but pathetic worst, normal decent life continues. They gain no victories whatsoever because they do not terrorize; they merely, as Trump says, prove that they are life’s “evil losers”.
