.... I am no Muslim theologian, but Islamic extremists can hardly be blamed for concluding from their religious belief that neither western societies nor western governments are legitimate.
Their position is not illogical, given its premises. God, not man, is sovereign; the Koran is the word of God; therefore all that is not derivable from the Koran, or is opposed to it, is evil in the sense of being against God’s sovereignty. Only God has the right to be obeyed; and if he says kill, then kill we must.
.... Of course, Darren Osborne was hardly reacting against an Islamic view of sovereignty and its practical consequences. He almost surely did not have thoughts of political philosophy in his mind when he ploughed his hire van into Muslims outside Finsbury Park mosque, but hatred and an incoherent notion of group revenge: an atrocity for an atrocity, as it were. But he probably could not tell his Koran from his Corona, his Hadith from his Hoegaarden.
By his cruel, stupid and criminal action, he has given succor to those who would like all criticism of Islam to be treated as a kind of phobic disorder, akin to fear of spiders or mice, that is to say a disease of the mind.
The day after Finsbury Park, there was another attempted attack on a policeman on the Champs Elysées in Paris — and not by, or because of, the likes of Darren Osborne. [NYDailyNews.com] Read more
