Well, as we all know, it has happened again – another radical terrorist bombing attack with multiple deaths - this time 22 deaths and a hundred plus serious injuries, and barely-expressible shock at the brutality of it echoing around the world.
Again an Islamic adherent - this time in in Manchester, England, where a 22-year-old British born man, with a refugee Middle-Eastern heritage from Libya died in a suicide bombing, where many teenagers and children attending a pop-music concert were the unfortunate victims of the tragic event.
Sadly, the subsequent police investigation into this tragedy has partly evolved into an exercise in the management of political correctness in the UK and elsewhere.
At time of writing, investigators had made eight arrests in England and in Libya, and comments of British officials, identify the bomber, Salman Albedi as part of a “a network — a cell of ISIS-inspired terrorists.”
Meanwhile experts suggest the device used the explosive TATP, the same one used in the deadly November 2015 attacks in Paris and the March 2016 attack in Brussels carried out by Islamic State extremists. The British officials who shared confidential information with US security, were dismayed to see that information leaked to American media.
Politicians of all stripes quickly stepped up to echo their countries’ undoubted sympathy and support for the victims and their families as did the usual host of celebrities and entertainment stars drawn into the event by its circumstances.
The social media scene is equally alive, The twitter-verse is packed and media is looking to the usual line up of local Islamic representatives for response. As expected – they all deplored and condemned the bombing as not associated with local Muslims or mosques in Manchester. It is too early to tell – but police arrests and raids on possible bomb factories don’t provide assurance.
It is easy to see and even understand the frustration of the peaceful Muslim communities in the U.K. as they protest the inevitable wave of outrage and accusations directed at the religion. It springs from the depressing fact that clearly, like all communities, there are “bad apple” elements – and the fallout has to be extremely difficult to swallow.
Police are now guarding the Manchester Islamic Centre, better known as the Didsbury Mosque, where the Albedi family worshiped. Mosque leaders deny Albedi worked for the mosque.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has acted quickly to bring in the military to guard other possibly-vulnerable targets, including Buckingham Palace. It is now less likely you’ll see an unarmed British bobby involved in terrorist-related police business.
In this latest atrocity children are dead and scores of lives are affected and the best efforts of all of those who have been working tirelessly to retain a good level of charitable and political acceptance and support for the millions refugees from the war-torn regions of the middle east are likely to find themselves back at first base as the tide of horrified reactions and demands for retribution and justice for the innocent proliferate.
The gamut of emotions is predictable in most of the known religion-based terrorist situations – in Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, in the United States, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Canada – everywhere the “lone wolf” attack pattern, openly encouraged by ISIS, has been adopted.
It’s so scary because it’s such an “entrepreneurial” approach to killing – whether it involves the use of guns, explosive vests, fertilizer bombs, IEDs, trucks, cell phones and whether it’s committed by individual fanatics or friends, lovers, married people or their , families.
Patience and thoroughness is required in getting to the bottom of such events – but their frequency and unexpected locations spark anger and demands for definitive clear and speedy action and they always will.
To the families of victims, flowers, candles and balloons are not enough!