The cold blooded murder of Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers – just outside his barracks in Woolwich – saw Al Qaeda-type savagery and bestiality explode in our midst for the first time since 7/7. It is the kind of savagery and bestiality that is no respector of borders, race, religion, or creed. It is the same kind of savagery we saw last week in the film of the so-called freedom fighter in Syria cutting out the heart and lungs of a dead Syrian soldier, prior to holding them up to the camera and starting to eat them.
The Muslim community in this country has nothing to apologise for. It does not deserve to be put in the dock for the actions of a few crazed killers who seek to justify bestiality with a distorted and twisted ideology. What does deserve to be put in the dock is a foreign policy that on the one hand fuels and courts extremism and extremists, while on the other wages war on it with the blunt instruments of drone strikes, missile strikes, and wars of occupation.
Islamic extremism is something our leaders have used when its suits them, doing so in order to pursue certain geopolitical objectives. The beast who mutilated the body of the dead soldier in Syria last week is no different from the beasts who butchered a British soldier in Woolwich. Yet Britain along with France is currently seeking to overturn a EU ban on supplying weapons to non state actors in order to arm various rebel factions operating in Syria, many if not most of which are adherents of Sunni extremism and the ideology of Al Qaeda.
It is utter madness.
Read the whole article on Socialist Unity.