Oh for the ever-loving state of feck. This is like the whine that "We just want to have an open discussion about immigration" as though immigration wasn't frequently on the front pages of national newspapers, being discussed on the radio and freely talked about over dinner plates up and down the land. What it actually translates to is "Shut up and agree with me!"
Same as Islam, every time there is one of these tragedies some talking head or another pops up to say that all they want to do is 'talk about Islam' and you can bet that one of the first parties to say "Great! Let's talk!" Are the Muslim communities themselves who appear in every media to denounce the attack and discuss the various and varied beliefs in Islam. Whether its the page of letters in yesterday's metro, the cleric on Radio 4 the other morning discussing the principle of not attacking those who protect you. Then there are the community leaders who come on the air to tell parents to be careful of internet radicalisation...
If ever there was a better demonstration of this, I can't think of one than York Mosque who opened themselves up to EDL protesters, serving tea and coffee to discuss Islam.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/27/york-mosque-protest-tea-biscuitsThe Torygraph article bemoans that after the attack, everyone looked at things like foreign policy, economics, etc rather than the fact that he shouted 'Allahu Ackbar!' Apart from the fact that it's obviously untrue (or else how would he have known that he shouted it in the first place?) it actually makes sense to look at the factors which would drive this Muslim to terror in addition to Islam. there are 1.5 million Muslims in Britain, that we do not see 1.5 million attacks shows that religion alone is not sufficient to drive terrorists , so how do factors like alienation, national identity, economics, ideology etc etc affect how likely one is to commit a terrorist atrocity?
If this article had appeared in 1980 it could have read:
"There is a lot of displacement on the news and in the papers, as if it's all too politically difficult and socially awkward to talk about the killers' ideology, or the place of religion in that ideology. So we talk instead about the NF, or the black and tans, or "the religion of peace" or say "Protestants kill too" or "what about Ian Paisley", or, well, anything but the brute fact that the murderers, like so very many before them, were Irish Catholics."
And doubtless there were articles written in that vein, but as should be obvious, discussing Irish Catholicism does not lead us to understand why the IRA would bomb a pub. For that we should look at his Republican ideology or his connections to the IRA.