{"id":6735,"date":"2017-06-19T09:39:39","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T15:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6735"},"modified":"2017-06-19T09:39:39","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T15:39:39","slug":"finsbury-park-attack-placeholder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/06\/finsbury-park-attack-placeholder.html","title":{"rendered":"The Finsbury Park attack (placeholder)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"From<\/p>\n

Last night, a reportedly-48 year old white man plowed into a crowd near the Finsbury Park mosque in London. \u00a0This is a mosque which, somewhat over a decade ago, was breeding terrorists, and was shut down, then later reopened \u201cunder new management\u201d and, from all reports, claims the mantle of moderation.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the obligatory link to a relatively recent story on the incident: \u00a0from the BBC<\/a>. \u00a0One person is dead (though apparently not necessarily as a result of the attack), and 10 injured.<\/p>\n

After reading initial reports last night, I figured that this morning there would be more details. \u00a0There weren\u2019t. \u00a0Reportedly, this is because of British law on criminal cases; according to a seemingly-credible statement on twitter<\/a>, since he survived the attack and will stand trial, there are restrictions on what the British press may report, and on what details the British police may provide to the press. \u00a0Near as I can tell, they have not released his name, and I haven\u2019t seen any indication of when this information will be coming. \u00a0(The BBC article gives his age, which suggests that this was released, but nothing more.)<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Theresa May has announced<\/a> that this attack affirms her plans to increase internet regulation, with more government abilities to access information, e.g., as shared in What\u2019s App texts, and with more censorship. \u00a0Newsweek reports<\/a> that the attack \u201cplays in ISIS\u2019s hands.\u201d \u00a0And on twitter there are demands that the news media devote as much figurative ink to this attack as to the prior attacks by Islamic extremists, and prove their even-handedness by labelling this as \u201cterror\u201d \u2014 a label which it seems to be should be reserved for acts which are organized by a specific group or are at least connected up with one, especially since everyone had seemed to settle on \u201chate crime\u201d for attacks on<\/em> minority groups vs. attacks on the general population.<\/p>\n

So we don\u2019t really know much, but it seems very out-of-character for a UKIP hooligan to turn to the suicide attack that\u2019s the stock-in-trade of Islamicists. \u00a0And it does seem to have been a suicide attack. \u00a0That is, it\u2019s widely known that London has CCTV cameras everywhere, so I assume that he knew that he wouldn\u2019t be able to just disappear. \u00a0And the BBC reports a witness saying, \u201ckill me, I\u2019ve done my job\u201d, which suggests that his expectation was some variation of suicide-by-cop. \u00a0Maybe more details will arise that suggest this isn\u2019t the case, that he thought he would be able to drive away from the scene.<\/p>\n

Now, none of this is good news. \u00a0Was he motivated by a general animus towards Muslims? \u00a0Had he had specific run-ins with Muslims? \u00a0Was he personally affected by the recent attacks? \u00a0Was he \u201cradicalized\u201d by anti-Muslim groups in the UK (which I doubt were any sort of pro-Christian group, since that country has now become so secular), in the same way as we\u2019ve been tossing around ideas that the D.C. shooter was \u201cradicalized\u201d by anti-Trump politicians and Facebook groups? \u00a0Did he choose this mosque because of its past terror links, or because he believed those terror links to be ongoing, or because it just happened to be prominent?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve labelled this post as a \u201cplaceholder\u201d in the expectation that we\u2019ll have more information to chew on over the course of the day. \u00a0But we may not, really, if the British legal system withholds his name.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image from Wikipedia: https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AFinsbury_Park_mosque_-_panoramio.jpg; Olof Lagerkvist [CC BY 3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, a reportedly-48 year old white man plowed into a crowd near the Finsbury Park mosque in London. \u00a0This is a mosque which, somewhat over a decade ago, was breeding terrorists, and was shut down, then later reopened \u201cunder new management\u201d and, from all reports, claims the mantle of moderation. Here\u2019s the obligatory link […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[653,414,353],"class_list":["post-6735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-finsbury-park-attack","tag-london","tag-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Finsbury Park attack (placeholder)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last night, a reportedly-48 year old white man plowed into a crowd near the Finsbury Park mosque in London. \u00a0This is a mosque which, somewhat over a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/06\/finsbury-park-attack-placeholder.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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