The British Have Class

I'm just watching a news conference with spokesmen for several of the British agencies involved in dealing with this morning's tragedy. The police spokesman was asked by a reporter if they suspected that the attack was due to Islamic terror suspects. His response was the best thing I've heard in as long as I can remember. My paraphrasing won't do his succinct, articulate reply justice, but essentially he said that as far as he is concerned, the words "Islamic" and "terrorism" don't belong in the same sentence. From what he understands, anyone who carries out acts of terrorism is in direct opposition of many of the tenets of Islam. In effect, he made it clear that a "terrorist Muslim" is an oxymoron and that anyone who calls themselves Muslim and carries out such atrocious acts is gravely mistaken about the purposes of Islam. Now I certainly don't claim to be an expert on Islam, but I have tremendous respect for this man's response to the reporter's question. This past weekend I watched a Tivo'd episode of Morgan Spurlock's new show, 30 Days. The episode I saw had a red-blooded Christian from North Carolina live with a Muslim family in Michigan for a month. While there he had to follow all the Muslim customs. The show was quite interesting, but what I found most fascinating was a brief segment of the show in which Morgan Spurlock asked Americans on the street to do a word-association game with him. He said "Islam" or "Muslim" and asked people to name the first thing that came to mind. Almost everyone's reply was "terrorist". There's no doubt that there are several radical groups out there who insist on perpetrating terrorist acts in the name of Islam, but they really are not representative of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. I don't know if any American official would ever even think of replying with the kind of answer that the London police spokesman gave. I do think, however, that a change in the tone that the news and politicians use to discuss these types of events could help minimize the collateral hostility directed at decent, law-abiding Muslims the world over.