London Bombing

For those that didn’t hear, there was a bombing in London this morning.

The news reports that I’m listening to on CBC Radio One are all saying that a group claiming to be part of Al Qaeda is claiming responsibility, but it’s not confirmed.

Regardless, this seems to be enough to get the women in my office talking about how “only Muslims could do something like this” and talking about the Muslim organization in our office building in a cruel way.

I can’t stand this crap. Do people not realise that Al Qaeda does not represent all Muslims? Do people not realise that terrorism can be done by *anyone* regardless of religion? I mentioned the Oklahoma building bombing, and that that was done by a Christian, and their response was that “only Muslims could pull off a bombing on this level” and that “there’s no proof that [McVeigh] didn’t have help from Muslims.” Argh.

I don’t understand how some people can just be so inherently racist, especially when coming from a group that also faces racism (well, anti-semitism).

The flip-side is that I don’t understand why Al Qaeda continues doing this. The loss of innocent lives is beyond my understanding. But for the group themselves, they’re trying to further their cause, but if a significant portion of the population now sees all Muslims as terrorists, suspects, and just “evil”, how is this good PR?