Missed Opportunities - the Manchester Arena tragedy

The preliminary report of the Manchester Arena Inquiry draws attention to failings of the on-site security team on the evening of the event. The problem runs deeper than that. The failings began long ago. We need to understand exactly what those failings were, and are.

In the make-believe land of Nayeif, openly armed men and women walk the streets unchallenged, their weapons flagrantly brandished in plain sight. The nation is proud of its freedom and of its citizens’ genteel restraint. Violent deaths are rare, as one would expect in any civilised society. People go about their daily business, accepting and tolerant of others, politely exchanging pleasantries and passing the time of day.

Every so often, however, something less pleasant transpires. Occasionally, there is a brutal shooting. Everyone shakes their head in puzzlement. What can have gone wrong? No-one in their peaceful, civilized culture would dream of committing such an atrocity. The balance of the gunman’s mind must have been disturbed. Perhaps he was radicalized. Yes, that’s it. Radicalized. Something happened, just to that one man, whirling him around to stand in diametric opposition to the harmonious Nayeifian way of life. There must be wicked people among the citizens of Nayeif, their hidden agenda to radicalize our innocent youth. Everyone must be on his guard. Each man must hunt the radicalized ones down. They must start an anti-radicalization movement, to avoid similar tragedies in the future.

One thing is absolutely beyond question. The barbaric murder cannot possibly have arisen from the fact that everyone carries a loaded gun as part of their daily routine. Everyone in Nayeif knows that to be true, because carrying loaded guns is part of their culture. It is a tradition dating back to the time of their forefathers. To change it would be to renounce their heritage; to betray their birthright and to comprise their rightful seat in heaven when they duly pass away and face judgment from their maker.

The make-believe land of Nayeif is full of loaded weapons, borne by those who rarely fire them. But the weapons are there. And they are loaded. They are very easy to fire, should someone decide to do so.


In the real world of twenty-first century Earth, men and women are free to believe in accordance with their learned cultures. They walk the streets unchallenged, their beliefs brandished proudly - often, loudly - in plain sight and earshot. Their holy text calls for the death of all those who do not share their beliefs, but few are motivated by that mandate to commit suicide and murder. Each nation is proud of its freedom and of its citizens’ genteel restraint from acting upon a literal reading of their preferred holy texts. Violent deaths are rare, as one would expect in any civilized society, but they do happen. People go about their daily business, accepting and tolerant of others, politely exchanging pleasantries and passing the time of day.

From time to time, however, something less pleasant transpires. Occasionally, there is a brutal suicide bombing. Everyone shakes their head in puzzlement. What can have gone wrong? No-one in their peaceful, civilized culture would dream of committing such an atrocity. The balance of the suicide bomber’s mind must have been disturbed. Perhaps he was radicalized. Yes, that’s it. Radicalized. Something happened, just to that one man, whirling him around to stand in diametric opposition to the nation’s harmonious way of life, with its fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect for, and tolerance of, those with different faiths and beliefs. There must be wicked people among the citizens of the nation, their hidden agenda to radicalize the country’s innocent youth. Everyone must be on his guard. Each man must hunt the radicalized ones down. They must start an anti-radicalization movement, to avoid similar tragedies in the future.

One thing is absolutely beyond question. The barbaric suicide-murder cannot possibly have arisen from the fact that everyone believes the literal truth of their holy text, including its injunction to slay as many unbelievers as you can. Everyone in the nation knows that to be true, because following their beliefs in their daily lives is part of their culture. It is a tradition dating back to the time of their forefathers. To change it would be to renounce their heritage; to betray their birthright and to comprise their rightful seat in heaven when they duly pass away and face judgment from their maker.

The real world of twenty-first century Earth is full of minds capable of following their holy texts’ injunction to commit murder in the name of a deity. The vast majority do not go on to murder. A few do, however. It is very easy for them to justify doing so.


Action could have prevented the 2017 Manchester suicide bombing years before Christopher Wild’s alert was ignored by poorly trained, inexperienced security staff at the Manchester Arena. We could have acted collectively, long before Salman Abedi was born. We could have put in place a healthy programme of rational education for young people, making clear the difference between actual fact and fictional holy text. But we have not done so, because we are too busy bending over backward to shower respect upon those who assert that the fantastic is true. Often, the reason for the professed ‘respect’ is pure pragmatism - we kowtow to religious bullying because we do not want our windows broken. It is ironic that such cowardly accommodationism makes it easier for misguided would-be martyrs like Abedi to carry out their self-interested crimes. The Arena security guards were worried about accusations of discrimination if they challenged Abedi. Why, we might now ask, did they not prioritise public safety over their own fears of reprisal? Perhaps it was because they did not appreciate either the immediacy or the scale of the threat.


Salman Abedi was a Muslim. That means he followed the religion of Islam, whose holy text is the Qur’an. In that book, those who die while slaying non-Muslims are promised rich rewards in heaven, to where they will be fast-tracked without having to spend years buried in the ground. The religion of Islam is comparatively young, its claimed prophet having died in AD632. However, there has been plenty of time for the civilized, rational world to react to its rise, and spread protective common sense through education. All we need to do is instil, in young people, the teaching that reality is best understood through science and clear, rational thinking, not through ancient texts and superstition. Salman Abedi could easily have been taught that he would not go to heaven for blowing up a foyer full of schoolgirls. He was born in Manchester in 1994 and was educated in UK state schools and Salford University. Throughout his formative years, there was ample time to call him out on any incipient aspiration to martyrdom. To have done so would have saved twenty-two lives, including that of eight-year-old Saffie-Rose Roussos, who bled to death from injuries caused by Abedi’s bomb, fully aware of her situation and asking medical staff if she was going to die.


Salman Abedi was 22 when he died. He threw away three quarters of his life. His death is as tragic as that of his victims. He is a victim himself, of a cruel, false ideology that dupes its adherents into acts that are extremely harmful and without benefit. Never mind the argument that most Muslims do not blow people up. Most alcoholic drivers do not kill people in road accidents, but a few do and that is why drinking and driving is, quite rightly, illegal. Islam is an expensive luxury the world cannot afford. It needs to be stopped, through a world-wide programme of rational education that should have started long ago.


We have to start now.

This is truly offensive

Peter Tait, a candidate in the upcoming Scottish Elections, has suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by gay marriage. When called out on his assertion, he cited God.

Yesterday, Good Friday, 2 April, 2021, Professor Alice Roberts tweeted, accurately and appositely, that dead people do not come back to life. There followed a stream of predictably sanctimonious replies, with the common theme that she should leave well alone and let innocent believers be happy in their harmless persuasion. Moreover, she should refrain from posting tweets that might offend people. Many of the ‘please don’t offend’ tweets were in this wise: “I personally don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead, but I understand that some people really need to believe that, so you should not try to stop them doing so.” Can these people not see the patronising condescension that drips from their every word? “I am far too clever to believe in God but I pity lesser brethren for whom belief is an indispensable crutch. Prevented by their limited intellectual capacity from defending themselves, they need me, a paid-up member of the ‘I’m an Atheist-But’ club, to ride in like the cavalry on their behalf.”

As I’ve said numerous times in my own blog, there is no automatic right to believe what you want. That is because beliefs affect actions, and actions affect people. Peter Tait’s statement that the COVID-19 pandemic is God’s judgment on gay marriage is truly offensive on just about every level. Like some of the self-righteous respondents to Professor Roberts, Peter Tait hides behind God to justify his claim. I know several people, all of them honest, reliable and trustworthy, who are in gay relationships including marriages. Peter Tait has blamed those innocents for, at the time of writing, almost three million deaths. His vile words are deeply offensive to them, and to me.

Theists, please don’t respond that I’ve missed the point and I don’t understand the beautiful subtleties of your religion. There are no such subtleties. There is merely a set of contentions with nothing - absolutely nothing - to support them, other than a single book accompanied by blind faith in its inerrant truth.

Unsupported assertions deserve to be questioned. When those assertions affect people’s lives, the questioning should be especially robust. You will not be allowed to play the offence card. If you make a claim, either back it up with evidence, or stop making it.

And before you start asking me where religiously inspired great art, or music, or architecture came from, think on this. The world is, thankfully, well supplied with all of the above, pertaining to and arising from religions that are long dead, with no living adherents. As examples, I cite the breathtaking temples of Abu Simbel; the Parthenon which housed the lost statue of the goddess Athena, numerous prehistoric circles including Stonehenge and Avebury, the Temple of Mithras in London, and numerous Roman relics, such as the Temple of Diana in Turkey. There are others. None of them is evidence of the existence of the deity or deities in whose honour they were erected. As I’m sure you would agree, those beings existed only in the minds of their loyal followers, who were nevertheless driven by their piety to invest vast wealth and labour in those enduring monuments. Your cathedrals and churches are the same, with the trivial difference that you, a believer in Yahweh, are still alive. Please don’t forget that the ancient Egyptian and Roman gods and goddesses held sway for far longer than Yahweh, before their fandom faded away and they became a mere historical curiosity. There are other religions, causing us more daily grief than yours does, that have been around for even less time, and still bask in the bright, youthful flare of their adolescence. I am sure they will all go the same way as did Olympian Zeus, the sun god Ra, and the Norse pantheon of Thor and Odin.

You protest that Professor Roberts ought to remain silent. Yet, your cathedrals and churches, with their attendant rituals and pageantry, are a stark daily reminder of your own baseless claims. 

The best way to protect your declared right to your private belief is to keep it private. If you wish to make it public, be prepared to have it questioned, and to defend it, with real, verifiable evidence. 

Offence and Deep Hurt

Whoever was depicted by the cartoon shown briefly to students at Batley Grammar School last week, as part of a PowerPoint presentation that had been in use for ages, it was certainly not the Prophet Muhammad.

At the time of writing, no-one has seen his face for 1389 years. He died in 632CE. There were no cameras in those days and it is painfully well known that Muslims do not make or keep images of their beloved prophet. At the time of his death, no-one but a Muslim would have been terribly interested. It is safe to conclude that no authentic image of him survives.

Amid the furore, non-Muslim apologists are quick to bid for the politically correct limelight. The Independent grants irritatingly provocative exposure to the well-intentioned but sadly misguided Carolyn Edwards, from Leeds. Ms Edwards’ missive is fairly well written; a class of eleven-year-olds would find reassuringly few errors if they were to peer-assess her outpouring. She slips on a classic, common banana skin - that of assuming, from her liberally postmodern Olympian vantage point, that she can see everyone’s point of view, while the rest of us can see only our own.

“Are we indifferent to an action that knowingly offends the nearly 2 billion Muslims with which we share the planet?” she rhetorically asks. I really hope the bruises aren’t too bad as, feet flying amid fruit peel in the air, she crashes down in an inelegant heap. ‘We’, it is evident, are different and separate from the 2 billion Muslims. We share a planet with them. They are a different species. They get offended by stuff, and we have the power to offend or not to offend. This is patronising condescension at its nauseating worst. Blind to her own arrogance, she gazes down her nose at the simple, bewildered underlings over whom we hold potentially offensive sway.

A vanishingly small sample of the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims - a few of them actually parents of children at the school - has rocked up at the gates of Batley Grammar, COVID-19 protocols be damned, mask around the chin, to exercise their Islamic right to be offended, insulted and very, very angry. And the accommodationist left falls over itself to appease them.

Consider this. How much more respectable would be the face of Islam in the UK if the below, or something like it, was the text of their statement to the press.

“It has been reported that a cartoon, said to portray the noble Prophet Muhammad, has been shown to students in a religious studies class, as part of a PowerPoint that is used year on year. Whoever is depicted in the cartoon, it is certainly not our Prophet, for no-one knows what his face looked like. He has been dead for almost fourteen centuries. There is no recorded likeness of him anywhere. If, as some correspondents suggest, the cartoon’s display was a calculated attempt to provoke us, it has failed to do so. Islam is a peaceful religion with two billion followers. We do not fear petty mockery, which does nothing to perturb our submissive commitment to Allah and the five pillars of Islam. Those who seek to belittle us simply show their own intolerance and bigotry, which do not impact us in any way. We require no resignation, no apology and no huffing and puffing from within our own rank and file. We do not descend into street mob politics. Peace be upon our noble Prophet and upon us all.”

I will dream on. I would be exuberantly, ecstatically delighted if anything like the speech above were to issue from the lips of any influential Muslim.