Terror attacks - Minority acts

IN recent days, at least 77 people died in just two terrorist attacks in distant and not so distant cities.

On Tuesday, 44 people died at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul and yesterday at least 37 people, mostly recent police graduates, died in a Taliban suicide attack in Kabul. Many, many more were seriously injured in these attacks.

Both atrocities were carried out by religious extremists who have shown, for over many years of terrorism and lethal fanaticism, a scant disregard for anything we imagine as the constraints of civilisation.

This is, in specific cases, indeed tragic, but it is also a tragedy on a far grander scale. Like it or not, a whole swathe of the world’s population — Muslims — are put under suspicion by these outrages, though the vast majority are utterly innocent.

These crimes also energise those who would close borders and limit freedoms of those of a different culture. The atrocities are not a reflection of Islam, just as Provo outrages we not a reflection of Irish people’s wishes, and we must always react accordingly.