[Magdalen] Siege in Sydney

[Sally Davies]

Keith showed me a lovely social-media trend that started before the siege
had even ended: "Ride with you", which arose as a warm hearted Australian
response to a plea from a Muslim who expressed fears of going on public
transport in the aftermath of something like this.

I'm sure the police had their reasons for decided to storm in but it can't
be called a good outcome. This week grieving South Africans are preparing
to receive the body of Pierre Korkie, killed in a failed rescue attempt in
Yemen, literally the day before he was due to be released after lengthy
negotiations by a local Muslim charity, Gift of the Givers. The American
hostage who was the main object of the military rescue effort was also
killed.

It cannot help in these situations if we don't have a sense of who the
hostage takers are, or what they want - but surely it is more of an issue
that a guy like this can be free to do what he likes, get weapons and so on
given his violent and abusive history. Much more of an issue than whatever
violent ideology he happens to be espousing.


Sally D

On Tuesday, 16 December 2014, Claudine Chionh <anglican at claudinec.net>
wrote:

> Cue the increase in alarmism from our politicians and general
> Islamophobia. It now seems more accurate to describe the perpetrator as
> an unhinged individual who had murdered his wife and has a history of
> violence against other women, and who was also attracted to the message
> of ISIS - but many commentators are only picking up on the Islam angle.
> I made that mistake in my first post here.
>
> Claudine
>
> On Tue, 16 Dec 2014, at 01:14 PM <x-apple-data-detectors://20>, Marion
> Thompson wrote:
> > And thank God for the end of it.  A terrible experience for the hostages
> > and everyone.
>