Daesh

I refuse to call these murderers ISIS or Islamic State.

Do they really think they are acting on behalf of Islam?

A picture is emerging of Daesh based on what we know about them. We know they will bomb anywhere that will get them publicity and we know they hate Muslims just as much as they hate everyone else. How else to explain the carnage in Istanbul last week, Baghdad the day before yesterday and then today in Medina, one of Islam's holiest sites? And all this done during the holy month of Ramadan.

We know their terrorists come from many communities around the world. Right now we have families in Bangladesh trying to work out how their well brought up, well educated sons for whom they sacrificed a lot and who wanted for nothing ended up killing 20 people in a cafe in Dhaka. We have had families all over the world asking the same thing in recent years. How did two doctors come to the decision to blow up Glasgow airport? How did decent family men come to set off bombs on the London underground? Why did Charlie Hebdo attract the attention of home-grown terrorists? Why would an American doctor turn his gun on fellow Americans?

Maybe it's time we looked at the Daesh problem in a different way. Daesh are not out to 'get' the west. Nor do they want to convert people to Islam. Daesh are the ultimate anarchists. They are out to de-stabilise every community they can get access to. They have struck in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France, the UK, the US and Nigeria - over and over and over. They particularly like to attack communities that are already pretty unstable, especially in Africa. Where they get the chance, they enslave people. Remember the girls of Chibok in Nigeria, held as sexual slaves for over two years now?

That's not to say the west is innocent. I wonder how history will judge the US (the world's self-appointed policeman) and its followers, like the UK (in thrall to the 'Special Relationship'). And what will history have to say about the protection the west has afforded to Israel in the horrific way it treats Palestinian communities?

And no, since you ask, I don't have a solution to the Daesh problem, other than to urge everyone to be tolerant, to love each other, to think of future generations who must surely learn to live together, to resist in our small way any attempt to set one group against the other.

I kinda feel this is not a popular sentiment in the UK right now, where there are groups that seem to be determined to isolate and victimise any minority group, classing everyone who is not 'us' as immigrants, foreigners, asylum seekers and therefore fair game.

If we go along with this hatred of the 'other,' we're playing into the hands of Daesh.