Regard the utter nihilism of Islamic terrorism. Upwards of 21 people have been killed after a shooting attack Wednesday at a Tunisian museum with two gunmen taking hostages before they were shot dead. The number includes 17 tourists who were murdered as they admired historic relics from, well, Islamic civilisation itself.
At a press conference in Tunis, health ministry officials said that one of the dead was a Briton. The deceased has been named as Sally Adey by the UK Foreign Office.
Amongst the other casualties there were three Japanese, one Australian, one Colombian, one French, one Belgian and one Polish national.
This was no random attack on foreign visitors. It was planned as an act of barbarism committed in the name of religion. Mohamed Ali Aroui, an Interior Ministry spokesman who detailed the deaths at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, specifically called the attackers Islamists in remarks on national radio.
No ‘lone wolves’ or ‘terrorists’ weasel words there. Just plain Islamists.
I don’t know if that makes Mohamed Ali Aroui an Islamophobe or racist or religious bigot or possibly all three in the eyes of the progressive, left-liberal thought police, but there is a pattern emerging here.
Just as we’ve seen too recently in Paris, Sydney and Ottawa, unhinged Islamists around the world are taking up arms against anyone they deem to be an enemy of their faith. Even people who have the temerity to go to a museum to admire Islam itself.
The choice of Tunisia for this crime is in itself emblematic. The country remains the only place where the so-called Arab Spring has successfully taken hold. It has a coalition government with Cabinet posts shared across a range of religious and social divides.
Now it has joined the list of countries that have been visited by the scourge of radical Islamist terror. With neighbouring countries Libya and Algeria awash with jihadis and staggering under the weight of internal sectarian divides, we can hope that a more cosmopolitan country like Tunisia can stand and not fall in on itself after an attack like this.
Except we need more than hope. How about a concerted effort to label Islamic terrorism for what it is rather than granting it the fig leaf of religious ignorance.
The truth might be hard for some people to manage but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored.
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