This thread makes very troubling reading for me. As a dad of a young lass myself, I can feel the horror, repulsion and anger following this terrorist act. And I can understand how frustrating it is that there isn't a visible or identifiable target somewhere they we can target to retaliate, to get a sense of justice. It is horrible.
But for me personally any actions we take should take should be towards stopping, or reducing the possibility of such an action happening again.
The top one for me is to avoid giving the terrorists exactly what they want. ISIS in earlier incarnations published a book called "The Management of Savagery" which acts as a kind of rationale for using brutal terrorist action to provoke actions from other societies that cause their people to isolate and abuse their resident Muslim populations. They know very well that this causes some, very few, but some usually younger, more impressionable, or mentally unstable people who are more prone to such online grooming. As a result, these individuals 'feel isolated' and look for 'ways out', of 'belonging', of rejecting the society that they perceive to be rejecting them. It's a long process, and in no way excuses or justifies in any way their actions for they are absolutely unjustifiable, but it seems to explain why ISIS use such dreadful means of killing. It creates a vicious cycle that ultimately feeds on itself and causes more depths.
So for me, the number one thing is to not give them what they want; not to blame, isolate or abuse our resident Muslim population. Such opinions expressed on here do trouble me, and I swear I understand the reasoning behind them - it's a very human reaction. But I find it hard to swallow because I currently live and work in East London which has a huge ethnic mix. Many of my work mates are devout Muslims but they are just as shocked and angry as the rest of us. Apart from a couple of women wearing religious head dress they work, socialise and are part of the work community as anyone here. I find it hard to accept such generalised talk of 'Muslims being the problem' or 'we should ship out Muslims' simply because of this. We'd be targeting people just as British in behavior and norms as I am. I just can't accept that penalising these colleagues of mine can be an acceptable part of any solution.
I think that working in East London may be different to my hometown. One of the first thing I noticed living here is how integrated the different cultures are. My daughter's school class accomodates about 20 different languages but on the wall this is expressed on a wall poster as a strength, a positive thing about the school. From what I remember, and still see in Rotherham, there is still a tendency to seperate different cultures; they live there, we live here and this comes from the equally from the different cultures? I'm not sure how much this still holds true (please let me know your thoughts, I do feel quite an outsider after 20 years down South)? But it still seems that parts of the borough have their separate communities whereas here, I can see directly what happens when people are kind of 'thrown' together. It felt weird to me at first, I wasn't comfortable at all, but now see it as a positive thing if cultures are to co-exist.
I remember an excellent documentary (I think it was put together by Trevor MacDonald) which went into depth on this problem of social cohesion and the local council (in the North West I think, I'm sure you can google to easily find out about it), had the initiative of ensuring that the children of the different communities went to the same schools, and that in doing this the children will come to accept each other as a natural factor, just as my daughter does with her multi-cultural friends. It seemed a really positive initiative, and I wonder if we shouldn't move in this direction.
Just a few thoughts for what they're worth. I agree with Mr Chuckle that one no-brainer is that if an individual is proven to have left the country for defined terrorist activities, then of course they should not be allowed back. I agree on the logistics anyway.
