YP Comment: Reaching out to every faith
As Angus Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader, said: “No terrorist outrage is representative of any faiths.” Powerful words which had even more resonance on the day Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, the paramilitary-turned-peacemaker, was laid to rest in Northern Ireland in an irony of timing, they help explain why the police have pro-actively sought to reach out to Muslim faith leaders.
A measure of the increased importance now attached to community relations following the 2005 suicide bombings, Britain’s first line of defence is those values – liberty, freedom of speech and democracy – which apply to all. Unlike Irish republicanism, there is no means to negotiate with Daesh – the so-called Islamic State – and its convoluted network of violent sympathisers who have embraced its twisted ideology. As such, it puts an even greater onus on positive relations between the police, and communities of all faiths, to deter those evil terrorists intent on dividing multi-cultural Britain.