folio

An innocent young Muslim woman has tragically been killed on her way to buy groceries, in the last ten days of Ramadan.

Our activists, when they thought she was the victim of a hate crime: “A hijabi sister has been murdered by a white terrorist.”

When police arrests seemed to suggest that she was killed in error in the crossfire of a feud between rival gangs whose members were of Muslim heritage: sudden silence.*

Then later: “The victim was Shia; do we even know she died a Muslim?”

Here we discover that our hearts are dead. Sectarian hatred transforms mourning for an innocent victim of an awful crime into a hate crime itself. Despicable. Deplorable. We are the walking dead.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.

—————

* Update 22 May: Five people, Feroz Suleman, Abu Bakir Satia, Uthman Satia, Kashif Manzoor and Judy Chapman, have now been charged with the murder of Aya Hachem, and the attempted murder of the man believed to have been the intended target.