Ramadan 2017 starts Friday evening May 26 and is expected to end on June 24. We are now receiving wishes from friends for a blessed Ramadan but it is too simple to wish blessings while only days earlier, May 22,  the 22 years old Salman Abedi blew himself up just after a concert of Ariana Grande, causing the death of 22 people. Over 59 others were badly wounded. Ariana Grande is in particular popular among teenage girls and thus many of the victims were teenage girls. Among the victims are also children. The youngest, Saffie, was only eight years old.

From a terrorist perspective this attack was a “success,” terrorism expert Prof. Beatrice de Graaf, explained in the Dutch NRC newspaper today since in each attack they try to increase the effect, attention and number of victims. It appears to be unlikely that Abedi was a lone wolf. He was more likely a pawn in larger network that is related to Deash (the name preferred over Islamic State that many use in the West). The English police found in a search after the attack more explosives.

If there was a network than this would make this attack very different from those carried out with trucks such as in Nice and Berlin. Those were more likely lone wolfs.

The  attack in Manchester appears to be a ‘lifestyle target’ such as earlier attacks on nightclubs and other locations that Daesh sees as representing a hedonistic lifestyle that they oppose.

I spoke with Muslim friends of us. They are totally abhorred by the carnage caused by someone who called himself a Muslim. One friend of mine started choking when I asked her today what she felt of the attack. This attack is not representing Islam but it is impossible to claim that this has nothing to do with Islam. Shaykh Muhammad Salah has in earlier interviews with Arab-WestReport argued that it is needed to address their wrong understanding of Islam. That is something that non-Muslims cannot do. Muslim scholars should address the ideology of Daesh and people sympathizing with them. Many do but, no doubt, more could be done.

We wish all our Muslim friends a blessed Ramadan. This is a most important month for every Muslim believer. We also wish that more thought will be given to combating the ideology of people who have the guts to think that they should sit on God’s throne and judge others for their lifestyle. Of course we may have different beliefs about lifestyle and of course this can be expressed in many different ways but never in killing people with a lifestyle that is not ours.

May 25, 2017

Cornelis Hulsman,

Editor-in-Chief Arab-West Report