What a week

In this last week, the news has been a fairly constant stream of death, pain, anguish and misery. In particular, the Boston marathon bombings and subsequent apprehension of one suspect and death of the other; the explosion in West of a fertiliser factory; an earthquake in China.

What I want to focus on, however, is the reaction of many people to these events. In particular, the fact that many Muslims have experienced very negative reactions, because the Boston bombers adhered to their faith. It seems to me that this is completely unreasonable, utterly unfair.

Let me make a point: the Boston marathon bombers left 3 dead and many injured, some very seriously. The West explosion left some 15 dead and many others injured. The Chinese earthquake has killed 100 or more, and injured many hundreds.

In the same week, many have died in Afghanistan and Syria, numbers unknown.

And yet the hatred and anger is focused on the religion of the two men who caused the fewest of these deaths. I don't see calls for fertiliser to be banned. I don't see calls for earthquake zones to be abandoned, and yet these are bigger killers than the Boston bombs.

Of course, the bombings are deliberate acts, not accidents.

I don't see calls for troops to leave Afghanistan or intervention in Syria, despite the fact that the dead here are the results of deliberate acts.

I am convinced that the reason for this discrepancy is that many people - not just in the US, of course - see Islam as Bad, and so look for reasons to see the bad in acts of any Muslims. This is a mistake, and a dangerous one.

There is a lot of good and a lot of bad in Islam. As there is in a lot of good and bad in Christianity. And in atheism, monetarism, and any other ism you want to focus on. Islam is not the worst of these - one could argue that it is the greed and selfishness that requires large amounts of fertiliser to keep producing produce to sell. In the UK, the government's austerity measures - based on research that has been shown this week to be seriously flawed - have caused a whole lot of suffering and death.

Demonising other people because of their difference is dangerous and damaging. Not least, because it is the people who are substantially like us who tend to cause the most problems and the most suffering. Yes, the radical aspects of Islam do need reigning in, almost certainly by the leaders of their faith. But the radical aspects of Christianity also need reigning in, and of monetarism, the forces of greed and avarice. And some of these are our responsibility to change.

The rejection of more restrictive gun control in the US this week indicates that this sort of change may still be some way off.