22 people.

10 kids and teens.

An off duty police officer.

Parents.

The victims of the Manchester Bombing on May 22nd, 2017 shall never be forgotten. The investigation has been running at a breakneck pace, with 11 people currently in custody. But since the attack, terror hasn't stopped or paused, just yesterday over 20 people including children in Egypt were gunned down on their way to visit a monastery. Malawi City in the Philippines has been openly attacked by an ISIS affiliate leading to martial law being declared and large evacuations from a city quickly turning into a borderline war zone.

There were quick calls to remind people after the bombing in Manchester that not all terrorists are Muslim and certainly not all Muslims are terrorists. Including Kim Corona in her piece written on this website. There are a couple of issues I take with her claims. The first is identifying the Newtown and Aurora shootings as terrorist attacks, I have not seen them ever classified as that, because they aren't. Neither of those shootings meet the definition of a terrorist attack. My other problem is that Kim Corona tries to extrapolate that because terrorists aren't of a single background, there are no relationships to be found.

That is the crux of the issue. Whenever attacks occur, while there are those bigots who try to take advantage, there are many who quickly move to remind people that not all Muslims are terrorists(which is completely correct) and that Islam is the "religion of peace." That claim has little basis in reality unfortunately. If we first consult Wikipedia's list of all terrorist attacks that had at least 50 fatalities, over 70% with a political ideology of Islamic Extremism. That number is likely higher due to some attacks being unknown. But screw Wikipedia, lets ask the Institute of Economics and Peace's Global Terrorism Index. There they say that 74% of terrorist attacks were carried out by: ISIL, Boko Haram, the Taliban and al-Qa’ida. All groups that claim to be based in Islam and throw serious wrenches in the works of the "religion of peace" narrative.

But Kim Corona does have a good point. Terrorists are found elsewhere as she pointed out in Dylann Roof but also Anders Breivik, who carried out an attack that killed 77 in Norway in 2011. These other appearances show that the relationship between Islam and terror is more likely correlation and not causal. But that leaves us with questions, like why is so much terror centered around that religion? What drives young Muslims in the West to join these terrorist organizations to carry out attacks? Of course the biggest question of all, how do we prevent these attacks?

Those questions are without answer for now, but they are very important questions that need to be asked. It would be downright dangerous to ignore routes of questioning that could save lives. We must also be careful not to fall into the discrimination or bigotry for all Muslims. But that fear is no excuse to shut down intellectual questioning.

May those in the hospital after Manchester have a speedy recovery. The families and friends of the deceased have my condolensces. And may the deceased find the peace they were denied in life.