And we’re glad she has.
Following the Finsbury Park attack on Sunday night, people have been taking to social media to pay their respects, and to comment on the public reaction to the fourth UK attack in the past three months.
The attack took place on Sunday evening, seeing a van drive into pedestrians outside Finsbury Park Mosque at the end of evening prayers, leaving one man dead and 11 injured.
The incident is confirmed to have been an intentional attack of terror on Muslims, with the attacker reportedly shouting ‘I want to kill all Muslims – I did my bit’ as he ploughed into worshippers.
In the social media storm that followed, the public expressed outrage at the double standard surrounding the coverage of the attack, with the attacker being referred to as a ‘van driver’ rather than a ‘terrorist’ – something that people have suggested is simply because he was not Muslim.
Quick to point this out was author JK Rowling, who took to her Twitter account to post, ‘The Mail has misspelled “terrorist” as “white van driver.” Now let’s discuss how he was radicalised.’
While JK Rowling has since taken the tweet down, she has been praised for raising an important issue, highlighting the fact that white people aren’t excluded from being terrorists, and neither are they immune from radicalisation.
‘I deleted my tweet about the Mail not calling the #FinsburyPark attacker a terrorist because many rightly pointed out that the headline was written before charges had been brought against him,' she later tweeted. 'I was angry at what I saw as victim blaming in their immediate coverage (the mention that an Islamist had preached in the area three years ago).' She continued: 'I'm still angry about that, but I fully accept that in the immediate aftermath, it isn't reasonable or responsible for a newspaper to rush into judgement without knowing the facts.'
Hats off to JK for bringing a very important issue to light.
