Here he is:

Nothing of what you have said appears to map onto what I’ve written here, or anywhere else. I will address your confusion point by point:

‘Opining over whether it was morally justified or not is utterly ridiculous…’

I was not opining over whether it was ‘morally justified or not’, I was categorically, unequivocally saying it isn’t. I was also calling on people to challenge those who attempt to justify it. As there are actually people doing this. I won’t put up with Muslims justifying terror and I won’t put up with non-Muslims doing it either.

‘and smacks of pretentious moral grandstanding also known as “virtue signalling”’

This is simply an uncharitable assessment. I spend *most* of my time attacking Islamists and their apologists. To not be seen as a ‘virtue signaller’ on this instance of non-Islamic terror, should I have just ignored it and not issued any sort of condemnation? Please detail what one is reasonably allowed to think and write on this topic without being accused of ‘virtue signalling’.

‘What’s relevant here and speaks to how we understand and respond to this event is how the perpetrator justified this criminal act to himself’

How can that be ‘relevant’ at this point in time, given we did not have this information at the time of my writing, and we still do not have it now? I suppose it makes much more sense for me to wait and just let people assume I secretly endorse the murder. What IS relevant here (my blog), is whatever I choose to write about. Feel free to write about what you feel is relevant.

‘Your tendency to grasp onto and overplay those extremely rare instances of genuine (ie. not fake) blowback against an ongoing litany of Islamic-inspired atrocities also reveals your moral cowardice’

‘Tendency’? Where? Again. I spend *most* of my time criticising Islamism. You mustn’t be aware of this fact so simply took a chance with this accusation. This comment is especially odd when you consider the piece of writing you are attempting to criticise contains this paragraph: ‘I’ve been incredibly critical of the “backlash” narrative in the past. It’s a narrative that somehow takes centre stage each time a Muslim kills large scores of non-Muslims. I’ve always felt it was fairly outrageous to focus on a potential secondary issue that never seemed to actually manifest when we have a very really primary issue still bleeding us in the face’ – including a link of me rubbishing the ‘backlash narrative’.

How can I be of the view that blowback never seems to manifest, and have a tendency to ‘overplay’ it at the same time? I even said I “hope this is a one-off atrocity”. This is overplaying? Care to retract this blatant falsehood about a ‘tendency to overplay’ instances of ‘blowback’? As it’s quite clear that I’m a critic of the ‘blowback’ narrative.

‘Whatever happened to “not all British”? This double standard is absurd and moreso given that being British is not a choice. How do you take “pride” for a label you have no control over?’

Who said anything about ‘all British’ people? Or British people at all? I never even said I was proud to ‘be British’, or no longer proud to be as a result of this attack. I said I was proud to be part of a society (Britain) in which it was a fact that no one in said society had ever engaged in a ‘like-for-like’ attack on Muslim citizens. Since that’s no longer a fact, I can’t well still be proud of it now, can I?

‘Deliberately mislabelling individuals as “far right” when they legitimately criticise Islam (yes and muslims too) does not diminish their arguments, and nor will it protect you from the same charge’

Where have I done this? That charge DOES come my way. As someone with a large platform and a lot of critical views on Islam, I’d wager I understand this point better than you do. It’s precisely one of the reasons I’ve never labelled someone ‘far-right’ simply because they ‘legitimately criticise Islam’. You do realise the blog is about a man who used a vehicle to try and murder scores of innocent Muslims, right? I’d submit this doesn’t fall into the category of ‘legitimate criticism’. Is this a non-sequitur? Given it’s not relevant, shall I uncharitably interpret it as ‘virtue signalling’? ‘Not all critics of Islam’ etc.

I appreciate you taking the time to comment. But it’s not that you disagree with my views – it’s that you’ve invented some for me.

Your tendency to grasp onto and overplay those extremely rare instances of genuine (ie. not fake) blowback against an ongoing litany of Islamic-inspired atrocities also reveals your moral cowardice: “I have to let go of that [British] pride today”. Whatever happened to “not all British”? This double standard is absurd and moreso given that being British is not a choice. How do you take “pride” for a label you have no control over?

I also want to point out that the real “far right” in the UK is a neutered species. Deliberately mislabelling individuals as “far right” when they legitimately criticise Islam (yes and muslims too) does not diminish their arguments, and nor will it protect you from the same charge.

PS. Definition of moral grandstanding: “One grandstands when one makes a contribution to public moral discourse that aims to convince others that one is “morally respectable.” By this we mean that grandstanding is a use of moral talk that attempts to get others to make certain desired judgments about oneself, namely, that one is worthy of respect or admiration because one has some particular moral quality—for example, an impressive commitment to justice, a highly tuned moral sensibility, or unparalleled powers of empathy. To grandstand is to turn one’s contribution to public discourse into a vanity project.” – Tosi et al

But, if it does turn out to be a purposeful attack on the Muslim community, then I would express the same thoughts as in your post.

(I had a fair bit more written but it got lost in the ether when I tried to post it the first time, the above sums it up.)

Of course, as more facts come to light if it does turn out to be a purposeful attack on the Muslim community, then I agree it should be condemned as a “hate” crime at that point. I certainly do not think it can be called terrorism in any case, and it would take a lot of extra facts to make me call it such. I also dislike the term hate-crime, because a crime is a crime and crimes are often committed out of hate, I’ve only used it here to differentiate it from terrorism, which is far more than just crime it’s a coordinated series of attacks for political ends, which this certainly doesn’t seem to be. (Media has announced that the attacker was not a known extremist, nor had any ties to extreme groups that they’ve found and therefore this cannot be called terrorism, so far at least).