The biggest mistake being made...

... in the aftermath of the 7th July bombings in London is summed up by the headine of an article in today's Independent: "Let us not grace these bombers with a cause. This was about pure, hollow evil."

Completely, spectacularly, wrong, and one reason why hatred continues to fester in this world. You don't have to excuse these people for their actions by defining the reasons they embarked on it. They're not some collection of cartoonish evil moustache-twirling villains who do evil for evil's sake. Rightly or wrongly, they have reasons for their actions, and you don't have to agree with those reasons or the way in which they acquired them to acknowledge they exist. We live in a world of cause and effect, and every single effect has a cause. And if you don't understand those causes, you set yourself up to repeat the effects.

The actions of the bombers was evil, of that I have no doubt. But as a historian I know only too well that - to quote a great article in today's Guardian (here), the bombings "do not 'clarify' or 'sharpen' but muddy and bloody already murky waters." Once the knee-jerk reaction of hate dies down - and we must all let it die down - we must make sure we do not find ourselves thinking along the same lines of those behind the bombings. Sadly the world is not black and white, and even if these bombers are an incredibly dark shade of grey, we are not necessarily that much lighter ourselves...