Fear and Loathing in the Municipal Car Park

There's no getting away from this latest terror scare - the other day some morons tried to burn down our local mosque. Police think the attack might be related to the recent arrest of several Muslim men in connection with a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners. No shit Sherlock! It really is good to know that we're being protected by the cream of law enforcement! I'll certainly be sleeping safer in my bed tonight, knowing that! The really depressing thing about this attack is that it was probably carried out by a bunch of boozed-up shaven-headed and tattooed morons who, under different circumstances, would just have happily burned down a synagogue. They're just looking for someone to hate, and right now a combination of press-hysteria and government over-reaction is winding them and setting them off in the direction of anybody vaguely 'Muslim' looking. Face it, if there hadn't been a mosque in this town, they'd probably have burned down a Pakistani-owned newsagents or beaten up some waiters from the local curry house.

Having said all that, I found myself having a 'racist moment' the other day. I got cut up by another car in a car park the day after this latest terror 'plot' was 'foiled' - although I didn't react, just slammed my brakes on and waited for the other car to piss off, as it was turning away, one of the occupants gave me the finger. Noticing that the car was occupied by four young Asian men, I has this sudden desire to take their licence number down, phone the police and tell them that I'd just seen four terrorist suspects acting suspiciously - probably planting a car bomb. I was immediately ashamed of myself for such a thought - it is exactly the kind of racial stereotyping I usually rail against. It would also have been, as a friend I told about the incident pointed out, a completely disproportionate response to a trivial incident. Unless I was the State of Israel, of course. In which case a proportionate response would have been finding out where they lived and planting child pornography in their houses before ringing the police and the newspapers with an anonymous tip off. At least that way their ethnic origin wouldn't have been a factor in my choice of response, and I would therefore have been able to gloat with my liberal conscience clear. Maybe next time...