August this year in London was heralded by the crash of breaking glass, the wail of police sirens and the smell of livelihoods and businesses going up in flames. Thousands of rioters and looters smashed their way into the public consciousness by instigating the worst violence the capital had seen for nearly fifty years. In a chain of events precipitated by the police killing of a young black man, Mark Duggan, it seemed the whole country was possessed by a form of Midsummer madness as copycat protests spread as far north as Nottingham, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.
“Everyone was just on a riot, going mad. Chucking things, chucking bottles, breaking into stuff… It was good though.”
These are the words of two young rioters who made headlines when they boasted to the BBC that they were showing the police they could “do want we want”.
But three weeks on, now that the smoke has cleared, the anger and fear have given way to reflection, and a form of justice has been served, what do the people on the street make of the fallout from the recent upheaval?
This is a cross-post from an article I published on Not on the Wires. To read the full article, click here.
Luth, Fundamentally (!) I agree; the moral instinct is uamtiltely grounded in conformity with the Divine will and our God-given nature. Yet on a practical day to day basis, irreligious people function perfectly well as moral agents despite the untenability of a secular justification for morality. Non-believers can behave just as morally as the best of believers whilst believers can and do behave as badly as the worst non-believers.I would be pleased to read how the riots are symptomatic of the UK’s rejection of God. As believers, this is a conclusion that we can all easily jump to but cogently presented arguments that support this insight is what is needed if the religious viewpoint is to be taken seriously. Or are we to continue to speak truths to each other in a closed room whilst the battle rages outside?Apart from the solitary reference to religious deprivation’, nothing in what I read in the original post would be unusual if I had read it in such secular bastions as the Guardian or New Statesman. And the way forward’ described in the conclusion was remarkably religion free.Hanif