A war on joy

When the pictures of the dead came in, it was hard to take, even from a distance. There was Georgina Callander, 18, a bespectacled Ariana Grande ‘superfan’ who had tweeted that she was ‘so excited’ to go to the concert in Manchester Arena. There was Saffie Roussos, aged 8 and still at primary school, who went with her mother and older sister. There was Olivia Campbell, aged 15. I looked at their bright faces and thought of all the love their families had carefully decanted into them over the years, their wealth of possibility. Then on Monday night a suicide bomber smashed up all their futures in an instant. What an act of vandalism against humanity. What grubby blasphemy.

The statement from Isis duly arrived, full of the usual nonsense about ‘a soldier of the Khilafah’ placing explosive devices ‘in the gatherings of the Crusaders’. That meant a twisted youth strolling into a hall foyer to murder adults and children.