very sad

The total deaths from Thursday are now up to 49, plus 700 injured and 62 of those still in hospital.

It should be obvious to anyone with even half a brain, however, that these terrorists do not represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims, who are peaceful, law-abiding and so on. It is very sad that there have already been retaliatory arson attacks on mosques, and that the Muslim Council of Britain have received hate-mail. Though they have also received a lot of emails from people expressing solidarity with them.

It's weird that when the IRA attacks were going on in the 1970s, people didn't talk about expelling all Irish people from mainland Britain - so why do people start talking about chucking out all the Muslims? Could it be because they look different?

There are aspects of Islam that I don't agree with, but I think we should make a distinction between the practices and what is actually written in the Koran. As the Interfaith Code puts it, we should "recognise that all of us at times fall short of the ideals of our own traditions and never compare our own ideals with other people's practices".

I for one want to live in a multicultural society, as it's a more interesting place to be - and it also happens to benefit me as a Pagan, as people are learning to recognise that religions other than Christianity deserve tolerance and respect.

The friend I texted on Thursday didn't get my text, but he contacted me via email to say he wasn't in London last week. Still waiting to hear from my friend who lives in London, though.