JK Rowling is known for expressing her political opinions on Twitter and the aftermath of the Finsbury Park attack was no different.
A terror attack in London left one man dead and several others injured as a van drove into pedestrians outside the Finsbury Park mosque after evening prayers. Soon afterwards, Daily Mail tweeted about the attack, calling the attacker a ‘white van driver’.
JK Rowling responded, by tweeting a screenshot of a headline from the Daily Mail, which referred to the attacker as the “white van driver, saying “The Mail has misspelled terrorist as white van driver.”Now lets discuss how he was radicalised.”
Soon after posting the tweet, she deleted it and wrote an explanation in a series of tweets:
“I deleted my tweet about the Mail not calling the #FinsburyPark attacker a terrorist because many rightly pointed out that the headline was written before charges had been brought against him. I was angry at what I saw as victim blaming in their immediate coverage (the mention that an Islamist had preached in the area three years ago). I m still angry about that, but I fully accept that in the immediate aftermath, it isn’t responsible for a newspaper to rush to judgment without knowing the facts.”
The Daily Mail has corrected its headline following JK Rowling tweet. It now calls the suspect a ‘terror attacker’.
Throughout the day, Rowling’s tweets and retweets focused on different definitions of “radicalised”. One tweet showed a collage of British tabloid headlines, all referring to Muslims in different negative ways.
Let’s talk about how the #FinsburyPark terrorist was radicalised. pic.twitter.com/Lx1woEaLKL
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 19, 2017
Again: let’s talk about how the #FinsburyPark terrorist was radicalised. pic.twitter.com/t3O6q5zfXq
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 19, 2017
Rowling’s underlying message was evident that there are stark differences between the way people treat Muslim attackers and the way people treat attackers of other religions. While no tabloid will hesitate to label a Muslim as a ‘terrorist’, they wouldn’t be so quick to call a white man a ‘terrorist’.
The incident is now being investigated at a terrorist attack. The UK Prime Minister Theresa May has also labelled it as a terrorist attack.
