The recent acts of Islamic terrorism inflicted on Manchester and London were despicable. They hit the areas of freedom, enjoyment and social life within our western society and they hit out right across our daily way of living. But, today's terrorist attack on the Muslim community in Finsbury Park was equally deplorable. An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.
How did we get here? Well, hatred breeds more hatred. Bombing innocent civilians in the Middle East creates more hatred. Tabloid newspapers with an almost daily drip-feed demonising Muslims and creating islamophobia creates hatred.
The ugliness of xenophobic rage and islamophobia disturbingly lurk as a knee-jerk response to recent activities.
There has to be a better way than this. So rather than ratcheting up the levels of military interventionalism and propaganda based xenophobia narratives (which is exactly the type of Western response that Isis want), a response to the terrorists should be both equally measured and pragmatic - but actually have a workable chance of diminishing their power base. The only solution to undermine Isis is to find ways to defund them to try and stop their revenue streams through diplomacy and collective geopolitical financial aggression.
As well as tightening up the pathways of financing to the terrorist organisations, the West should stop selling weapons or financially propping up any state or regime that has a risk of passing on these weapons and funds to terrorists. Again, this may well expose a few inconvenient truths about those involved in this process, but so what? If we really want to hit terrorists where it hurts, their supply of money and weapons has to be cut off.
Equally, we need to curb the dog-whistle influences of any media outlet that seeks to smear entire communities or religions after a terrorist attack.
Adopting this approach will not completely destroy terrorism, but it sure as hell offers a more rational, compassionate and pragmatic response to target funders of terrorism than yet more ill-conceived bombs thrown onto innocent civilians or whipping up more hatred against Muslims which, in turn, increases more hatred and more violence.
We need to find a better way to combat terrorism. Because, if we don't, the endless cycle of hatred will in turn, lead to even more hatred. This cycle has to be broken.