London City Hall had red, white, and blue lights in solidarity with Paris, France after the attacks killing at least 129 people.
The gesture was similar to many people using a filter with the same colours on their Facebook profile picture. Although many were expressing solidarity at first, others were wondering why similar events around the world did not receive as much attention.
Nawaz Tahir, chair of Muslim advocacy group Hikma, said what happened in Paris is tragic. “The loss of innocent lives and the murder of innocent civilians is completely unacceptable to all of humanity.”
He adds the media coverage of the Paris attacks so far, has been fair, because “people aren’t jumping to conclusions, people aren’t trying to draw major stereotypes.” However, he knows people could make assumptions based on stereotypes.
“That’s unfortunate. No one, person or small group ever represents a larger group,” he said, “Especially in a situation like this, where you have extremists that are trying to commit horrific acts on innocent people. It’s not reflective of Muslims or what our religion calls for.”
Tahir added Muslims in the Middle East are killed every day by extremists, so we must mourn for all of those who lose their lives.
“Whether that’s in Paris, whether that’s in Syria itself, Lebanon, other countries around the world, we have to keep those people in our thoughts, keep them in our prayers, and focus on being good human beings.”
