On Sunday 25^th July, at Speaker’s Corner in London, a Christian critic of Islam was stabbed by an as yet unknown assailant. The victim, Hatun Tash, was scooped up by the armed police that regularly patrol the Speaker’s Corner/Park Lane area and taken to hospital where she was treated for stab wounds that have been described by various sources as ‘not life threatening’.

There is much speculation that there was a religious and/or political motive for this stabbing. This speculation is given some credibility because Ms Tash is said to have been the subject of intimidation and attack before by the great many Muslims who now congregate at Speaker’s Corner to both promote Islam and to counter critics of Islam who might appear at a place where freedom of speech has traditionally been both legally and socially accepted. There are a number of people out there claiming that this attack on Ms Tash was a terrorist attack as an attack carried out in order to advance a political or religious cause meets the Crown Prosecution Service definition of a terrorist attack. The Met Police have issued an appeal for information about this case but so far, at the time of writing, there have been no arrests.

There are indeed aspects of the attack on Ms Tash that do suggest that a terroristic religious motivation was behind it, most notably the fact that Ms Tash was wearing a Charlie Hebdo T shirt at the time she was attacked. You don’t have to be a MENSA member to believe that wearing such a shirt supporting a publication that has a history of mocking religions and religious figures, could have provided the motivation for an extremist Muslim to attack Ms Tash.

So, we have an attack, on a woman who has been subject of threats before by Muslim extremists most likely triggered by her declared support for Charlie Hebdo. This looks very much like terrorism to me especially as it meshes with the CPS’s definition of terrorism.

Now it’s time for some observations about the Speaker’s Corner area and some questions for London’s Metropolitan Police.

Speaker’s Corner and the areas surrounding it such as Park Lane and Marble Arch are very very well policed. There’s normally a strong police presence around Speaker’s Corner for reasons of public order, this has been the case for many years. In addition Marble Arch – which is a major tourist attraction and Park Lane because of the high concentration of high net worth individuals and businesses are also very well policed. In addition to the large police presence in the area this zone is also, because of its very nature as a place where the wealthy congregate and because the area contains a number of potential terrorist targets, very well covered by high quality CCTV. There is public/police CCTV and CCTV run by the businesses, individuals and other entities that are present in the area. It’s an area where I would reasonably expect an alleged assailant in a stabbing incident would be very quickly apprehended.

The question that I and others have for London’s Metropolitan Police is why, with such a heavy police presence in the area and with the area flooded by various forms of CCTV, has the stabber of Ms Tash not yet been apprehended? Because of the police presence and the CCTV presence it could reasonably be assumed that no matter what direction the assailant ran in, whether it is towards Park Lane or Marble Arch or even into Hyde Park itself, that there should be no escape for him.

There have been other stabbing incidents in the area where arrests have been made within two days of the incidents occurring most notably the stabbing to death of a bouncer at a nightclub on New Years Day 2019. In that situation the police managed to apprehend one of the assailants by the 2^nd January 2019 and in this stabbing incident there was a lot less immediately available evidence in that case than there was in the Hatun Tash case. With the Hatun Tash case there must be a wealth of evidence in the form of images and names of regular attendees at Speaker’s Corner, for to use to apprehend the attacker. The stabbing of Ms Tash was observed by a number of witnesses and was filmed by bystanders on their phones and according to some reports I’ve seen members of the public gave chase in order to, sadly unsuccessfully, apprehend the attacker.

This case raises some worrying questions mostly about the conduct of the Metropolitan Police. The main question for me and others who are concerned about the attack on Ms Tash is are the Met taking this stabbing incident as seriously as they should be or are they dragging their feet in order to not upset the Muslim extremists? Brendan O’Neill writing recently about the attack on Ms Tash has accused Britain’s police forces and the political Establishment of ‘cowardice’ when it comes to the issue of Islam and how this cowardice has had the effect of emboldening Islamic extremists. It would well be the case that the slothful way that the Met are dealing with this case is related to the Met’s cowardice when dealing with Islam related problems. I find it both astonishing and disgusting that the Met are quite happy to throw massive amounts of resources at dealing with and punishing those who make comments on Twitter that some Muslims claim are ‘offensive’, but are giving the distinct impression that they just can’t be arsed to apprehend a man, most likely a Muslim man, who stabs an ex Muslim, in broad daylight near to police officers and in an area that to all intents and purposes is one of the most secure in the country.

So, Met Police. Why have you not caught the alleged assailant who carried out what many believe is a terrorist stabbing attack that occurred right under your damned noses? I think that we all need answers to that and other questions about how the Met deals with Islamic extremists in the Speaker’s Corner area, don’t you?