Dawn Picken: Terror in the family

Thugs killed neighbours under the guise of a political cause segregating people based on religion, geography, surnames and the schools, clubs and pubs they call their own. Photo/Getty Images

My family was once loosely connected to a terrorist group. I didn't learn details, but I did hear from a relative that members of my clan engaged in activities designed to intimidate rivals.

It was zealotry, and if you followed the history, you'd denounce members of both parties who detonated bombs, lobbed rocks, sticks, paving stones and bottles (I have no evidence my family was violent).

Thugs killed neighbours under the guise of a political cause segregating people based on religion, geography, surnames and the schools, clubs and pubs they call their own.

Parts of my tribe come not from the Middle East, but from Northern Ireland, a place that saw 30 years of terrorist attacks resulting in more than 3600 deaths, most of them civilian.

Politicians who claim the scale of terrorist threats in the UK is "unprecedented" have apparently forgotten about the Irish Republican Army.

The IRA in June 1974 exploded a bomb at the Houses of Parliament, hurting 11 people. Birmingham pub bombings the same year left 21 people dead.

The Brighton bombing in 1984 killed five and nearly assassinated Margaret Thatcher.

The Omagh bombing in 1998 staged by the Real IRA killed 29 people and injured nearly 300.

In 2001, a car bomb planted by the same group in West London hurt seven people.

In total, the Guardian reports the IRA killed about 125 people in attacks in England and more than 1500 in Northern Ireland.

The BBC's Seamus Kelters wrote the IRA killed 350 Protestant civilians. "A substantial number were specifically targeted because of their religion. Loyalist paramilitaries [such as the Ulster Defence Association] also repeatedly selected targets simply on the basis of their perceived religion, killing almost 720 Catholic civilians."

During the Troubles, Britain did not enact a ban on Irish migration to the UK. IrishCentral reports from 1951 to 2001 the Irish were the largest foreign-born group in Britain.

President Donald Trump and others who get news from conspiracy theory and pseudo-journalism websites rushed to politicise the latest terror attacks on the London Bridge.

Trump trolled London mayor Sadiq Khan on Twitter, just hours after violence that left seven people dead.

The US president accused Khan (London's first Muslim mayor) of saying the massacre gave "no reason to be alarmed", when the mayor had actually suggested it was increased police presence, not the attack itself, that should not alarm people.

In another tweet, Trump renewed his call for the US to ban travellers from several Muslim majority nations, even before learning the London attackers' nationalities.

Soundbite solutions to complex problems.

Blaming faith or lack thereof - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or secular humanism - for the world's ills is easy.

Learning why people become radicalised - propaganda, prejudice, poverty, misogyny, loss of spirituality - and attacking those root causes is hard. Iranian-American Shirin Taber writes in an article entitled, 9 Ways to Counter Radical Islam, we need to discredit dangerous ideologies of Islamism, Salafism and jihadism. "Servant leaders must replace ego-centered political leaders, religious dictators and warlords. We cannot tolerate political parties that support violent End Times theologies. Muslims must learn to disagree without using violence."

My 13-year-old daughter, after hearing of the London Bridge attack, asked, "What is happening in this world?"

She also knew about the bombing that killed 22 people and injured more than 100 at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last month.

It followed another terror attack near the UK Parliament in March where three people died.

I could only mutter something about humans being violent throughout history. I told her we can't let fear, ignorance and rage rule our lives.

Humans throughout history have stabbed, shot and bombed in the name of God and country.

In the late 20th century, radicals from paramilitary organisations such as the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Defence Association were conjoined with religious identity. In this way, you could argue all Irish Catholics and Protestants were terrorists - worshipping at an altar piled with assault rifles, home-made mortars and plastic explosives.

Using the same logic, 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide are Islamist radicals bent on bringing terror and Sharia law wherever they go, despite the fact most abhor the violence that victimises them in numbers much greater than non-Muslims.

The least Muslims could do is apologise for each new act of terrorism, just as I should apologise for other writers' grammatical errors.

As for my relatives, I was told while visiting Northern Ireland seven years ago that members of the Belfast clan had taken part in Orange Order parades, controversial when commemorating paramilitary groups or passing through Catholic areas. I'd apologise to my Catholic friends, but I didn't march.

Dawn Picken also writes for the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend and tutors at Toi Ohomai. She's a former TV journalist and marketing director who lives in Papamoa with her husband, two school-aged children and a dog named Ally.