Tag Archives: Woolwich

Religion, Science

Religious fundamentalism could soon be treated as mental illness

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By JohnThomas Didymus

Kathleen Taylor, a neurologist at Oxford University, said that recent developments suggest that we will soon be able to treat religious fundamentalism and other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society as a form of mental illness.
She made the assertion during a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday. She said that radicalizing ideologies may soon be viewed not as being of personal choice or free will but as a category of mental disorder. She said new developments in neuroscience could make it possible to consider extremists as people with mental illness rather than criminals. She told The Times of London: “One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Someone who has for example become radicalized to a cult ideology — we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance.” Taylor admits that the scope of what could end up being labelled “fundamentalist” is expansive. She continued: “I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults. I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness. In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm.
International, Life, News

The bravest woman in all of UK. Cub scout leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett confronts the London jihadi without fear for her own safety.

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Brutal murder in Britain: ‘You’re going to lose’, said mum who ‘disarmed’ attackers

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When confronted with random acts of violence, the first reflex of most humans is to seek safety. But when Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, a 48-year-old mother of two and a Cub scout leader, came  face-to-face with a knife-wielding Islamist attacker at Woolwich in southeast London who wanted to “start a war in London tonight”, she calmly talked to him – and urged him to surrender.

For her selfless act of bravery, overlooking the risk to her own life, she is being celebrated on social media platforms as a hero.

Loyau-Kennett was one of the first people to arrive at the scene in Woolwich where two men – evidently in a fit of jihadist rage – butchered a British soldier with machetes and butcher’s knives.

She told The Telegraph of London that she was in a passing bus and saw the bloodied body of the soldier on the streetside, and since she, as a Cub scout leader, had received training in administering first-aid and had a kit at hand, she hopped off the bus to attend to him. She had assumed it was an accident scene, but soon realised that the man was dead – and that it was not exactly an accident.

“When I went up there, there was this black guy with a revolver and a kitchen knife… He had what looked like butcher’s tools and he had a little axe, to cut the bones, and two large knives. And he said, ‘Move off the body’,” Loyau-Kennett told newspaper.

She said she didn’t quite know what was going on, but she felt that it would be better to keep the blood-covered attacker distracted and keep him from attacking more people. She asked him if he had killed the man, and why. To which he said: “Because he has killed Muslim people in Muslim countries… I am fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan…”

And when the attacker said that he wanted to “start a war in London tonight,” Loyau-Kennett patiently sought to dissuade him and urged him to surrender his weapons. “I said: ‘Right now it is only you versus many people, you are going to lose’,” she recalled.

She then went over to the other attacker – who seemed “much shier” – and urged him to hand over “what you have in your hands.”

“I did not want to say ‘weapons’, but I thought it was better having them aimed on one person like me rather than everybody there,” she told the newspaper.

The attackers didn’t quite hand over their knives, but in a larger sense, Loyau-Kennett had – by standing face-to-face with them and by plainly telling them that they would “lose” – metaphorically disarmed them and calmed them down and, most importantly, ensured they didn’t attack anyone else.

On Twitter, Loyau-Kennett’s selfless act of bravery has many people in awe.

Courtesy: FirstPost
http://www.firstpost.com/world/brutal-murder-in-britain-youre-going-to-lose-said-brave-mum-who-disarmed-attackers-807629.html?utm_source=hp-footer

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