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You hear a lot of sirens where we work; about one an hour I would guess. There was a chorus of them at around 3pm yesterday. Everyone in the office realised that something different was happening.

Twitter kicked into action. For an hour or so, a scattering of tweets and photos filled in spots of detail, giving us a blurry picture, one pixel at a time, of what was apparently still going on.

Then came the official media reports, clinging on to endlessly–repeated, solitary established facts, like they were so many pieces of wreckage from a disaster.

By the evening news, we knew more: sequences and consequences, actions and reactions; but still not we really wanted to know: who did this and why?

Strangely, given this general confusion and uncertainty, I spoke to a friend last night who told me exactly what had happened, and who had done it, and why he had done it, and why those who denied that the murder’s actions had anything to do with a particular religion were kidding no–one. You can join the dots. I’ll wager he wasn’t alone.

I suspect he was right, and that this will be revealed as the deeds of a terrorist, motivated by (his understanding of) Islam to shed blood in the symbolic precincts of democratic liberty. But the speed with which he rushed to this judgement worried me.

When violence of this nature erupts, we seek reassurance and return to established narratives. We know what’s going on even when, technically speaking, we don’t. A pre–existing narrative makes sense of the events.

One such narrative widely prevalent today is that many British Muslims sympathise with acts like this and too few do enough to condemn them. In the likelihood of this narrative being further established, it is worth noting what the Muslim Council of Britain said yesterday straightaway or hearing the voice of New Horizons in British Islam:

An attack on our democracy, the police, people on our streets, is an attack on our nation, on all of us. We condemn this act, an attack not just on the capital but on the values that people across Britain hold dear. We pay tribute to the bravery and prompt reaction of police officers and the emergency services, whose work keeps us safe… We urge people to report any suspicious activity to the Anti–Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321… Terrorist attacks like this seek to divide us, but they will fail and we will remain united.

Rowan Williams was a few yards from the World Trade Centre when the first plane hit. He afterwards penned a short book entitled Writing in the Dust, in which he used the story of Jesus’ reaction to the woman caught in adultery to encourage a pause before response. Instead of responding immediately to the accusation and the imminent vengeance, Jesus “bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.” Instead of eye–balling an instant reaction to his famous advice about casting stones, “again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.”

It is a good example to follow. When the atmosphere is thick with aggression and violence, we stop, pause, wait, and try to write something new.

Nick Spencer is Research Director at Theos | @theosnick

Image from flickr.com available in the public domain.