Sweetly Forgiving of the Unforgivable

Ashraf Haziq (photo: BBC)

What could represent as more of a nightmare than a young man far from home in a foreign country, determined to take advantage of the recognition of his scholarship through funding to enable him to study at a prestigious university abroad, suddenly facing a hostile and violent world with no one to support him?

Ashraf Haziq, a young Malaysian student just arrived in London to begin studies in accounting, looking forward to breaking his fast for Ramadan, riding his bicycle over a London bridge, when he is accosted by a mob of young people intent on ravaging whoever they can, because they can. Because the police are nowhere about, and there are a few vulnerable people they can focus on.

And Ashraf was one of them. He describes being surrounded by young people, "They threatened to stab me, they told me they had knives. Some of them were quite young, maybe still in primary school. They had their hoods on and demanded my bicycle." Which must have been inordinately frightening.

How do you respond, what do you do, when faced with this kind of horror? You're beaten, and dazed, wondering how this could possibly be happening to you, and what kind of people are these who confront a stranger and threaten and beat him for no possible reason?

Then, as though to restore his faith in the goodness of people, a helping hand up, while blood flows freely from his facial wounds.

The helping hand becomes quite a few helping hands, all helping themselves to whatever they think is of value that is contained in his backpack, while he is still dazed and uncomprehending, unable to respond, simply submitting to having his belongings ransacked, until he is finally left alone, wounded, to seek help.

He required an operation to repair his broken jaw, and he now has missing teeth as a result of the beating he sustained. "Britain is great. Before I came here I was very eager and I haven't got any ill feeling about what happened", he has declared. "I feel very sorry for the people who did this. It was really sad because among them were children."

The young man is as sweetly forgiving as his attackers are disgustingly vile.