There is nothinglike a bomb exploding close to home to focus the mind on the grotesque aspects of war. Watching television from the comfort of an armchair, the full horror of murder and mayhem taking place in some far away land doesn’t have the same impact as blood and body parts festooning local landmarks you pass on your way to work.

The London bombs on 7 July claimed the lives of almost 60 people as deaths of the injured crept up in the days following the attacks on three underground train stations and a bus. The victims, reflecting the population of this most cosmopolitan of cities, came from all walks of life from hospital cleaners to surgeons, and included a diverse selection of nationalities and religions.

Debate, in the media and on the street, has been continuous. It seems certain the suicide bombers responsible were British “home grown” extremists, all were Muslim, remarkable – if reports are to be believed – chiefly by their very ordinariness.

Yet these young men felt strongly enough to leave their homes and families with the intention of inflicting the most gruesome of deaths on people they had never met and would never know. A campaign proliferated in the wake of the attacks featuring Londoners going about their business and declaring to the world: “We are not afraid”. Bunkum, of course we are afraid, only a fool could fail to be. I am afraid for myself, my children and the people I love who walk the streets of this city daily. I am also afraid for people I have never met and will never know; people who enrich my life in a thousand different ways, with their skills and talents, their writing, music, culture and art.

Clerics and scholars have been among the many thousands of British Muslims to denounce the terrorist action of 7/7. Some have warned this sort of violence is just a curtain-raiser and no more than we should expect given the British government’s involvement in Iraq, where, according to the latest figures a staggering 24,865 civilians were reported killed between March 2003 and March 2005.

Others point to the UK’s support of the United States, which financed the training of men such as Osama bin Laden and his operatives when they wanted the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and it suited their purpose to do so.

Radio, television and newspaper reports are trying to take all points of view into account. There is anger but, for the most part, it has been constructive. ‘What went wrong?’ and, ‘How can we stop this happening again?’ are the questions on a million lips.

There is widespread popular determination that British foreign policy will never be determined by Osama bin Laden and his henchmen but a genuine desire to understand more about why four young men from the north of England would feel driven to dispose of their own life and the lives of countless others, in such a cruel and haphazard way.

Clearly, I cannot know what was in the minds of the bombers on the morning of 7/7. Their own families seem genuinely bewildered that their sons, brothers or husbands could have played any part in these murderous attacks, one father going so far as to declare his son must have been brainwashed; so I hold out no great hope that I will ever be truly conversant with the facts.

Reading through the long list of victims’ names, ages, nationalities and occupations however, the overwhelming feeling is not one of anger, sympathy, or hatred but of absolute waste – of life, skills and experiences and the prospective future each victim and their family will now be denied. This is equally true of those who died as a result of 9/11, in the Madrid bombs in March 2004 and in the countless unprovoked attacks that continue to devastate the civilian populations of Afghanistan, the Occupied Territories and Iraq on a daily basis.

All life is precious, yet it remains true that daily news reports from far flung places have less effect than those taking place in our own back yard; a failing certainly but a very human one. A dead British teenager, be she Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Jew, is not worth more or less of our sympathy than a dead Iraqi teenager. Both are entitled to our compassion, respect and the best future we, as part of the privileged world, can offer. It is only when we lose sight of this fact, when we cease to care about the people we do not know and will never meet, that we are truly doomed, in this world and probably in the next.