We’re told the killer does not in any way represent Islam or Muslims.

Yet in the same breath, we are told that the perceived insult against Islam for which the act was committed is deeply hurtful to ‘the Muslim community’ or was a gratuitous ‘abuse’ of free speech. This line always comes with the perfunctory preface ‘nothing justifies murder, but…’.

This now familiar sleight of hand has been used routinely since the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. It shifts scrutiny away from the attacker and focuses it on the victim. What did Samuel Paty do to put himself in such obvious danger? How could he have acted differently? More sensitively? What sensible, safe, more civilised middle ground did he callously stride away from to his predictable doom? This reflexive victim-blaming is practised by people who think they are engaging in an enlightened act of inclusiveness and understanding towards Muslims.

In reality, while blaming the victim for his own murder, this argument also sets up ordinary Muslims as cover to conceal the real and only beneficiaries of its doublespeak – the Islamists who continue to promote it whenever innocent lives are taken in the name of their ideology.

Each murder desensitises us a little bit more to the next, promoting a kind of cultural fatigue among societies that never imagined they would ever have to explain why religiously motivated murder is unequivocally wrong. ‘Of course it’s wrong’, the Islamist agrees, sympathetically.

‘But we mustn’t forget that the killer was provoked. In fact, when you think about it, he was a product of your society. A victim, crying out for “respect”.’ Anyone daring to wonder out loud if the killer was also influenced by his more immediate environment – perhaps the mosque he attended and the preachers he heard there – will, however, be immediately accused of scapegoating Muslims..