Thanks to gun control in the UK this lone wolf attacker was not able to easily arm himself with military grade weapons and ammunition, thankfully the majority of people do not need to carry lethal weapons for fear that others might be carrying them and we can even have faith that our police services are unlikely to kill civilians due to the majority being armed with only non-lethal weaponry. This attack would have been far worse if this nut had access to more dangerous equipment than a simple knife and I think it is an incitement of the fact that gun control saves lives.
A couple days ago a 'lone wolf' terrorist attack in the states resulted in the gunning down of numerous innocent people, due to the fact that these weapons are much harder to acquire in the UK than in any US state this attack had only 3 victims and the perpetrator will face justice of law. It should be noted there is still an issue with violent crime in the UK, with an increase last year of knife related crimes up to 26k, but thankfully due to control of lethal weapons we have managed to avoid having a mass killing every single day of the year in 2015.
Considering the 2.7+ million Muslims in the UK I would say that the one knife crime incident that occurred which involved a recourse to the defence of Syrians or Islam is probably more to do with current events (syria bombing campaign / cali shooting / paris etc.) than being an 'actual' terrorist attack such as the 7/7 bombings. If this had happened in a less charged environment it would be unlikely to have made national or even regional news. There will always be nuts in the world who want to get attention by shouting at the top of their lungs and attacking people, whether that be physically or otherwise, it doesn't make them right and it doesn't mean people should pay them any attention.
There are plenty of honest, descent Muslims in Britain, I know, work and have lived with several British Muslims of varying descent in my time and none of them have ever echoed any sentiment of what some purport to be the fundamentals of their faith. Of course they are not representative of all Muslims in the UK or in the wider world, just as those who behead people are not representative of my old house mate Tasnim who used to make the best damned Tajine you'd ever try; I think it's very easy to label a whole group if you don't know individuals and if you do it's impossible to be unbiased by it. Of course like any sane person I think the extremest elements of Islam are despicable, hell a lot of the moderate elements are pretty fucked up and dont mesh with 'western ideals' (whatever those truly are). That doesn't mean I'm going to reject wholesale anyone who is associated with that faith as it would be as close minded and foolish as cutting of someone's head because they don't know the first passage of the Quran and it only feeds those who hold such extreme view points as that.
