The awful massacre in Christchurch is another example of what many would consider to be manifest evil – a brutal murder of innocent people carried out by a white supremacist motivated by fear and hate.

A chilling aspect of the follow up coverage was the depiction of the killer as a young boy, with golden curls, and his description as ‘angelic’ – in other words, he was such a lovely boy, and now look what’s happened. Of course this is the same for almost all the people who go on to kill, they don’t tend to start out as homicidal.

But one can’t help feeling there is an implicit racism in our categorisation of some as ‘angelic’ – I was trying to remember the last time I saw a brown skinned baby described as ‘angelic’ in a British newspaper*. I don’t recall it happening. It’s a hang over, perhaps, from days of religious art when cherubim were little pink skinned children, with curly golden locks. And then there’s the constant references to the ‘dark’ side, the ‘black heart’, even ‘shady’ or ‘shadowy’ remind us that evil is done in dark places. Perhaps its because Christianity has always been strong on iconography, while Islam has been quite the opposite, that our angels are so white, and our demons so dark. That blackness and Satan are so often mixed together should concern us all.