IN the lastest of our series on inspirational British Muslims, BEN GRIFFITHS and GARETH MORGAN talk to Firas Sa’adedin, senior consultant at London’s King’s College Hospital.

It was Firas who rushed to help victims of last June’s London Bridge terror attack.

WHEN Dr Firas Sa’adedin finally climbed into his bed after treating victims of the London Bridge terror attack, he broke down in tears.

He wept for the seriously injured people he had helped save — but also at these attacks being misguidedly carried out in the name of Islam, his religion.

Firas, 42, said: “I cried for the people who had been injured. I witness knife crime weekly, but you are never truly prepared for incidents of this magnitude.

“There were also tears of anger that people would do this in the name of Islam. Islam is supposed to be about peace.

“These people weren’t Muslims in my eyes. They were murderers undoing all the good work the majority of Muslims are doing.

Firas was at home watching TV on June 3 last year when he got a call as emergency medicine consultant at King’s College Hospital, London. Eight people would eventually die in the attack, with 48 injured, after three terrorists drove into pedestrians on London Bridge, before stabbing others in nearby Borough Market.

Despite living 40 miles away in Medway, he leapt into his car and was at the hospital in an hour.
Firas, 42, a British-born Muslim from Edinburgh, said: “Like many of my colleagues, I didn’t hesitate.

“I knew it would be terrorism in the name of Islam. I felt a certain sense of guilt, as though tarred by association. A part of me thought if I could help these innocent, injured people, it could also help alleviate some of the guilt.

“I also felt anger. I knew it would create a negative image of Muslims in general, especially as there had been so many incidents through Europe in a short space of time.”

Amazingly, all patients brought into King’s that night survived.

Firas said: “There was an overwhelming sense of achievement.


“We worked as a team. There were many of us, but we didn’t need to say anything to each other.

“We were all faiths, all nationalities. We were Team King’s, all doing what many of us felt we had been put here to do — to help people.”