When three Asian men were killed in Birmingham protecting businesses from black looters, many feared the city faced a race riot (in 2011). Yet a speech by a grieving father is now credited with almost single-handedly bringing the city back from the brink...
At about 19:30 BST, Mr Jahan faced the world's media outside the petrol station where, hours earlier, his son had lain dead in his arms.
With representatives of the city's black, white, Muslim and Sikh communities standing behind him, he read out a statement calling for calm and for communities to unite.
Then, overcome by emotion, he spoke directly from the heart.
"Basically I lost my son," he told the crowd. "Blacks, Asians, whites - we all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another?
"What started these riots? And what's escalated? Why are we doing this? I lost my son. Step forward if you want to lose your sons.
"Otherwise calm down and go home."
Five years later, Mr Jahan admits he was surprised at the impact his words had.
"I don't know where those words at the end came from - they just came out," he said.
"A lot of people said to me 'we can't believe what you said, I don't know where you got the strength'.
"It impacted the public massively. They did walk away."
and the BBC article today credits the speech as stopping further rioting in that city.
But the story doesn't stop there. Mr Jahan is collecting supplies to help others:And he is now is sending help to refugees in Syria and on Lesbos. from a story in March 2016
Tariq and Sophia have been collecting aid, such as blankets, clothes and toiletries for some time, but nothing prepared them for the scenes of desperation and human misery as thousands of refugees arrived daily.
He said: “It was absolute chaos. I thought it would have been well-organised. It wasn’t. There was no methodical organization dealing with a situation there. They had no funding.”
Tariq Jahan, (left) on aid trip to Lesbos to help Syrian refugees
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