Author: Andrew Bolt
Publication: Herald Sun
Date: August 5, 2009
URL: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25883761-5000117,00.html
SO I turn on the radio to hear babble about
police raids in our suburbs on suspected terrorists.
I immediately suspect . . . what?
That the four men arrested were Presbyterians?
Baptists? Greens?
Well, if I'd hopped onto the ABC website,
I'd be little the wiser.
In the 750 words on this alleged plot to launch
suicide attacks, not one was "Islam", "Muslim" or even
"jihad".
Not one word was used to describe what allegedly
motivated these men - Lebanese and Somali Australians with reported ties to
Somalia's al-Shabaab Mujahideen terrorists - to want to kill Australian soldiers
on an army base.
That's how reluctant we are still to honestly
debate Islam, terrorism . . . and immigration, suddenly the biggest elephant
in a tension-filled room.
But we knew. We all did - even those eager
to advertise their non-racism.
In fact, Victoria Police was forced to ditch
the sensitivity manual it produced only last month to get us to not mention
this war - you know, the war that only days afterwards took out three more
Australians in Jakarta.
That manual is its Lexicon on Terror that
Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said would be sent to officials and
politicians to instruct them not to use feelings-hurty words such as "war
on terror", "Islamic terrorism", "Islamo-fascists"
and "moderate Muslims".
Such insensitive speech just made Muslims
think we were at war with Islam, Fontana said, overlooking the fact that too
many Muslims think Islam is at war with us.
Well, his manual didn't survive reality for
long. There was Chief Commissioner Simon Overland at yesterday's media conference,
freely linking Islam to terrorism and once more urging us not to forget all
those moderate Muslims.
"I also want to assure the broader Islamic
community here in Victoria we understand that the overwhelming and vast majority
of the Islamic faith are not terrorists," he preached.
Good on him for saying so, of course, but
I suspect it's now time not for non-Muslims to reassure Muslims that they
mean no harm, but rather the reverse.
After all, this is not the first alleged terrorist
plot by local Muslims to have been busted. Only six months ago Algerian-born
preacher Abdul Nacer Benbrika was jailed in Melbourne, along with six followers,
for planning terrorist attacks on Australians at the football.
We've also had Muslims jailed for plotting
bombings in Canberra, while others have raised money for jihadists in Africa
and Afghanistan, sold pro-jihad manuals at mosques, or joined Islamist terrorists
in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Somalia.
There are many such reasons we've been given
to link Islam to terrorism.
We saw the Islamic Youth Movement meet regularly
in Australia's biggest mosque, in Lakemba, to preach jihad and support terrorist
chief Osama bin Laden. We heard the then Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj el-Din
al-Hilaly, praise the September 11 attacks and back terrorists in Lebanon.
We watched on television the Jordanian-born
Melbourne cleric Mohammed Omran declare: "I dispute any evil action linked
to bin Laden."
And only last week we had a NSW judge describe
the Islamic Friendship Association's Keysar Trad, Hilaly's spokesman, as a
"racist" Jew-hater who stirred up hostility between Muslims and
non-Muslims and said things that "appear to condone violence".
Note: I've kept this list to just Islamist
activity in Australia. I have not included those countless explosions of Islamist
hatred overseas - such as the attacks on New York, Washington, Madrid, London,
Israel, Mumbai, Kenya and Bali.
So as I said, when we heard the news yesterday,
we knew. Reality trumped our manners.
But though we knew, what do we now do, other
than rely on our police and courts? Let me suggest five things.
1. Make enemies only of enemies.
Overland is in fact right to make clear our
quarrel is not with Muslims who believe their faith forbids terrorism.
While you may sometimes doubt just how many
such Muslims there are, if most really did think the Koran obliged them to
declare war on unbelievers, we would have many more terrorists to deal with
than the handful so far.
Encourage the best to disown the worst. And
that's done by knowing the difference, and honouring it.
2. Defend free speech.
The real threat to peace here is not Anglo
racism but Islamist radicalism.
Yet attempts to warn of hate preachers in
our midst such as Hilaly, or of jihadists in the mosques who need rooting
out, have too often been damned as racist or mean, especially by the ABC and
Fairfax journalists.
WORSE, Victoria's Labor Government shamefully
passed laws against saying hurtful things about religion - laws promptly used
to punish two Christian pastors who warned their flock about the Koran's praise
of jihad.
But no frank debate means no one gets shamed
who needs shaming, and without shame, who'd change?
3. Don't think anywhere is too far to be dangerous.
The September 11 attacks showed us that no
place was too far away to leave to terrorists. Even men in caves in Afghanistan
could bring down skyscrapers in New York.
We know that leaving Somalia to anarchy has
allowed Islamists to set up new terrorist training camps, used by Americans,
Europeans and even Australians.
If we don't fight these Islamists there, they
will fight us here. So support the fight for Afghanistan, and wonder what
we can do with Somalia - now a haven for pirates, terrorists, and the kidnappers
who have for a year held Queenslander Nigel Brennan hostage.
4. Scrap multiculturalism.
We are all safer, and I suspect happier, if
we see ourselves as one community, and not a nation of tribes.
Yet see the taxpayer money now spent on building
ethnic ghettos.
The Victorian Multicultural Commission alone
boasts of spending $34,700 in a year on 12 separate Somali organisations,
each of which depends on staying separate from us to get yet more cash, perks
and clout.
But what are we propping up? Those many groups
offer a clue. The 10,000 estimated Somali refugees in Victoria are deeply
divided by clans - at least four, including the Hawiye, aligned with Somalia's
radical Islamic Courts Union.
And Aden Ibrahim of the Somali-Australian
Council of Victoria put the problem frankly in March: "A Somali is loyal
to his clan before any court, before marriage, before any other loyalty.
"It's like the military - the general
gives the order and that's it."
Given that alone - leaving aside even such
cultural practices as the genital mutilation of girls - do you want your money
spent on keeping Somalis apart, or on giving them the talents to make their
way among the rest of us?
5. Rethink immigration intakes.
There's a million people desperate to get
here, so doesn't it make sense to choose those most likely to fit in?
Yet we keep making the same mistake, particularly
in taking in people from war-torn, tribal and backward countries who, as a
whole, struggle to make the best of our help.
Take the Muslim Lebanese we took in during
the Lebanese civil war. Many did fit in well, but too many others ended up
on welfare . . . or worse. In fact, the Lebanese-born are twice as likely
as the rest of us to be in jail, and Lebanese dominate several Sydney crime
gangs.
It's not just a Muslim thing, of course. The
Vietnamese are three times more likely to be imprisoned - and the rate for
Tongans and Samoans is still worse.
CRIME figures for Somali immigrants are harder
to prise out of police, but figures from then chief commissioner Christine
Nixon suggest that refugees from neighboring Sudan are four times more likely
than others to be charged.
Yes, these figures could lie, since some of
these groups have a higher proportion of youths - always riper for strife.
But such figures, properly calculated, may
indeed show we are importing problems we don't need - problems that may even
turn Australians against helping anyone.
Certainly, the Howard government decided in
its last year to slow the intake of refugees from Africa for precisely such
reasons.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews was monstered
for this "racism", but what would you rather? That we import more
people of a group that's struggling to fit in? More of a group that's more
prey to ideologies of hatred and jihad?
Yes, it's hard to talk about such things without
making many decent immigrants feel hurt. But ask what does more to set us
at each other's throats: frank talk, or terrorist plots on our soil?
