So many are afraid to state the obvious, to proclaim that we do not wish to change our laws and the way we live in order to accommodate a separatist minority whose very garments proclaim a refusal to integrate and assimilate.
After the La Rambla atrocity I hoped, although not with much conviction, that the Spanish might do more than engage in yet another resolute clenching of the collective jaw we have seen so often across Europe. I was right, sort of, because Spanish police did a very efficient job of first shooting dead the Islamists, but then it was back to the Continental norm – flowers piled on the site of the latest massacre, candles lit, cuddly toys for the dubious comfort of the dead. Oh, and resolute words, always those vows and pledges never to “let the terrorists win”, as countless politicians have said while the cameras roll. Quite likely they will have grabbed the nearest tame imam to stand beside them for the obligatory photo op. Perhaps someone is playing Imagine in the background.
And after that? To be blunt, nothing. The boatloads of illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East keep coming, with nary the hint of consensus that a slow-motion invasion needs to be stopped, let alone how this might be achieved. Indeed, the exact opposite. When Poland and other nations swear they will not have their cultures overrun, they are denounced as Islamophobes and bigots. With few exceptions, that’s the pathetic extent of fearful Europe’s resolve in the face of terror.
Nobody seems to notice that terrorists could not care less about the immediate reactions of the societies they are changing and squeezing every day, the societies whose liberties and freedoms are being constricted in the name of security. It is a sure bet they are not intimidated in the least by Teddy bears and wreaths on blood-stained pavements. What future victims do immediately after the body parts and dead children are scraped off the streets does not matter to future killers. What does matter is that their targets are afraid, softened up for future submission.
Fear is the weapon of Islamic Terror International. It does not have color or texture, one cannot touch it or see it. One can smell it, though, the sickly, hopeless, constant whiff of unarmed helplessness. Cattle in the abattoir’s holding pen must catch the same scent. This fear is all-pervasive, shaped and crafted by the human bombs and van attackers to percolate through the interstices of our lives, our thoughts, our behavior. It works, too. How many AFL fans heading for the MCG will be thinking the shuffling lines outside the ground make perfect targets — queues waiting for the bag checks, wandings and pat-downs that Islam’s shock troops have made ubiquitous.
This fear pervades our public discourse, just as intended, clouding our responses, our plans and actions — and it is an incredibly cost-effective weapon against our freedoms. This fear is easy to introduce, debilitating in the extreme, insidiously corrosive and easy to pump up to saturation point. It distorts perceptions and inverts logic. Aggressive, intolerant Islam is the reason our malls and public spaces are dotted with bollards, why we are now asked to arrive at the airport a full and inconvenient two hours before flights. Yet what do our leaders tell us? Why, that the greater problem is Islamophobia! We’ve heard it all so often: “exclusion”, “marginalisation”, “disempowerment”, fear of “the other”.
That fear, it has many faces. So many are afraid to state the obvious loud and clear, to proclaim that we do not wish to change our laws and the way we live in order to accommodate a separatist minority whose very garments proclaim a refusal to integrate and assimilate.
The recent massacres in the UK, France and Spain confirm that terror has become simple and cheap. Rather than the immense planning that must go into hijacking aeroplanes and flying them into tall buildings, knives and motor vehicles are the latest keys to martyrdom, paradise and the eternal orgasm with those 72 virgins.
This change in terror’s tools and tactics creates additional difficulties for law enforcement agencies by its unpredictability and lethal simplicity. Any Tom, Dick or Harry (or rather, Mohammad, Mahamad or Mohamet) with a cheap kitchen knife or a rented minivan can become a champion of Islam’s glory. In their personal fight against the infidel rest of us — the Dar al-Harb, the House of War by Islamist designation — the killing of kafirs is a sanctified pastime. Allah’s warriors make no distinction between Jews, Christians or Hindus, men or women, children or the aged, and it is working for them. It took just one man and six pistol shots to ignite Europe’s tinder box and start World War One. A sustained terror campaign ultimately led to the October Revolution. Arab hijackers and the Munich murderers of Israeli athletes were stepping stones on the path to a Palestinian state. Terror is effective because it infests entire societies with existential fear, thus destabilizing them. Even those terror campaigns which failed to achieve their political goals because they were vigorously opposed – here I think of the IRA and Tamil Tigers – achieved measures of success by imposing enormous costs on the societies they targeted.
I often compare Islamist tactics with those of the Communist USSR. While differing ideologically, both are similar in their aims and ways of achieving them. Both are messianic in their outlooks, convinced against all the evidence that their way of life and belief is superior to any other and, as such, will inevitably by adopted by all mankind, willingly or not.
In this context, the changes Muslim immigration and associated terror brought to the West deserve to be examined. The low-skilled and poorly educated migrants came from failed or barely functional, poverty stricken societies often torn by religious conflicts and further complicated by their endemic corruption. Many were traumatized by their experiences of living in what amount to semi-feudal states. The backgrounds of these immigrants have virtually nothing in common with the Judeo-Christian culture of the West, especially in their rejection of religious tolerance. If pervasive, open and vicious anti-Semitism is not enough, an aggressive and often violent Sunni/Shia schism will always be alive and well.
As an aside, I find it grimly amusing to see Muslim clerics from countries with no histories of religious tolerance become sudden and ardent advocates of interfaith dialogue and universal brotherhood as soon as they arrive in Australia. When invited to Kirribilli to break the taxpayer’s bread with a prime minister hot for a multiculti photo-op, subsequent revelations that among his feted guests were would-be executioners of homosexuals and sexually active unmarried women are seemingly of no importance. Apparently it is only native Australians who can be hateful bigots. Sit tight and Waleed Aly will soon produce a column lamenting the racism and intolerance of those who baulk at “cultural differences”.
