RUTHFULLY YOURS

At about 10pm British Summer Time on Saturday night, the London Bridge area was the scene of a series of vehicle attacks and stabbings. So my scheduled conversational topic with Judge Jeanine on Fox News was replaced by yet another discussion about terrorism. We’ll link to any video that gets posted. I’ll be back on Fox with Abby, Pete and Clayton tomorrow morning, Sunday, live at 8am Eastern/5am Pacific.

As I write, six members of the public are dead, and three attackers. I’m wary of weighing in as the situation is unfolding, but, though the details are always different, in the end the story is always the same. And, as I said only the other day, the reality of what is happening in Britain and Europe is that this problem was imported and that, until you stop importing it, you’re going to have more of it.

No one likely to end up as Prime Minister or Home Secretary after this Thursday’s election seems minded to say that, never mind act on it. Instead, we have the usual post-terrorist theatre: Congratulations for the speed of the emergency services, and sober anchormen announcing that Theresa May will be chairing a meeting of COBRA – as though a bunch of bureaucrats with a butch-sounding acronym has any clue about how to stop the corpse count from mounting. The cynical strategy of British and Continental leaders is to get their citizens used to this.

For that to work, it’s not helpful for new attacks to follow so swiftly on the last attacks. After Manchester, Mrs May raised the official “Threat Level” from Mildly Perturbed to Somewhat Disturbed or whatever it was, and in order further to reassure the public put soldiers on London’s streets. Soldiers aren’t really much use at stopping homicidal car drivers or random stabbers. To do that, you’d have to ban motor vehicles and sharp knives, which, given the fecklessness and decadence of Europe’s political class, I wouldn’t entirely rule out. Absent that, it’s unfortunate that the London carnage occurred before Katy Perry, Justin Bieber & Co had had a chance to hold their stupid, useless, poor-taste all-you-need-is-sentimentalist-delusional-crap pop concert for the victims of the Manchester carnage. Maybe they’ll cancel it, or maybe they’ll make it a twofer.

Meanwhile, even as the politicians trot out the rote response that these attacks “won’t change us”, everything changes: more armed police, more soldiers, more bollards, more security checks – and smaller lives, fewer liberties, less free speech. London Bridge still stands, but everything else is falling down, in Britain and Europe.

In Australia in recent days there has been some controversy over a Quadrant editor’s response to the obnoxious remarks of someone on the ABC’s Q&A panel that an American has more chance of being killed by a falling refrigerator than by terrorists. This happens not to be true. As far as I can tell, the only source of this bon mot is a US Consumer Product Safety Commission report that found that, between January 2000 and December 2011, toppling television sets, furniture, refrigerators and all other domestic appliances killed a total of 349 Americans – or 29 people per year.

For purposes of comparison, in Britain Islamic terrorists have just killed 28 people in 12 days. [SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: it’s now 29.] More to the point, your refrigerator is not trying to kill you, and not eternally seeking new ways to do so. You don’t have to worry about your fridge getting hold of an automatic weapon, or a dirty nuke. The Islamic supremacists want to kill as many infidels by whatever means are to hand. Nor are statistics relevant: If you’ve lost your only child because she went to an Ariana Grande concert, that’s 100 per cent of your kids who are dead. When it comes to deceased loved ones, the only statistical pool that counts is your family, not the nation or the planet.

U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster, by rejecting the term “radical Islamic terrorism,” appears to be ignoring the ideological, cultural, religious, political and economic factors behind global jihad.

It is as if McMaster believes that the terrorists’ war against the West emerged out of nowhere — unconnected to a multi-pronged logistical foundation and network.

A Palestinian state would quickly become a theocracy — an ISIS clone, denying its citizens exposure to Judeo-Christian culture, as Islamists are currently trying to do in Europe, Australia and Canada.

Despite considering Iran a grave threat to the Middle East and the rest of the world, the U.S. establishment opposes canceling the nuclear deal, and instead apparently prefers to provide the Islamic Republic’s theocratic regime with the logistical means to continue developing its nuclear weapons program.

U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster, for example, by rejecting the term “radical Islamic terrorism,” appears to be ignoring the ideological, cultural, religious, political and economic factors behind global jihad. It is as if McMaster believes that the terrorists’ war against the West emerged out of nowhere — unconnected to a multi-pronged logistical foundation and network.

The same can be said of the American media, the Justice and State Departments and the intelligence services — and not only in relation to terrorism.

U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster, by rejecting the term “radical Islamic terrorism,” appears to be ignoring the ideological, cultural, religious, political and economic factors behind global jihad. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The American establishment also seems to be suffering from a similar form of tunnel-vision in relation to the Palestinians’ quest for a state, by ignoring the fundamental logistics behind it. Under the best circumstances, any state created would not be like Denmark. The reality is that such a state would adopt the political and institutional nature of the totalitarian regimes of the Gulf countries, just as Hamas did in the Gaza Strip after Israel’s withdrawal in 2005.

A Palestinian state would survive through funding from regimes such as Iran, Qatar and Turkey, and continue to serve as their proxy in the region. Similarly, it would quickly become a theocracy — an ISIS clone, denying its citizens exposure to Judeo-Christian culture, as Islamists are currently trying to do in Europe, Australia and Canada. Witness the attacks in Europe on Paris’s sports stadium and the Bataclan theater in November 2015, or on young girls listening to music in Manchester on May 22, 2017. Or the attempted Christmas bombing in Australia and attempts further to silence free speech in Canada.

Our political, civic and even religious leaders are stubbornly unwilling to grasp and accept Islam’s true nature, its ambitions and what those things mean in the context of Australia’s future. Silence, as they say, gives consent. The need now is to get loud and stay loud.

What is to be done about Islam?

Before any attempt to answer that question, it is essential that those taking up the challenge determine what is Islam, so let us, first of all, toss out the two most audaciously false claims: that it is the Religion of Peace™ and “one of the Great Abrahamic Faiths”. The first will only be true, according to Muslim authorities, when all of mankind is under the rule of the only “true” version of Islam, whatever that means. The second assertion stems, ironically, from the easily demonstrated fact that Muhammad plagiarised and distorted fragments of Christian and Jewish scriptures widely known in his 7th century Arabia. The late Christopher Hitchens, a scathing critic of all religions, reserved a particular contempt for the Koran, its borrowings, contradictions and arrogant presumptions. His appraisal of the Koran and its origins,good as any and better than most, can be heard here.

In fact, Islam is more than a mere religion. Rather, it is a totalitarian socio-political philosophy, adroitly contrived by Muhammad to secure for himself and successors total control over its followers by invoking the sacred authority of Allah.

It is no coincidence that the Nazis and Islam were staunch allies and actively cooperated to serve their shared interests, the murdering of Jews high on their lists. The Nazis must have envied Islam’s efficient functioning, how it had no need for a Gestapo to enforce absolute control of its adherents.

The second requirement is to ascertain the disposition of Islam towards us — the West and our traditions, in other words.

Islamic scriptures leave no room for doubt about the attitude of Islam regarding the non-Islamic part of the world in general and the “people of the Book”, Jews and Christians, in particular. It asserts vehemently that Islam is the only true religion and, further, that it is divinely destined to subdue all the world under its authority. Furthermore, it is prescribed as the sacred duty of every Muslim to endeavour in all possible ways to bring about that destiny. The Koran also specifically instructs the faithful to fight and kill the unbelievers (kaffirs), the enemies of Allah, true lord of the universe. They are also told that unbelievers, inferior beings, must either submit to Islam or die, with a third option of living as tolerated inferiors (dhimmis) and paying a special tax (jizya) for the privilege of being indulged by their Muslim masters.

All of the above is furiously contested by Muslims and their apologists, who regularly refer to certain verses of the Koran as proof that all accusations are unfounded. There certainly are Koranic verses urging love and compassion, but they need to be considered in context. First, bear in mind that the Koran speaks specifically to the faithful and refers to unbelievers only indirectly, which means the enjoinment of benevolent attitude applies only between Muslims.

Another is the rule of abrogation, which states that chronologically later verses supersede and negate earlier and contradictory messages, rendering them invalid. It is undisputed even by Muslims that the verses directing the faithful to be hostile and violent towards the unbelievers are of later origin than the ones with the kinder messages. Trotting out the more favourable but superseded verses to defend Islam while simultaneously presenting it as a pacific creed is taqiyya in action– the slippery business of telling sanctified lies in order to further the cause.

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, went into the lion’s den known as the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday for the stated purpose of challenging the status quo. Sadly, the status quo won, at least for the time being. The UN’s human rights apparatus, including the Human Rights Council and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, continues to face no consequences for its blatant hypocrisy, anti-Israel bias, and even for its interference in the U.S. presidential election last year.

Ambassador Haley dutifully pointed out to the other Council members something that many of them are quite proud of and have no intention of changing – the anti-Israel bias so prevalent in the Human Rights Council as well as other UN forums. She also urged reforms that would preclude the worst human rights abusing countries such as Saudi Arabia from serving as members of the Council. However, she ducked completely the issue of the UN human rights chief’s interference in last year’s presidential election. And Ambassador Haley stopped short of turning her pleas for reforms into demands for action. She drew back from threatening to withdraw U.S. political and financial support for the Council and the whole UN human rights apparatus if serious changes were not forthcoming immediately.

Indeed, on the same day as Ambassador Haley delivered her remarks to the Human Rights Council, High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jordanian Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, signaled business as usual in his opening statement to the Council. After going through the motions of declaring that the Holocaust “has no parallel, no modern equal,” Zeid then immediately drew a parallel of his own to his version of the Palestinians’ situation today. “Yet it is also undeniable that today,” Zeid said, “the Palestinian people mark a half-century of deep suffering under an occupation imposed by military force. An occupation which has denied the Palestinians many of their most fundamental freedoms, and has often been brutal in the way it has been realized; an occupation whose violations of international law have been systematic, and have been condemned time and again by virtually all States.”

Aside from his regular Israel-bashing, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who hails from the decidedly non-democratic country of Jordan, decided to stick his nose into the U.S. presidential campaign last year. Moreover, he continues to offer his unsolicited opinions on matters directly impacting America’s national sovereignty, such as protection of its borders.

“If Donald Trump is elected, on the basis of what he has said already, and unless that changes, I think it’s without any doubt that he would be dangerous from an international point of view,” Zeid proclaimed to the press less than a month before the election.