Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun
October 7, 2015
THEY treat us like fools. Police and politicians are telling untruths about what inspired Farhad Jabar to kill.
Those untruths are meant to build trust with Muslim Australians, which we need. But everyone else will wonder: “What other lies are we being told?”
Consider: Iranian-born Jabar went from his mosque to the Parramatta police station where he shot a Buddhist accountant and shouted “Allahu akbar” — Allah is the greatest. In his backpack was a letter reportedly containing Islamist extremist literature.
Police have raided Farhad’s mosque and are checking sermons given there. They are also investigating an alleged ring of sympathisers of the Islamic State, which quotes the Koran to legitimise the murder of nonbelievers.
“Kill the polytheists wherever you find them,” goes one such passage in Islam’s holiest text.
Yet police and ministers of the Turnbull Government still pretend this murder was not religiously inspired, but politically.
“This appears to have been an act of politically motivated violence,” claimed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop agreed this was “a politically motivated killing”.
Even NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione repeated this deception: “We believe (Farhad’s) actions were politically motivated and therefore linked to terrorism.”
Excuse me, but what political party did Farhad represent? Who is this “Allah” — a candidate at the next federal election?
Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas kept up the act on the ABC’s 7.30, claiming Muslim youths such as Farhad were “doing this simply as a way to rebel”.
“In a sense, they’re not really religiously driven. I wouldn’t say they’ve studied the Koran and come to some firm views … It is a rebellion.”
True, many children of all faiths rebel, but most don’t rebel by shooting or stabbing our police, or supporting terrorist groups that slaughter unbelievers and hack off heads.
That’s a script we don’t see Buddhist or Presbyterian Australians following. But it is one followed by hundreds of Muslim Australians, who quote the Koran in justification.
Yet the Government won’t discuss the links between Islam and terrorism, saying it is determined to “reach out” to Muslim Australians.
But keeping quiet about Islam doesn’t merely take the pressure off Muslim leaders to reform their faith. (Anyone heard from the Grand Mufti?) It destroys the trust of other Australians in the authorities meant to protect them, not least when choosing who to let into our country.
The Government’s policies left even the usually frank Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs, performing strange contortions in my interview with her on 2GB on Tuesday.
Full interview and comment with Steve Price and Andrew Bolt
Bolt: Why is Malcolm Turnbull — and Julie Bishop and Andrew Scipione — calling what happened politically motivated violence when the boy was shouting “Allah” when he shot the unfortunate police accountant?
Fierravanti-Wells: Well, Andrew, I think the Prime Minister today … referred to it as politically motivated and then said “and that’s terrorism”.
Bolt: Yes, the word that is missing here is “religious”.
Fierravanti-Wells: Well, Andrew I think there will be things that are going to come out as part of the inquiry …
Bolt: I find it amazing that … the Government keeps calling it a politically motivated attack and not a religious one and I just want to know why.
Fierravanti-Wells: I think, Andrew, that this is an ongoing investigation … Look, there is no doubt that the motivation is a very important issue. People want to know what motivates a 15-year-old boy to walk down a street ...
Bolt: Shouting “Allah”.
Fierravanti-Wells: ... shouting whatever he is alleged to have shouted.
Bolt: You see, you can’t even say what he is alleged to have shouted. He shouted “Allah”.
Fierravanti-Wells: He shouted what he shouted and did this and it is really important that we do understand what is the motivation.
Get the impression the Government actually has no interest in the motivation if it’s Islam?
Notice how it prefers to talk about everything but — about the “marginalisation” of Muslim youths, the “divisive” language of former prime minister Tony Abbott, the need to “engage” Muslim parents, the creation of more “deradicalisation” programs.
Easy stuff. But largely peripheral stuff. It’s like searching under a street light for your lost key, because it’s too dark where you actually dropped it.
Yes, I understand the Government doesn’t want to alienate the many law-abiding Muslims. It does not want rednecks hitting back. It needs the trust of Muslim parents to help stop radicals.
Yet much of this treats the symptoms, not the cause.
And for many Australians, the deceitful language suggests our politicians lack the courage to even name that cause, let alone confront it.
BIGOTRY AND THE SOUND OF SILENCE
WARNING: our universities are breeding a generation of totalitarians determined to shut down debates.
Take the University of NSW. Its Student Representative Council demanded other students cancel a lecture this week by former defence minister Kevin Andrews.
Andrews was against same-sex marriage, complained SRC president Billy Bruffey, and that would “cause UNSW students to feel victimised and isolated”.
Besides, “Andrews’ views do not conform with those of the University or its students”. Really? Andrews’ views conform with not one of the students’? And by what right does Bruffey stop students from hearing different arguments and deciding for themselves?
Yet how often we now see this effrontery. In South Australia, the Flinders University Student Association’s head declared she was “repulsed” by the proposal to have Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg set up a think tank at the university. Lomborg, she claimed, would run “a climate change denial centre on campus” putting out “Right-wing junk”.
I don’t know if she bothered to listen to the renowned academic she wants to ban because she’d know he was no “denier”. He merely believes the planet is warming less than once predicted, a fact the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits.
He also believes it’s not smart to spend trillions on “solutions” that make little difference to the temperature. But that important debate is now impossible on many campuses. In fact, students and staff at the University of Western Australia stopped Lomborg’s centre from opening there, falsely accusing him of “bad science”.
But global warmists aren’t the only ideological stormtroopers.
Socialist Alternative protesters have howled down a lecture at Melbourne University by former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella and assaulted Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop at Sydney University.
In May, also at Sydney University, students, backed by two academics, burst into a lecture by retired British colonel Richard Kemp, chanting, “Richard Kemp, you can’t hide, you support genocide”. Kemp’s crime? To argue that Israel had tried very hard to avoid civilian casualties in its war with Hamas.
Watch out. Today’s campus totalitarians are tomorrow’s politicians, judges and journalists and our free speech is already in danger. We’ve seen even the Turnbull Government ban an American who had been booked to speak here against abortion.
Who will be silenced next?
