Piers Akerman
Sunday Telegraph Pg. 32
October 18 2015
THE words Islam or Islamic were uttered six times in Federal Parliament before it rose for the week on Thursday — but not once in reference to terrorism.
The only “I” word being embraced by the Turnbull government is “inclusive”, which makes one wonder — just which planet are our parliamentarians living on?
It’s more than a year since the Government raised the national terrorism alert level to high, last September 12, and it has not been shifted since.
The system rates four levels of risk. They are: low — terrorist attack is not expected; medium — terrorist attack could occur; high — terrorist attack is likely; extreme — attack is imminent or has occurred.
Yet two innocent people were killed in an Islamist terrorist attack in the heart of Sydney last December when shotgun-wielding Man Haron Monis made hostages of patrons of the Lindt Cafe, and Curtis Cheng was ruthlessly murdered by a 15-year-old boy in front of the Parramatta police station as he was leaving work on October 2.
As it happens, that same morning Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull publicly signalled his much-heralded break with his predecessor Tony Abbott’s hard-line approach to Islamism.
After discussions with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Justice Minister Michael Keenan, who both urged him to take the fresh approach, he wheeled out his new, more inclusive tone for future dealings with the Islamic community.
Needless to say, it was warmly embraced by the country’s Muslim spokesmen, and according to GP Jamal Rifi, the “larger Muslim community” would “respond with open arms”.
Dr Rifi told The Australian newspaper that the Muslim community was “elated” at Mr Turnbull becoming prime minister, as the relationship with the government under Mr Abbott had become “extremely tense and hurtful”.
Though clearly not as hurtful as the lethal relationship between Mr Cheng and his teenage murderer was to be just hours later.
Since then police officers have been told not to wear their uniforms to and from work, just like servicemen and women, out of fear they may be targeted when they are not carrying their service-issue weapons.
But not a flicker of the terrorist threat meter, just more baloney about Islam as a religion of peace from a gaggle of self-important so-called Muslim community leaders and clerics and apologists who want to blame anything but absolutely barbaric Koranic verses as reasons for the constant global incitement of Muslims to murder the nonbelievers.
The Federal Government had been moving for months to introduce laws that will lower the age at which control orders can be applied from 16 to 14 years of age — even as we learn that a 12-year-old was among the 17 extremists named in court papers as a close-knit
Western Sydney group, lured into the Islamist death cult and willing to commit murder or die for the Islamic State.
Extremist hate preachers and fake sheiks speak at mosques and Islamic schools, and Canberra assembles a congregation of multi-faith ministers to sing kumbaya and have a group hug.
Mr Turnbull has confirmed that over the past five months the Federal Government has trained more than 300 “specialists” who will be embedded within the nation’s frontline departments and agencies to intervene and divert individuals from radicalisation.
He didn’t mention the particular group which the agencies were concerned about but you can be fairly certain it is not the Amish.
He said that individuals and extremists “seek to denigrate other groups in the community, often within their own religion, other religions and other ethnic groups, and they seek to turn us against each other”.
Which religion, Mr Turnbull — Buddhism, Christianity or Judaism?
Guess again, because he didn’t say.
There were plenty of omissions from Thursday’s debate in Canberra, not least being Labor MPs Maria Vamvakinou and Melissa Parke, who managed to totally ignore the current wave of terrorist stabbings and shootings targeting innocent Israelis and the torrent of hate
speech pouring out of the West Bank as they talked up the cause of Palestinian statehood.
But the extraordinarily high number, per capita, of young Australians who have chosen to join fellow jihadists in Syria and Iraq would indicate that relying on local Muslim leaders to co-operate with the security agencies has not been entirely successful.
The motherhood view was outlined by Muslim MP Ed Husic on Friday, when he said the aim of terrorists was to divide communities with fear.
“We need the broader community to feel secure,” he said. Just imagine. The broader community won’t feel secure until those who follow Islam show they wish to assimilate and adopt Australia’s liberal democratic values just like earlier new Australians from northern European, southern Europe and south-east Asia.
Having embraced the nonsensical policy of multiculturalism, the Federal Government is stuck with the problem of dealing with a growing group of individuals who show little sign of observing their oath of loyalty to Australia.
Congregating in essentially non-English-speaking ghettos clustered around a profusion of mosques in which English is not heard, taking satellite news from Arabic-language broadcasts, will not help this migrant group become part of the broader community and it will not make Australians feel more secure.
Millions have now been spent, and tens of millions more are earmarked to go to Islamic projects, but it is difficult to see how a single cent of the money will help remove the cultural barriers that are core to Koranic teaching.
