Piers Akerman
The Daily Telegraph
November 27, 2015 12:00am
IF you want to understand why the liberal, democratic Western world is losing ground to the ideology of Islamic extremists look no further than the weak-kneed responses of the NSW and federal governments to a convicted criminal who refuses to obey the directions of its court officers.
In NSW an accused person must stand to hear the charge and respond with a guilty or not guilty plea, and it is protocol to stand when a judge enters or leaves but for more than a year now Milad Bin Ahmad-Shah al-Ahmadzai, 25, has refused to stand in court before at least four judges claiming that he is “not at the behest of any authority other than Islam”.
He has also refused directions to kneel during a routine security process when prison officers enter his cell at NSW’s Supermax prison facility. The failure of the NSW government to take decisive action demonstrates the weakness endemic to Western nations that have pandered to extremist members of one religious minority — Islam — despite assurances from many self-appointed Islamic community leaders that there is nothing in Islam that prevents its followers from honouring the laws of their host nations.
From Sweden to Australia, apologists for Islam have capitulated to a nauseating political correctness which has seen Christian-based culture demeaned and imagined Islamic sensitivities embraced.
Merry Christmas — about as inoffensive a greeting as it can get — is shunned and replaced by the saccharine Happy Holidays.
At schools, Easter Bonnet parades for children are banned because some toddler might want to know what Easter is, if he or she can get over their fascination with funny hats.
In Sydney, students at Christian schools are regularly bussed to mosques so they can “learn” about Islam but there is no two-way traffic. Islamic students are forbidden to study the Bible or learn about Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism.
And this is what the West is doing to its own children. This doesn’t address the Islamist propaganda being pumped out by extremist imams and mullahs pimping for IS and other death cults.
It took this month’s Paris shootings and bombings to get the French and Belgian governments to react to a problem which they have been aware of for years.
Islamist propaganda being pumped out by extremist imams and mullahs pimping for Islamic State
That both European capitals have no-go areas has never been kept secret but no action was ever taken to enforce the laws of either France or Belgium in their Muslim-dominated bainlieues until the Paris riots of 2005, when nearly 9000 cars were burnt over a 20-day period.
Despite tougher laws requiring immigrants seeking residency permits or citizenship to learn French and integrate, with a crackdown on fraudulent marriage, anti-racism groups claimed that greater scrutiny of immigrants would only create more racism.
France’s failure to stand up for its own culture and ensure that immigrants assimilate is reflected in a recent ICM poll which reported that 16 per cent of French citizens have a positive view of Islamic State, rising to 27 per cent among 18-24 year olds.
As Toby Young noted in The Spectator magazine: “That is more than a quarter of all French 18-24 year olds who think it’s just fine to behead aid workers, throw homosexuals off buildings and sexually enslave 12-year-old girls.”
Australian governments, which have emphasised multiculturalism over multiracialism have ensured our society will be as fragmented, with some cultures refusing to assimilate and actively encouraging young people to ignore Australian laws.
The case of the convicted criminal al-Ahmadzai is a glaring example of the failure of the state to administer the law equally.
Instead of treating his refusal to obey the law within our courts and the regulations that govern our prisons as acts of contempt that should have been immediately punished, the NSW government, through Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton and the prison system via Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin, has proceeded down the same policy path which has so demonstratively failed European nations.
Al-Ahmadzai began his standing boycott before District Court Judge Ian McClintock in May last year, when he sat as he pleaded guilty to threatening to “slit” the throat and crack the neck of an ASIO officer.
Last November 26 he refused to stand to be arraigned in front of Judge Colefax for aggravated break and enter. And at his District Court trial on that charge in September he again refused to stand, this time for Judge Jane Culver.
It is a year since Judge Colefax referred al-Ahmadzai’s actions to the Attorney-General for investigation for a possible charge of contempt but the state showed its weakness and has taken no action.
Crown Prosecutor Craig Everson said the Attorney-General determined to take no action beyond that of the referral for possible action.
Ms Upton denies that, saying she had asked her legal advisers for “options” on how to deal with al-Ahmadzai and her spokesman later said it was the Solicitor-General, and not the Attorney-General, who had decided that there were no grounds for contempt proceedings.
This is buck-passing of the most egregious sort. It cedes power to criminals.
Avoiding confrontation to shield the extremist minority has only one outcome — the monstrous Paris option.
Show some spine and stand up for our own laws.
