Peter Baldwin
The Australian
12:00AM July 14, 2017

On a recent episode of the ABC’s Q&A American physicist Lawrence Krauss delighted the audience by claiming that in the US falling fridges posed a greater safety risk than terrorist attacks.

Variations on this theme recur in statements by those determined to minimise the threat posed by terrorists inspired by Islamic doctrine. What about bathroom drownings? Electrocutions while changing light bulbs? In Australia we could throw in fun­nel-web spiders and brown snakes. All the better to get people to focus on the real menace: an outbreak of Islamophobia in response to the attacks among the unenlightened masses.

This is pernicious nonsense. It is patently absurd to make statistical comparisons between deaths by accident, misadventure and disease with those resulting from deliberately orchestrated violence by groups determined to reshape our society.

Morally, there is no comparison between the inevitable accidents of life and planned slaughter. The terrorists responsible for the Manchester atrocity real­ly intended to kill and maim large numbers of teenage girls. People are profoundly unnerved, and rightly so, to think that we have people in our midst capable of forming this kind of evil intention and of carrying it out.

And, crucially, we are not just talking about individuals, the proverbial “lone wolves”. In case after case it turns out that the attacks are committed by organised cells, sometimes involving scores of people. In the case of the 2015 Paris attacks, for example, 23 arrests were made in addition to the eight who carried out the attacks.

Often the direct perpetrators are just the tip of the iceberg, with others providing weapons, safe houses and other support. This is a stark contrast with the rare cases of lethal anti-Islamic violence, which are almost invariably the work of lone individuals.

It is true, of course, that only a tiny minority of Muslims directly participates in these attacks, and most do not support them. But it takes only a handful of violent ­jihadists to cast a pall of fear over a society. I wonder if Krauss can point to any instances of feral ­fridges causing cities to go into lockdown, as happened in Boston, Paris and Brussels.

It is also sadly true that substantial minorities in some Muslim communities do identify with the perpetrators. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, polls in France and Britain revealed that about one-quarter of Muslims expressed some level of sympathy for the terrorists, with support strongest among the young.

According to a poll of British Muslims commissioned by Channel 4, two-thirds of those asked would not report a terrorist plot involving someone close to them to the police, a result that the former chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commis­sion, Trevor Phillips, described as “astonishing” and “troubling”.

Mao Zedong famously stated that in a guerilla war the fighters must move among the people “as a fish swims in the sea”. Suburbs such as Molenbeek in Brussels, where the Paris and Brussels terror attacks were incubated, provide just this kind of environment.

We need to also bear in mind the “sky’s the limit” mentality of ­jihadist attackers, in which catastrophically successful attacks such as the 9/11 World Trade Centre atrocity are the gold standard. Such attacks need a high level of organisation, technical competence and substantial financial backing. Those responsible would think nothing of inflict­ing hundreds of thousands or even millions of casualties, given the opportunity.

This forces Western governments to take extreme measures to ensure security, including legislative and surveillance measures that would not be contemplated in more benign circumstances.

In France, heavily armed troops patrol beaches in Nice; Jewish schools and synagogues resemble armed camps. In Britain troops were ordered on to streets after the Manchester bombing. In Melbourne ugly concrete bollards have been placed in 10 CBD locations to protect pedestrians from terror attacks. Our societies are being transformed by all this — and very much for the worse.

The most sinister aspect is the effective curbing of free speech. Starting with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, any high-profile critic of Islam has had to face the prospect of death threats.

Many have felt the impact of this, from cartoonists (including this newspaper’s Bill Leak) to historians of Islam who challenge orthodox accounts, such as British author Tom Holland, who was subjected to what he called a “tsunami of death threats” against his family after the airing of a Channel 4 documentary about his ideas.

[highlight]At greatest risk are defectors from Islam, apostates such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who must take extraordinary security measures.[ /highlight]

Frank wrote on Jul 15^th, 2017 at 12:08am:


Oh, dear.  I judge you by what you have posted, Soren.   Are you now telling us that you've been lying all these years?    That in reality you don't hate Muslims, you don't hate Multiculturalism, you don't hate Indigenous Australians?  That you don't hate women/gays/etc?

If that is true, then I unreservedly apologise.   However, I suspect it isn't.   Your public statements are all on record.  I've read most of them and they disgust me.  You have no idea it seems from your statements what decency and tolerance is.  Tsk, tsk.   

The Lefty looneys were poo-pooing the wall Israel had to build to defend itself against Muslim terror.