Daesh threat real, serious and terrifying

Turnbull dismissal of Islamic terror risk short on facts, writes Piers Akerman

VOTERS have become used to mischievous Malcolm Turnbull talking on matters outside his portfolio but as well-read as he undoubtedly is, his views on the threat posed by Daesh or the self-described Islamic State, are irrelevant.

He doesn’t sit on the National Security Committee and doesn’t see material gleaned by intelligence agents.

It may be he doesn’t even bother with the views of the global community, for it would appear he is on a very different page from some who have studied this evil phenomenon.

Turnbull opened an unnecessary public debate on the Abbott Government’s security position when he cautioned a Sydney Institute audience on Tuesday against under- or over-estimating the threat posed by Islamist terrorists and said critics of the Government’s new national security measures should not be “denounced”.

He said the nation needed to be careful not to get “sucked into” the group’s strategy and become “amplifiers” of their message or add credibility to Daesh “delusions”.

“Daesh is not Hitler’s Germany, Tojo’s Japan or Stalin’s Russia,” he said.

“Its leaders dream that they, like the Arab armies of the 7th and 8th century, will sweep across the Middle East into Europe itself. We need to be very careful we don’t get sucked into their strategy and ourselves become amplifiers of their wickedness and significance.”

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, usually seen as a Turnbull ally, was quick to warn that Daesh posed an extremely grave threat, as she had told the same forum in April when she said it was the greatest threat to civilisation since World War II, including the rise of Communism and the Cold War — and that her view was based on classified briefing and private talks with international leaders.

Nobel prize winner V.S. Naipul agrees. The author travelled through Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia in the 1980s and early 1990s examining the “revival” of Islam that was taking place through the revolution in Iran and the renewed dedication to the religion of other countries.

In his most recent essay, published after the murder of tourists in the Tunisia’s Bardo museum in March, he said Isis is dedicated to a contemporary holocaust.

“It has pledged itself to the murder of Shias, Jews, Christians, Copts, Yazidis and anyone it can, however fancifully, accuse of being a spy. It has wiped out the civilian populations of whole regions and towns. Isis could very credibly abandon the label of Caliphate and call itself the Fourth Reich.

“Like the Nazis, Isis fanatics are anti-Semitic, with a belief in their own racial superiority.

“They are anti-democratic: the Islamic State is a totalitarian state, absolute in its authority. “There is even the same self-regarding love of symbolism, presentation and propaganda ... terror is spread to millions through films and videos created to professional standards of which Goebbels would have been proud.

“Just as the Third Reich did, Isis categorises its enemies as worthy of particular means of execution from decapitation to crucifixion and death by fire.”

Where the Nazis pretended to be guardians of civilisation and stole artworks to preserve them and kept Jewish musicians alive to entertain them, Isis destroys everything that arises from the human impulse to beauty.

While Turnbull addresses the crisis with a barrister’s sophistry, Naipaul says Isis is the most potent threat to the world since the Third Reich.

Several weeks ago I watched with revulsion videos Daesh posted on the internet amid its recruiting material.

In one, captives were filmed as they were put in a car that was targeted with an antitank missile and their death throes were recorded. In the next, a cage of victims was lowered into a swimming pool in which underwater cameras had been placed to film their gasping end, and in the third, prisoners were linked with detonator cord wrapped around their necks, which blew their heads off when it was triggered.

As thousands are lured to Syria to join the perpetrators of these atrocities each month it is difficult not to agree with Bishop and Naipaul that this is a force to be taken seriously and fought until eradicated.

Turnbull’s musings don’t assist anyone achieving that.