Aly must shine light on lethal culture of Muslim victimhood

I APPEAL to Waleed Aly: stop spinning for Islam and start demanding reform before more of us get killed. Start now, even if simply to save your faith from seeming such a threat that we put up bollards to save ourselves from being run down. I appeal to Aly for two reasons. One, because he’s our most prominent Muslim, beamed into thousands of homes by Channel 10 and ABC radio. He is the “moderate Muslim” so desperately sought by the political class that it has showered him with positions and awards, from a university lectureship to a board position on the Australia Council.

He is also highly articulate and charming, so he could do great good.

But there is a second reason: who else can we turn to? Islam’s top religious leaders here have failed to reform their faith, drive out the extremists and contradict the apologists.

Take our past three grand muftis. The first, Sheik Taj El- Din Hilaly, called suicide bombers “heroes” and the September 11 terrorist attacks “God’s work against oppressors”.

The second, Sheik Fehmi Naji el- Imam, praised the Hezbollah terrorist group as “freedom fighters”. The latest, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, initially claimed the “causative factors” of the 2015 massacre by the Islamic State in Paris were all alleged failings of the West – our “racism”, “Islamophobia”, excessive “securitisation”, “duplicitous foreign policies” and “military intervention” in Muslim lands.

So Islam’s religious leaders have been worse than useless. Other influential Muslims must step up, and who is more influential than Aly?

But here is the tragedy. Aly, in my opinion, has so far been the problem, not the solution.

For instance, when Islamists staged the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, Aly shrugged that terrorism was just “a perpetual irritant” which “kills relatively few people”.

When Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in 2014, Aly claimed this notorious movement was “hard to describe” and “might just be vigilantes”. Never did he mention it was Islamist and committed to jihad.

When Australia in 2014 sent more military to fight IS and stop genocide in Iraq, Aly suggested we were fighting something that didn’t threaten us. “This is a movement on the other side of the world that seems to be importing people rather than exporting them,” he said.

As for the attempted genocide of Yazidis, Aly objected: “But can we call it a genocide?”

Same denialism again in 2015, when IS exported fighters to help massacre 130 people in Paris. This time Aly – incredibly – told viewers “ISIS is weak”, and turned on Pauline Hanson, accusing her of doing the work of terrorists by dividing us with her warnings against radical Islam.

With every fresh Islamist attack, Aly’s reaction seems the same. Discuss the failings of the West, not the failings of the faith that the terrorists insist is their inspiration.

So when asked by The Age to file 500 words on the 2014 police raids on Australian jihadists, Aly refused to mention “Muslim” or “Islam” even once. Same silence this month in a piece for the New York Times on the Manchester suicide bombing. Aly failed to mention “Islam”, “Islamic” or “Muslim” once, even though the bomber blew up 22 people in the name of IS.

I suspect Aly is tortured, trying to reconcile the faith he loves with the horrors done in its name, but this intelligent man cannot keep running from this debate. Waleed, step up. Be frank about how in the eyes of some, the Koran licenses terror. Be brave in demanding reform.

Bring light to the debate, and fight the lethal culture of Muslim victimhood that has Hizb ut Tahrir spokesman Wassim Douheiri shouting: “Even if a thousand bombs go off in this country, all it will prove is that Muslims are angry and they have every reason to be angry.”

Lead, Waleed, because if you don’t, who will?