Time to defend our values
A“SENIOR Liberal” last week proved we can’t rely on our political class to defend our culture from Islam’s demands.
This “senior Liberal”, a West Australian, complained to their local paper that former prime minister Tony Abbott would give a speech on Wednesday on “Enlightenment values”.
Note this anonymous idiot’s words well: “The last thing we want is Tony Abbott ... discussing western civilisation.
“We’ve got to get back to discussing real-world issues.”
That’s the gibbering of a surrender monkey much like Austria’s president, former Greens leader Alexander van der Bellen, who has just blasted Austrians for being too fearful of Islam.
“If this continues,” van der Bellen warned, “the day will come when we have to ask all women to wear a headscarf — all — out of solidarity to those who do it for religious reasons.”
So if you believe Islam oppresses women by forcing them to cover up, you are so “Islamophobic” that nonMuslim women may have to cover up, too. Don’t defend your civilisation. Submit.
You may think our own political class has more sense, but you’d be wrong. Even Abbott now admits he stuffed up as prime minister by scrapping his promise to reform the Racial Discrimination Act so we could criticise the Left’s new tribalism without being sued.
Abbott’s excuse at the time: restoring free speech would offend Muslims and make jihadism worse.
“I don’t want to do anything that puts our national unity at risk,” he said.
Some journalists still mock him for caving, yet almost every newspaper still refuses to publish the Muhammed cartoons that had jihadists plot to kill Danish cartoonists. They surrendered, too.
At least Abbott apologised. He now realises the worst way to defend ourselves from militant Islam is to surrender the freedoms central to our civilisation.
Luckily, he isn’t alone in believing Western civilisation is a real-world issue.
In Europe, former pope Benedict has broken his silence to call for a fight for “the future of our continent”.
His successor, Pope Francis, claims it’s not “right to identify Islam with violence”, but Pope Emeritus Benedict said Islamic fundamentalism was a “radicalism” Europe must “overcome”.
“The clash between radically atheistic conceptions of the state and the emergence of a radically religious state in the Islamist movements leads our time into an explosive situation.”
But how many “senior Liberals” — other than Immigration Minister Peter Dutton — believe Western civilisation must be publicly defended?
True, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced two weeks ago that he’d fight for “Australian values” but, as I warned, this risked seeming a campaign slogan rather than deep conviction.
After all, Turnbull had often been silent when those values were most challenged.
For instance, he said nothing when the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils’ president said the Koran allowed men to beat disobedient wives.
Sure enough, Turnbull has again gone wobbly after Muslim apologist Yassmin Abdel-Magied posted on Anzac Day: “Lest. We. Forget. Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …”
Abdel-Magied was preaching tribal resentments on our most important day of unity, when we honour our war dead and celebrate Australian values such as mateship and stoicism.
But Abdel-Magied instead accused Australians of being mean to Muslim illegal immigrants and Muslims overseas.
Worse, we sponsor her. She is both a host on the taxpayer-funded ABC and on the government’s Council for Australian-Arab Relations.
Asked about that on 3AW, Turnbull — who’d just promised to fight for “Australian values” — hedged.
Yes, Abdel-Magied had made “a very inappropriate tweet”, he agreed, but it was up to the Foreign Minister to decide whether to sack her from the council. As for Abdel-Magied’s ABC job, he had no opinion.
Turnbull may hem and haw, but Abdel-Magied’s defenders shriek and howl.
In the Guardian Australia, columnist Clementine Ford jeered that Anzac Day was “that special day” when Australians “combine the solemn observance of a nation’s sacrifice with getting rat-arsed at the pub and p---ing in doorways”.
Oh, and politicians defending the day from Abdel-Magied were simply “reassuring Australia’s most virulent racists”.
Mohamed El-Mouehly, president of the Halal Certification Authority, defended Abdel-Magied by likewise accusing “white Australians” on Anzac Day of not caring about Muslims.
He then ranted about Jews, claiming the West had joined the Syrian war to “protect Israel”, where Jews not only “dispossessed” Muslims but “torture them, imprison them and there (sic) children, treat them like animals who have no soul”.
Note that El-Mouehly sued Kirralie Smith, a campaigner against halal certification, complaining she’d portrayed him as “part of a conspiracy to destroy Western civilisation from within”.
But who needs a conspiracy when there’s so little resistance?