To the surprise of nobody, they were Muslim. “They are inspired by ISIS and ISIS propaganda,” said police commissioner Graham Ashton.
But inspired, too, by Islam. Just open your eyes. Join the dots.
In Germany last week, a Tunisian-born Muslim murdered 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin, driving over them with a hijacked truck.
Three weeks ago, also in Germany, an Iraqi-German boy, aged just 12, tried to detonate a nail bomb at another Christmas market, in Ludwigshafen
In Belgium last week, 10 Muslim teenagers were arrested over an alleged plot to bomb more Christmas fairs.
In Britain two weeks ago, anti-terrorism police arrested six Muslims thought to be planning a “significant” bomb attack on a shopping centre in the run-up to Christmas.
None of this is new.
In 2000, long before ISIS was formed, 14 Muslims were arrested and later jailed for plotting to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market outside the cathedral.
“This cathedral is Allah’s enemy,” declared one as he filmed the building during preparations for the attack. “Here we see the enemies of Allah as they stroll about. You will go to hell, Allah willing.”
That attack failed but two ago another Muslim terrorist drove a van into a crowd at a Christmas market in Nantes while screaming, “Allahu Akbar.”
Again, are you surprised by any of this?
Or are you instead astonished that our politicians still pretend not to see the links?
Take Victorian premier Daniel Andrews after the Melbourne arrests.
Such terrorism plots were “not acts of religious observance, not acts of faith”, he insisted.
Oh, really? Then why do so many of these terrorists shout “Allahu akbar” — Allah is the greatest — as they kill?
Why do so many pledge allegiance to the Islamic State’s new “Caliphate”?
And why do they target the Christian Christmas?
But Andrews is typical of that breed of politicians who first let in a hostile culture and now refuses to admit this demographic experiment has failed and cannot be fixed.
But what comfort is that if we’ve still let in enough radicals to make even Christmas shopping dangerous?
Our leaders must wake up to two things.
First, Islam is not like turn-the-cheek Christianity. It is a warrior faith created by a warrior prophet and spread by the sword. That is why Muslim terrorists can and do quote the Koran and sacred hadith to justify their attacks.
Second, when we import a people, we import a culture. We cannot now assume the even the children of immigrants now assimilate.
Take these latest Melbourne arrests: four of five people charged are Muslims born here.
Conclusion: we cannot protect ourselves from more jihadism unless we end this fiction that Islamic terrorism is not Islamic inspired.
Then we must all but close Australia’s doors to those who follow a faith at such dangerous odds to our own — at least until the winds of jihad have finally died.
