Artwork: John Tiedemann Source: DailyTelegraph A DANGEROUS parallel universe now exists alongside the reality of what the Police Commissioner calls the “clear and present threat” of homegrown Islamic terrorism. This sham reality has been constructed by the “progressive” Left-leaning establishment of academics, politicians, journalists, media organisations and activists who have inexplicably joined forces with Islamic ideologues to downplay the threat, undermine our security and accuse those trying to keep us safe of Islamophobia and fearmongering. BLOG WITH MIRANDA DEVINE
In their eyes, the terror raids last week were suspiciously timed to distract from the Abbott government’s budget, bolster the case for new security legislation, and somehow to justify sending troops to the Middle East to help Iraq confront the Islamic State.
In politicising a security issue, they are wilfully deaf, dumb and blind to the blunt assessments of those who actually are privy to the intelligence which led to last week’s terror raids.
“Let me tell you that matter (leading to the terror raids) that we dealt with last week was well past being a thought bubble,” NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione tells me.
“There was a clear and present threat that was very soon to be delivered. We know in Queensland only the week before, again, a matter of days before it was to be delivered.
“… It’s such a difficult call that the experts in the counterterrorism command area have to make.
“It’s a matter of waiting to get as much evidence as possible but ensuring that nothing happens. And we will always err on the side of going a little bit early because … if that attack that was planned last week had been successful. this nation’s history would have changed forever.”
That’s the reality which the tinfoil hat crowd deny, on the basis of zero evidence.
They ignore the unadorned order by Islamic State extremists to their supporters to kill Australians in whatever way they can.
For a view into the belly of this tinfoil beast, go no further than Monday night’s Q & A on ABC-TV.
It distilled every delusion and pernicious idea about Muslim victimhood into one hour of dangerous insanity. Western imperialism is to blame. Israel is to blame. “Team Australia” is to blame.
Two belligerent Muslim women controlled the conversation. Sociologist and Islamophobia specialist Randa Abdel-Fattah and Anne Azza Aly, a social science research fellow at Curtin University, who was billed by the ABC as a “terrorism expert”.
Fattah claimed the terror raids were like an NCIS episode “whipping people up into a frenzy of hysteria of war fever”. “(They) reinforced this wider narrative of Muslims as criminals,” she said.
After being the font of all wisdom for 50 minutes, Fattah said it was too complex to explain why Iraq would have asked for Australia’s help to stop Islamic State extremists. “I’m not an expert because I’m too busy battling Islamophobia,” Fattah said.
Aly, meanwhile, described terrorism as “theatre”.
Fellow panellist and Greens MP Scott Ludlam agreed the timing of the raids was an “amazing coincidence” and the terror threat was a beat-up hatched by “tabloid papers” which are “hurling fear” at people.
“Divisiveness” and fear is what terrorism is all about, he said, that “corroding and undermining of the underpinnings of society”.
Silly you if you thought terrorism was about chopping off heads and blowing up people.
Mark Dreyfus, Julia Gillard’s former attorney general, accused the government of “overstating” the jihadist threat,
Justice Minister Michael Keenan did a valiant job rebutting the nonsense but he was outnumbered five to one, and his most effective opponent was the host.
Tony Jones cut across Keenan, allowed guests to badger and interrupt him, and at one stage made the most extraordinary intervention.
He interrupted Keenan to quiz a Muslim woman in the audience whom he imagined had claimed that “ASIO” had threatened to behead her, rape her corpse and slit her children’s throats.
Who would believe such a thing?
It turned out the woman’s claims were about “right-wing Nazis” on social media.
Even the audience laughed at Jones then.
The ABC could have brought in any number of sensible Muslims who understand the terrorist threat. It could have brought in Christian Assyrians or Afghan refugees or actual terrorism experts.
Instead the taxpayer-funded broadcaster via Q & A chose deliberately to sow community disharmony, to smear Australians as racists and bigots and to feed the sense of misplaced grievance and victimhood that justifies radicalism.
But the reality remains that we have a serious terrorist problem and the people charged with keeping us safe must not be distracted by spurious claims of Islamophobia and legal threats.
Were police not supposed to question three men at the football who were pointed out to them by spectators because they might hire lawyer Adam Houda and threaten civil action?
Were they supposed to ignore two carloads of bearded Muslim men stopped near the Lucas Height nuclear reactor?
This isn’t a game. It’s not politics. It’s about saving lives.
“There are tough times ahead,” Scipione says.
“We can never become complacent. Just because something’s been thwarted … doesn’t mean the threat has gone away. In fact every day … that you don’t read about it is one day closer to the day when the attack will happen.
“They’re out there and they’re plotting.”
That’s the truth.
