ISLAMISM - BEYOND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

ISLAMISM = ;- BEYOND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Paul Stenhouse

The shortcomings of Islamism are, in the words of not unsympathetic commentator= s, manifest and legion. Its intellectual, social, political and <= span style=3D'letter-spacing:-.15pt'>military failures

… are evident not ju= st to political scientists and analysts, but to the citizens of the countries concerned. For example,= at the time of writing there is widesp= read popular support in Sudan for an American-led initiative to end that country= 's civil war and establish a more representative and less Islamist government. The disastrous experience of political Islam is part of every Sudanese’s personal experienc= e. Yet, Usama bin Laden is a figure of cult adoration for many Africans, and political Islam continues to raise the banner of resistance against US global hegemony. And the nature of Islamist writing, specifically its attachment to a Utopian ideal of political community fixed in the past, makes it very difficult for Islamists to admit their failures.[1]

And not just Islamists. <= span lang=3DEN-GB style=3D'mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>While the US and her al= lies appear to be losing the propaganda war, despite their obvious military= and economic strengths, Islamists, against all the odds, and despite the irrationality and intolerance of their doctrines, and their violent and outspoken opposition to democratic values, are accorded a curious degree of respect by certain media and deference by some people in public office.

Take for instance the following report on= the Muslim Brotherhood that appeared in The Australian[2] earlier this year

‘Australia has granted asylum to five men who claim their membership of an organisation accused of ties to al-Qa'ida would expose them to persecution in their home countries. The men from Syria, Egypt and India sought protection on the basis of th= eir membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned in Syria and is considered the father of terrorist groups including al-Qa'ida. Osama= bin Laden's right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri adopted the organisation. And earl= ier this month, The Weekend Australian revealed that one of the five asylum-seekers, Ahmad al-Hamwi, who arrived in Australia 10 years ago, was a senior al-Qa'ida bagman linked to 1993 World Trade Centre bomber Ramzi Yous= ef. US terror expert Steven Emerson said the practice of allowing Muslim Brotherhood members into Australia was "extremely dangerous". Mr Emerson, credited with being the first expert to warn a= bout al-Qa'ida, said Britain had a similar policy to = Australia, which had led to a "high concentration of radicals" and the establishment of extremist networks there.’

The worrying statistic is not only the nu= mber of those who were accepted by the Refugee Review Tribunal as refugees becau= se they could prove that they belonged to the Brotherhood or Ikhwan al-Musl= imin [mis-transliterated as Ikwhan al-Muslimin in the RRT documents] but the= far greater number who were rejected because they could not do so. The Departme= nt of Immigration accepts as a datum that ‘The Muslim Brotherhood is not= an extremist group,’[3]<= /a> and describes the Brotherhood as follows:

‘ … the Egyptian government under President Hosni Mubarak has, over the past decade, increas= ed its efforts towards the suppression of the Brotherhood. Whilst Mubarak and = his officials claim that the Brotherhood is little more than the political wing= of the more extreme (and violent) Islamic groups which have been outlawed in E= gypt such as the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad other commentators have suggest= ed that the success of the Brotherhood in capturing various professional groups and its successive political alliances which have made the Brotherhood a de facto opposition party are at the root of Mubarak's repressive actions.’[4]

The Australian bureaucracy’s unwillingness to accept the Egyptian Government’s judgement on the Brotherhood may be thought to be correc= t by some who regard Hosni Mubarak and his government as pawns of the West; but = audiatur altera pars, ‘let the other side be heard’ is always wise advice, especially where national security is at stake. <= /p>

If the Egyptian government and the Syrians – not noted for squeamishness in dealing with militant opposition – fear the Muslim Brothers then Austra= lia would be foolish to think it knows better because one or two analysts regard the Brothers as neo-converts to democracy. The militant wing of Hamas is attached to the Brothers, and both its founders belonged to the brotherhood= . As recently as December 16, 2005 the leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brothers, Muhammad Mehdi Akef, told the state-owned English daily Ahram Weekly that ‘we will not recognize Israel which is an alien enti= ty in the region and we expect the demise of this cancer soon’.[5]

To the view of those analysts who claim that the brotherhood poses no threat to national security now because it claims to be bent on seeking cha= nge by democratic means – even though the ‘change’ involves imposing Shari‘a Law after the hypothetical election win – we suggest that the sobering analysis of others be considered. Take for instan= ce the following:

= ;

‘In = Egypt, where the group was founded in 1928 and later banned, the Brotherhood worked under the Islamic doctrine of "concealment" (kitman) in or= der to "Islamize" the country. In the 1930's and 1940's, the MB collaborated with the Nazis. Hajj Amin al-Husseini,the MB chief in British Mandate Palestine, strongly supported Arab links with the Nazis, particular= ly in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, where he backed the short-lived pro-Nazi regime= of Rashid Ali al-Gailani in 1941. In Egypt too, the MB orchestrated riots, occupied police stations and attempted coups d'etat. Following their failed 1954 attempt to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser, MB loyalists fled Egypt to the universities of Saudi Arabia, where they were granted busi= ness monopolies to finance their future reemergence; in 1961 the sympathetic King Sa'ud even funded their establishment of the Islamic University in Medina. In October= 1981, an MB offshoot group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In the la= st decade alone, MB offspring including Gama'a al-Islamiya and the Abdullah Az= zam Brigades repeatedly attacked Western tourists, killing hundreds and wounding many more. Since the history of the MB is full of instigating civil wars and committing atrocities in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Algeria, their expansion and success elsewhere is destined to wreak more havoc and destabilize every nation in which they are allowed to operate freely.’= ;[6]

= ;

If pr= oving that you belong to the Brotherhood entitles you to refugee status in Australia<= /st1:place>, then it entitles you to citizenship also; and nothing can prevent your sett= ing up a branch of the Brotherhood in a nearby supermarket. How can the anonymo= us Australian bureaucrats who decide the criteria to be applied to seekers of asylum, know that ‘the Brotherhood,’ is not still ‘work[ing] under the Islamic doctrine of "concealment" (= kitman) in order to "Islamize" the country’?[7] Only this time, ‘the country’ is not Egypt, Syria, the Sudan, Alg= eria or Palestine, but <= st1:country-region w:st=3D"on">Australia.

Part of the= reason that so many non-Muslims in Western bureaucracies are ill-informed about the Muslim Brothers, and Islamists in general, can be shot home to the ignoranc= e of their masters in Government, and their informants in the media, and especia= lly to the street-wise Islamic Societies in Western host countries who have embraced the art of propaganda and misinformation, whether deliberately or indeliberately furthering the cause of the Islamic radicals.

These present politico-religious Islam as= the answer to the world’s problems, and themselves as vulnerable immigrant underdogs – which many indeed are – who need protecting from th= ose in and out of the bureaucracy, the media, the non-Muslim religions, especia= lly Christianity, who dare to question the spin they put on the history and the foundations of Islamism.

By not distinguishing sufficiently between fanatical Islamists who use the Qur’an and Islamic Law for their base purposes, and moderate Muslims who are doing their best to settle into Australian society in a law-abiding way while remaining faithful to their religious beliefs, some government officers, commentators and media have confused both the Australian public, and the Muslim population. And in their turn played into the hands of the Islamists.

It is remarkable that in 2006 in the Stat= e of Victoria, civil = law prevents critical appraisal by non-Muslims of Islamic Law and custom under = pain of being hauled through the courts and charged with vilifying a religion. Islamists have gladly taken advantage of this retrogressive law to silence their critics.

Catholics, and indeed most other religion= s, recognize that there is benefit to be derived from frank and open discussio= n of their beliefs. They welcome it. If their teaching truly come from God, as Gamaliel, the Pharisaic teacher of St Paul in his youth said of St Peter and the other apostles to the members of the Sanhedrin, then nothing can stand = in the way of its spreading; and if it doesn’t come from God then it will die out eventually, and pose no threat to anyone.[8]

No serious academic enquiry could be cond= ucted in an atmosphere of threats of physical violence or litigation. Islamists a= nd even some moderate Muslims refuse to allow any discussion of the genuinenes= s of the message allegedly handed down to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel, and incorporated in the Qur’an, or of the prophethood of Muhammad. <= /o:p>

There is no critical text of the Qur̵= 7;an nor of the ‘Sunna,’ the traditions concerning Muhammad, nor of = the hundreds of thousands of hadiths that are claimed to be utterances of Muham= mad. Yet these elements are of the essence of Islam for most Muslims. And provide grist for the mill of the Islamists.

It is time for objective assessment of th= e type of courses being offered in Australian universities under the umbrella of Islamic Studies. And for reappraisal of the conditions under which chairs of Islamic studies in Australian universities are funded by Islamic states. Co= uld a non-Muslim competent in Arabic language and literature be eligible for su= ch a chair; could a Christian or a Jew? No Islamic academic in an Australian Universi= ty has, to my knowledge, so far come forward calling for openness in discussion and argument on Islamic beliefs and traditions that affect non-Muslims.

Whether Muslims will one day come to exam= ine the literature of their religion in the light of history, linguistics, psychology and sociology, is a matter for conjecture.

But non-Muslims have an obligation and a = right to look hard at the Sacred Books of the Muslims when fanatical and violent Muslims base their religious and racial violence against non-Muslims on the= se texts.

It is self-evident that a democracy must = permit the free and open discussion of ideas and that necessarily includes religion and politics. Christians and Jews and other non-Muslims cannot be penalised= by the civil law for examining anti-Christian and anti-Jewish teaching found in the Qur’an and in other parts of Islamic tradition.

Nor can they be obliged to condone the co= ver-up of Muslim atrocities against non-Muslims in the past, and more especially at the present time, in the Sudan, in Indonesia, in Pakistan and elsewhere throughout the Muslim world.

In a democracy all citizens must respect = the rights of others to defend their beliefs [or absence of beliefs in the case= of atheists or agnostics] without having to face threats of violence.

If Islamists and their camp followers intimidate or threaten non-Muslims in a democracy then they must understand that the democratic state has the right and obligation to punish such behav= iour – not for religious reasons but because the civil rights of non-Musli= ms [as of Muslims and all other citizens] are protected by law.

An impression that could be drawn from a = recent address by John Stone [Quadrant Dinner 2006] on Islam is that the current a= nd on-going threat to the survival of Western democracy allegedly posed by fanatical Islamists calls for strong, even draconian measures.

I agree that democracy is under threat, b= ut not just from Islamic extremists. Over-reaction by Western non-islamic democrac= ies to Islamic extremists compounds the problem..

The military response by the United States Administration to the tragic events of September 11, 2001 has undoubtedly played into the hands of the terrorists and their propaganda machine. Such a response was, we suggest, the end-result sought by Usama bin Laden. Yet we sympathise with the US dilemma. It had to take so= me action to restore the confidence of the American people in their leaders, a= nd in the durability of their democracy in the face of terror and its aftermat= h. Nevertheless cooler heads should have prevailed.

The war in Afghanistan - historica= lly a graveyard for foreign armies - was symptomatic of such over-reaction. Providentially the US = and its allies were bailed out of this potential quagmire by the support = of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s enigmatic President. The return of the Taliban and their growing support among disaffected elements in the Afghan countryside illustrates the foolhardines= s of simplistic and quick fixes in a region where nothing is black and white.

‘… opium cultivation increased by two-thirds, reaching an unprecedented 131,000 hectares. Bad weather and dis= ease lowered the opium yield per hectare resulting in output of 4,200 tons, an increase of only 17%, thus preventing a bumper harvest. Opium cultivation a= lso spread to all 32 provinces -- making narcotics the main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome populations. Val= ued at $2.8 billion, the opium economy is now equivalent to about 60% of Afghanistan’s 2003 GDP ($4.6 billion, if only licit activity is measured). With the Afghan nation struggling to ensure a democratic election and coalition forces work= ing to establish a secure situation on the ground, the narcotic question was not given the priority it should have. Yet the building blocks to tackle opium cultivation and production have been developed and important positive signs= are emerging. In the countryside, because of excess supply, opium prices are two-thirds (67%) lower than last year: the incentive for farmers to plant t= he next opium crop should now be lower. At the borders, stable heroin prices a= re the likely result of law enforcement, which has made it more difficult for traffickers to refine and smuggle drugs across the country. The drug proble= m in Afghanistan has been allowed to become ever more serious. If it persists, the political= and military successes of the last three years will be lost.’[9]

The invasion of Iraq, too,was a tragic tactical error, as is the ongoing US support for the attack on Lebanon by Israel.

The US and its allies continue to= hit soft targets in the hope that the harder ones will take note and back off. = This immoral and unjust ploy deceives no one and seldom works – as events = in Iraq since the invasion prove. I say seldom advisedly, because Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi’s sudden conversion to democracy was undoubtedly spur= red on by visions of the Libyan leader’s joining Saddam Hussein in prison awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.

American appeasement and often downright support for the calamitous policies of Syri= a’s Hafiz al-Assad have contributed to the growth of the Hizbollah militia in t= he south of Lebanon, and = to the continuing destabilisation of the Middle East.

Imposing ‘democracy’ on count= ries unwilling to accept it, or unprepared for it, in order to bring a region vi= tal to the West’s economies under ‘control’ by the West or its surrogates, all in the name of helping the peoples of the region to fulfil their destiny, is at best a pipe-dream and at worst a nightmarish scenario = that must eventually backfire.

US support for Israeli military intervent= ion in Lebanon to stop Shiite militia shelling Northern Israel is like destroying = your neighbour’s home [and killing your neighbour] because burglars have t= aken over the neighbourhood.

The bombardment of Lebanon – an unwilling = host to the Iranian armed and Syrian supported militia - at the very moment when= it was resestablishing its fragile democratic institutions causes grief = to none but innocent and militarily impotent Lebanese Christians and Muslims. These, tired of war and warmongers are powerless - after years of Palestini= an, Syrian and Iranian interference in Lebanon<= /st1:country-region>’s internal affairs in which Israel and the US were tacitly complicit - to dislodge the powerful Shiite militia in the sou= th.

Israeli spokesmen admit that Hizbollah can never be wiped out by Israeli bombs as the bombs continue to fall indiscriminately on Hizbollah and innocent Lebanese civilians alike. They m= ust also be aware that no military action, by air, sea or land-based troops, can guarantee Israel’s immunity to hostile shelling. Hizbollah shells and Hamas suicide bombers are symptomatic of the erosion of trust and mutual respect over past decades between Israel and her neighbours. = Israel’s security from shelling can be achieved only by non-military means. To think otherwise is to condemn Israel and her neighbours to mutually genocidal conflict that will only end with t= he extinction of one or all of the protagonists.

In the meantime, far from being cowed by = the bombing of Lebanon, the Syrians and the Iranians - the eminences grises in the sordid affair - must wonder at their good fortune as they= see Israel and the US further alienating the few friends they have left in the non-Muslim and Muslim world.

All other things being equal, there is no danger of Australia’s succumbing to the Islamist nightmarish scenario, though there is a grave risk that global terrorism will erupt as a result of continuing instability in the Middle East.

The history of expansionist Islam is a li= tany of disappointed hopes and betrayed trust. St John Damascene’s grandfather, Mansur ibn Sarjun, believed Khalid ibn Walid, nicknamed The Sword of Allah, when he promised that if the civilian population capitulated and paid the poll-tax ‘nothing but good shall befall them’.[10] The gates of = Damascus were opened to the Muslim warlord in Septem= ber 635 AD and with the exception of the first and best of the Arab ‘kings’ Mu‘awiyah ibn abi Sufyan, the subsequent history = of ethnic and religious minorities in Arab dominated Syria is a wretched one.=

Islamic Law and Islamic Economics do not = sit well with successful government. No example can be given of a country gover= ned by Islamic Law that hasn’t fallen back into social, economic and religious chaos.

The Wahhabi Saudis with their religious p= olice, their futuristic cities in the desert and their double standards may be add= uced as a proof of the contrary. Yet Saudi power is not derived from some inner strength of its Islamist beliefs. It comes from its seemingly limitle= ss wealth in US dollars and euros directly or indirectly derived from oil and = its by-products; and oil, like Saudi dominance of the Arabian peninsular, is finite.

However, by tolerating and uncritically publicising violent, unpatriotic and even treasonable behaviour and writing= on the part of minorities who work behind the scenes to promote political Isla= m in this country, those responsible – whether in government or in the med= ia - weaken the Australian democratic ethos which depends for its stabilit= y on mutual respect and trust among the numerous minorities that make up its Commonwealth.

Prime Minister Howard, for his part, unequivocally rejected the recent suggestion[11] by Australian Muslim leaders, and by members of his Muslim advisory b= ody including Ameer Ali and Sheikh Fehmi Naji al-Imam, that Hizbollah should be removed from the list of banned terrorist organisations in the light of the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. To have agreed would have further undermined Australia’s credibility= and endangered its security.

Muslims living in = Australia enjoy, under the la= w, equal rights and obligations with every other citizen. Islamic societies on= the other hand will not tolerate this extension of equality under the law to non-Muslims. Dhimmis are by definition ‘tolerated’ people, non-citizens, whose rights depend on the good will and the whim of the pers= on in charge of the society for the time being. The alleged ‘tolerance’ enjoyed by non-Muslim minorities in Spain from 711 = AD until 1492 AD is a propagandistic urban myth along the lines of alligators = in the New York sewers. No Islamic society will extend full citizenship to non-Muslims; the Saudis will not even extend citizenship to some foreign Muslims who work to keep its petro-dollars and euros flowing.

It would be a mistake to view Stone’= ;s suggestion that Muslims be not allowed to emigrate – with which I disagree – as merely a knee-jerk reaction of an Australian candidate = for the Ku-Klux-Klan who plagued the US in the nineteenth century with their anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic and anti-Black rhetoric.

Like it or not, Stone speaks for a great = number of intelligent and hard-working Australian tax-payers who wonder what return they are getting for the salaries they hand out to their ‘leadersR= 17;. And that includes state, federal – and local government.

He is, for instance, not alone in wonderi= ng about the dynamics of the so-called ‘race riots’ in Cronulla NSW last Boxing Day, and the reaction to them on the part of the constitutional= ly appointed authorities, and the way the events were reported in the media. <= o:p>

Had local and state government officials,= and the police, not dithered about taking action against the rioters, and in particular, had they and the media generally over a long period treated Mus= lims like all other citizens in the country: with the same rights – no more – and the same obligations – no fewer - then the situation would never have reached the stage that local people, and especially disaffected young people, could be driven to taking the law into their own hands. =

At this late stage one can well ask how m= any Muslim gang members have been imprisoned for their involvement in the riots. Has any been found guilty? Were all the fanatics and radicals on one side o= nly?

Continuing media insistence that the riot= s were racial in origin, and that Muslims were the only victims, further fan= ned – and continues to fan – the discontent. It raises many a quest= ion about responsible reporting by allegedly self-regulating media in a free society. Race does not seem to have been involved either on the Muslim side= or on the side of the Australian gangs and others who reacted.

Islamism and its erosion of the rights and civil liberties of democratic Australians, lies at the heart of the problem. Muslims do not constitute a ‘race’. Those involved were from different countries, as were those who reacted to them. If anything the rio= ts were a regrettable response born of frustration at the inaction of the part= of the appropriate authorities who cannot hide their fear of confronting Islam= ist radicals. Fear breeds in such conditions, and bullies multiply.<= /span>

When applicants are accepted as migrants = it should be made clear to all, including Muslims, that in a democracy politic= al and civil leaders exercise legitimate authority through the will of the peo= ple. Local government, judges and police, like political leaders at the state and federal level, must be respected. If their religious beliefs can’t al= low them to live in this kind of society, then they should not come, or if they= are here, they should leave for the sake of their conscience. If they choose to stay then they must obey the laws. Not to do so, or to work actively to sub= vert the laws and constitution of the host country that has welcomed them as mig= rants, is to face punishment under the law. None of this is spelled out to prospec= tive migrants at the present time.

It is not an option for Islamists who mig= rate to this country, and are offended by aspects of Australian life that differ from traditional ones in their native countries, to work by stealth to subv= ert the Australian Constitution and endeavour to turn the country into an Islam= ic state. Islamic Law and democracy are incompatible. Those who for whatever reason seek to prove the opposite, invariably resort to subterfuge and dissembling.

A final observation. Religion, the sword = and race are inextricably intertwined in any discussion of Islamism. There are reasons for thinking that it is not Islam as such that threatens the peace = and stability of non-Muslim countries. Islam is frequently the tool, the ploy, = the lever which is used to soften the target people or country. Despite popular views on the extremism of the Shiite majority in Iran, a major force at work b= ehind the scenes is Sunni Arabism of the Wahhabi variety.

The Hanbali Wahhabi sect of the Saudis ha= s been leading the pack since the beginning of the nineteenth century when its influence was felt from Java and Sumatra in the East, to Nigeria in the West. Its power increased exponentially when the West stood by foolishly and allowed the barbarous and outlawed sect to oust the traditional Sharifs of Mecca and Medina – no slouches themselves when it came to Islamism, but not in the class of the clan of Ibn Saud – and take con= trol of Mecca in 1924 and Medina in 1925. Since then the Saudis h= ave peddled their extreme form of Islam throughout the world via the annual Haj= .

Once in charge, the Wahhabists was= ted little time in censoring the Haj. As early as 1929, Egyptian pilgrims were refused permission to celebrate the colourful Mahmal rites and more than 30 were killed. At the time Egypt severed diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. Few governments= have stood up to them since.[12]=

Millions of Muslims go to Mecca each year for the pilgrimage and are vulnerable to the Wahhabi/ Salafi virus that wreaks more havoc than malaria or dengue fever; and become carriers of= it in their turn. Wahhabi puritanism even affects the mountain of light, al-Nur, with Hira'a cave, where Muhammad is said to have received the first verses of the Koran. This is targeted for destructi= on by the Mutawin, the religious police, in order to stop pilgrims visiting it= . At the foot of the hill there is a Wahhabi fatwa forbidding visitors to climb = the hill, to pray there, to touch stones or and tie knots on trees. The grave of one of Muhammad’s wives in the cemetery of Jannat a-Baqi in Medina was destroyed by the Wahhabis in= the 1950s. The religious police are present night and day to prevent anyone pla= cing flowers on the site, or even praying in the proximity of the graves. <= /o:p>

Muhammad Ibn Saud, the founder of the Sau= di ‘dynasty’ used the extremist Islamic doctrine of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab in the 18^th century AD to lift his tribe of petty bandits based in the village of Dir‘iyeh in Najd in Central Arabia, from obscurity. From terrorising the local Muslims who did not conform to Abdul Wahhab’s puritanism, Ibn Saud’s forces graduated to unsettling the Ottoman Sultan of Turkey, and defying the British Raj in India with their militant Islamism in the name of the Wahhabi cult. Reverence for saints was banned, tombs were despoiled, headstones destroyed, minarets and inscriptions on mosques were banned, use of the ‘rosary’ proscribed, pilgrimages and acts of popular devotion forbidden.<= /span>

The extremist Wahhabis continue to use Is= lam as a lever to peddle their particular form of Arabism – what Western fellow-travellers would call their ‘culture’ - disarmingly symbolised by white robed sheikhs in the desert holding hooded falcons on t= heir gloved wrists, and eating exotic meals in gorgeously appointed tents. = ;

This Wahhabi culture is seventh-century Arabian. It stopped in a time warp with Muhammad’s death, or at least with the final edition of the Qur’an as produced by ’Uthman, the third caliph, 644-656 AD. It finds its supreme and far from unambiguous expression in the complex of elements – with the Qur’an as the centrepiece - that make up what is called the Shari‘a, Islamic Law.

The catch-cry of King Feisal, son of Shar= if Hussein, when he was trying to preserve a united and independent Syria at t= he end of the Great War, finds an echo, I suggest, in the ambitions of the Sau= di usurpers who now occupy the throne that rightfully belonged to the Sharifs = of Mecca and Medina: ‘We are Arabs before being Muslims, and Muhammad wa= s an Arab before being a prophet ... we were Arabs even before the time of Moses, Muhammad, Jesus and Abraham’.[13]

Similar sentiments were expressed by the Lebanese writer Amin al-Rihani in 1938: ‘The Arabs existed before Isl= am and before Christianity. Let the Christians realise this, and let the Musli= ms realise this. Arabism before and above everything’.[14]

For all its wealth and arrogance this new, resurgent Arabism of the Saudis is, I suggest, doomed. Its dark side may be unknown to befuddled non-Muslims in the West, but is too well known to fell= ow Muslims: from the native African Sufis of West Africa, the multi-ethnic non-Arab Sunnis of Africa, and Central and South East Asia, to the Indo-European Persian Shiites of Iran.. The black Muslims who have been murdered, raped and dispossessed by the Arab militias in the Darfur region of the Sudan<= /st1:country-region> understand, better than most, this other side of the militant ‘Arabism’ coin:

The village had been surrounded by armed Ara= bs on horses and camels - members of the Janjaweed militia, who, with the back= ing of the Khartoum government, are apparently intent on "whiting out" Darfur= 's black majority, despite both sides being Muslim. The mounted Arabs, in mili= tary fatigues, charged into the village, wheeling precisely between the huts and firing indiscriminately. The Janjaweed were followed by government infantry= who gathered Har 'Janga's young men into a group and executed them, each with a single shot in the back of the head. Ismael's family were singled out and t= aken to a well. The Janjaweed accused them of supporting the Sudan Liberation Ar= my, the rebel movement that began an uprising against the government a year ago. "They took a knife and cut my mother's throat and they threw her into = the well," said Ismael. "Then they took my oldest sister and began to rape her on= e by one. My father was kneeling, crying and begging them for mercy." Ismael escaped by hiding under a dead mule, from where he saw the Janjaweed rape h= is three other sisters, among them Khadija, her face now unrecognisable, before slitting their throats. "After that they killed my brother and my father," he said. "They threw all the bodies in the well."[15]

The tragedy of Darfur and= the Sudan generally, the continuing tragedy of the Palestinians now in the firm grip of Hamas and the Muslim Brothers, the ethnic and religious mayhem paralysing Iraq, the potential descent into Taliban-engineered chaos of Afghanistan, the deadly response of Hizbollah to Israeli bombardment, the deterioration of political life in Egypt, Algeria and Somalia, the strident calls for Iranian nuclear capability, the growing influence of Fundamentalist Islam in Malaysia, the threat of Islamist forces in Indonesia and the southern Philippines – all point to the accuracy of the judge= ment of Alex de Waal that we quoted at the beginning of this article.

No democratic society can afford the luxu= ry of political correctness when it comes to protecting itself from the threat of social, economic and religious disintegration that Islamism carries in its train.

[3] See, e.g. M196 of = 2002 v Minister for Immigration & Anor [2005] FMCA 1650 (16 November 2005).