22-Dec-14: Evil, good and lone wolf attacks in Australia

Man Haron Monis, prior to the Sydney siege 

Over on the website of the Brisbane Courier-Mail, the major newspaper in the northern Australian state of Queensland, there's an oped today written by Rowan Dean who happens to be the editor of The Spectator Australia. His piece is entitled "Islamism, the evil that dwells in our nation". He deals mostly with the process of internal reflection (or its absence, depending on how you view this) by Australian society in the wake of last week's Martin Place Sydney siege.

The opening words:

"The terrifying realisation following the murderous siege in Sydney last week was that through our own craven stupidity, and cowardly political correctness, we as a society have permitted and encouraged a genuine “evil” to prosper and thrive among us. “Evil” is, of course, a strong word; it can equally be applied to a kiddie-fiddling priest, a deranged psychopathic serial killer or a clerical officer in the backroom at Auschwitz. But there really is no other word capable of fully describing the Islamist/jihadist mindset and ideology. In a nutshell (as it were) Islamists believe that their belief system justifies as much cruelty, bloodshed, death, rape, murder, fear, terror, slavery and violence being visited upon nonbelievers as they see fit for whatever their particular purpose."

In many parts of the Australian discourse this past week, the idea has taken root that the hostage-taking self-styled “Mufti Sheik Haron” was mentally unbalanced and that this, to the exclusion of anything else, was what Australians interested in understanding what had happened needed to know.

For instance, Australia's prime minister

Tony Abbott has refused to link Sydney hostage taker Man Haron Monis with Islam, pointing out: “We don’t blame the pope for the IRA and we don’t blame the Catholics living next door for the folly and madness of some people who may claim Christian motivations”... He said Monis was “a deeply unstable person with a long history of violence and mental illness... someone who was way beyond any mainstream … and who has been rightly repudiated by all the mainstream of Australia”. [The Guardian, December 16, 2014]

Move along, folks, in other words. Nothing much to see here.

That's not Rowan Dean's view. He points out, with complete justification in our view, that there are real and emerging mortal threats here to ordinary Australians and their way of life, and they are not being well understood:

What damage can one lone nutter do?” The answer is simple. Cripple our way of life, our values, our enlightenment, our humanity. Last week it was a coffee shop that saw the death of two wonderful Australians. But they are not the first. In 2001, at a pizza shop, a sweet, vivacious Aussie girl called Malki Roth also lost her life. In a bustling street in Jerusalem. The madman that time was actually a mad woman, called Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian “activist”, who also happened to be a TV presenter, who, after driving the suicide bomber to the pizza hut (which she had carefully researched and knew was always full of kids) then went back to her TV station and bragged on air about the deaths... Evil. There isn’t actually another name for it. ["Islamism, the evil that dwells in our nation", Courier-Mail, Australia, today]

Our daughter Malki, 2001, shortly before she
was murdered

It touches on personal and very painful issues for us. Here's a brief note we posted in the Courier-Mail article's comments section:

That "sweet, vivacious Aussie girl called Malki Roth" is my daughter. The "TV presenter" "activist" who engineered the massacre was sentenced to 16 terms of life in prison. People who met her behind bars told me she's a frighteningly psychotic individual. But today she is free. She travels widely and often throughout the Arab world, and advocates in the name of Hamas for more Islamist terror and killings.
Against that background, it's deeply disturbing to see the Martin Place terror attack dismissed as the work of a "lone wolf" nut case. If he was that, there are many more like him on the way. They're ready to do the same and worse.
Australia is playing a supportive role in that process without realizing it. Just a few days before the Sydney siege, one of the most important schools of journalism in the Arab world honoured the "TV presenter" by declaring her to be their "success model". I came across it and wrote about it here: http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/11-dec-14-why-is-it-not-newsworthy-when.html
I think it's a great pity the Australian media appear to be unaware of it. 

Arnold Roth - Jerusalem

As of now, there is no response from the Aussie readers of the Rowan Dean piece or from its author.