Group hugs can be dangerous

Tackling Muslim extremists is the price we must pay if the West is serious about defending itself, writes Janet Albrechtsen

GROUP hugs get us nowhere. And that about sums up a talk-fest in Canberra last weekend called "Australia Deliberates". About 350 "representative Australians" came together to ask panellists questions about the fractured relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Australia. Gushing headlines told us that, having listened to "detailed discussions", non-Muslims are now more comfortable about Muslims. Of course they are. It was a con job. The hard issues were flicked aside. Here's something we did not deliberate on: lulling ourselves into complacency is a dangerous option.

• Few talked about where the rubber meets the road: a small group within the Muslim community in Australia is committed to values inconsistent with those that go to the core of living in a Western liberal democracy. And then there are those who are willing to go one step further, strapping bombs on their backs in their deluded quest to overthrow the West. Why are so many people unwilling to talk about the tough issues? Because of what follows: we need to do more than hug a Muslim neighbour.

The gig, aimed at polling attitudes and sponsored by The Australian, kicked off with much sweet talk about chatting to your Muslim neighbour and getting together for a barbecue or friendly game of AFL. Not a great start, I thought. Two of the London suicide bombers loved cricket. In fact, 22-year-old Shehzad Tanweer played a congenial game of cricket the day before he blew himself up. Each panellist seemed to be competing for a nice, warm round of applause. And they got it.

Good intentions are great and bridge-building sounds neat. But confronting the real issue - whether radical Islam can co-exist with Western modernity, and why some Muslims would rather throw their hat in with some kind of global ummah than the Western liberal democracy in which they live - means digging a bit deeper and forgoing rowdy applause from the huggaholics.

One of those polled at the conference, Fadi Rahman, works with disadvantaged Muslim youth in Sydney's western suburbs. He told The Australian it was a "freak show" of panellists too gutless to talk openly. The Cronulla riots? Not mentioned. Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali? Swept under the carpet. No one talked about the angry Muslim youth in Australia who are susceptible to jihadist ideology. "We're in a state of denial (about terrorism) in Australia," he told me after the conference. "It's not a case of if. It's a matter of when."

Right about now we rightly point out that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are moderate people of good faith. The trick is pinpointing the real moderates. As Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan, told Mark Colvin on ABC Radio last Friday, many Muslim leaders who have been embraced as moderates are anything but moderate. While Colvin seemed confused by that idea, Phillips wasn't: "Views such as the West is a conspiracy to destroy Islam. Views such as the Jews are the puppet masters of the West. Views such as British Muslims should live under sharia law in Britain and Britain's own laws should become sharia-ised. These views are not moderate."

Sure enough, at the first session on Saturday, Mohammed Omran almost had me going with his "Shucks, I'm just a Westerner" routine. With his charm and formidable humour, the sheik had the audience in the palm of hand, telling us that "we all think the same" and that he was just a "grassroots" moderate Muslim.

Sociologist Katharine Betts tried to break the spell, only to be slapped down by moderator Bob Hawke. But her unasked question for Omran was obvious. This is the guy who said "I dispute any evil action linked to (Osama) bin Laden" and thinks the Americans orchestrated the September 11 terrorist attacks. Is that moderate? Were we being duped by Muslim leaders into ignoring the rise of Islamic extremism? That issue was untouched.

George Pell provided the reality check. Everyone was skirting around terrorism, furrowing their brows, wondering why on earth Muslim migration was more problematic than previous groups of migration. Pell pointed out that the problem was that a small group of Muslims are intent on annihilating the West. D'Oh. But there the discussion more or less ended.

And if we are to understand the complicated drivers of terrorism, you need to work your way backwards to Islamic extremism. Not every Islamic extremist is a terrorist, but every terrorist has taken the extremist route. Usman Badar, a Muslim youth advocate, told us to ditch words such as "radicals" and "extremists" because they are charged terms. Hello? They are charged because they are more accurate than calling these people "naughty boys".

One way to pry the huggers apart with some reality is to pick up a copy of Living Apart Together by researchers at the British think tank, Policy Exchange (www.policyexchange.org.uk). Its recent survey found that 36 per cent of Muslims aged 16-24 believe death is an appropriate punishment for those who convert from Islam. That's almost double the proportion of those aged over 55 who hold that view. And 37 per cent of Muslims aged 16-24 prefer sharia law to British law - more than double the number of Muslims aged over 55. Thirteen per cent of 16-24-year-old Muslims admire al-Qa'ida for fighting the West. (Only 3 per cent of those over 55 do.)

In Britain, where one-third of the almost 2 million Muslims are under the age of 16, they have a problem. Do we have a similar problem in Australia though on a smaller scale with a smaller Muslim population? That issue was left alone.

When sharia law came up at the weekend jamboree, Abdullah Saeed, from Melbourne University, said we should not be too worried by those preaching a global caliphate because every society has its dreamers. True enough - Wassim Doureihi, the leader of the Australian arm of Hizb ut-Tahrir, looked kind of dreamy when he spoke on Sunday morning about establishing a global caliphate. But when these dreamers reject Western values or resort to violence, we have a problem. That was not explored.

We might have explored why a search for meaning and identity has led some Muslims to a radical form of Islam that loathes the West, and ask whether the rise of a more extreme form of Islam is perhaps just an extension of a wider cultural problem infecting the West. If we degrade our own history and have little respect for our own national identity, it's hard to expect others to integrate into something so hollow and uninspiring.

Yet, no one talked about the battle of ideas - about challenging an Islamist ideology with an alternative one based on values and institutions that promise a better future than death by backpack bomb. We're fooling ourselves by imagining the problem will go away with a barbecue and friendly chat over the fence.

janeta@bigpond.net.au