Illustration: John Spooner
As the re-branded Islamic State stays relentlessly on message with its pornographic missives from Iraq and Syria, the debate about how to keep Australia safe from terror is a haze of half-formed arguments, meaningless slogans and double-talk.
On one side the Abbott Government exhibits occasional bad faith in its pitch for new counter-terrorism measures. On the other side, and receiving little level-headed scrutiny, some Muslim leaders keep trying to change the subject .
Even typing the words "Muslim leaders" or "Muslim community" brings an anxious, sinking feeling as I reduce a vast tapestry of nationalities and ethnicities to a roomful of unelected representatives.
Still, I think the Islamic Council of Victoria expressed the frustration of the "Muslim community" in snubbing Tony Abbott last week, after the Prime Minister implied, among other insults, that Muslims were "migrants", their membership of "Team Australia" under probation.
Abbott followed this divisive riffing with a characteristic over-correction that actually the Muslims were among the most committed Australians because they had chosen to come to this fabulous country. Given the majority of Australians have young roots here, I guess that means I am, you are, we are, really, really Australian.
This "Team Australia" rhetoric plays into the hands of the Muslim leaders who claim the Government and security agencies plan to use counter-terrorism measures to "target" their community. The claim is absurd. These leaders say they are especially angry about proposed bans on Australians travelling to the front in Iraq and Syria because there is no corresponding crackdown on Jewish Australians joining the Israeli army.
Abbott's technical response last week was that dual nationals are allowed to fight in the armies of overseas states but not in terrorist groups such as Islamic State. He gave the example of the Pakistani army, which dual-citizen Muslims were free to join – a suggestion I imagine caused an outbreak of good cheer at ASIO. The commonsense answer on the travel ban is that until Zionists start calling for terrorist attacks in the West, the comings and goings of Australians trained in the Israeli military is irrelevant.
What I can understand is Muslim leaders' frustration in having to constantly condemn – and thus, by implication, own – the barbaric atrocities of their communities' fringe dwellers. The obsessive demand for Muslim leaders to "condemn terrorism" borders on bullying. But the way they respond to these calls can be revealing.
In a statement condemning the image of a young boy, thought to be the son of Australian Khaled Sharrouf, holding up what appears to be the severed head of a Syrian government soldier, the Australian National Imams Council said: "Just as ANIC denounces the unspeakable atrocities committed in Gaza, so too do we speak out against the brutality carried out in Syria and Iraq..." The statement included the oblique rider: "The current trend by many world leaders... for injustice, unilateral aggression, duplicitous foreign policies and infringements on basic human rights, will only aggravate the state of global fear and violence."
The Islamic Council of Victoria, in a release explaining its refusal to meet with Abbott last week, put the case more explicitly. "The question of why young Australians would willingly put themselves in harm's way is much more complex than some spurious notion of religious extremism," said the Council, which claims to represent 150,000 Muslims. "We would point the Government to its own foreign policies as a starting point. The government stance on the issue of Israel and the massacres in Gaza over the last four weeks has done more to 'radicalise' people than this boogie monster of radicalisation that it uses to periodically scare the community... and divert attention away from reality."
I have nothing against these organisations – on the contrary, I understand Australian Muslims' distress at the suffering of Palestinians. But the leaders' persistent deflection to Israel, a tendency shared by some on the hard Left, suggests an inability, or reluctance, to look reality in the face.
To follow the Islamic Council's logic, some Muslims are so angry about the Australian Government's support for Israel's actions in Gaza that they head to… Syria and Iraq, where they butcher, with orgiastic delight… other Muslims, Sunnis as well as Shiites. I don't get it. Perhaps the jihadists take a long view, content to establish the caliphate first and then tackle the Zionist entity – in which case, I can only admire their capacity for delayed gratification.
And I wonder what it would take to keep aspiring jihadists in the fold? Presumably, the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza won't do it. If Australia was to push for sanctions against Israel, would that be sufficient? If next week the Government miraculously engineered the establishment of a Palestinian state, would the caliphate's appeal rapidly dissolve? Or would that require the complete dismantling of Israel? And if the Abbott Government even managed to pull that off, are we there yet? Would this fix the "unilateral aggression" and "duplicity" the Imams complained of? Would this be enough to calm the bloodlust of young men yearning for the caliphate?
Israel is not the problem here. The problem is the pull of an atavistic cult that offers a grandiose revenge fantasy. It is a fantasy that owes some of its potency to an overarching and incoherent narrative of victimhood, a narrative that perhaps these leaders, and their fellow travellers, unwittingly perpetuate.
Julie Szego is an Age columnist, author and freelance journalist.
