Aunty the apologist

THE Howard Government sounds so strong, telling Muslim leaders to curb the extremists in their mosques.

Yet extremists still party in the Government's own temples of culture - not least the ABC and SBS.

Why would Muslim radicals here feel they had to change, if influential parts of our public broadcasters excuse and shield them?

Let me give the latest two examples of this folly. On Monday, ABC television's Media Watch program tried yet again to prove I'd been wicked, this time to Muslims.

Two weeks ago, you'll recall, I cited case after case of Muslim leaders either spreading hate speech or failing to condemn it.

"Heavens," I wrote, I'd once even "described as 'moderate' the Melbourne based Islamic Information Services Network of Australia (IISNA), which purged from its website articles I'd noted claiming democracy was a sin, Jews were behind September 11 and Western society was a pollution".

I know IISNA has rejected terrorism, several times.

Yet, I wrote, its website now offers this advice: "In regard to non-Muslims who are at war with the Muslims and do not have a peace treaty with the Muslims or are not living under Muslim rule, then Muslims are commanded to kill them . . ."

I warned: "If that's advice passed on by a 'moderate' Islamic group, what must the radical ones here say?" Odd. I thought an outfit passing on such a message would make even the ABC wary. But, on Monday, Media Watch host Liz Jackson explained: "IISNA has contacted us to put their case, and this is how it goes . . ."

That's right - the ABC will now act as the spokesman of Muslim groups defending hate speech. Free.

So what were my faults?

First, I hadn't actually said this advice "passed on" by IISNA was not on its own website, but on the "Islamic Q&A" site it linked to.

So had I been unfair? Did this mean IISNA in fact rejected this advice to kill?

Er, no. As Jackson admitted, it does actually recommend the Islamic Q&A site for its "intelligent and authoritative responses".

So it seems I was right IISNA indeed passes on, even calls "authoritative", such scary preaching. That was my point, so what really was my real sin, Liz?

Well, said Jackson, while it was true "Muslims should fight against those with whom they are at war", I'd left out the first part of the advice-that "killing a non Muslim when he is a mu'aahid (one of those who have a peace treaty with the Muslims) is a sin".

But Jackson is wildly misquoting the evidence - almost as if she wants to hide the truth about Islamism. Or protect IISNA.

You see, the advice IISNA passes on does not tell Muslims only to fight enemies in war, but - I repeat - to kill infidels "who do not have a peace treaty with the Muslims or are not living under Muslim rule".

Infidels much like us, actually. After all, where's our Caliph? Our treaty with Osama bin Laden?

And is Iraq a war? IHAVE long tried to warn against such explosive preaching. Should Jacksonthrough Media Watch - still be making such strained excuses for it? Her brief, surely, is to defend journalism, not Islamism.

Even then, she hadn't finished protecting IISNA, saying its leaders rejected "all forms of political violence", and showing one damning the London bombers, "whether they're Jews, Christians, Buddhist monks, Muslims". (The bombers might be Jews?) Hmm.

Could be. As Jackson failed to add, IISNA president Abu Hamza only last month said the September 11 attacks were the work of the US. "We believe they are willing to sometimes sacrifice their own people for the objective to control the whole world," he said.

And this - by no coincidencesounds almost word for word like the synopsis of a new three-part anti-US documentary, The Power of Nightmares, bought by SBS.

Which station best defends and promotes our Islamists - our SBS or our ABC? I'll report, you decide.

What the British-made The Power of Nightmares aims to prove is best explained by quoting from its transcript - the bits that will give Hamza deja vu.

According to its narrator, international terrorism really "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media".

Gee. So who's playing on our fears like this and feeding us such lies? Bin Laden?

Not quite. "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

Aha! So it is just an American plot to control us. Just like Islamist extremists say!

True, the series doesn't deny there have been terror attacks, and by Islamists.

But there's no doubting its take-home message: American politicians are hyping up our fears to grab power.

So why haven't you seen this documentary yet? Bad news. Just days before it was to screen, Islamist terrorists in this "fantasy" war blew up three trains and a bus in London, and more than 50 people with them. Then came more attacks in London, more in Iraq and the terrible bombing of Egyptians in Egypt.

Suddenly the fantasy war couldn't be made to seem so fantastical. And SBS hastily pulled the show.

If buying this documentary was bad, postponing it was worse. Why didn't SBS expose this show to the contempt and ridicule it deserved?

Or will it now wait until the bloody facts dim in our minds, so conspiracytheorists can again be persuaded the terrorism is just a con by evil US President George W. Bush?

I suspect the worst. After all, just after the September 11 attacks, SBS binned footage it had shot days earlier of Australia's Mufti, Sheik Taj el-Din el-Hilaly, calling suicide bombers "heroes". It didn't want viewers to get the "wrong idea", it said.

But in fact the Mufti was saved by SBS from having his jihad-worship set next to the bloody reality of it. He was saved from us getting not the wrong idea about him, but the right. SOSBS saves our Islamists from themselves.

And more - in an earlier lull in terrorism, it ran The World According to Bush, a documentary claiming Bush was a "liar", "political whore" and "idiot" who was manipulated by powerful Jews into attacking Iraq "for the benefit of Israel".

How parts of SBS and the ABC came to encourage Islamists or their apologists is for another day. What matters most is simply that they have. And now, when words suddenly matter so much that they can make us bleed, this is not only dumb but dangerous.