In a YouTube clip at the weekend, the Prime Minister foreshadowed a statement on national security next week, saying: “It is clear to me, that for too long, we have given those who might be a threat to our country the benefit of the doubt. There has been the benefit of the doubt at our borders, the benefit of the doubt for residency, the benefit of the doubt for citizenship.” Liberal MP Andrew Nikolic, newly promoted to the whips’ team, provides more detail in an opinion piece for this newspaper today. A migrant with a distinguished record in our military and bureaucracy, Mr Nikolic calls for “an objective public debate” on whether or not Australia should suspend or revoke the citizenship of those who would strike at their adopted nation in the name of global Islamism. “Many will argue persuasively that by pledging allegiance to transnational terrorist organisations and participating in terrorist acts, even Australian-born citizens forfeit their right to be considered Australian,” he says.
This is a debate that falls within a broader attempt to strike a balance between counter-terrorism and public safety on the one hand, and the preservation of the rights and liberties that attract migrants to Australia; these are the freedoms that Islamists themselves seek to destroy.
Mr Nikolic points to tough counter-terror measures involving citizenship in Britain, France and Canada. Nation states characterised by pluralist, open societies are grappling with such questions because they are increasingly coming under attack from within.
Last night, as The Australian went to press, Danish police confirmed a man shot dead by officers in Copenhagen was involved with murderous attacks on a free speech gathering in a cafe in the city as well as its main synagogue. Although there was no direct evidence of motive last night, there were parallels with last month’s assaults in Paris on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. The Swedish artist Lars Vilks, frequently threatened with assassination by radical Muslim groups since he published a cartoon caricaturing the prophet Mohammed in 2007, is believed to have been the intended target of the attack on the Copenhagen cafe and cultural centre, where he was the main speaker at a panel discussion titled “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression”. Vilks was not injured, but a 40-year old man attending the event died after being shot in the head while two policemen were wounded. Outside the synagogue, a Jewish man died and two policemen were injured in the shooting.
Denmark has seen other, similar threats. The noted cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, the target of repeated assassination threats over his controversial 2005 portrayal of Mohammed wearing a bomb in his turban, is, like Vilks, forced to live his life under heavy police guard. But never before has Copenhagen seen such a determined assault on a public event commemorating freedom of expression, and, like the Charlie Hebdo attacks and Sydney’s Martin Place siege, it signals a need for greater vigilance and awareness of the challenges being posed by Islamist extremism in the heart of major cities.
Denmark is not the only European country in which Jews feel less safe and in which Islamic extremism is on the rise — the result, to some degree, of jihadists going off in increasing numbers to fight with Islamic State and returning home to fuel the forces of extremism, and of others becoming radicalised having never seen a frontline. The president of the EU, Donald Tusk, described the Copenhagen attack as “another brutal terrorist attack targeted at our fundamental values and freedoms, including the freedom of expression”.
This is the nature of the threat that confronts open democracies, Australia included, and as the Abbott government prepares to release next week’s national security statement, it will be vital to bring to bear sound expertise in counter-terrorism as well as astute political judgment in order to do everything possible to discourage Islamist radicalisation within a successful multicultural nation.
