Peta Credlin: Terrorist truths have been exposed

New findings this week confirm not only who it is that considers terrorism to be acceptable, but also how urgent the task of eradicating extremism is, writes Peta Credlin.

This week we got proof that Islamist terrorists are almost unreformable.

Still, the government is spending some $53 million on so-called de-radicalisation programs (or reform schools for Jihadis) which we now know are an almost complete waste of time and money.

The idea that religiously-motivated killers would suddenly decide that Western society wasn’t so very decadent after all or that Allah really had been a god of love all along was never very plausible.

Now, an in-depth study from the Lowy Institute has totally debunked the comforting illusion that would-be Jihadi terrorists suffer from mental illness and only need treatment and exposure to moderate Islam to become decent, law-abiding Australians.

Not only are local terrorists not mentally ill; they’re not the victims of an unfair society either.

Even with ISIS forces largely defeated, the fight continues. Picture: supplied

The study found that 60 per cent of them were second generation migrants; only 9 per cent had a previous criminal record; in less than 10 per cent of cases were mental health issues accepted as even a factor during sentencing; less than 10 per cent expressed contrition during their trial; and, unsurprisingly given their lack of remorse, less than 30 per cent were said, at their trial, to have good prospects for a subsequent normal life. The study confirms what Singaporean officials told me some years ago (a country with more experience of this than most): that lengthy preventive detention is really the only good safeguard against terrorist recidivism.

The basic problem is the persistence of a “death to the infidel” mindset in much of Islam. Around the world, tens of millions of Muslims, if not more, who wouldn’t dream of killing anyone themselves, accept the notion that nonbelievers have no right to live with the faith’s doctrine against apostasy. In the legal systems of some major Muslim countries, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, apostasy is still punishable by death.

Only Muslims can expunge these errors from their faith and the Lowy findings confirm how urgent that task is, despite the demise of Islamic State.

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Terrorist truths have been exposed