Magnet for madmen

IN THE politically-correct revisionist view of fanatical Muslims, the modern world must acknowledge a debt to Islam for all manner of scholarship in the fields of mathematics and medicine.

Those wily Greeks, and later Romans, it is claimed, shamelessly stole the intellectual property developed by followers of the tent-dwelling warrior Prophet's message of universal love and tolerance, even though the Greek and Roman civilisations pre-dated Mohammed's birth by centuries. What is becoming clear however is the Muslim doctors held in the UK for their alleged connection with the weekend's terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow paid scant regard to Islam's harmonic interpretations let alone the Hippocratic Oath which governs the philosophy of most of the modern civilised world's physicians. Hippocrates' ancient pledge is to keep the sick from harm and injustice – not attempt to cause harm to innocents through acts of random violence such as car bombs and fanatics dressed in suicide suits. The doctor who was apparently fanatically shouting "Allah, Allah" outside Glasgow airport even as his clothes burnt to his body has given the game away. He has left further exposed all the apologists who from the morning after 9/11 claimed the West and in particular the US were through some bizarre alchemy the architects of their own misfortune. He has left naked the moral relativists who claim that all forms of violence are equal and he has made Britain's new leader, Gordon Brown, look pathetically weak in his determination to avoid associating al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists with the words Muslim or Islam. Kow-towing to terrorism didn't help the Spanish. The civil liberties lobby which parasitically infests the West it decries has operated as a fifth column to ensure that Islamists are given the full protection of Western law to preach their sermons of hatred and opposition to Western culture. The fruit of their pleadings is now being reaped by the alleged wannabe terrorists who tried to target holidaying children and dance party enthusiasts celebrating the northern summer. The detention of a Gold Coast doctor shows the alleged sweeping extent of the global links of international terrorism. Whether or not that doctor is charged with anything, a magistrate has determined there is sufficient evidence for him to be held for questioning. In the UK, where most of those being held were practising medicine within the National Health Service, it has been suggested that al-Qaeda or one of its subsidiaries searched for recruits among the professional class because they would attract less attention from migration authorities. Those arrested were certainly not the panting, hot-eyed fanatics shown firing Kalashnikovs from Gaza to the Philippines. By all accounts, they were reserved, modest, studious medical practitioners working in health and treating patients with diligence. Western fantasists will no doubt go out of their way to find cause with these doctors and attempt to fabricate excuses for their alleged actions. Were they anti-colonial, anti-Western, anti-poverty, anti-Israeli. who knows? But there will be some pop psychiatrist ready with a post-modernist rationale for why innocents should be slaughtered in the West to appease some fanatical ideology hatched in some mad mullah's mediaeval mind. Though there has not yet been an attack by these fanatics on the Australian continent, Australians have been victims, notably in Bali, and New York and London, and two men have been successfully prosecuted for terrorist activities in Australia, with more than 20 currently on trial. It may be a matter of time but it may be wise to reconsider the mockery that was made when the Howard Government attempted to raise the consciousness of the nation with its fridge magnets and there message: Be alert but not alarmed. Such alertness has assisted the US authorities thwart scores of attempted terrorist attacks since 9/11 and helped defeat a major attempt to explode bombs aboard numerous passenger aircraft leaving the UK earlier this year. Only a true idiot would continue to mock the magnet's message in the light of such a successful campaign. The message which must be learnt from the medicos' unsuccessful bombing blitz is that our population cannot afford to be anything than fully aware of all possible risks to major security targets. One would think that commercial pilots would be keenly aware of this but according to the Australian and International Pilots Association, two Qantas pilots have had enough of airport security screenings, with one refusing to remove his shoes despite setting off an airport alarm. Their frustration would be readily understood by every frequent flier (admission: I was recently relieved of a tube of toothpaste weighing more than 100g at Melbourne airport) but that's the price everyone must pay when faced with terrorism. Passing through airport security and being asked to remove one's shoes is an annoyance but it is a lot less painful than spearing into the ground from an altitude of 30,000 feet. If it takes a magnet or something else to keep the population alert, it is worth it and in an age when any idiot, educated or ill-educated, rich or poor, thinks a place in virgin-filled heaven can be won with a bomb, a magnet seems as good a reminder of the dangers as any.