Spewers of hate run free

ONLY a society with a sincere death wish could entertain an individual, let alone a group, which preaches vile hatred toward others and urges parents to school their children in martyrdom.

Only a culture with its central beliefs and resolve so undermined by self-doubters could accept that bald-faced attacks on its values were humorously irrelevant. Yet, Australia, as a microcosm of the West, does host such people. It has for decades looked the other way as some accepted as religious leaders by sections of the Islamic community have unapologetically bucketed the nation and important contributors to its fabric with the most corrosive abuse. Last week, it was the Australian-born Islamic leader Sheik Feiz Mohammed’s turn in the spotlight; the week before it was the loathsome Sheik Taj Eldeen Alhilaly, and in the months and years before it has been Sheik Mohammed Omran of Melbourne and Sheik Abdul Salem Mohammed Zoud, and that constant apologist for poor translation, Keysar Trad. Sheik Feiz, now in Lebanon lapping up the publicity his hate videos have attracted, can be seen on YouTube excoriating Australian Muslims for not spilling their blood in the Islamic cause. Echoing the now familiar line of martyrdom which connects this death cult’s followers from the West Bank to Baghdad to the madrassas of Pakistan and Yemen and the suburbs of Leeds and London, he can be seen gesticulating theatrically as he spews hatred of Jews and incites parents to teach their children there is no goal “more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid’’. Already, a Melbourne Muslim group has facilely attempted to equate Sheik Feiz’s remarks with Prime Minister John Howard’s support for a Christian interfaith conference organised in part by the Catch the Fire Ministry, itself the target of a concerted if totally flawed attack by Islamic organisations and the Victorian Government’s own ideologically distorted anti-vilification police. Bad translations, loose cannons, poor attempts at humour, and the rest of the threadbare excuses will be trotted out. Attempts will also be made to deflect attention from these examples of gross intolerance with references to the prolonged incarceration of David Hicks. But many who believe they are good, morally upright people will sign petitions in their Christian churches this Sunday, as they have in recent months and declare that the democratic processes of the US are corrupted. The jihadi puppeteers peddling Sheik Feiz videos to simpletons should be effusive in their thanks for the support of the civil liberties lobby and the social justice set and the human rights and peace groups waiting to talk to the school students and to the church bodies which see themselves as the consciences of the nation. With their dubious moral equivocations, their transparent anti-Americanism, their acceptance of an unprecedented level of anti-Semitism, and their contempt for basic Australian freedoms including such simple pastimes as bathing in a bikini without being threatened, members of these groups do as much to confuse and weaken the national will as any extremist suicide bomber. It’s all very well for popular opinion to demand that Sheik Feiz be brought to book for his outrageous remarks, and for vote-grubbers like the NSW Premier Morris (The Dilemma) Iemma to say he should not return. However, within the past 12 months attempts to outlaw merchants of hate were scoffed at by hard and soft Left alike. Ordinary Australians may well think Sheik Feiz and others of his ilk will attract dangerous followers with their hate speech with disastrous effect - just as we have seen from London to Amsterdam to Madrid to Bali to Jakarta and to the smoking ruins of the World Trade Centre but our society has few weapons in its arsenal. For this or that sheik to be prosecuted, it must be proved beyond doubt that it was intended through their statements to urge the use of force or violence, or that they intentionally urged a person to engage in conduct to assist an enemy. Statements made without evidence of any intention to urge force or violence do not fall within the elements of the offence. Little wonder the hate-filled sermons pour from certain mosques each Friday, inspiring deluded souls like Hicks, perhaps, to take up arms against the West. Australia has a racial discrimination act, as do a number of states and the territories. However, as we have seen in Victoria with the Catch the Fire case and in NSW on numerous occasions, it is activist Muslims, arguing the case for intolerance, who clog the corridors of justice with their specious claims of outrage. Australians have idly watched as Islamists agitated elsewhere. Now we have our own imbedded purveyors of hatred. This is not a mark of the sophistication of our laws of freedom of speech; it is a measure of our acceptance of self destruction, well-intentioned, of course.