Andrew Bolt responds to Waleed Aly speech on The Project about Paris massacre and Islamic State

IN a segment about the Paris attacks on The Project, Waleed Aly singled out just one Australian - Pauline Hanson. This is disgraceful, evasive and scapegoating, says Andrew Bolt.

I WAS wondering how Waleed Aly would spin the Paris massacre.

Last night on The Project, Aly:

- suggested it wasn’t actually the work of the Islamic State, even though the Islamic State has taken responsibility and France has retaliated by attacking Islamic State targets in Syria;

- claimed it was some kind of self-motivated “DIY” terrorism, even though the attack was extensive, clearly well-planned and well-supplied, involving at least eight heavily armed terrorists from at least three countries, with one terrorist apparently arriving in Europe as a “Syrian refugee” just last month;

- claimed the Islamic State was actually “weak”, even though this “weak” terrorist outfit has in the past month killed 129 people in France, 224 people in a Russian jet in Egypt and 44 people in bombings in Beirut;

- warned against fighting the Islamic State in Syria on the grounds we’d been falsely told that destroying al Qaeda would “end” terrorism - a claim no leader anywhere actually made, and one that ignores the inability of al Qaeda to repeat its “success” of September 11 since the invasion of Afghanistan;

- gave not one single proposal for actually fighting the Islamic State or reducing the terrorism threat other than a fatuous call to “unite”, even though he is a lecturer at Monash University’s terrorism centre.

Andrew Bolt.

Waleed Aly. Picture: Andrew Tauber

Worse, though, Aly in his editorial singled out just one Australian by name - and picture - for criticism.

No, it wasn’t a Muslim hate preacher like Sheik Wahwah.

It wasn’t the evasive Grand Mufti, who yesterday actually used the France terrorism to demand the West treat Muslims better.

It wasn’t any of the Muslims who have joined or recruited for the Islamic State or shot or stabbed Australians here.

It wasn’t any of the 21 Muslims jailed here for terrorism offences.

No, the one Australian he attacked was Pauline Hanson, a non-Muslim who has warned against the threat of jihadism.

That is disgraceful.

That is evasive.

That is scapegoating.

Pauline Hanson does not threaten to kill anyone.

She does not espouse the creed of those who do.

Mourners gather outside the Bataclan concert hall, the scene of the worst atrocity of the Paris attacks, to lay flowers. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

True, Aly this time did mention Islam, which he refused to do in some past attempts to explain some Islamist terrorist attack.

But he did not give some important context in giving his bizarre take on the Paris atrocity.

First, he is a Muslim and was spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria at a time that it had voted to make the extremist Sheik Hilali the Mufti of Australia.

He could be seen to have an agenda.

Second, just last year he falsely claimed the Islamic State represented no great threat to us:

What seems to underlie all of this is that ISIS represents a serious threat to Australia. Can you give us an indication of precisely the scope of that threat and the mechanism, can you describe its precise terms? Because it’s not immediately clear when you consider this is a movement on the other side of the world that seems to be importing people rather than exporting them.

Since then, an Islamic State supporter staged the deadly Martin Place siege.

Another Islamic State supporter stabbed two police in Melbourne.

A teenager in contact with the Islamic State shot police accountant Curtis Cheng.

The Paris terrorists, linked to the Islamic State, shot an Australian teenager.

I believe Channel 10 must question whether Aly should be the station’s main explainer of Islamist terrorism.

Mind you, I am the bad guy.

The media Left on Twitter is loving Aly’s take.

Anything that suggests that we can fight the Islamic State with a few hugs and hashtags, plus a big bucket of sand in which to bury our heads, is just what they want to hear.