Hussain's views on bin Laden disturbing and dangerous

HANDSOME, articulate and engaging, Nazeem Hussain, who recently appeared on the ABC's Q&A, presents a plausible face for modern Muslims in Australia.

HANDSOME, articulate and engaging, Nazeem Hussain, who recently appeared on the ABC's Q&A, presents a plausible face for modern Muslims in Australia.

Described as a comedian and the treasurer of the Islamic Council of Victoria, he joined ABC television's Q&A program on May 9 to give a young Muslim Australian's perspective on the death of Osama bin Laden.

The result was highly disturbing and dangerous.

In what amounted to an apologia for terrorism he displayed a warped view of the war against terrorism and drew a moral equivalence between the deliberate and senseless slaughter of almost 3000 innocent people in the US on September 11, 2001 and the targeted killing of terrorist leader bin Laden in Pakistan.

Given more than 100 Australian civilians have been killed in terrorist attacks since those planes were flown into the twin towers, we all live with the trauma of modern security concerns, and we continue to send soldiers into harm's way in Afghanistan, it is too much to accept these misguided and insensitive views as part of a broad public discourse.

Let's examine Hussain's words and consider whether this is really what he wanted to say. "You know, look this is the war on terror,'' said Hussain. "This is the age of rendition, torture, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib Prison.''

Really? Most of us would characterise the age of terror by the vile atrocities perpetrated against civilians. More than 200 people blown apart and burned by bombers in Bali, or dozens of London and Madrid commuters slaughtered in trains on the way to work, or Pakistani families cut down by suicide bombers in a marketplace, or tourists hunted and shot like feral animals in Mumbai - this is the age of terror.

It is also the age of soldiers at sports venues, screening at airports and daily worry we have about travelling friends.

Hussain insults us all by defining the age of terror not through this insidious evil and its consequences but through a list of anti-American grievances.

This is a moral backflip that instantaneously converts the terror campaign from being a savage and unprovoked attack against western people, their supporters and their values into a tale of western wrong-doings fomenting resentment and violence.

What is the point of these words if not an attempt to provide excuses for terrorism?

In fact, Hussain went on to explicitly blame the west for terrorists.

"You know, Islamic terrorism exists in the context of many, many years of western intervention in the Middle East dating back to the first Gulf War with sanctions and bombings of Iraq.

"You know, I think we need to start looking broadly about how we talk about terrorism.

"With so much  you know, with so many years of intervention in the Middle East, eventually you're going to create someone like Osama bin Laden who is going to react in a way that you just can't control.''

So Hussain is saying it was all our fault.  What a terrible, wrong and dangerous thing to say.

This is the sort of muddle-headed self-loathing that can only endanger the very existence of liberal democracies because it leads inevitably to us doing whatever the terrorists demand.

This bright young man neglected to condemn the horror and went straight to criticising our response.

He neglected to detail the evil of bin Laden's actions but immediately protested the trampling of the al-Qa'ida leader's rights: "You know due process isn't something that the US has always kind of followed, so it's not surprising that they essentially perhaps, you know, executed this guy.

"They didn't ever express an intention to capture this guy, to put him on trial.''

That these views are held and expressed is bad enough but some in the ABC studio applauded them.

Thankfully, Malcolm Turnbull and Lydia Khalil offered eloquent alternative views that condemned terrorism, defended our right to tackle it and promoted a tolerant attitude to people of all faiths.

But what of Hussain and the danger of his words? He actually drew an unqualified moral equivalence between the actions of Osama bin Laden and those of President Obama: "I think you shouldn't respond in, you know, the same way that bin Laden has  you know, bin Laden killed people indiscriminately.

"You know, he intended to go out and kill people and that was his form of justice.

"I don't think the United States should be proud that they're stooping to the same level.''

Without knowing Hussain, I would venture to suggest he might retract that statement in the cold light of day.

Surely he cannot seriously contend the shooting of a terrorist mastermind in a military raid is comparable to the deliberate slaughter of 3000 civilians. But he should be held responsible for those words and consider their implications.

If this is the message we get from a young, modern and moderate Muslim Australian, then we all have a lot of work to do.

The starting point is that terrorism must always be condemned and never justified.

Hussain seems to think we all have a lot to learn: "Now, that he's gone, now we can just take a break, pause, look back and see where we are and see if we've actually progressed since September 11 ten years ago in terms of our attitudes towards minority communities  not just Muslims but people who aren't white in Australia.''

Get it? Osama bin Laden apparently taught us a lesson about how we treat minorities.

If Hussain doesn't understand how offensive this is, he really needs to sit down and discuss these issues with a mature person.

In fairness, Hussain did also say this about bin Laden; "Look, can I just say I don't like this guy. I'm not a sympathiser.''

But Hussain's performance does leave us with difficult questions about whether it is appropriate to air those views, and if so, how we should challenge them.

 Chris Kenny is an editorial writer for The Australian newspaper.