Islamist ‘invasion’ is already happening by stealth

a pro-Palestine protest camp at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra to break up the encampments. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There are similarities between the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Intifada protesters shouting “from the river to the sea” in response to the war between Israel and Hamas. For a start, the original Taliban knew almost nothing about their own country or history except that which they were fed by manipulative, charismatic cult-like leaders.

While Australia sent more than 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan during the 20-year War on Terror, with 41 killed, hundreds wounded, and countless with invisible scars, little did we know, the Taliban were building a base right here in our own country.

The literal translation of Taliban is “student”. During their origin in Afghanistan these students were obsessed with cleansing their society through brutal enforcement of sharia law. Its leadership also provided a sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, who planned the September 11 attacks from his Kandahar compound.

In Australia today, we are witnessing the emergence of a new form of Taliban on our streets, at political conferences, universities and at places where Jews may gather. While their claims appear to be about the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, this is a moral cover. Their real aim is to extend the Islamist global insurgency’s power and influence. Their narrative is based on conspiracy, humiliation, justice, oppression, survival and duty. All cosy intellectual affiliates of the modern left-wing, victim-based movements overrunning Western institutions.

Of course, most of these spoilt, lost little souls in Australia are far from being anything like the warriors of Afghanistan: they wouldn’t last five minutes in a Ghazni village. Their privileged cries would be met with stones of justice.

Anyone who participated in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force there will tell you the Taliban maintained and extended control of towns and villages by co-opting or killing the three nodes of leadership – political, security and religious. This is the classic insurgency framework. In a northern Cote D’Ivoire town bordering Mali, I created a community web of protection around these nodes of leadership as they were threatened by al-Qaeda affiliates in their attempt to assume a new region of control. The immediate reaction to this anecdote might be that we are in Australia; not Afghanistan or some far flung African borderland. But it doesn’t matter – the application of this insurgency framework is the same. And not only Australia. Look at this year’s local government elections in the United Kingdom where Islamist candidates shouting “Allahu Akbar” won several seats.

In Australia we have growing numbers of Islamist sympathisers and Jihadist supporters changing the minds of Federal and State politicians, universities and senior leaders across civil society, business and the media. Our foreign policy is changing because of this influence.

What we missed in the War on Terror, but what the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Hamas understand, is the most transformative components of conflict are moral and mental. Being a member of the Taliban is a state-of-mind. The weak can be lured by fantasies. This is the jihad we are witnessing in Australia and other Western countries October 7. Governments assumed our national security and our freedoms could be protected by a strong defence force, borders, and police. As if like a gas, without front or back this movement bypassed all of that. It didn’t even need to sneak in.

One of the least known, yet most strategically influential al Qaeda figures was Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al Suri, arrested during a 2005 counter terrorism raid in Pakistan. No other individual did more to transform al-Qaeda’s strategy into a globalised umbrella. Now jihad is becoming mainstreamed into many aspects of Western society, involving not just physical acts of terrorism, but also the kind of struggle we see around Western cities.

Abu Musab al Suri recognised there would need to be a great mobilisation to achieve mass participation in a jihadist movement. He saw the Palestinian Intifada as the “prototype” but on a broader basis reaching the home of the American invaders and their infidel allies from every race and place.

The phenomenon has been successful because it is coinciding with the denigration of everything that made the West great since the Enlightenment. This includes the slow removal of borders through the creation of anti-sovereignty constructs such as the “Global South” and mass migration. These debase the value of our citizenship. Even Afghans know not to, as they say, let snakes live in your sleeve.

Our own democracy is being cultivated, coerced, and co-opted to support one of the most anti-democratic, anti-Western, anti-Christian movements in the world. We have every right to question this Intifada movement in Australia. Because none of this came via Chinese, or Russian or Iranian cruise missiles, battleships, or drones. It is by our own ruling class of elites who are even making us question freedom of speech. Some people realise videos of priests being stabbed in our suburbs awakens the busy mums and dads and grandparents to the fact that something is not quite right.

The gut-wrenching irony of it all is we sent some of our best this country produces to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. We convinced ourselves the fight was over there. If only we knew a sanctuary for Islamist extremism was being built right here. A sanctuary to undermine all that is good, and decent and generous about Australia.

Dr Jason Thomas teaches business strategy at Swinburne University of Technology and is director of Frontier Assessments.