DAR AL HARB - AUSTRALIA: IT MAKES SENSE FOR WESTERNERS TO BE VIGILANT ABOUT TERRORISM, OR EVEN OBSESSED

Every right to be obsessed by Islamic terrorism
by Gerard Henderson

The terrorist attacks on London and Glasgow at the weekend should bring a sense of reality to the debate over civil liberties in the West. They should. But don't bet on the prospect. The problem is that a number of well-meaning people in the civil liberties lobby will continue to believe what they want to believe, and consequently, will continue to deny that Islamist terrorists want to destroy Western societies.

It's just gone four months since Justice Michael Kirby, during proceedings in the High Court in Thomas v Mowbray, equated a focus on terrorism with obsession. Interrupting David Bennett, the solicitor for the Commonwealth, Kirby said: "The Americans, with all respect, have become completely obsessed with September 11 [2001] and that is not an event which occurred in this country and I think we have to keep our eye on the threats to Australia. I mean, more people die every day from AIDS than died on September 11."

What's a fine legal mind such as Kirby doing running a non sequitur like this? In fact there is no causal connection between deaths from terrorism and deaths from AIDS. Yet this non sequitur seems to have become fashionable in that large section of the legal profession that supports the civil liberties lobby.

In May 2006 Julian Burnside, QC, took part in a debate in which he argued that citizens have more to fear from the state than from terrorists. His non sequitur was of the motor vehicle genre. Burnside said: "The average worldwide death toll from terrorism each year is 600 to 700 people - which makes it one of the least likely ways to die. Westerners are 100,000 times more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist attack".

The obvious fact is that HIV/AIDS is a problem and so are motor vehicle accidents and so is terrorism. More people die from heart disease than AIDS in Australia, but it does not follow that those who focus on the latter illness should be depicted as obsessive. It's much the same with the road toll. It's responsible for more deaths than, say, cystic fibrosis but this does not mean that deaths from this illness are less significant than accidental death.

If such logical howlers were made in a school debate they could be readily corrected. However, when they are made by bright, well-meaning people such as Kirby and Burnside there is a problem. Clearly neither wants to acknowledge that Islamist terrorists want to attack Western and non-Western societies and to kill indiscriminately.

The US was attacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001. In view of this, Americans have every right to be obsessed with terrorism. We know that Islamist terrorists have also waged war on Australians and others in Bali, on British and others in Britain as well as in Spain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and elsewhere. It is not clear precisely what happened in Britain at the weekend but the preliminary evidence suggests an Islamist attack of some kind. In view of this, the British have a right to be obsessed with terrorism.

The Kirby-Burnside position is an honourable one in Western society in that both men put a primacy on human rights. But this position usually subsides, for a period at least, when nations regard themselves as under attack or even at war. In the present climate, particularly after the suicide attacks in London on July 7, 2005, it is hardly surprising that civil liberties are being wound back in Britain. What is surprising is that the British equivalent of the Kirby-Burnside position remains extant.

In Australia there has been a broad bipartisan approach to the terrorist threat at federal and state levels. It has been the Greens and the Democrats who have sided with the civil liberties lobby. In Britain, on the other hand, the Conservatives in opposition did not fully support Tony Blair's Labour Government on national security issues. Consequently, Britain's laws on terrorism are not as strong as they might be. It is not clear whether Gordon Brown will attempt to strengthen national security legislation following the most recent terrorist attacks.

The mindset of today's civil liberties lobby in Western democracies is not dissimilar to that of the pacifists of recent memory. They do not want to believe that terrorists really are a threat, just as the pacifists did not want to believe that some totalitarian regimes were hell-bent on aggression. Some Westerners do not want to acknowledge that belief motivates individuals to kill in the name of a secular or religious ideology.

In Warrant for Terror (Hoover Studies, 2006), Shmuel Bar examines the fatwa issued by Sunni Muslim leaders with the call to wage jihad against the West. He says Islamism is not a "consequence of political and socioeconomic factors alone" and points to "the centrality of the religious culture that allows it to flourish". The civil liberties lobby does not want to concede that Islamists are waging a religious war against the West.

The June 2006 issue of Prospect contains a study by Shiv Malik of the British-born suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan. Malik shows that Khan was not motivated by a dislike of Blair's foreign policy but by a commitment to "Islamism as a kind of liberation theology" along with a desire to destroy the British democratic state in order to impose a Muslim caliphate.
Warrant for Terror shows there has only been one fatwa issued by Sunni Islam leaders condemning terrorism. In March 2005 some Spanish Muslims issued a fatwa opposing Osama bin Laden. But, according to Bar, this "has not been backed up by any leading Islamic scholar in Spain or in the wider Muslim world".

While the overwhelming majority of Muslim leaders decline to condemn al-Qaeda's killings, it makes sense for Westerners to be vigilant about terrorism. Or even obsessed.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of the Sydney Institute.



Pertinent Links:

1) Every right to be obsessed by Islamic terrorism