Opinion
The first step to addressing a problem is telling the truth about it. As alcoholics will tell you, admitting the problem is the first step. Nothing meaningful can be done unless you proceed from a basis of truth.
That includes correctly and unflinchingly addressing the truth of the root problem.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Islamic terrorism, that’s something almost no-one in positions of responsibility wants to do. Instead, we get dodging fluff like “religiously motivated violent extremist ideology” from authorities. Even supposedly “right-wing” politicians and media play the same cowardly game, wittering about “Islamist” terror, rather than calling it what it is: Islamic terror.
Far from sly dog-whistling, most of our political leaders have been careful and solicitous of Muslim sensitivities in their discourse on terrorism. Former prime minister Tony Abbott always referred to Islamic State by the Arabic acronymic term Daesh. He did this solely to avoid saying the word Islamic when referring to the Islamic State group.
Malcolm Turnbull, who was always at pains not to demonise Islam, nonetheless frequently referred to “Islamist terrorism”. After one foiled attack, Turnbull declared: “Islamist terror is a global challenge that affects us all.”
“Daesh” it should also be noted is an Arabic pejorative. IS groups threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone they heard using it. In other words, using the term dodged the reality that it is the Islamic State groups being referred to. Like “Islamist”, it’s avoiding admitting the truth.
Islamism is distinctly different from Islam. Islamism is an ideology that seeks to impose a particular, very conservative, interpretation of Islam as the guiding philosophy, and basic law, of the state.
So, it’s not “distinctly different” at all. It’s integrally Islamic. As Graeme Wood wrote for The Atlantic:
“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic… Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”
What is true of Islamic State is true of “Islamism”.
I have the greatest admiration for the head of ASIO, [Mike Burgess]. But in 2021 he actually announced that he was moving away from terms such as Islamist terror and embracing instead the more neutral term “religiously motivated violent extremism”. When a particular attack, group or threat comes from a Sunni Islamist group he sometimes adds the word Sunni.
Much as I admire Burgess, I think this was a very serious mistake. The Islamic peak groups are demanding now that under no circumstances can any security agency or government minister ever use any word that has any derivation of Islam when referring to terrorists and further demanding that they not even use the word “religious” as in religiously motivated terrorism.
This is because, they say, Islam is opposed to terrorism.
If this is true, then it’s pretty shit at opposing it. Some 90% of global terror attacks are related to Islam. The four most deadly terror groups are all Islamic.
In any case, even the Koran explicitly enjoins Muslims to “strike terror into the enemies of Allah”.
But too many people will do anything rather than face these facts.
With the Albanese government now apparently permanently out to lunch on national security, it was left to NSW Premier Chris Minns as usual to express common sense and moral decency. He rejected the call by the Islamic peak bodies and said: “We need to confront religious extremism.”
Minns deserves a kind of Victoria Cross for political leadership for this simple and straightforward statement. He didn’t take refuge in a bureaucratic dodge.
The Australian
If that’s medal-winning straight talk, then God help us all. Far from “simple and straightforward”, Minns couldn’t even bring himself to say the “I-word”.
Until politicians, police, media and religious authorities tell the straight truth, we’ll never solve the problem.
Because the first step is admitting just what the problem is.