Yesterday, terrorists threatened to “behead” Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie if she did not help “introduce sharia law in Australia.”
To her credit, Lambie had recently called for the introduction of the death penalty for terrorists and had been quoted as saying: “If you don’t like our Australian law… then pack your bags and… leave. We will never bow down to sharia law.”
The police do not yet know whether this death threat was sent by Jihadists or by opponents of a planned mosque.
Australia, Down Under? Is there no continent free of lone wolves, wolf packs, citizen-jihadists who turn on their own countrymen or who travel to join ISIS?
Sadly, the answer is no. In fact, yesterday the Australian government barred its citizens from traveling to Mosul to combat “what the government calls growing radicalization among young Australian Muslims, some of whom have fought overseas with militant groups.”
Australia is part of the core group coalition against ISIS, which consists of the United States, Britain, France, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Denmark.
Jihad is not new to Australia. According to Mark Durie, writing in Middle East Forum, almost one hundred years ago, in 1915, two Muslim men joined forces to shoot and kill four people and wound several others before being killed by police. They were answering the “call to jihad issued by the Ottoman Caliphate (on 11 November 1914).”
Durie defines three different forms of jihad: “individual jihad,” “jihad by bands,” and “jihad by campaigns,” which is warfare using armies directed by the Caliph. “This is the mode the self-declared caliphate known as the Islamic State is following today.”
These jihadists are not crazy or stupid or impoverished or justifiably angry because they have been persecuted. This is, pure and simple, “a manifestation of Islamic theology.” Westerners, especially our leaders and elites, do not want to believe this. As I have pointed out elsewhere, contrary to Western myth, many Islamic terrorists come from stable homes and have advanced educations; their leaders are often men of enormous wealth.
In December of 2014, “Sheikh” Man Haron Monis took 18 people hostage at the Lindt Chocolate Café in Sydney; he also hung an ISIS flag in the window. Two hostages and the gunman were killed. Like the 1915 Australian jihadists, Monis had experienced difficulties with the law. One of the 1915 jihadists, Mullah Abdullah, had been convicted of slaughtering sheep on an unlicensed premise; in 2014, Monis was facing criminal charges as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife.
When someone is taught that they are “superior” and should dominate others and yet finds himself treated just like everyone else—or treated punitively due to what constitutes criminal behavior in the West but not in the Muslim world—one’s honor has been assaulted and revenge is called for. Such behavior—attacking Western officers or civilians– means that “sudden” or “instant” jihadists have internalized shame and honor codes and believe that Islam should reign supreme over every other religion and legal system.
Westerners have a very hard time believing this as well.
Jihad has been building for years in Australia. In 1998, a Sydney police station was shot at by four Arabs. In 2004, a Lebanese-Australian told a reporter that he “wanted to undertake a terror attack in Sydney in the name of Islam.”
According to Australian terrorism researcher Andrew Zammitt, in 2003, thirteen Melbourne men and nine Sydney men were arrested and charged with forming two different cells to prepare attacks. Eighteen were convicted. These arrests suggested that Australians had become “newly radicalized” post 9/11.
In 2005, hundreds of Australian women at the beach were harassed by angry, offended Muslims. Two hundred such men thereafter smashed hundreds of cars and windows, bashed several people and threatened women with rape.
In the summer of 2014, when Israel was self-defensively trying to eradicate the diabolical terror tunnels in Gaza, a convoy of cars drove through Sydney, brandishing the black flag of ISIS. Some chanted: “Jew and Christian will not stand. You can never stop Islam.”
In the fall of 2014, in Melbourne, Abdul Numan Haider was going to be questioned for “inflammatory” social media postings. He was on the radar. However, when the police came to talk to him—only to talk to him, not to arrest him—Haider stabbed one officer in the abdomen, neck, and head; he stabbed a second officer in the forearm. Haider was shot and killed.
Haider was considered to be a “gentle, loving, quiet” person, a “skinny small boy” who was a devout Muslim.
A worshipper at Haider’s mosque suggested that the 18 year-old was “upset about the recent cancellation of his passport and the police attention on him, [and] frustrated at what was happening in Iraq and Syria.”
Like the jihadists in 1915 and 2014, Haider did not view Australian law as more important than Sharia law and the “call to Jihad,” and when he got in trouble with the law (he was legally stopped from leaving Australia), and when he was merely questioned, he immediately enacted his own, lone Jihad.
I called a friend in Australia who does not want to be named. He is a physician and has many Arab patients. He shared the following anecdotes.
“I have had many Arab patients. I tell them I am German. Many praised me because Hitler was German and did ‘such a great job with the Jews.’ At a clinic, a Muslim reception clerk often greeted me with Heil Hitler, arm extended, and a smile. He thought I was an Aryan German. A young man, whom Australian Jews had helped, confided in me, saying that ‘Islam is going to take over the world as the fastest growing religion. Even in Australia.’ One of my Australian patients complained that he was harassed and bullied on the street by Arabs, shouting, ‘we are going to take over your f**king country.’ Someone who had been a member of Hezbollah, wanted me to write a letter for him to the Prime Minister so he would not be deported. When I declined, he grabbed me by the neck and threatened me.”
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