IN A POKE in the eye to decency — and hot on the heels of the disgusting terrorist attack in Paris on Friday — news that Muslims have set up a political party in Australia is the last thing we need; parties predicated on any religion are abhorrent, but the idea of a Muslim bloc in Australian legislatures is an outrage. Signs of Islam’s utter incompatibility with liberal democracy are everywhere. This enterprise must be defeated at all costs.

I must apologise for my silence; some of the undertakings that have placed great demands on my time in the past few months are winding down after reaching something of a crescendo point recently, and as ever, the things that take precedence are those that pay the bills: hence my silence in this column at a terrible time in world events, although I have remained vocal — where possible — on Twitter throughout.

In any case, whilst there are still a couple of known time-intensive jobs headed my way in the next fortnight, readers should see a little more of me from now on.

At the outset, I have to say that what the world witnessed in Paris on Friday night (Melbourne time) was obscene, and for the second time this year the French have borne the despicable burden of showing the rest of the Western world exactly why Islam is utterly incompatible with liberal democratic society, and it is to be hoped that this time — finally — the cacophony of Chardonnay drunks, bullshit squirters and “compassion” babblers is once and for all drowned out by an avalanche of hard-nosed common sense, and the realisation that continuing down the bleating path of trendy socialists who think they’re agents of social Nirvana will lead only to disaster: and an awful lot of bloodshed and lost lives.

Regular readers will recall my piece when Islamic terrorists attacked the offices of French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo in Rheims in January; then, as now, I publish the same image, identically captioned and which is every bit as relevant today, and which has taken on far more sinister meaning in view of the recent events in Paris.

SAGE ADVICE…the culture of violent, radical Islam has no place in free societies.

We will return, e’er briefly, to Paris and the fallout from Friday’s events shortly, and whilst I am painfully aware I’ve missed a lot of the early discussion, there are some points I nonetheless wish to make this morning: unlike the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Paris attack isn’t going to disappear from daily discussion very quickly, and I do want to place a couple of pieces of coverage before readers for their consideration.

But before we do that, the news yesterday that Australia is to have its first Muslim-based party in time to contest next year’s federal election is about as appropriate and as welcome as the proverbial hole in the head; not content with timing the announcement of its arrival to coincide with the brutal slaughter of 130 innocent people in France, the “policy” unveiled to accompany the launch is to never support military action in a Muslim-majority country: or in other words, if the atrocities like Charlie Hebdo and Friday’s Paris massacre continue, and hypothetically are traced to state backing in the Middle East, this party would seek to ensure that no reprisals are ever meted out.

I don’t believe any political party based on religion is appropriate and, as one mischief-maker on Twitter suggested yesterday, that goes for the Christian Democrats as well (which in truth, is really an anti-abortion party in any case, and thus not necessarily the same thing despite its name).

But Rise Up! Australia, for example, with its hardline fundamentalist Christian ideas and the noxious, offensive outbursts of its founder Danny Nalliah — from whom the assertion that the devastating bushfires in Victoria in 2009 was God’s punishment for relatively liberal abortion laws in this state pretty much sums up what is wrong with both Nalliah and his odious party — is, on one level, every bit as bad as any mooted party of Islam. There are, of course, other non-Muslim religious fringe parties I could have equally cited by way of illustration.

But one thing all of them lacks, compared to a Muslim party, is a background theological code of murdering people in its name, and the idea a party underpinned by a religion — or totalitarian ideology, depending on your view — of subjugating women, raping and murdering women and children, slaughtering “infidels” (quite simply, non-Muslims) and bolstered by the newly announced policy of shielding Muslim states from military attack has no place in Australia, and is less welcome than even the repulsive Nalliah and his God-forsaken band of fanatics masquerading as candidates for elective office.

The proposed party (or at least, its central pledge to interfere in the management of external affairs) could well be unconstitutional.

And like any half-arsed, power-crazed electoral venture, the Australian Muslim Party promises only to contest Senate seats and upper house berths at state elections across the country: the same approach of any party that boasts little broad support, and which seeks to accrue disproportionate clout in order to wield disproportionate influence.

I have always said — and do so again, even after what happened in Paris — that what makes dealing with the issue of Islam and the Muslim community in Australia so difficult is that the majority of Muslims do, in fact, simply want to be left alone to live in peace, and don’t actually want to hurt anyone.

Yet by the same token, where Muslim immigration exists, so too does the risk of terrorist atrocities: and the end destination of this lies in the kind of outrage played out on the streets of Paris on Friday night.

Muslim reform activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali (to whom much attention should be paid, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike) published an excellent op-ed piece in The Australian yesterday, in which she bluntly acknowledged that fundamentalist jihadis have been at war with the West “for years,” and that the West must militarily destroy Islamic State and its so-called caliphate, whatever it takes.

She is also on record as describing Sharia law to be “as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism,” and that “Violence is inherent in Islam – it’s a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder (sic).”

But even were Islamic State to be wiped out of its solidifying stronghold in Iraq and Syria, the problem of Islamic fanatics would go unresolved; the only surprise about what went on in Paris last week is that it didn’t occur in the Netherlands or Belgium first, for Muslim numbers in European countries have ballooned to the point that tension between those communities and the rest of the population is a constant. Boilovers — or worse, the profane and gratuitous violence perpetrated in the name of “religion” that occurred in Paris — are an incessant and wholly undesirable prospect.

It is not accurate and not good enough for Muslim leaders to simply eschew responsibility whenever their flock offend against the majority non-Muslim populations in countries where they have been made welcome; in my view, it is idiot-simple (and wrong) to blame Islamic terror now on former US President George W. Bush, or on the United States generally.

Certainly, the flawed military action in Iraq from 2003 onwards was based on false assumptions, and if a finger must be pointed anywhere it should be pointed in the direction of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government was responsible for preparing the defective dossier of intelligence upon which the 2003 strikes were based.

Yet acts of Islamic terror were growing in number and force well before the US led Western forces back into Iraq in 2003; and in any case, deposed tyrant Saddam Hussein had spent years after the first Gulf War claiming he had complied with disarmament obligations imposed on him by the United Nations whenever a Western voice was listening, whilst simultaneously telling his regional neighbours that he retained biological and chemical warfare capability and wouldn’t hesitate to use it if provoked.

This game of brinkmanship was, of course, ultimately exposed as bluster. But whilst the effects of US action may have exacerbated the progressive emergence of Islamic terrorism, it is unfathomable and bereft of credibility to claim it was singularly responsible for it.

And as I mentioned earlier, even if you excise the problem (whoever you believe caused it) from the Middle East, it would simply germinate and fester in Europe and, increasingly, in other Western countries.

One of the big take-outs from events in Paris for me is the admission by French authorities that screening of immigrants to weed out potential terrorists and jihadis had been a failure: and no matter how much chest-thumping or how many claims to tough border control regimes are made in Canberra, or London, or across continental Europe or even in the United States, it defies belief that screening procedures in any Western country are imbued with sufficient rigour or efficacy to stop the importation of militant Islamic terror at the border.

And something that ought to horrify and alarm fair-minded Australians — even the bleating left-wing imbeciles who would simply run up a white flag in the name of “tolerance” when their beloved, unseeing diversity programs are concerned — is that fact that the most senior Muslim in this country, Grand Mufti Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, not only failed to condemn the atrocities in Paris, but added insult to injury by claiming, in short, that the attacks were the fault of the West and, by implication, that our own government was complicit in them.

I’m not going to dissect everything the Grand Mufti had to say, but in terms of his shopping list of things that were responsible for the slaughter in Paris, rather than Muslim communities taking responsibility for the actions of their members:

• “Racism” is a cowardly cop-out — this problem here is not race, but religion, and a theological construct that codifies and practices specific acts of violence against “infidels” and anyone else who dares defy the “sacred” book of Qur’an (and yes, I am well aware the Christian bible also spells out some pretty barbaric edicts, but the difference is that Islam continues to practice literal interpretations of its holy book, whereas Christianity doesn’t);
• The Grand Mufti can hardly complain about “Islamophobia” when the litany of barbaric acts carried out against civilian populations in the name of “Allah Akbar” is growing: of course people are frightened, antagonised, and increasingly hostile to this so-called religion of violent slaughter and destruction;
• Blaming the “curtailing of freedoms through securitisation” is hardly an astute pronouncement from a senior Muslim, when across the world radicalised Islamofascists have destroyed parts of cities, exploded commercial airliners, slaughtered innocents going about their business, beheaded private citizens in Western countries at random and for no particular reason other than religious hatred, and make little effort to hide their disinclination to integrate into the communities that have offered them a chance at a better life;
• And just what “duplicitous foreign policies” the Grand Mufti is referring to is unclear, but in any case, the bottom line appears very simply to be that Islam — with values and laws and expansionist objectives that are utterly incompatible with Western democracy — refuses to play any genuinely meaningful role in western countries it is welcomed into, and that even when accommodated, it can’t be trusted not to bite the hand that feeds it.

These observations will be dismissed by the Left as the rantings of a bigot, a hate monger, or whatever other abuse it is flinging around the place this week, and I strenuously reject any such claim.

I don’t think anyone these days seriously looks at Jewish holocaust survivors, or Greeks or Italians, or people from Asia and India who have found new lives in Australia, and tries to make the claim with any credibility that they don’t want to be part of the Australian community. There will always be fringe wackos around who will try. But Australia’s immigration record is one to be proud of, and the tolerant society it has helped to create is rightly the envy of the rest of the world.

(I would add that the greatest moral hypocrites of our time at the ALP and the Communist Party Greens have amply demonstrated their hatred for Israel, but of course to them, that’s “different:” the hard cold fact is that Israel only responds aggressively when provoked, and surrounded by lawless thugs sworn to wipe it off the face of the Earth, it is no surprise such provocations are frequent. But to the compassion blurters of the Left, radical Islamic aggression = good whilst justified Israeli responses = bad. Such a position is baseless, unjustifiable, and tantamount to an endorsement of outright savagery in and of itself. But I digress).

Even so, the one group that simply refuses to become part of Australian life is the Muslim community: it wants Halal food served everywhere. It wants men and women segregated at swimming pools, sports facilities and other areas. It agitates for the introduction of Sharia law. It refuses to surrender known troublemakers in its ranks to law enforcement agencies. It apologises for terrorist atrocities and seeks to transfer blame for the acts of Islamic jihadists to the very societies that feel the full force of the obscenities they commit. How many Muslims are interested in serving in the Australian military and fighting for their (adopted) country? How many Muslims want to leave the country to fight in jihadi wars against Western interests (as much, admittedly, as against each other among warring Islamic factions)?

These people are happy to take with one hand what they are given by western democracies. It is highly debatable whether anything given back with the other is worth anything at all. Indeed, it seems all countries like Australia get in return for their “compassion” is a kick in the head.

Europe is a powderkeg; with immigration from Muslim countries in places like Belgium and the Netherlands (and France) many years ahead of Australia and involving exponentially more resettled people, the ignition point between the relentless advance of Islam and the fed-up, resentful and defiant incumbent populations has arguably been reached. Very soon, all hell may very well break loose. If and when it does, blaming Uncle Sam will be a facile fallacy indeed.

As night follows day — with the same defective controls on its borders and in screening out potential terrorists in particular, no matter how loudly Coalition politicians might protest — what is going on in Europe is what Australia has to look forward to if things are allowed to continue, unchecked, with the Muslim community insulated from reproach for the actions of its members and the Left cheering it along under the auspices of “social justice,” “humanitarian compassion,” and whatever other fatuous bullshit it churns out to justify undermining the integrity of Australian society.

It is not heartless to insist on the defence of our national way of life; it is not “racist” or prejudicial on religious grounds to point the finger at one group when the weight of evidence of its culpability — and complete incompatibility with Western values — is overwhelming.

I acknowledge how heavy-handed this might seem, especially given I am sincere in also acknowledging that the vast majority of Muslim people don’t want to hurt anyone.

But the first obligation of any government is to its own people — not to others elsewhere in the world, irrespective of the nobility and authenticity of the desire to help others.

Serious consideration must be given to a moratorium on Muslim immigration until or unless failsafe methods of excluding potential terrorists can be devised and implemented. If such an undertaking proves impossible to achieve, then Muslim immigration must end.

There’s nothing bigoted in this. France has shown us twice this year the dangers of unfettered open borders for people who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a decent and tolerant society. The same Left that preaches the need for understanding and acceptance remains mute in the wake of last week’s outrages against civilised decency, and just as unwilling as the Grand Mufti to acknowledge exactly who was at fault for killing and maiming hundreds. That, on its own, speaks volumes.

And it brings me back to the point at hand.

Perhaps a political party for Muslims is legal; perhaps it isn’t, but this is scarcely the point.

Enough acts of barbaric violence mark the course of Muslim settlement in free democratic societies to suggest to any reasonable person that not only is there a serious problem emanating from this particular group, but that the problem is growing — and quickly.

If there are constitutional grounds on which to disqualify and dissolve any Muslim political party, they should be seized upon and used: such a divisive, confrontational and downright inappropriate initiative must be responded to resolutely and with the full force of any law that might neutralise it deployed to that end.

A little foresight is all it takes to see the catastrophic end destination of a political party forged in a religion that claims to be a force of peace when so much of its recent history has left a trail of destruction, rape, murder and other barbarities.

And if forward thinking is beyond the capacity of those well placed to avert such an outcome, then a look instead in the rear view mirror will suffice: the most recent images that receptacle displays are of murdered and wounded civilians in Paris; plenty of comparable episodes are visible the further into the past one chooses to delve.

At the bottom line, Islam is utterly incompatible with the nature and spirit of liberal democracy. It is a poor joke of the most insidious variety that Australian Muslims now seek to attempt to use democracy as a vehicle for the advancement of their aims. Too much indulgence has been afforded to a group in Australian society that will never respond in like kind, and whose brethren elsewhere in the world trade only in slaughter and misery and destruction.

Enough is enough. If Australia, like the rest of the West, is to learn anything at all from the events last week in Paris, it must draw a line in the sand against the excesses of Islam. The time to do so now.