The irony in the controversy that has broken out about whether Australia should impose a total ban on Muslim immigration to combat ISIS terror is that if only Iraq had been able to close its borders to Western invaders back in 2003, this whole ISIS shit could have been avoided.
The controversy was stoked by the call by The Voice host Sonia Kruger on the July 18 Today show to have all immigration to Australia by Muslims “stopped now”. Kruger justified the call by reference to the July 14 Nice killings, when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a truck into a crowd and killed 84 people.
Of course, as Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was not actually a practising Muslim, but a mentally disturbed man with access to a large truck, it probably makes more sense to ban all sizeable motor vehicles.
He was also reportedly a beer drinker, so maybe we should ban beer drinkers too, which, by basically excluding the English wholesale, and history does suggest they are the migrants likely to cause the most damage.
It is true ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Nice attack, but it claims responsibility for everything these days. I wouldn't be surprised to hear ISIS claiming to have built the world's first time machine in their northern Iraq stronghold and taking credit for Jack the Ripper, the Kennedy assassination and 1980s hair and metal bands.
Of course, not every violent act by a mentally unstable man counts as a terrorist. In Western Sydney on July 21, a car was set alight and driven into the Merrylands police station in what was briefly labelled a “terrorist attack” until it turned out the mentally unstable man was white.
Police called the incident “drama-laden”, as though it was a particularly gripping episode of Downton Abbey. But had it been carried out by an individual with any connection to the Muslim community, it is a fair bet its aftermath would have more resembled an episode of Game of Thrones.
It is not that we have no terrorists to worry about here. Sydney man Renas Lelikan has been charged over his alleged links to the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which is listed as a banned terrorist group.
The PKK is a group that, as well as fighting the Turkish regime's genocidal war against Kurds, is known as one of the most effective forces in the Middle East fighting ISIS.
So to sum up, attacking a police station with a flaming car isn't terrorist, but allegedly supporting the fight against the world's most infamous terrorist group is. So long as our logic is clear, we can keep the moral upper hand.
Further controversy was stoked by the debate over whether Kruger's comments to close Australia's borders to all Muslims were racist. It is an allegation her supporters angrily reject, yet it is undeniable that she began with that infamous statement that precedes so many racist comments: “I think Andrew Bolt has a point”.
In her defence, Kruger released a statement saying, “I believe it's vital in a democratic society to be able to discuss these issues without being labelled racist”.
Of course, a case might be mounted that it could be considered vital for any democratic society to avoid systematically persecuting an entire community on the basis of their religion.
Many respond to allegations that persecuting Muslims is “racist” with the argument that Islam is not a race — a particular use of semantics that not even the Nazis dared use at Nuremburg, failing, as they did, to defend their deadly race hatred of Jews by insisting: “But your Honour, the Jews aren't a race!”
It is true that Islam is not a race. It is also true that a blanket ban on Muslim immigrants would close our borders to the vast majority of people from North Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia — among other places notable for being decidedly non-white.
Whether the intent of the ban, or the person advocating the ban, is racist is less important than the undeniable fact that its impact would be racist. But it is apparently vital for the functioning of a democratic society that no one be allowed to point this out.
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