The Muslim problem and what to do about it.

WHEN I WAS ASKED to give this talk, I hesitated before accepting. I have written previously about Australia's Muslim problem--principally on the opinion page of the Australian, and also, at greater and hence more considered length, in the quarterly National Observer last October--and have been the subject of assorted abuse for doing so. While I wear most of that as a badge of honour, I have also been described (not by name, but collectively) as a "fool" by Andrew Bolt, a columnist whose views I generally respect.

Greg Sheridan, whose foreign policy views I usually hold in high regard,

described some much more limited remarks on this topic by Peter Costello earlier this year as "cheap, lazy, nasty populism", "foolish", "lazy, incendiary" and "idle rhetoric" that "demonises Islam". Since Costello's comments were a mere trifle comparatively, I hesitate to imagine Sheridan's opinion of my own views.

The reason that I risk even more such opprobrium is that, despite the ever-mounting level of evidence, there appears to be very little recognition at the national political level in Australia of the clear and present danger confronting us.

In attempting to restate that danger, it would be easy to focus on the crimes which, over recent years, have emanated from Australia's Muslims. Two and a half years ago, former detective Tim Priest spoke to a Quadrant dinner about his concerns in that regard (see Quadrant, January-February 2004). Since then we have seen, among many other such developments, the revelations over the gang-raping of "white Aussie sluts" by young Muslim men of Pakistani origin; the increasing Muslim lawlessness in south-western Sydney; and the concerted raids on some eastern suburbs by car-load convoys of young Muslim men "responding", so they said, to the Cronulla riot of December 11, 2005. Incidentally, while I do not condone that riot, it is worth remembering that it was clearly provoked by the mounting anger over the behaviour of similar young Muslim men at Cronulla and other beaches for some years previously.

It would be easy to point to such specific acts of lawlessness, and to the ineffectual reactions of those responsible for law and order in New South Wales-including, now, a premier whose own electorate centres on Lakemba and whose party is responsible for the continued presence here of one of our foremost Muslim troublemakers, the Imam of the Lakemba mosque, Sheikh Al-Hilali. It would also be easy to point out that there has still not been a significant prosecution of the Muslims involved in those December raids.

It would be easy--and it would largely miss the point. It would do so because the point does not reside in these individual criminal or otherwise offensive incidents, such as the presence of violently anti-Western literature in assorted Muslim bookshops. If we focus only on such matters, the responses of our politicians will consist on the one hand of such things as enhanced policing, sterner anti-sedition laws, more expenditure on ASIO and the Australian Federal Police, and so on. On the other hand, we shall see their further attempts to "embrace" the Muslim community while arguing that, just like former immigrant groups in postwar Australia, in due course it too will meld into our great national "diversity". Even the Prime Minister has not been guiltless of this form of cultural appeasement.