Scimitar society. (Letters).

SIR: I am writing to add my voice to yours in respect of the editorial "Compassion, Illegal Immigration and Hypocrisy" (October 2001). But I would also like to say that I take umbrage with the terms elite and intellectual that recur so frequently throughout the editorial. Journalists and schoolteachers, together with a few academics in disciplines like sociology, education, anthropology and political science, do not constitute an intellectual elite, so much as a coterie of reciprocating collaborators of narrow dogma, used to repress the thoughts of those who have a deeper and longer view. Such persons who have managed to corner the market on presentable opinion include Mike Carlton, Michelle Grattan, Jennifer Hewitt, Mark Riley and even, disappointingly, Tony Jones and Maxine McKew, who have half-baked views on historiography and contextualisation. At the same time, those who do present a longer view, like Geoffrey Blainey or Roger Sandall, are predictably dismissed as narrow or bigoted or constructivist, given to an abuse of discourse.

These so-called intellectual elites are particularly selective themselves in denouncing categorically a word like crusade, while demanding a sensitive interpretation of jihad. It is apparently forgotten that the crusades of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries were attempts to regain holy places taken by marauding Saracens under the banners of their early jihads. It is rarely remembered that the supposedly gracious and gentle Saladin had 330 knights slaughtered after the Battle of Hattin in 1187 because they would not submit to the faith of Allah.

It was because of pirating Muslims that southern Europe was trapped in the dark ages, and that Spain was overrun and the Spanish Catholics oppressed until the Reconquista gradually drove out the intruders. This campaign was not complete until the year Columbus embarked on his voyage to open up the New World to the advances and benign influences of the West. It is unlikely you would find many native Americans who would appreciate the loss of the extra twenty or thirty years of life that westernisation brought them, or the loss of the televisions or beer or tenpin bowling so they could return to the tepee and the buffalo hunt.

The intellectual elite dogmatists may forget the Muslim depredations that have continued through from the time of the hegira, while calling on their publics to acknowledge the wonderful work of Averroes or Avicenna, yet again forgetting that most of what they published stemmed from the minds of Western thinkers like Aristotle, Archimedes and Hypatia.

I also feel it is important to support the stance taken by Mr Ruddock and the Liberal-National government on illegal immigrants and refugees. It is unreasonable that those who recognise the imposition of such groups and seek to resist it suffer the criticism that dogs them, either because of biased politicking, or uncritical concern for human rights issues. Terms like racist, parochial, redneck, simplistic, xenophobic and Hansonite have recently come to dominate the press electronically and in print. All such terms seem to be code for saying it is wrong to disagree with the self-appointed politically correct.

The disregard shown by boat people from the Middle East for Australian laws and protocols does not seem to be an aberration, but typical of 1400 years of interaction between these people who have raped and pillaged and taxed and even stolen Christian youth to form the nucleus of their armies as janissaries.

I have had dealings with many Middle Eastern people in the school system, I have noted their behaviour in public places, and read reports and statistics that substantiate views concerning an endemic lack of respect for the Australian community. At the same time, the high levels of intolerance apparent in Middle Eastern countries for ...