Babette Francis is Indian-born and experienced life in Muslim-majority provinces before the Partition of the Indian sub-continent into India and Pakistan. I am wearing a traditional Indian garland that she kindly presented to me. Here is her account of one of the talks I gave during my recent Australian tour.
“Australians warned about Islamic ‘jihad by stealth,'” by Babette Francis for News Weekly, December 24:
Muslims in Australia are the first migrant group which has no intention of assimilating in the host country, according to an American authority on Islamic extremism during a recent speaking tour of Australia.
Robert Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for US army, FBI and counter-terrorism officers, heads Jihad Watch and is a prolific author.
Even before his arrival in Australia for his speaking tour, Spencer’s impending visit was denounced by the Deputy Premier of Queensland, Andrew Fraser, who called upon the Liberal National Party and Bob Katter’s Australian Party to denounce advertising material distributed by the main sponsor for Spencer’s visit, the Q Society, which is dedicated to halting the further Islamisation of Australia.
I had lunch with Robert Spencer during his time in Melbourne and heard him speak that evening on the nature and aims of Islam. He emphasised the “jihad by stealth” approach by Muslims in Australia, noting they are the first migrant group which has no intention of assimilating in the host country.
He said: “Muslims constitute the first immigrant group with a notion of “˜superior governance” to the existing society of the host country. They see it as a “˜divine responsibility” to emigrate “” just as Mohammed moved from Mecca to Medina “” with the intention of establishing Sharia law wherever they are.
“This is not a question of race “” both Hindus and Pakistanis, who shared the same country until the middle of last century, were racially similar. However there has never been an attempt by Hindu immigrants to establish a Hindu worldview as the sole approach to life in Australia.
“Islam, on the contrary, has the aim of fighting [this is the meaning of jihad] from without or within a society to establish Sharia law here.”
Some nominal and secular Muslims come to Australia, as well as to Europe and North America, to escape Sharia, and when they get to the West they find authorities eagerly granting concessions to their more rigid coreligionists.
Loss of free speech
Spencer observed the asymmetrical nature of the battle with Islam. If one complains about the Islamisation of the country, one’s facts and observations are not listened to; one is immediately labelled “˜Islamophobic”. A phobia is an irrational fear, but in the case of Islam there is a well-attested danger of an increased incidence of terrorist killings, aggressive Islamist policies and refusal to integrate into a host country.
Spencer said “hate speech” laws are advancing in Australia. They are really Islamic laws because in Islam you are punished not because what you have said is untrue, but for saying what is not permissible to say under Islam.
The Islamic approach, said Spencer, is “a polemic against Judaeo-Christian society”. Muslims deplore the division of politics and religion in the West. They state with pride that their “religion” covers everything in life from everyday matters to everything in the political sphere.
I myself was living in India when over a million people were killed during riots which accompanied the Partition of the sub-continent into India and Pakistan. There was murder and mayhem by both Hindus and Muslims, but even as a teenager I understood the reason my country had to be divided was because the Muslim-majority provinces would not accept incorporation into a secular, democratic country.
Islam allows for no separation between religion and state, evident now when elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya have resulted not in the establishment of secular governments but of Islamist regimes, Sharia law and, of course, polygamy, which is completely counter to any concept of equal rights and dignity for women.
Spencer said that he was in Australia not because he hated anyone, but because he loves truth, law, freedom and human rights, the essence of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
The alternative to this, he warned, is to grasp power over everyone and everything.
As he pointed out: “The Koran’s Sura 3.110 says “˜the best of People” should rule the earth. The “˜best of people” refers to Muslims. Non-believers whom Muslims rule in the Koran states are to be ceaselessly subjugated.
“This differs from Christianity as unbelievers are to be made to suffer in this life as well as in the next. While the God of the Christians says “˜Vengeance is mine”, in the Islamic system the Koranic mandate is that Muslims should rule and inflict suffering on non-Muslims and exact revenge on them for being non-believers.
“Muslims” purpose is to put an end to the rule of unbelievers. Non-Muslims have no rights. This motivated Abu Hamza, now in jail in Britain. From an excess of piety he injured himself while trying to construct a bomb to kill unbelievers. He was following the dictates of his “˜religion”.”
Ritual humiliation
Sharia mandates a state of subordination of unbelievers. The tax “” or jizya “” is the payment a non-Muslim makes to a Muslim for not killing him/her. Spencer likened it to paying protection money to the Mafia. There is nothing benign about it. Humiliation must accompany the payment of such a tax “” whose alternatives are conversion or death.