Lakembastan

A deeply scarred Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of Murdoch's Australian, tells us how, most reluctantly, he lost his virginity... er, sorry - I don't know what came over me - his faith in multiculturalism:

"In 1993, my family and I moved into Belmore in southwest Sydney. It is the next suburb to Lakemba. When I first moved there I loved it... On the other side of Belmore, away from Lakemba, there were lots of Chinese... and on the Lakemba side lots of Lebanese... But in the nearly 15 years we lived there the suburb changed, and much for the worse. Three dynamics interacted in noxious fashion: the growth of a macho, misogynist culture among young men that often found expression in extremely violent crime; a pervasive atmosphere of anti-social behaviour in the streets; and the simultaneous growth of Islamist extremism and jihadi culture. [...] Occasionally at the train station I was recognised and my pro-Israel articles were not popular, though nothing serious ever came of these incidents. The worst thing I saw myself was two strong young men, of Middle Eastern appearance, waiting outside the train station. A middle-aged white woman emerged from the station alone. She was rather oddly dressed, with a strange hair-do. The two young men walked up beside her, began taunting her and then finished their effort by spitting in her face. They laughed riotously and walked away. She wiped the spittle off her face and hurried off home. It was all over in a few seconds." (How I lost my faith in multiculturalism, The Australian, 2/4/11)

Muslims of course. No doubt about it. The gutteral gibberish, the deranged look, the eyebrows fused in the middle, the hooked noses, the camels hitched to a railing nearby. And not just your common and garden Muslims either, but your dinky-di, Koran-quoting, scimitar-waving jihadi variety! Of course Greg knows a Koranic verse when he hears one, he's a foreign editor after all, and your scimitar? - pretty damn hard to hide, I'd say. Well, all the above, a trip to Europe in '09, "working on Muslim migration issues," and Christopher Caldwell's book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, "the best book of any kind on public policy I have read, [establishing] definitively that [Muslim migration] has been overwhelmingly a determined illegal immigration, not a refugee question,"* have finally, though with many a wistful backwards glance, brought Greg to the realisation that, Australia, we have a problem:

"Does Islam itself have a role in these problems? The answer is complex and nuanced but it must be a qualified, and deeply reluctant, yes... Islam is a deep sea with a tradition of much spiritual goodness and genuine insight. However, the Koran itself contains numerous injunctions to violent jihad and suppression of infidels. It also contains passages against violence and against compulsion in religion. These things are to a considerable extent matters of interpretation but it is understandable that at the very least a sizeable minority of Muslims choose an extremist interpretation." (ibid)

And so, dragged kicking and screaming by what he now knows to be the case - that, because of a failed, Muslim-friendly multicultural policy, none of us are really safe any more from jihadi spittle attacks launched from the Lakemba Strip (Spit?) - it's time to start screening those who hit these shores for their "ability to integrate into Australian society." Exactly how he'd have our immigration watchdogs go about this he doesn't say, although he does say something early in his 2-page spread about "identity" in Australia being "credal": "Recite the nation's creed, believe the creed, and you are an insider. It's a powerful mechanism because it focuses on values, not ethnicity." Perhaps he'll enlighten us in a follow-up article with the actual text of that creed.

Ah, Greg, I'm sorry to hear of your travails on the mean streets of Lakembastan. You deserve better. You really do. Just think, if only you'd moved to a carefree, jihadi-free place such as the northern beaches, you'd have been spared this terrible knowledge, those brushes with evil. And speaking of the northern beaches, Greg, it's funny but I found, in the exact same issue of The Australian that featured your doleful reflections, a report which shed some interesting light on that mecca (I'm sorry if I've offended you by using that word, Greg) of Aussie values, surf and sun. Allow me to quote from it, the better to revile the spitting jihadi madness that's taken hold of the Lakemba Strip/Spit:

"There was perhaps, from a sociological poit of view, an interesting insight into one tiny slice of society in the late 1970s. They were not really 'Roselands lads' - that was a term thought up by Mr Hammill - but they were 'sharpies', according to one of their number, Pasquale 'Percy' Virtue. That, he said, was because they were of ethnic origin and Catholic, resented being called 'wogs' and would get into fights over it. Younger males hanging around were known as 'HWs', which meant 'hero worshippers', and the young women as 'LTs', or 'little titties'." (A disappearance that remains in darkness, Malcolm Brown)

"What horrors [Trudi Adams] must have suffered. One story heard during the inquest was that while trying to hitch a ride in Barrenjoey Road, Newport, about 12.30am on June 25, 1978, she had been dragged into a Kombi van and sexually assaulted by several young men. The story went that she had dashed out her brains on a power pole as she jumped out, and had been picked up by the same men, two of whom had sexual intercourse with her body as they took her away to 'Palmie', as they called Palm Beach." (ibid)

[* For an earlier post on Greg, Caldwell, and 'Eurabia' see my 31/10/09 post Reinforcing Stereotypes.]