Reading Brendan O'Neill

What happens when you just make it up as you go along? Well, chances are that what you write will end up looking something like an opinion piece by Brendan O'Neill - half-baked, propagandist. 

O'Neill, editor of Spiked, is often recycled in Murdoch's Australian, and it's easy to see why:

"[F]ocus too much on Islamist terrorism these days and you risk being accused of Islamophobia. 'Christians used to do this kind of thing,' they will say, inaccurately, to deflect attention from their own unwillingness to take a strong moral stance on Islamist extreme violence. Or they will point out that the US and Britain and other nations are still engaged in violent conflicts in the Middle East... even though they must know, somewhere inside their moral universe, that there is an immeasurable difference between America's military campaigns in the Middle East (which are wrong)... " (Islamist barbarism thrives on West's weak response, 26/4/19)

"Which are wrong"? Why the brackets, Brendan? Why the dropped voice? Why not say it loud and clear: AMERICA'S MILITARY CAMPAIGNS IN THE MIDDLE EAST ARE WRONG? And why not say why? Because Islamist terrorism has been the result of such campaigns - from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya and to Syria.

"... and the wilful slaughter of children queuing for sweets..."

Of course, our USraeli friends are never "wilful" when they slaughter children queuing for sweets:

"Witnesses to Sunday's incident said a missile that appeared to be a rocket hit an area just outside the gates of the Rafah Preparatory, a boys school where children were queuing to buy sweets and biscuits from stalls. The school had been providing shelter to more than 3,000 people - the same number that had been seeking refuge at a girls school in Jabaliya last Wednesday when it came under attack from a hail of Israeli shells. In contrast to that strike, which wrecked a classroom full of sleeping woman and children, the physical destruction this time appeared minimal: just a small but deep hole in the road where the missile had landed. But that clinical effect masked a devastating human cost. Pools of blood... were seen inside and outside the school, demonstrating how the blast's powerful impact had wished inside the grounds of what was supposed to be a safe haven." (Gaza school attacked as children queue for sweets, Robert Tait, telegraph.co.uk, 3/8/14)

Nothing personal there, of course, just good, clean collateral damage, right? Sorry about that, kids.

"Whether it is their accusations of Islamophobia or their morally relativistic comparison of today's new barbarism with the behaviour of Western armies, the liberal elites key aim seems to be to avoid having to take a strong position on this new, strange, spectacularly anti-human violence."

And, Brendan, what precisely do you mean by "liberal elites"? Do you mean someone like Obama's Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton? 

Was her position on "today's new barbarism" not "strong"? Didn't she propose defeating ISIS "on the battlefield" and working "with our allies to dismantle global terror networks"? (See Combating terrorism & keeping the homeland safe, hillaryclinton.com)

And yet you've already said, "America's military campaigns in the Middle East are wrong." So cut the crap and tell us what you mean by "a strong position."

The trouble with Clinton is that she doesn't seem at all interested in taking on certain regimes who inspire and stoke Islamist terrorism, and for obvious reasons:

"On the contributions given by state actors to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was US Secretary of State, Assange discusses one email in particular: 'There's an early 2014 email from Hilary Clinton... to her campaign manager, that states that ISIS is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.' He states, 'Actually, I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection, perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the place including into many media institutions. Analysts know, even the US government has mentioned, or agreed with, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS, funding ISIS, but the dodge has always been that it's just some rogue princes using their cut of the oil money to do whatever they like but actually the government disapproves, but that email says that no, it's the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have been funding ISIS." (Never forget: the towering exposure of Hillary Clinton by Assange and WikiLeaks, Clinton Emerald, 21stcenturywire.com, 13/11/16)

Nor, for that matter, does the other side of the US coin, non-liberal, populist Donald Trump.

"A weak and morally disoriented West that will not strongly condemn the nihilistic ideology behind the slaughter of Christians in Sri Lanka..."

Now that "nihilistic ideology" wouldn't be Saudi Wahhabism, would it, Brendan?

 "... is a West that cannot feign surprise when such violence continues. It is no longer enough to say 'that's awful' and then move on; we need a serious reckoning with the war on Christians, the rise of seventh-century barbarism and the collapse of any semblance of moral restraint among the new terrorists."

And Brendan, isn't your phrase, "the rise of seventh-century barbarism," just a sneaky euphemism for Islam? Please explain why this isn't Islamophobia.

Bet you'd never conflate the barbarity of the Crusades with Christianity, or for that matter "America's military campaigns" - which you admit are ("wrong").

Portrait of a Sri Lankan Wahhabi

This report should be read in conjunction with my last post:

"Zaharan Hashim, a radical Muslim preacher accused of masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, never hid his hatred. He railed against a local performance in which Muslim girls dared to dance. When a Muslim politician held a 50th birthday party, he raged about how Western infidel traditions were poisoning his hometown, Kattankudy.

"There were, Zaharan said in one of his online sermons, three types of people: Muslims, those who had reached an accord with Muslims, and 'people who need to be killed'. Idolaters, he added, 'need to be slaughtered wherever you see them'.

"Zaharan has been described by Sri Lankan officials as having founded an obscure group with inchoate aims: a defacement of a Buddha statue, a diatribe against Sufi mystics. But in his hometown, and later in the online world of radical Islam where his sermons were popular with a segment of Sri Lankan youth, it was clear for years that Zaharan's hateful cadences were designed to lure a new generation of militants. 'He was influential, very attractive, very smart in his speeches, even though what he was saying about jihad was crazy,' said Marzook Ahamed Lebbe, a former Kattakudy politician and member of a local Islamic federation. 'We all underestimated him. We never thought he would do what he said.'

"Standing among seven masked men in black, Zaharan is the only one with his face exposed. Sri Lankan investigators believe that eight suicide bombers carried out the attacks on the hotels and mosques Sunday, one of the bloodiest assaults ever claimed by IS. On Thursday investigators said they believed Zaharan was one of two suicide bombers who targeted the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. (The Sri Lankan police have also identified him as Mohammed Zaharan.)

"Muslims in Kattakudy said they had repeatedly contacted the police to warn that Zaharan was dangerous, but that the authorities played down the threat [...] Growing up in Kattakudy, an oasis of Islam on a majority Buddhist island with significant Hindu and Christian minorities, Zaharan's religiosity was unremarkable. Most houses here have a picture of Mecca on their wall, and road intersections are decorated with golden monuments in Arabic.

"Zaharan and his brothers were sent by their father, a small-time seed and spice seller, to a madrassa, where teachings adhered to a strict interpretation of Islam. But even as he impressed with the fluency of his Koranic recitation and easily made friends, Zaharan confronted his teachers and accused them of failing to adhere to true Islam. Like other Kattakudy youths lured by new overseas fashions, he had come under the spell of foreign preachers whose sermons were being passed around town by DVD, said MBM Fahim, one of his classmates... 'He spread misinformation about us,' Fahim said. 'He said the the school should close because it was teaching the wrong way. He was just a student and he was saying like this. Zaharan was kicked out of school. He enrolled at another Islamic college but never graduated, his acquaintances said. Still, by listening to the sermons of charismatic but extremist preachers based in India and Malaysia, Zaharan was honing his oratory.

"After getting ejected from serving as imam of one mosque for his extremist views, Zaharan started a group in 2014 called National Thowheeth Jamaath or NTI, which drew from the austere Wahhabi tradition that claims to follow the faith as practiced in the age of its founder, the Prophet Mohammed." From Sri Lanka bombings: 'Mastermind' never hid his hatred, Hanna Beech, The New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 26/4/19)