The Lindt cafe in Sydney, Australia

STEVE from the Gold Coast of Australia writes:

May I start by thanking you for providing, through your website, what is really quite a wonderful and very rare resource to thoughtful people  as we observe, ponder, try to make sense of and live with the many quite toxic forces that are at work today in the West.

By “the West”, I mean Europe, broadly, but western Europe in particular, along with those societies founded, built up and still largely maintained by the descendants of Europeans, including but not limited to such traditionally English-speaking nations as the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and my native Australia.

When I think of your website I can’t help but be reminded of one of the best definitions of art that I ever heard which is: “Great truth, greatly told.” Your website is a rare oasis of wisdom and civility for which you are to be commended.

Anyway, if this were a radio programme I would describe myself as  the stereotypical “long-time reader, first-time caller.” I often mean to comment but find that your learned and perceptive regulars always seem to beat me to the punch and inevitably  make the point far better than I could anyway.

But the recent siege at the Lindt cafe in Sydney’s Martin Place strikes very close to home for me and I believe that as a native Sydney-sider I can offer at least one insight into the event itself and another into what the inevitable wash-up will yield which illustrate something about the West generally and Australia in particular.

The first is that a truth about the siege which ought to be covered by the mainstream media will not be mentioned at all whilst the second is that a patent untruth about the siege, which ought not to be propagated by the media, will be.

I spent my first twenty years as a lawyer practicing in Martin Place just a few metres from the site of the siege  and know its demographics very well.

Whilst it is true to say that the site of the cafe at Martin place between Elizabeth and Phillip streets is situated at the very heart of Sydney’s economic, judicial and political life, surrounded as it is  by some of our highest state and federal courts, most of the largest of our commercial law firms, the head offices of several of our largest banks and with the gates of state Parliament only about two hundred metres away, the targeting of this particular cafe and the attack on its customers should not be spun, as it inevitably will be, by both Moslems and the mainstream media as an albeit misguided but somehow brave-because-doomed attack on Australia’s power structure by a forceful, virile, heavily-outnumbered lone Islamist warrior and martyr.  On the contrary, the targeting of this particular cafe and its customers was nothing but an act of calculated cowardice and as such runs entirely true to the way that Islamic attacks in the West usually play out.

The Lindt cafe, although it does serve quite decent coffee, is not a coffee shop but a specialist store  packed throughout with bright, shining, visually-striking and quite beautiful and ornately-wrapped chocolates in attractively designed and be-ribboned display cases.

Yes, I am partial to a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day and stopped by occasionally on my way past the cafe to enjoy one – but I don’t believe that anyone ever could mistake this cafe for a predominately business or adult space or fail to notice that the very few be-suited bankers and lawyers at the corner coffee bar were always heavily outnumbered in by female backpackers, mothers and children in town for a day’s shopping and enjoying a break there.   To my mind, the selection of such a soft target by this gunman ought, but won’t, be identified for the craven and personally cowardly act it was.

Instead, the proximity of state Parliament house, basically just across the road, where the gunman could easily have chosen to strike a blow against the hated infidel power structure in a fair fight with armed police at the gate, but didn’t, will be ignored. Likewise, the fact that the HQ of the Australian Army’s “Land Command” was only a few minutes away at Victoria Barracks where he could have engaged in a shootout with trained and armed soldiers, but didn’t, will also be overlooked in favour of the preferred script of the Moslem community and the media that   Moslems are innately brave and fearless when riled and that we had therefore be careful not to risk turning them against us and into armed Islamists.

The patent untruth that will inevitably feature in the media coverage and political analyses to come will be the unquestioning, unwavering and unapologetic description of this coward as an “Aussie.” What an absolute rejection of the concept of nationhood itself to describe as a citizen a person or people who consistently act in ways that demonstrate to all but the most narcissistic and self-adoring liberal poseurs that they have a clear and fundamental contempt for and rejection of the most clear and fundamental values of their host society.

I know you and others have already touched on this subject when dealing with the vile phenomenon of so-called “western” jihadis flocking to the Isis banner so I will not elaborate further. I am paraphrasing here as I cannot recall where I first heard the analogy, (it may have been in your website or the late Mr Auster’s or even at Miss Asrat’s excellent website Reclaiming Beauty), but I do agree that we are now at the point where western opinion-leaders have truly redefined the modern nation state to  mean nothing more than just a land mass where distinct and often fundamentally incompatible tribes happen to share a common camping ground.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your generous praise. It’s nice to hear from you.

There are about half a million Muslims in Australia today. This attack is terribly sad, but not surprising, particularly since in September, a spokesman for the Islamic State, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, called on individual Muslims to carry out attacks of their own in retaliation for Australia’s involvement in American military operations in the Middle East. Despite this warning, Man Haron Monis, believed to be the man responsible for the attack, was permitted to remain in Australia. He had an extensive criminal record and open sympathy for Islamic warfare. From The New York Times:

He was charged in November 2013 with being an accessory before and after the fact in the murder of his ex-wife, Noleen Hayson Pal, and in April 2014, he was charged with the indecent and sexual assault of a woman in western Sydney in 2002. Forty more counts of indecent or sexual assault relating to six other women were later added in that case.

 Mr. Monis pleaded guilty in 2013 to 12 charges related to the sending of poison-pen letters to the families of Australian servicemen who were killed overseas, local media reports said. He was reportedly sentenced to probation and community service.

[…]

A website apparently associated with Mr. Monis included condemnation of the United States and Australia for their military actions against Islamic militants in Iraq and Afghanistan. News reports said the site also contained a posting saying Mr. Monis had recently converted from Shia to Sunni Islam, and SITE, an organization that monitors Islamic extremist groups, said he posted a pledge of allegiance to the “Caliph of the Muslims.” The posting appeared to refer to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State militant group, SITE said, though the posting did not mention them by name.

Mr. Monis apparently emigrated to Australia from Iran around 1996, and was previously known as Manteghi Boroujerdi or Mohammad Hassan Manteghi. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said he was granted political asylum.

It’s much more effective to attack a tourist site. Mr. Monis wouldn’t have instilled much fear in the public if he had gotten into a shoot-out with Australian security forces.

Here are the two hostages slain during the attack. Tori Johnson was the manager who tried to wrestle the gun from Monis and Katrina Dawson was a mother of three children under ten.

— Comments —

George Weinbaum writes:

I couldn’t avoid noticing the similarity between Jihadi attacks and something we experience in the U.S., i.e., polar bear hunts or knockout king attacks by Negroes against whites.  Particularly elderly whites.  How often are these attacks excused as the product of the “terrible legacy of slavery” or some such nonsense?  Eventually the West will conclude Islam has no place in it.  Or else the West will cease to exist.

Pete F. writes:

Concerning the attack, hostage-taking and subsequent siege of the Lindt Café in Sydney, Australia, please permit me to add to the comments of your Australian reader, Steve. In particular, the following passage deserves mention:

 “On the contrary, the targeting of this particular cafe and its customers was nothing but an act of calculated cowardice and as such runs entirely true to the way that Islamic attacks in the West usually play out.”

 I am not an expert on Muslim theology, but it is important to note that the target of the attack – the Lindt Café – may not have chosen because of the presence/absence of cowardice, but for other reasons pertaining to Islamic religious doctrine and belief. Allow me to elaborate…

Far from being random, Islamic attacks upon the non-Muslim world are often motivated by a very specific set of grievances against the modern west – as well as by Islamic doctrine itself as found in the Koran and the Hadiths. In order to explain how this is so, a brief digression into 20^th century history is necessary.

 The largest and most-influential Pan-Islamic organization in the world today is the Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan (“The Brothers”). The group, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, quickly spread throughout the Middle East and much of the Islamic world. One of its most-important members was Islamic theorist Sayyid Qutb, the author of the influential book anthology “Milestones,” a compendium of Islamic commentary, theology, and criticism.

 Qutb, who spent several years in the United States as a young man during the late 1940s as an exchange student and also traveled extensively in Europe, returned to Egypt from his travels as a changed man. Formerly employed in the civil service and largely apolitical in his views, he resigned and in the early 1950s, joined the Muslim Brotherhood. He became the editor of its weekly magazine, Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, and became one of the chief propagandists for the group. Soon after returning from abroad, Qutb penned “”The America that I Have Seen,” in which he was sharply critical of the United States and the west, in particular its culture, which Qutb saw as degenerate, corrupt and degraded by sexual promiscuity and permissiveness (Qutb was also undoubtedly upset by American/British support for the new nation of Israel, but that is another matter).

 Qutb’s harsh assessments of the modern west extended not only to such concerns as permissiveness and promiscuity, but to faintly-ridiculous criticisms of everything from the green lawns in front of American homes to boxing matches and football games to women and men attended church together.

As noted by Egyptian political scientist Mamoun Fandy, Qutb’s critique of America and the west was just as much a critique of encroaching modernity in Egypt as it was of American or European society. “Qutb was warning Egyptians of the west, of modernity, of things they were attracted to…”

 “In his prison writings, Qutb equated governments like Egypt’s with the pre-Islamic tribes of Arabia. They represented a state of ignorance — Islam offered liberation…”

 Qutb was jailed by the regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser; during his imprisonment, he completed “Milestones,” which was published in 1964. Although he was later executed by hanging in 1966, Qutb’s writings survived to become one of the chief intellectual/philosophical fountainheads of the modern jihadist movement and its groups, such as al-Qaeda and many others.

 Within Islam, the devil (Satan) is considered a tempter – one who seduces the righteous. Likewise, idolatry is held as a serious crime. In the material wealth and prosperity of the west, its liberation of the sexes, its unrestrained entertainment and sports – Qutb saw temptation, seduction and idolatry which threatened long-established Muslim traditions and customs – indeed, Islam itself. His concerns are echoed in the video communiques of Osama Bin Laden, among others – right down to the present day.

Many simple pleasures westerners take for granted – eating a piece of chocolate, attending a movie with a person of the opposite sex – are considered serious transgressions within orthodox Islam. To a Qutbist – the most-fanatical and donctrinaire of Muslims – these things are an unforgivable affront to Islam which must be punished. The Koran offers theological justification for such punishment, i.e., such as “the verse of the sword” (Sura 9, Verse 5), which states in part, “…kill the idolators wherever you may find them.”

 At first glance, there can be – at least to a typical secular westerner – nothing remotely threatening about a chocolate shop – but that is only because most westerners fail utterly to understand the mindset of men like Qutb – or Man Haron Monis – for that matter. Modernity itself represents a grave threat to these men and others like them.

 Steve is undoubtedly at least partly correct; when operating in open western societies such as Australia, terrorist/direct-action individuals/groups seldom choose to attack hardened, military targets. They prefer to attack soft targets for maximum shock effect and for propaganda purposes. However, I hope that I have built a convincing case that jihadists like Man Haron Monis make their choices based upon other, less-obvious criteria as well. Of course, whether or not Monis’ actions were directly-informed by Qutb or other Islamic theorists has not yet been established – but it would not be at all surprising if a link is later discovered.

Please follow and like us: