A gunman has taken over a cafe in downtown Sydney. Your first thought when you heard the news was, “Oh no, another Catholic fundamentalist.” But it seems that’s not the case. The New York Times does not initially identify the hostage-taker as a Muslim, but as an armed person with a black flag. The headline is:

Black Flag Is Hoisted as an Armed Person Takes Hostages in a Sydney Cafe 

This is Newspeak at its finest.

The black flag features Arabic script and a Muslim declaration of faith. Prime Minister Tony Abbott does not want to rush to any conclusions. He is amazed that anyone would wish the peace-loving, tolerant Australians harm:

“We don’t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator — we don’t know whether this is politically motivated — although obviously there are some indications that it could be,” Mr. Abbott said at a short briefing in Canberra, Australia’s capital. “There are people, even in a society such as ours, who would wish to do us harm.”

“The whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves,” he said. “Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society and nothing should ever change that, and that is why I would urge all Australians today to go about their business as usual.” [emphasis added]

Jihadis don’t want to scare Australians out of being their peace-loving selves. They want to scare them into being more of themselves. Whenever Muslims take their religion seriously in such inconvenient and messy ways, Westerners are lectured by their politicians about the continued need to be themselves.

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