Newstalk ZB Host explains to her youngest daughter why armed guards were everywhere on their trip to London
Terrorism is always sickening and yet there is something particularly stomach-turning about the latest mutation to emerge from the extremes of Islamism.
Forget the criminal mastermind or the darkly comic supervillain who directs destruction from a secret lair. This new wave is far more base, more banal and more cruel.
As an Australian diplomat once drily told me, the worst thing about Islamic State is not that you get killed but that you get killed by someone with a third of your IQ, reports news.com.au.
So it was with the horrifying attack in Melbourne last week, when a randomly radicalised thug took a knife and plunged it into the first innocent human he could – indeed, by all accounts a human who had actually gone to help him.
How horrible it must be to die so close to someone full of such evil. But that is a key part of the latest Islamic State playbook. They want to make murder both random and intimate. Just grab anything and pick anyone. You don't need a killer gang or a grand plan anymore. All you need is a dickhead and a knife.
As a paper published this year by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point observes, there are extensive online resources specifically targeted at would-be terrorists who are too stupid to build a bomb.
"They encourage would-be attackers to utilize any means at their disposal or, as one channel puts it in its description, 'Trucks. Knives. Bombs. Whatever. It's time for revenge.'"
Prime Minister Scott Morrison was quick to condemn "the radical and dangerous ideology of extremist Islam" and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was one of thousands of Melburnians left reeling by the death of the iconic café owner.
"Shocking, unreal and heartbreaking," he said on Saturday.
"Impossible to imagine the devastation for his family and staff."
Shocking, unreal and heartbreaking. I have been visiting Pellegrini’s since school. I just saw Sisto on Monday morning. He insisted I try a slice of his almond cake. He’s a Melbourne icon and a true gentleman. Impossible to imagine the devastation for his family and staff. https://t.co/CPziguJlpz
And yet later that very same day one of the Labor Party's star recruits at the last election was playing down that devastation.
"The biggest victims of violence in Australia aren't victims of violent terrorism, they are victims of domestic violence," so-called terrorism expert Anne Aly told Sky News.
"When we look at all forms of violence, violence perpetrated by violent jihadists — or radical Islam as the Prime Minister wants to put it — pales in comparison to the number of women who are being killed every week in domestic and partner violence."
This is a bizarrely perverse response in the raw aftermath of a terrorist event and yet it is one that has become a clichéd template from some sections of the left. Let's not worry about terrorism because it doesn't kill as many people as domestic violence does. Or perhaps Australians should just ignore all murders altogether because our murder rate pales in comparison to Brazil's. Or perhaps we should deny assistance to earthquake victims because earthquakes don't kill as many people as world hunger does.
This is knuckle-dragging logic. How it continually passes for academic argument or credible political debate is just another sad indication of how devoid of rationality both those fields have become.
One wonders what Aly would say if, following the brutal death of a woman at the hands of her abusive partner, another MP were to simply turn around and say: "This pales in comparison to the number of women who are being killed every week by motor vehicle accidents."
Anne Aly: @ScottMorrisonMP needs a little terrorism 101 before pointing fingers at radical Islam. Yes, violent Jihadism has been a predominant aspect of religious terror but the biggest threat in Australia is domestic violence.
And, as it turns out, at the time of the terrorist rampage Monis – who had declared allegiance to Islamic State – was being charged as an accessory to his wife's murder and 43 counts of sexual assault. His girlfriend was later convicted of having carried out the murder at his insistence.
So what was Aly's response to this terrorist wife-killer? She wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian within days of the deadly siege headlined, Don't call Man Monis a terrorist, in which she argued he didn't qualify for true terrorist status and ultimately blamed authorities for not stopping him.
Interestingly, in last weekend's interview saying that terrorism wasn't as deadly as domestic violence, Aly failed to mention that the last CBD terrorist she opined about was in fact just as deadly at domestic violence. Or maybe I just missed it, just as the interview transcript was oddly missing from her interview transcript web page.
The fact is terrorism and domestic violence go hand in hand, as the wives of many Islamic State fighters can no doubt attest. And terrorists are also quite adept at killing and enslaving thousands of women who are not their wives.
Nino Pangrazio, Sisto's collegue, is comforted by family. Photo / News Corp Australia
So too the nauseating excuse that comes around like clockwork that terrorists like Man Monis and the Bourke Street butcher are really just victims of mental illness. As one of the millions of functionally insane Australians who manage to go about their day to day lives without killing people in the name of God may I just say: Nah. It's not the same thing.
Instead I might offer the following observation: If you are actually surprised or think it is noteworthy that someone who blows up a car and stabs people at random in a city street might also be a stubby short of a six-pack then perhaps a career in academia is for you.
Either way, Aly's energies were devoted to attacking Prime Minister Scott Morrison for calling out radical Islamic extremism and urging the Muslim community to help identify and illuminate it. She even suggested he learn more about "Terrorism 101" – although she clearly has a different definition of it than the United States' most prestigious military academy.
Certainly the family and friends of Sisto Malaspina learnt a lot about Terrorism 101 on the weekend while Aly was busy saying it wasn't that bad.
Meanwhile, another leader in the Muslim community had a different view.
Barely 48 hours after the attack the tireless Sydney GP Jamal Rifi was at a community picnic in south-west Sydney, an area home to more Muslims than anywhere in the country.
Special Op personnel outside the home of the parents of the Bourke Street attacker. A women is turned away after she requested that she visit the residents of the home. Photo / News Corp Australia
He knows more than most the threat of Islamic extremism. As an outspoken voice of peace and moderation he has been subjected to countless threats of death and violence from those on the fanatical fringe of his own religion.
And in the wake of the attack, as he sat at that peaceful picnic on a sunny Sydney day, he penned a few words and sent them to me, asking that I would spread them.
"I personally believe that what the PM said was a clear and true description of the threat that we all face in Australia," he said.
"I knew he never sugar coated any issue and never expected him to sugar coat such an important threat to our society."
He also stressed that many in the Muslim community – just like him – are extremely alive to extremism and are doing what they can.
"We all need to do more, we all need to be vigilant but people in power need to do the heavy lifting.
"Our religious leaders have been carrying the heavy burden to empower our boys and girls against such a deviant ideology but they are powerless to deal with the ills of society, mental health issues or substance abuse.
"It is in the interest of Australian Muslim community to protect our boys and girls from being ensnared by those evil recruiters. Politicians need to keep us united. Security agencies need better assessment tools and constant engagement with our community.
"The global jihadist movement has and continues to be the greatest risk to our country and community.
"We love and live in this country and its people's safety and security is as important to us, even more important to us, than the rest of society. And we take this responsibility very seriously."
That's the Muslim community I know and love. A community that battles problems instead of burying them. A community that is more outraged than any other when evil is committed in its name instead of using parlour room semantics to pretend it didn't happen. A community that is at the coalface of the terrorist infection and wants to destroy it, not downplay it.
These are the voices that need to be heard when a nation is reeling. Not academics playing campus semantics but the real people on the street.
