Howard's End: Home Truths About Radical Islamists

The United States and Israel delegations have quit the UN Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in protest at attempts by delegates to single out Israel as a racist state. Time for some media balance. Maree Howard writes.

Accusations have been flying back and forth at the UN racism conference in Durban and it's being inflamed by the media. But a policy of a "plague on both your houses" makes for poor understanding.

Even the British Guardian newspaper recently carried an opinion piece suggesting that Israel has "no moral right to exist."

Since last September a terrible fury has spewed forth from radical Islam, mostly against Israel, in the media, in political speeches, in mosque sermons, in poetry, in school textbooks, and even crossword puzzle clues.

The West has also been attacked over the trans-Atlantic slave trade and reparations are being sought.

Nobody has been perfect in all this and we all know the accusations against Israel, so I'm going to tell another side of the story.

Radical Islam is a totalitarian movement dedicated to imposing its own ideological hegemony.

The states of Islam in the middle-east and elsewhere are not democracies. While their leadership relies on the thugs of Baghdad and Tripoli for support and they fail to recognise the basic human and civil rights on individuals to dissent, to vote for their leadership and to express themselves freely, they never will be.

While journalists in the Islam states are charged with collaborating with Israel and jailed without trial because they write balanced stories after talking to different sources, then there cannot be freedom in any new Palestinian state. The creation of another totalitarian state is the last thing the world needs.

Radical Islam is rooted in a severe reactionary interpretation of one of the world's great historic religions. But radical Islam's promotion of militancy in the form of Jihad and Intifada, and its segregationist view of society, conceptually known as Dhimmitude, are racist, imperialist and intolerant. (Non-muslims in Islamic countries are referred to as "Dhimmis.")

The thugs who run the radical Islamist countries - Sudan and Afghanistan to name two- have accused the West of racism, imperialism and intolerance for years and this has also been the theme at the UN racism conference.

Apart from attacks on Israel, let's look at other radical Islamist abuse.

* Persecution of Copts in Egypt

* Massacre and enslavement of black African Dinkas in southern Sudan.

* Terrorising Christians in Lebanon.

* Oppressing Christians in Nigeria.

* Persecuting Christians and Bahai's in Iran.

* Waging a terrorist war against Hindus in Kashmir.

* Terrorising Catholics and terrorising foreigners in the southern Philippines.

* Advocating ethnic cleansing in East Timor.

* Assaulting native Christians in Indonesia.

Then there's the subject of Arab reparations for the slavery it engaged in on the African Continent. Arab nations enslaved no small number of black Africans, and their trade in African flesh continued long after the West declared slavery illegal.

And remember international guerrilla, Carlos the Jackal who, in the 70's and 80's, was up to his neck in the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine?

He issued an open letter from his Paris prison on 29 August demanding revenge for the death of his comrade in arms, Abu Ali Mustafa.

Carlos called for worldwide attacks in support of the intifada writing "a protracted peoples war without boundaries is the way to follow."

In 1975 Carlos the Jackal led an international hit squad that took 70 hostages, including 11 oil ministers, at the OPEC Vienna conference. He killed three.

And what of this man Yasser Arafat? He has made overtures to the extremist elements of the anti-globalist movement including factions of the Black Bloc anarchists who last month turned the international demonstrations outside the G8 summit in Genoa into a rampage.

Members of the Black Bloc are now in the middle-east posing as tourists and "peace watchers."

Arafat constantly moans that Israel's war against his terrorism is "starving our children."

But both British and American intelligence services report that Arafat's wealth includes controlled assets of up to $10 billion and, as a result, the PLO enjoys annual income of $2 billion each year.

According to Scoop sources Arafat has systematically skimmed the $75 million a year in U.S. funds he has received since 1994 - not to mention major portions of aid from other countries along with Palestinian tax revenues.

Last year, hackers believed to be disgruntled Palestinians, broke into Arafat's computer system and found details of more than $5 billion in secret bank accounts in Switzerland, the U.S., Asia and North Africa. The accounts are not registered in the PLO's name but in the names of private individuals who have Arafat's trust.

The hackers also discovered that certain Palestinians own shares in Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo stock exchanges including shares in Mercedes-Benz and real estate in some of Europe's most exclusive neighbourhoods.

And the greatest irony? Arafat, one time mastermind of aircraft hijackings, is part owner of several airlines, including the national carriers of the Maldives and Guinea-Bissau.

Yet on the ground in Gaza, where more than 50% of the population is unemployed and barely existing, Arafat & Co erect one luxury villa after another, drive fancy cars, and grow fatter on public funds. Arafat also has his own planes.

Worse, the Palestinian people don't get a vote to get him out. They also live in terror.

Will the Palestinian people ever achieve their rightful place in the sun under self-determination and self-government? Not while these thugs are in charge.

And do we really need another radical Islam police state in the middle-east? Aren't there enough already?

With the mass of refugees now stalking the world seeking refuge from radical Islam, countries like New Zealand had better be pretty damn sure that those they admit are not part of the problem of coming global terrorism.

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