Islamist killers work on West’s weaknessesDespite the horrific murder of three people at the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice on Thursday and the beheading in France last week of history teacher Samuel Paty, many in the West remain too weak to name that enemy. The enemy is Islamist extremism. And, like Australians, the French must never accept this evil. Australian soldiers resting eternally on French soil did not sacrifice their lives to end one tyranny only to have another replace it. To recast a Winston Churchill phrase, the malice of the wicked must not be reinforced by the weakness of the woke.
And the weakness of the West is fertile ground. There have even been protests in Paris
supporting those on trial for their connection to the slaughter of the Charlie Hebdo staff. They are also linked to an attack on a Jewish shop, killing four people. The 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre was a call to arms and set off a terrorist killing spree across Europe and Britain. Yet
many of those who spoke against Islamist violence were labelled Islamophobic.The clever al-Qa’ida strategist Abu Musab al-Suri (real name Mustafa Setmariam Nasar) who in 2005 was arrested in Quetta, Pakistan, wrote a 1600-page book, The Call for Global Islamic Resistance. Demonstrating his appreciation of the West’s weaknesses, al-Suri described a changed strategy that is now playing out playing out on our streets. Al-Suri may not know their names, but his disciples swim in the warm waters of the West until such a moment that they become activated. It is a decentralised network in which every participant’s centre of gravity is metaphysical. They are not given instructions, but they know them.
We are the enemy. Their footsoldiers in this undeclared war are out to eliminate the “grey zone” within Western society where no one can remain neutral. Al-Qa’ida and ISIS understand that the moral asymmetric weakness of the West’s democratic principles allows them to drive Muslims and non-Muslims into polarising positions. And they identified and cultivated a sympathetic voice among Western institutions, media, academia and civil society. That’s what good insurgents do.
Our freedoms, laws and human rights are being exploited to attack us. Then those freedoms are used to defend the same terrorists. It is what US military strategist William Lind describes as fourth-generational warfare. If only we acquiesced to their nonviolent demands, the terrorism would stop. France, the epitome of freedom and liberty, is the antithesis of this psychopathic movement.
Today’s Islamists are applying lessons from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. As Sun advised, seize that which your adversary holds dear or values most highly, then they will conform to your desires. In the case of Islamic extremists, their nonviolent sympathisers can jump on board, further spreading the infiltrator’s narrative, shutting down dissension from within. Instead, Macron should be supported. Whether in Australia or France, there must never be a social contract with barbarians.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/islamist-killers-work-on-wests-weakn...