//After all, a tiny percentage of 1.5 billion isn't all that much, is it ?//

There are 1.5 billion Muslims in your backyard? Well paint me green and call me a cactus. 1.5 billion isn't f%^k all. I can see why you're fretting now.

We don't have that many up Newcastle way. But we do have an unfortunately large number of hippies. Maybe we could arrange some sort of swap?

Hi Toni,

I apologise for my intemperate remarks, it's just that I get a bit frustrated when something as serious as Islamist terrorism seems to be made a little light of. Terrorism doesn't need great numbers, that's the point of it: one person can do awful damage - look at Orlando or the Bataclan.

After all, if you put all the terrorists who have killed Australians end to end, (with a total of maybe three hundred Australians between them ?) there would only be a few dozen, here in Australia, in Bali and in New York and maybe elsewhere.

So 2 % of 2 % of 1.5 billion - the most extreme of the most extreme - amounts to only 60,000 or so, but it's a bit immaterial: the point of terrorism is to terrorise, to do maximum damage and generate maximum fear, with a minimal number of terrorists.

The Bolsheviks understood that too: Stalin (Koba) was quite adept at bank-robbing, but even they didn't deliberately kill, only occasionally and unintentionally, in order to force their views on anybody.

Of course, the point about a living, breathing ideology or religion like Islam is that, almost by definition, it will keep creating zealous adherents, to coin a phrase, and they will interpret the injunctions of their book in a literal way, perhaps more so as they suffer defeat (since defeat will only go to show what evil bastards the entire West is) - doubling down with each knock-back.

The entire 21st century is going to be a bumpy ride.

Cheers,

Joe

Jon J,

You quote Luke 14:26. "To hate" does not refer to enmity but is a Semitic expression that conveys indifference to one and preference for another (David E Garland). Some scholars suggest it fits the Greek philosophical tradition reaching back to Socrates that single-minded devotion to truth superceded family loyalties and concern for one's bodily life and its needs (John Nolland)

Like many people, I've been puzzled by the craven approach of the pseudo-Left to Islamist fascism. But the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner has nailed it for me:

“The Leftist intransigence that refuses any compromise with bourgeois society cannot castigate too severely “little white men” actively collaborates with the most reactionary elements of the Muslim Religion. But if the far Left courts this totalitarian theocracy so assiduously, it is perhaps less a matter of opportunism than a real affinity. The far left has never gotten over Communism and once again demonstrates that its true passion is not freedom, but slavery in the name of justice.”

What is it that devout Muslims and pseudo-Leftists BOTH find offensive in 'modernity': is it democracy, the even-handed rule of law, equality of men and women (all of which are often honoured more in the breach), the pursuit of scientific discovery regardless of ideological or religious pressures to find the 'correct' outcome ?

By definition, all religions tart up their principles: slavery is justified by pointing to the non-human or non-member status of slaves: the book says; women are assumed to be lesser: the book says. On the pseudo-Left, the masses, the working people, the bogans, are assumed to be too dumb to be able to run their own affairs (Lenin's 'five hundred years'), and will always need the class of intellectuals to govern them, like a stern father - and the class of executioners to punish and 'subtract' them.

I suppose, as long as both Islamist fascism and pseudo-Leftism are nowhere within cooee of victory, a bit of mutual support, a bit of oblique cheering from the sidelines at terrorist activity, is no great problem, even if - surely ! - Islamism and leftist principles are clearly incompatible. But it's a funny world.

Joe