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Transnational terrorism: surveying the threat to Australians

By Alexander Downer - posted Monday, 19 July 2004


Ruthven explains how these ideologues diagnose modern societies, including those of the Muslim world, as existing in a state of paganism. For fanatical Islamists, this is sufficient justification for declaring a state, its officials or its leaders - and in extreme cases whole societies - to be unbelievers. As such, they are candidates for removal or forcible change by armed jihad.

Jason Burke, in a recent article in Foreign Policy, makes similar observations about the influence of Leninist theory on prominent radical Muslim writers like Sayyid Qutb and Abu Ala Maududi. He also notes that: "the militants often couch their grievances in Third-Worldist terms familiar to any contemporary anti-globalisation activist". Al Qa’ida's ideology, then, is a crude but potent mish-mash.

However, we ought not to make the mistake of underestimating their popular appeal and power to captivate. This is the stuff that turns devout, mild-mannered students into suicide bombers and we underestimate its effects at our peril. It is salutary to remember how an ideology as home-made as Nazism enthralled Germany with its appeal to base prejudice and notions of manifest destiny

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In essence the theme of Al Qa’ida and its affiliates is a perversion of Islamic religion. It is a simplistic message of repression, hatred, inexhaustible rage and revenge. It is an inherently political message designed to appeal to the basest instincts. It travels easily and deciphering it takes no religious training or knowledge.

Why we're a target

The reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan is the best indication we have of the social order they want to impose. It is a society that brutally represses its women and disenfranchises almost everyone. It is a state with no separation between secular and religious law, run on authoritarian lines by an elite band of zealots. It is an order better adapted to the pre-modern world - one in which notions like economic liberty count for next to nothing.

Al Qa’ida and allies such as Jemaah Islamiyah want to eradicate the West's presence, its cultural and economic influence, in Muslim lands. They rightly see its modernity as a threat to all they hold dearest. They revile democracy as idolatrous, knowing how fatal to their objectives democratic choice would inevitably prove. Al Qa’ida and its allies want to replace the existing governments in Islamic countries with regimes that share their fanaticism. Ultimately they want to re-shape the international order to accommodate a new hegemon, a pan-Islamic super-state. Al Qa’ida and its allies cannot countenance the West's ability to deal with complexity, ambiguity and modernity.

Whatever the First World's shortcomings and areas of dysfunction, in general terms it is adaptable and plainly works, in ways that a Taliban society could not. So the terrorists' strategy, with premeditated violence, is to exploit the very openness that is a great strength of societies like ours, and to wreak havoc where it can. Civilian populations are intimidated by its threats, as we saw in Spain. Governments are held to ransom with that tell-tale gesture - the threat of another beheading and the countdown. They seek to undermine us economically, to undermine our confidence and values, sowing division and intolerance.

A modern Iraqi state would pose an intolerable threat to the terrorists’ world-view and its plausibility. A failed Iraqi state would be an immense blow to the prestige of America and its Coalition allies, a triumph for fanaticism in the battle of ideas. That is why Iraq is not a sideshow or a distraction from the war on terror - as the Labor Party would have people believe - but the front line of battle. That is why so many lives and so much treasure have been spent in the struggle. That is why, irrespective of reservations after the event about the war, this government is resolute in its determination that Australia's military and civilian contingents will stay the course and play their part in winning the peace.

A resolute response

The first thing we can expect is that, although this is a new and unfamiliar kind of engagement, war is no mere metaphor. Far more civilians than soldiers have already lost their lives. Who knows what terrorist outrages, abroad and even at home, may lie ahead? Or how many billions of dollars will have to be spent, before we can safely say that Al Qa’ida and its henchmen have been contained and eventually defeated?

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It may not happen for a generation. Networks of cells can lie dormant, undetected, for a very long time. When the enemy depicts our response as religious persecution, as they undoubtedly do, and when the volunteers for martyrdom in suicide bombings are plentiful, vicious cycles are set in motion that take ages to run down.

Our greatest allies will be those mainstream Muslims and moderate Muslim leaders and politicians best placed to assert orthodox values in the face of fanaticism and stare down terrorist sympathisers. They are also the people who have most to fear from Taliban-style regimes.

Even before the Bali bombings, Australia was engaged in a very productive regional partnership with Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim nation. Cooperation in counter-terrorist intelligence and law enforcement has been an obvious priority.

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This is an edited extract from a speech to launch the White Paper on International Terrorism at the National Press Club, Canberra, 15 July 2004.  The full text can be found here.



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About the Author

The Hon. Alexander Downer MP is Minister for Foreign Affairs and Member for Mayo (SA).

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