This column was reported in the Sydney newspaper on the 9th, Australian Sunday Tellegraph
Islam fails to find the gift of global generosity.
Piers Akerman
Sunday Telegraph January 9th, 2005
The tsunami which swept out from Indonesia a fortnight ago has not only smashed the population of the seaboards of neighboring nations but has devastated the notion of a so-called Islamic world.
Any concept of a unified Islamic entity should now be viewed with skepticism.
After a series of outrageous attacks on the west witch reached a crescendo with the world trade Centre murders on September 11, 2001, much of the liberal western media and many Christian religious leaders demanded the west re-think its approach to Islam and the Arab nations and start treating their dysfunctional societies seriously.
That many of these no-account nations had contributed little more than oil and terrorism to the world in the past century meant nothing to the pundits advocating a closer embrace with what is called “the Arab street”.
There are even demands from some of Australia’s self-anointed moral and intellectual leaders for democratically-elected western leaders to sit down and negotiate with murderers such as Osama Bin Laden and his followers in al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah
Though Osama and the suicidal murderers aboard the hijacked planes were wealthy and educated people, the west was told that the reason it was that we were being attacked was to do with poverty an inequity.
Poverty and inequity are sadly part and parcel of the Islamic world however and clearly don’t feature as priority issues for their governments or the stream of populist revolutionary leaders who have exploited Muslims’ sensitivities.
The lack of any coherent response to the needs of tsunami victims from the mythical Arab street and the blood thirsty mullahs preaching hatred across the majority of the Islamic nations demonstrates precisely how wrong it was to give the fanatics even a sliver of attention.
Islam which advocates the antithesis to democracy through the submergence of the individual in religion has truly failed its followers.
Nowhere is this more obvious that in the noisome refugee camps supported by the United Nations around the Israeli border for the past half century.
The Arab street has had every opportunity since Israel was founded by the United Nations to absorb the Arabs who fled the fledgling nation but instead closed its heart to those fleeing providing them with little more than false hopes.
In the west, we have been assailed by calls for greater tolerance though little or none is shown to those of other religions in most Islamic nations and in a number, Muslims who decide to leave Islam effectively sign their death warrants.
This intolerance extends even within elements of Australia’s Islamic community who deliver anti-western and anti-Jewish diatribes whilst enjoying a level of free speech which is non existent in any Islamic nation.
But it would seem that Islam with its many forms is not serving its followers well. Though more than 1,200,000,000 people or some 20 percent of the world population claim to be Muslim, there have been fewer than 10 Nobel laureates and one of those laughably honored the late and unlamented terrorist Yasser Arafat. The 14,000,000 Jews, about 0.02 percent of the world population have produced more than 120 Nobel Prize winners.
The strong strand of fatalism which runs through Islam may provide a clue as to the comparative failure of so many Muslim nations, and the poor response of the oil-rich Islamic nations to come to the assistance of their religious brothers and sisters in the current crisis.
It’s time Muslims put two and two together.
What has been revealed by the Jakarta conference is that it is not the Islamic brothers-in-arms who have responded to the tragedy but the nations that are usually referred to in the Arab countries as the Great Satan’s.
The Arab oil producers are knee-deep in the black gold but apart from the token payment by the United Arab Emirates they have been almost invisible in the aid lists.
Giving aid should not be a contest but it is apparent that Australia’s 20 million populations are contributing much more than many other nations and certainly more than any Islamic country.’
It is not just this tragedy which has brought this trait to the fore. Be it Bam or Beslan, the aid has always flowed in from the non-Arab world.
Nor is it just money, the Islamic world is apparently incapable of offering anything, a field hospital, medical staff, water purification, you name it, because it is so out of touch with the modern notion of humane contribution.
It should be lost not upon the Islamic world that the Israeli victim identification team now working in Indonesia was developed to help identify the innocent victims of Muslim terrorists.
In modern history’s greatest disaster lies the genesis for understanding how destructive and sterile militant Islam is.
In this catastrophe and all future catastrophes as far as we can see into the future, the saviors will come from Australia and the US, and other nations the Muslims are taught to hate.
Indonesian president S.B. Yudhuyono clearly understands this message in welcoming the assistance we offer. Let’s hope the Indonesian and Muslims everywhere see things so clearly