Jewish Ozzies' Inter.Net
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Human rights groups say the West mustn't be scared of Islam. But how can we ignore the terrible bloodshed caused by Muslim fanatics?

HUMAN rights groups have been right to warn us not to overreact to the horrors of September 11.

But their own over-reaction scares me much more.

Yes, they do well to remind us that most Muslims want only peace. But they insult us and endanger us when they say our fear of militant Islam just proves we are racists.

I'm sorry to speak so bluntly on this sensitive issue, but Mary Robinson, the former Irish president and now the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, has just shown how perverted the ``debate'' about Islam has become.

The left-wing Robinson has long been accused of pandering to black racists and anti-Semitic Muslim despots.
But this month she set new standards in the hate-the-West hypocrisy of human rights groups by criticising us for the ``Islamaphobia'' she claims has gripped the world since Islamic terrorists slaughtered 3000 civilians in the United States on September 11.

What the globe's most powerful human rights activist apparently means by ``Islamaphobia'' is the suspicion many folk feel since hijacked passenger jets were flown into the World Trade Centre -- a suspicion that Islam may not be so cuddly as human rights activists like Robinson imply.

You might think 3000 bodies -- and the Muslims dancing with joy in Egypt and the West Bank -- give reason to feel a tad concerned.

But to Robinson, this concern seems to be more proof of how racist and dumb rich Westerners are, and how badly they need correcting, especially by Muslims.

AS she says in her statement: ``Prejudice and misperception feed on ignorance and this needs to be confronted, especially through the mass media, with the truth.'' And she calls on Islamic communities to ``become more active in countering ignorance'' in the West ``through offering positive information on Islam and Islamic beliefs''.

That should be interesting. Will these communities urge us to follow the example of the Saudi Arabian newspaper al-Riyadh, which this month tackled ``prejudice and misperception'' by running a column by an academic claiming Israeli Jews were mixing the blood of Muslim children in their pastries?
Or should we learn from Egypt's state-controlled newspapers, whose own efforts to combat prejudice include running articles saying Israeli spies actually brought down the World Trade Centre, and that Jew-loving  America deserved it.

It's a mystery how such reports come to be published, because Mullah Robinson declares after many nights of studying her Koran that ``no one can deny that at its core Islam is entirely consonant with the principle of fundamental human rights, including human dignity, tolerance, solidarity and equality''.

Well, no one except Sheik Osama bin Laden and his merry band of child-killers, I guess. And the leaders of Islamic Jihad. And Hamas. And terrorist-sponsoring Iran. And any other kill-them-all Islamic fanatics, who will no doubt be chastened to hear Catholic Robinson believes them to be unauthentically Muslim.

BUT Robinson goes still further: Islam has a human rights history  that's inspiring.``No one can deny, from a historical perspective, the revolutionary force that is Islam, which bestowed rights upon women and children long  before similar recognition was afforded in other civilisation,'' she says. And see the ``acceptance of the universality of human rights by Islamic states''.

Dear God, enough.

Robinson's weasel words are the most authoritative example of the intellectual cowardice and dishonesty of so many human rights  activists -- a cowardice and dishonesty that makes them appear to take the side of Islamic terrorists against Western secular democracies. Of fascism against freedom.
To activists who think in bumper-stickers, Robinson is, of course, right.
Yes, there is Islamaphobia. But follow the news for a few days, and even the most tolerant reader might feel that's excusable.
Again, let me say most Muslims here, including the many I know personally, want no strife and give none.
But let me give a run-down of some of the Muslim activities reported in this city's daily newspapers just since last Saturday.

We learned, for instance, that Islamic terrorists linked to bin Laden are on a killing spree in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Iraqi Government has doubled the reward to the families of Palestinians who kill Jews in suicide missions (sanctioned by religious authorities) to $47,000 each.
Yet another Islamic suicide bomber killed three shoppers in Jerusalem, and a Palestinian in police uniform murdered two international observers.
An Indonesian religious leader implicated in terrorism is openly instructing his 200 students to admire Osama bin Laden, but the Government refuses to crack down on Islamic extremist networks believed to have taken refuge on its islands.
Pakistan's dictator now wants another five years in power, in part to crush the Islamic terrorist groups destabilising his country.
American diplomats in Pakistan were ordered to send home their families after Islamic terrorists threw grenades into a Christian church there, killing a diplomat's daughter and four other worshippers.
The United States is beefing up security for the trials of members of the Islamic terrorist network behind the September 11 atrocities, amid fears of reprisals.
And an Australian Muslim was jailed for 15 years for allegedly helping Islamic terrorists in Kazakhstan.

Don't fret -- it could have been worse. There's been no news this week of the bloody Islamic insurgencies in Algeria, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines, Sarawak and Ambon.

There's also a lull in the battles in Afghanistan, Libya's mad Gaddafi has gone quiet, Sudan's genocidal Islamic leaders continue to get away with mass-murder and Iran's Islamic regime has been muted since it was caught a few weeks ago trying to smuggle a shipload of arms and explosives to Palestinian extremists.

And the papers didn't even report that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood last week paraded its first Palestinian-style suicide bombers at Cairo's famed Islamic Al-Azhar University.

So what do we conclude from this litany of death and hatred? That ``no one can deny'' Islam is a religion of peace? Why won't Robinson tell the truth -- that far too many Islamic leaders are among the greatest threats to human rights?

Even our own Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj Eldine el-Hilaly, last year praised suicide bombers to the men of his mosque.

IF Islamic groups take up Robinson's offer to help cure people like me of Islamaphobia, let me suggest how they could best begin.

Forget giving me improving lectures about racism.
Let them instead show me Islam means peace by sacking every Muslim cleric who praises killing of any sort.
Let Muslim Arab nations stop sponsoring or sheltering terrorists, not least those who kill for Allah.
Let Muslim leaders stop hacking off the hands of petty criminals, or slicing or stoning adulterers.
Let the Muslim world replace its countless dictatorships with democracies.
Let Muslim governments stop publishing newspapers or running TV  stations which preach hate and murder, or show Israeli leaders drinking Palestinian blood.
And, here in Australia, let moderate Muslim leaders find the guts to do what they promise me in whispers and depose Hilaly as Mufti.
Lying words will no longer do. Honest deeds are needed, or Islamaphobia will grow, and, sadly, not without some reason.

bolta@heraldsun.com.au