Human rights not sacrosanct

Five years after the war on terror began, some of us remain stuck in a September 10 mind-set

THERE is no polite way of saying this. Useful idiots have their place. They stir us out of our complacency lest we fall back into a lazy September 10 way of thinking.

With impeccable timing, just days before the fifth anniversary of September 11, The Sydney Morning Herald columnist Alan Ramsey bemoaned the Howard Government's terrorism laws and its recent commentary for unfairly targeting Muslims.

As evidence, he filled his papier-mache style Saturday column by quoting, among others, the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network. The network complained that "all people arrested under the legislation have been Muslim, and all of the 17 proscribed terrorist organisations are linked to Muslim organisations".

Like a joke without a punchline, that argument falls rather flat. Just how flat was neatly showcased later on Saturday evening as I settled into a seat at my local cinema. The previews included the Australian Government's new advertising campaign to stamp out domestic violence. In the short, powerful ad, five men admit to shoving, slapping or abusing women.

Their behaviour towards women is comprehensively denounced as unacceptable and illegal.

Did the ad target men? Undoubtedly. Did that make it unfair? No. Domestic violence is overwhelmingly a crime committed by men against women. But just because every person in the ad is a man, do we conclude that all men are women-bashers? Of course not.

That same logic applies to terrorism laws. Terrorism against Westerners is overwhelmingly a crime committed by Muslims but no one imagines that laws aimed at catching Muslim jihadists mean all Muslims are terrorists.

One would normally ignore Ramsey, as he rages Germaine Greer-like into ever more incandescent irrelevance. But on this, he illustrates perfectly the real difference that September 11 made to the intellectual life of the West. Forget for a moment the military and geopolitical consequences of September 11 and its aftermath, and the impact on individual countries and political leaders. September 11 will be remembered as the beginning of the end for the postwar hegemony of postmodern, so-called progressive politics.

To be sure, there are other contributors: the fall of communism and the dismal failure of centrally planned economics, for instance. But the attack on the twin towers was the catalyst for a revolution in Western thinking. For most people, at least.

However, September 10 people stubbornly adhere to a genre of multiculturalism that prohibits judgments about, or criticisms of, minorities or their culture. Hence, commentary by the Prime Minister and others that is critical of some within those minority cultures is deemed racist. In a nutshell, no pointing the finger at the unequal treatment of women by some Muslims even if that means putting up with the odd honour killing. Similarly, terrorism laws that in terms apply to all of us equally but in practice fall disproportionately on Muslims, are deemed discriminatory.

This mushy thinking is driven by the notion that being a member of a minority culture in a Western country is prima facie evidence of victimhood. And victims need to be protected from bullies banging on about protecting Western lives and values. That mentality has only encouraged Muslims to keep waving the victim card. It lets them off the hook. Instead, they should be confronting what London's former police chief John Stevens has called the "undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is their problem".

Stevens is a September 11 thinker. Writing in the News of the World last month after the latest arrests of suspected terrorists in London, the former police commissioner said: Enough of this victimhood stuff. He asked Muslims to "stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else's problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims". Stevens predicted that his comments would attract "instant squealings that this is racism". "It's not," he pointed out. "It's exactly the same as recognising that, during the Northern Ireland troubles that left thousands dead, the (Irish Republican Army was) totally based in the Catholic community and the (Ulster Volunteer Force) in the Protestant."

Proving Stevens's point, our friends over at Fairfax immediately labelled his comments as "inflammatory". But they are nothing of the sort. Post-September 11, they make perfect sense. So that's the first plank in the intellectual revolution ushered in by those terrorist attacks. Playing the victim is out. Taking responsibility is in.

The second intellectual change is how we view human rights. Ramsey and battalions of civil libertarians continue to defend a September 10 view of abstract, universal and unchallengeable human rights. In a pre-September 11 world, human rights tended to breed like rabbits and drafting fine-sounding bills of rights looked harmless enough. But now we're discovering, like never before, that human rights clash in the most spectacular fashion.

In Britain, both sides of politics acknowledge that their much lauded Human Rights Act is a potential strike against the human right to live safely. In May, Britain's Lord Chancellor admitted "there is a real concern about the way the act is operating ... There needs to be political clarity that the Human Rights Act should have no effect on public safety issues: public safety comes first."

Tory leader David Cameron has promised to amend the act because it has "actually hindered the fight against crime, it has stopped us responding properly to terrorism, particularly in terms of deporting those who may do us harm".

Those stuck in a non-judgmental mind-set believe that policy must be constructed on the basis that mankind is viewed as inherently decent and kind. They point to evil terrorism laws as unacceptable incursions on our civil liberties.

Post-September 11, more of us rejected this Pollyanna approach to policy-making.

We now know there are bad guys and that requires a recalibration of the balance between civil liberties and national security. It's about making sensible judgments, drawing lines based on reality, not some utopian view of man.

The final shift in thinking ushered in by September 11 has been a recognition that denigrating Western culture is a dangerous exercise in appeasement. Looking like a cultural pushover, the West became a sitting duck for jihadists keen on building an Islamic caliphate. Five years on, there is a virtual competition among Western leaders to see who can speak most often about the importance of Western values.

There's much talk about the rule of law, individual liberty, economic freedom, the equality of men and women, and so on. But the true genius of Western civilisation is its ability to self-correct, dumping silly ideas and allowing the better ones to triumph. September 11 and the terrorist attacks that followed have set the West on a path of self-correction. And the ninnies stuck in a September 10 world remind us not to deviate from that path.