Protecting the freedoms of the dead

A clear example of this was the zero tolerance laws enforced in New York about five years ago. At the time there was an eruption of protests from civil libertarians that these laws were inhumane, unjust and ignoble, and that they would be totally ineffective as a deterrent to crime. Their success however, in substantially diminishing crime within a short time, proved critics to be totally wrong.

This indeterminacy and unpredictability of all human laws, unlike the physical laws of gravity, in regards to their success against lawbreakers, is augmented moreover, to the highest degree when a government has to legislate laws against a “consortium” of religious fanatics whose mode of operation has the speed and randomness of quicksilver, and whose goal is the destruction of civilised society, by the barbaric and ruthless use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones.

The legislators of these laws that could forestall such lethal terrorist attacks must be aware that all such attacks in the eyes of these fanatics are “pushed” by the breath of Allah. Hence, the most impossible action(s) fantastically imagined, in the context of such apocalyptic fanaticism, becomes an alarming reality. Muslim fanatic terrorism, has no rational concrete political or social goals, despite its propagandistic pronouncements to the contrary, which are merely a fig-leaf of their real intentions, but only the eschatological goal of destroying decadent Western civilisation.

In such circumstances, laws that could be effective against criminal activity would be totally ineffective against zealots who are guided solely by the laws of God. Hence, one of the most fundamental elements of law, the deterring factor, is completely useless against these fanatics. And this is the reason why the government has to legislate a new generation of laws that would have a chance to be effective against God's outlaws.

In the passing of such legislation however, one has to make a distinction between hardcore terrorists and would-be terrorists. The latter have not reached the point of no return of the fanatics. And either because of fear of what would happen to themselves or their families, they could be constrained by laws, from entering the gates of hell of active terrorism. This is why the anti-terror laws must be composed of both a “safe-haven” and a “purgatory”: a safe-haven for those Muslim fundamentalists that can be promptly rehabilitated, and a purgatory for those inveterate and pathological fanatics, whose “rehabilitation” can only be accomplished, if ever, inside the gates of Infinite Paradise.

To the raw suspect recruits of would-be terrorists, the laws as applied to them must have provisions that they are not going to be treated too harshly, thus leaving them an opening, a safe-haven, to rescue themselves from the relentless squeeze of the vice of the law that would apply to the hardcore fanatics, either as suspects of being active terrorists or as suspects who propagate and incite terrorism - as some of the fundamentalist imams and teachers in Islamic schools do among their followers.

To these imams and mentors who actively or by intent engage in seditious activities and the incitement of a holy war against ourselves and our allies, who are also waging war on global terror, the purgatory of deportation, detention, and imprisonment should remorselessly apply.

This clear distinction of how to deal with hardcore fanatics in contrast to their greenhorn recruits, has the great potential to sever the association of the latter from the former, and hence “dry” the pool from which the fundamentalist mentors of a holy war against the West get their recruits. And by “deporting” their perfidious activities the government will effectively disable them from continuing to be the incubators of terror in this country.

The government must not be constrained by any “legal-niceties” or illusions in the enactment of the anti-terror laws. The latter must correspond to the great threat that external and home-grown terrorism pose to the country.

The curtain has fallen on all discussions, deliberations, and debates about the causes and ideological roots of terrorism. When someone is ready to stab you to death, you don't restrain his action by parleying with him about the causes that made him an assassin. This is the time for action.

The government must take no heed of the criticism and subterfuges of the civil libertarians. All their assertions are no more than a marivaudage, a sophisticated banter, about this grave and deadly serious issue. In its enaction of these anti-terror laws, it must be solely governed by its historical duty to ordain this imperative legislation to protect Australia.