On 30 March, the Australian Newspaper offered up the following morsel:
Pack your bags, Julian Burnside, your companion is ready
Julian Burnside on Twitter on Sunday:
Bigotry creates terrorists, by radicalising people who were willing to see hope in everything
Rodger Shanahan (associate professor at the Australian National University’s National Security College, and research fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy) replying over several tweets:
Comment from someone not very well travelled nor versed in areas in which he prognosticates. Am sure that the people killed (in) Nairobi mall, Paris, Brussels, New York, Ankara, Istanbul, Bali, Tunis etc were questioning their bigoted past before they were killed. Travel in some hard parts of the world, economy class by foot may expand your rather closed mind. I know your “thing” is to be controversial and eloquent, but some real life experience may temper your strange world view. Possibly. Education is supposed to allow discernment. Tempered by real life experience it is powerful. Alone it is like an empty vessel. Methinks you are an empty vessel railing against things about which you have theoretical learning but nil practical experience.
But Shanahan doesn’t just come bearing criticism, he brings a solution, too:
I would recommend a holiday to real world. Happy to travel with you. Warning: may involve real-life experience.
The Australian newspaper saw fit to extract just some of the relevant tweets: One of mine and all of Rodger Shanahan’s. Presumably the editorial theory is that, if you strip out the context, you can skew the result. As in most things, even on Twitter the context can be important. Here’s how this little non-story developed:
On 27 March at 11.15 am @DanWosHere wrote:
It’s terrorism @JulianBurnside and it is Muslims from refugee backgrounds committing it. End of story
On 27 March at 4.02 pm I responded:
People like you, Miranda Devine &c will radicalise some who may become terrorists. You’re part of the problem
And then at 4.06pm I said:
Bigotry creates terrorists, by radicalising people who were willing to see hope in everything
The next day, 28 March, Rodger Shanahan, came in swinging. (I will confess, I did not see his tweets until the Australian printed them, so the article was not entirely useless). His contributions went as follows:
7.41 pm:
Comment from someone not very well travelled nor versed in areas in which he prognosticates. Am sure that the people killed (in) …
7.43pm:
Nairobi mall, Paris, Brussels, New York, Ankara, Istanbul, Bali, Tunis etc were questioning their bigoted past before they were killed.
7.43 pm:
Travel in some hard parts of the world, economy class by foot may expand your rather closed mind.
7.46pm:
I know your “thing” is to be controversial and eloquent, but some real life experience may temper your strange world view. Possibly.
7.50 pm:
Education is supposed to allow discernment. Tempered by real life experience it is powerful. Alone it is like an empty vessel.
7.51 pm:
Methinks you are an empty vessel railing against things about which you have theoretical learning but nil practical experience.
I did not respond to Shanahan, because I did not notice his tweets until The Australian put them up this morning.
All in all, it was a fairly standard bit of trolling by Shanahan: abuse without any attempt at argument, although the second tweet suggests that he had misunderstood the point I had made. I have never suggested that all terrorists are the result of bigotry, merely that bigotry can radicalise some people, thus forming one element in the process which results in them turning to terrorism.
In all of this jollity, there is a serious point to be made, which @DanWosHere exemplifies, and Shanahan leaves completely unanswered. It is a matter of ordinary experience that a person who is treated badly may, eventually, react badly. If people in the West regularly condemn all Muslims, it is inevitable that some Muslims will begin to feel as though they are seen as the enemy, as though they are hated in the West. So, for example, British mosques have been attacked by anti-Muslim groups. In Australia, the construction of mosques has been violently opposed by some community groups, who were vocal in their condemnation of Muslims. Donald Trump has, in substance, said that Muslims should be excluded from the USA. And don’t forget what was said at the start of the Twitter exchange: @DanWosHere “It’s terrorism … and it is Muslims from refugee backgrounds committing it. End of story”.
Any group confronted with hostility like this is likely to be offended. As a matter of ordinary human nature, it is easy to understand that some members of that group will react badly.
The strangest part of Shanahan’s response is that it does not appear to draw on his professional credentials, and it does not seem to acknowledge ordinary human experience.
I do not approve of terrorists, whether Muslim, Red Brigade, Irish separatist or anything else. But I worry about the consequencws of treating one group as if all members of that group presnet a threat to our Society. What we need to learn is that we are threatened by extremists. Of course there are Muslim extremists, just as there are extremists who adhere to other ideologies. We would be making a catastrophic mistake if we treat all Muslims as if they are extremists.
Until Shanahan, or an expert in the field, can show me that I am wrong, I will continue to hold the opinion that being the target of relentless bigotry will drive some people to extremism, and is therefore one cause of terrorism.
We are being very foolish if we continue to tolerate public abuse of Muslims generally.
The WestCgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi was owned by Frank Lowy and Rented Shop to “The Youth” Somalian CIA outfit – Expect damage covered by Insurance – Attacks in Belgium happened on Atonement Day or Purim which happened to coincide with a Meeting at EU Parliament with Palestinians – the Israeli Minister for Science Technology and space blamed the attacks on “Product Labelling”. Apparently ISIS were acting on ISRAEL’s on behalf of products from the West Bank and Golan heights having to be labelled as such
Julian, your defence seems to boil down to this one sentence:
“I have never suggested that all terrorists are the result of bigotry, merely that bigotry can radicalise some people, thus forming one element in the process which results in them turning to terrorism.”
I agree with you on that. But the tweet in question does not open itself to that interpretation. To say that “bigotry creates terrorists”, without qualification, suggests two things: (a) this is a universal rule (b) bigotry is the predominant if not sole cause of terrorism.
Point (a) is false, as you well know. Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 highjackers grew up in Muslim countries where they experienced little to no bigotry.
Point (b) is also false. If one looks at the, say, last 100 examples of terrorism, they will find a variety of causes. Poverty, alienation, mental health, and yes, bigotry. But there is only one common denominator- I’ll put it as ‘adherence to radical Islamic doctrine’, but will also accept ‘adherence to radical ideology’ to pre-empt your inevitable response re anti-abortionists etc.
You say that the tweet in question does not open itself to that interpretation. I don’t agree, but it does expose the problem on a 140 character limit.
And I certainly do not agree that the tweet suggests that “(a) this is a universal rule or (b) bigotry is the predominant if not sole cause of terrorism.”
I agree that both of those propositions are unsupportable, and they are not implied i what I wrote.
Fair enough.
But if you do not agree that “bigotry is the predominant if not sole cause of terrorism”, then why is that the only cause which you have identified?
Put another way, do you believe radical Islam “creates terrorists” at least as much bigotry? I believe this to be plainly obvious from the evidence. If you agree with that, why have you not railed against Islamist ideology in the same way you have against bigotry?
I am not saying that one must condemn Islamist ideology or profess a view one way or the other. What I am saying is that once you chose to highlight an arguably minor cause of terrorism and remained silent on a major cause, you have said more in your silence that you could have ever said in 140 characters or 14000 characters.
I agree that radical Islam is a substantial contributor to terrorism. The real question is: how much more susceptible to radical Islam is a person who has been worn down by years of bigotry and hatred?
The answer to your question is “much more susceptible”. I agree with you on that.
But if we confine the making of a terrorist to just two ingredients- radical Islam and anti-Islam bigotry- we discover that, while they enhance each other, only one of these ingredients is truly indispensable.
It is not possible to have Islamic terrorism without radical Islam. It is possible to have Islamic terrorism without anti-Islamic hate.
So yes, it is true that years of bigotry will make a person more susceptible to radical Islam. But it is ultimately radical Islam that will make him the terrorist, without or without the push of bigotry. If we wish to tackle terrorism, it is best we attack also its main cause, instead of pushing the delusion (which is what your tweet does, unintentionally or not) that the true cause of terrorism lies not with the terrorists.
When you stress only the one contributing factor, you essentially support a “blame the victim” narrative.
Julian, I accept that you feel your tweet was grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted, perhaps maliciously so. But please realise that there are many of us who feel that your tweet is part of a broader refusal to accept what is a painful truth that grows louder and louder with each blast and each beheading.
“Bigotry creates terrorists, by radicalising people who were willing to see hope in everything”
So does the devil, stupidity, irrational fear, inequality, racism ….
Should we exclude bigotry from the list for you Bruce?
My views mirrors Mr. Burnside QC. I admire him as a great human being who gives up a lot of his and expertise to set the record right regarding illegals ( migrants ). Mr . Burnside practices what he advicates. I remember him having 6 Hazari refugees from Afganistan living in his home . Mr. Burnside’s Artist wife worked as a ” cleaner ” so she can expose the conditons in a refugee camp ( my recollection may not be exaxtly correct on this ).
Julian why then would only Muslims with hurt feelings become terrorists? Offended Buddhists don’t. Hurt Christians don’t. Not even at Pastafarians. :-/
I think the record of history contradicts you. Re-read the history of Gujurat, Ireland etc.
The problem is islam, an extremely bigoted belief system. Colonial Australians treated the Chinese appallingly on the goldfields and elsewhere they are now our most successful migrants. The Vietnamese copped flak, forty years later, take a look. The Beqqa Valley moslem peasants arrived at the same time as the Vietnamese. We’ve thrown bucket loads of cash at them and what do we get? Sharrouf, Elomar and so forth. Interesting thing, Lebanese Christians and moslems are ethnically identical, observe the difference, ditto for the Sudanese
Before you jump to conclusions like that, you should consider some of the teachings in our (Christian) Bible. Re-read the books of Exodus and Leviticus then re-consider what you said.
Of course the point is that most Christians do not believe (or enact) the most savage parts of our scriptural teaching. Likewise with most Muslims.
Forget the old testament and the bible Compare the teachings of Jesus to Mo. Jesus is a far better role model don’t you think? Not a Christian BTW, it’s not my bible thanks.
I will of course beg to differ with Julian as to what he meant by merely equating bigotry & terrorism in the one tweet with no additional context. Only after the lack of acknowledgment of other, central causal factors has been pointed out has Julian said that there are other factors. My reaction reflected this lack of a broader series of tweets or contextualizing – I’m actually not sure why he chose to post his random missive other than to provoke a reaction.
Nobody denies that bigotry exists. There are elements of it directed against Muslims but it is neither as pervasive as Burnside would have us believe nor can it be used as any form of justification for the horrendous violence that we see perpetrated. Plenty of groups have suffered bigotry in the past – in the Australian context we need to look no further than Irish Catholics, eastern and southern Europeans and Vietnamese and yet no element of them decided to kill their fellow countrymen and others because of it.
I would welcome some insight into the religious foundations of Islamist terrorism from Burnside just to see what level of understanding h has of the issue. I understand that as a human rights campaigner Julian likes to swim against what he perceives to be the current. But not looking at the religious aspect of Islamic terrorism is intellectually lazy – the reality is that the one element uniting all the Australian foreign fighters that we know about so far was not that they were the victims of bigotry; rather they all believed that God gave his imprimatur to their killing of others and that this duty marked them out as special Muslims. The vast majority of the tens of thousands of foreign fighters entering Syria and Jordan are from the region and are not victims of bigotry.
Trying to understand what makes a particular type of Islamic identity prone to such medieval violence is not to condemn the Muslim community. I am a student of Islam, lived in four countries in the Middle East and regularly travel to the region (am currently in the region now), and wager that I have been into more mosques and engaged with more Muslims overseas and in Australia than has Julian. I completely understand the problems that the community faces and I sympathise with many of them. But there are problems that need to be acknowledged before they can be addressed. Simply saying that bigotry causes terrorism not only simplifies a complex issue but it also gives a free pass to the deeper ideological question as to why an intolerant, violent, empowering message focused purely on establishing a particular Muslim religious identity has been allowed to fester and grow ? These are questions that should be debated by the community publicly.
What Julian could ask himself, or at least attempt to contextualise before launching into his bigotry defence is not why one thing is like another, but rather in what way things are not like each other. Much as Julian would like to portray the similarities between the Irish Troubles and the Sunni-Shi’a competition I am at odds to understand what they are given he has never sought to explain them. And while he likes to mention the violence inherent in the Old Testament, he neglects to mention the very peaceable nature of the New, and how neither are the literal word of God. I am sure that Burnside’s good understanding of the Qur’an and studies of the way in which sura are used in the various anshad and videos to make a direct linkage between God’s word and killing.
Nor has he engaged with questions such as why Australian, Pacific or Asian Catholics not feel motivated to travel to East Timor to take up arms with their co-religionists and fight against the Muslim occupying forces. Or why the persecuted Irish Catholics didn’t have waves of their Western brethren fly to Dublin and make their way north, or wage attacks against perfidious Albion wherever they found them because of the very real bigotry their kin had suffered for centuries.
As a lawyer Julian obviously chooses his words carefully. Odious comments by people like Donald Trump (forcefully rejected by many if not most in the US) and the comments of the far-right ideologues should equally be condemned. But it is interesting to note that in Burnside’s worldview the verbal attacks from some rabid right wingers constitutes ‘hostility like this’ while the massacres of innocents in Paris, Brussels, Ankara, Tunis, Bali and elsewhere is simply Islamists ‘reacting badly’. Based on Burnside’s measures I wonder what Islamists reacting ‘really badly’ or ‘very badly’ would look like.
This is a lot I know to extract from a 140 character tweet. I am sure that Burnsdie is a good lawyer and feels that he is doing good things. But my concern is that his lack of experience in the field about which he talks, his lack of knowledge of the areas from which the threat emanates (I could be wrong here and Julian could have lived and traveled extensively in the ME) means that he seeks to influence a debate about which he doesn’t have much knowledge. That is his right – I am just trying to mount the argument that we shouldn’t give his random thoughts on this subject much weight given his lack of theoretical or practical subject matter expertise.
Also as someone who has lived in the middle east as a local with a local spouse for decades, I concur with Rodgers reasoned argument. The problem with people like Julian boiling down the problem to a simple “cause” in his mind (or as he tries to backtrack) “might” cause or “could cause” “some” people to turn to terrorism, the major hole in his argument is that he cannot explain, because he has no knowledge of the foundations of where that ability to “turn to terrorism” comes from. As a result of being so simplistic and in my view ignorant, he is letting down many millions of muslims who are either turning their back on their private faith, questioning their faith or living in danger of being accused of apostasy because they reject this literal interpretation of their faith wholeheartedly. There is much to be said for knowledge. For knowledge is indeed power.
Your moral relativity is astonishing Julian. Some questions and they’re not negotiable:
1. How are Muslims to be viewed when they kill because (in your opinion) they are offended, and;
2. Why are other religions not doing the same?
3. If the answer to 2 is because being offended is not enough to drive so many to blood thirsty violence then it’s a fair bet that it’s not bigotry, but something else. In any event, your thoughts on terrorists by your very own admission makes you a bigot also.
Julian, you have proven form. Rodger was correct to call you out as a part of the “Chardonnay set”, all sausage and no sizzle. Your incessant abuses and sneers towards those who don’t subscribe to your views is well documented. Rodger was also correct to point out that you have no practical experience. You say he had no argument, that’s rubbish and you are once again looking down your nose at anyone who dares to disagree with you. His very argument is that you are not qualified to make your statements because it’s clear that you do not have the practical experience that qualifies you to do so. Furthermore, he is an expert and is therefore eminently qualified to say you are wrong. You know the power of expert testimony, heck even basic contractual principles establish that an opinion can still have promissory value if it comes from an expert. Therefore, you are being facetious and downright disrespectful to simply and with a snobbish sneer waive him away as though he is a ghastly intrusion by even daring to contradict Julian the Great. Your wrong Julian and you would be a far more endearing person if you were to for a change admit to it.