Not again...

So, terrorism has raised its ugly head again. This time, however, I don’t think anybody could have predicted where it would pop up. Australia has always seemed such a safe, laid-back country; so the idea of a terrorist taking hostage in the middle of Sydney would surely take anyone by surprise.

I struggle to understand terrorism. Its purpose is to deliberately upset and frighten people; make them feel vulnerable and insecure. But it doesn’t work. All it does is galvanise people and make them more determined to fight back.

It’s true that when Mon Haron Monis walked into that Lindt Chocolat Café and took dozens of people hostage, he did upset and frighten people. The numerous calls the police received reporting suspicious packages and persons across the city showed that he’d made the people feel vulnerable and insecure. But the siege has ended now; and come tomorrow the people of Sydney will go to work as normal; they’ll still pop in somewhere to get a coffee and a bagel; they’ll go about their business in defiance of those who wish to cause them harm.

Questions will be asked; security will be improved; people will become a little more vigilant. The world won’t have changed, or come to an end; it won’t even slow down. What Mon Haron Monis will have achieved is to make life harder for Muslims. People will look at them with suspicion. Some idiots might attack innocent Muslims who themselves will have condemned Monis’s actions. There will be more raids; more searches, and an increased risk of mistakes resulting in innocent, law-abiding Muslim men being arrested and detained – sometimes for years.

Since the 9/11 attacks most of the western world has been in a weird, open-ended “War on Terror” that has us in a permanent state of emergency. The idea of it is ludicrous – how can you wage war against a concept? But people like Monis; the 7/7 bombers and the men going out to fight alongside the Islamic State have put a face to this concept. They’ve put a face on a faceless idea; created a target for people’s hate and anger. They’ve created a tragic situation in which the “War on Terror” has essentially become the war against Islam. The Muslim has become the face of the enemy.

It shouldn’t be like that. The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens making a positive contribution to society. But they’ve been unfairly demonised through the actions of a few extremists whose campaign of sieges and hostage-taking achieves nothing for their cause.

Another by-product of these atrocities is that they feed into the paranoia of the Conspiracy Theorists. It provides oxygen for their theories which are, at best, questionable; at worst, bloody mental.

Anybody who hasn’t been living on an island for the last 13 years will be familiar with the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Again, they range from, “Hmm, that’s an interesting story,” to “Don’t be so fucking soft. You need your head looking at.” But a lot of people are making a lot of money on the back of it, so I guess they’re going to be around for a while.

Setting aside the whole conspiracy stuff, it has to be stressed that terrorism achieves nothing. After 9/11 and 7/7, people didn’t go running to their nearest mosque to convert; military leaders didn’t suddenly adopt a pacifist stance. Quite the opposite, in fact; they went over to Iraq and Afghanistan and reducing large piles of them to rubble, creating humanitarian disasters at the same time.

So, Mon Haron Monis is going to get his fifteen minutes of fame. Now he’s dead, along with two hostages; but like those who went before him, he will soon be forgotten. No plaque will bear his name; no statue will be erected in his memory; and not one fucking thing will have changed in terms of foreign policy.

It’s time for a change of strategy. It’s time to stop the sieges, the atrocities and the threats; and get round a table and talk through whatever grievances you have.

Fair enough, that’s rich coming from a bitter, vengeful potential killer like me; but we’re talking about other people here; innocent people – on both sides of the religious dogma. And these people deserve better. So bloody behave yourselves – all of you. Don’t make me come over there…