796 Ayaan Hirsi Ali two
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is in
the news again … she will be visiting Australia in April.
I have written about
her before, blog 487. I am very sympathetic to her ... it would be hard not to feel sympathy for a woman who has gone through what she had to endure. You can hear her in an interview with Sam Harris.
However, there is one thing she says in the newspaper article I take issue with ...
"The problem of Islamic extremism is a huge one.
It is one of the biggest threats facing the globe, not just the United States."
Donald Trump, of course, and indeed our pollies, do agree with her. I don't.
Donald Trump put out famously just recently that the media has not covered terrorism enough ... what rubbish. In the contrary, the media is beholden to the popular view espoused by Hirsi Ali - to the theatricality of terrorism - and they blow the importance of terrorism out of proportion; watch the video below.
Of course I agree that the problem of Islamic terrorism, or Islamic extremism, is great and it needs to be dealt with. That is happening, at least in Australia ... our security forces foil many Islamic extremists' plans before they get anywhere with their ambition to harm the public; they are doing a great job.
But our politicians and our media give the issue far too much attention; I wrote a letter to the paper about this, see my blog 783.
Just think ... recently the Premier of NSW appointed a Minister for Counter Terrorism! How about that?!
My point is this: Where is the Minister for Counter Youth Suicide? Where is the Minister for Counter Domestic Violence? Just to name a couple of ministries that would serve the community more effectively. Just saying.
These are the
statistics from America: Between 2005 and 2015 there were 24 deaths from
terrorism ... in Australia we had 3 deaths from terrorism; to put that
into perspective, nearly as many women die of domestic violence every
week.