Mass shooting on Bondi Beach

Opposition leader Sussan Ley is making political statements about government not protecting Jewish people enough. Political points scoring is very poor form in this situation.

Bit of a difference though between a few comments on an Irish website compared to the leader of the opposition party of a country that has just had a big terrorist attack.

I think extremist movements of the religious-nationalist variety tend to arise from revanchism n former imperial powers especially Russia. While probably unlikely, we need to keep an eye on this in the UK with the rise of Reform UK. They don't seem interested in expansionism, but reactionary nationalists sometimes go down that road. The Franco regime in Spain is an exception.

In the US, anti semitic violence comes from both White Supremacists and Islamic extremists. Efforts to stop it are hampered by the WHs ties to the neo Nazi groups like the Groypers. The other day, Nick Fuentes was on the Piers Morgan Show saying he didn't care about Jewish relatives of a Jewish English journalist having died in the Holocaust. Plans to deliver the swastika and the noise as hare symbols are sending the quest possible signal.

It's reported 30-40% of young Republicans are Groypers.

I heard Emily Hand’s father being interviewed today on the BBC: he said he saw a man of about 80 on crutches who had come into Beeri (their kibbutz) to do whatever he could to hurt Jews. Dozens of civilians including women and children came across. People they had employed on the kibbutz, people they’d invited in for coffee when they were working on the the kibbutz.

There’s no comparable atrocity committed by NI civilians against anyone on any side. It’s a whole other level of radicalisation.

But it’s not collective punishment: it’s a war.

Religious extremism is almost always political under the surface.

The people who carry out the attacks are undoubtedly radicalised to act on the violent parts of their religious teaching. There are violent texts in Islam , and texts of love and peace that strongly contradict these, just like Christianity and Judaism. Extremist interpretations are rejected or ignored by mainstream Muslims, just like mainstream Christians/ Jews.

Scratch the surface and Islamic terrorism is universally linked to foreign occupation and military intervention, civil war, state collapse, authoritarian rule, state repression, sectarian/ethnic struggles, poor education and no opportunities, which are all far more common in the ME than other political jurisdictions.

As example, Al-Qaeda formed during the Cold War where foreign troops fought in the Middle East, Taliban after Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Isis from the chaos after the Iraq/Syria wars, Hamas from Israeli occupation and repression, on and on. In each case, political breakdown came first, religious extremist ideology followed afterwards as a tool.

What is also a fact is the majority of victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslim themselves, which strongly undermines the idea that these movements are about defending Islam.

The "Terrorism is about Islam" fallacy sticks around, and is so common on boards.ie and in our media, because its simpler than trying to understand geopolitics, and in fairness because the pawns carrying it out think they are doing for religious reasons.

Countering Islamic terrorism isn't easy, but if it is seen as political rather than "they do it because they are Muslims", it is possible.
Kicking all Muslims out of Europe is absolutely not the answer.

Countries around the world need to promote sturdy and stable societies, and strengthen international law to prosecute repression throughout the world, whereas what we see these days is it's undermining / dismantling. Afterall, repression creates grievances that extremists exploit.

Also, it would be crazy to not acknowledge that western countries fighting exploitative wars in the ME and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians hasn't contributed. Of course there will be extremist pushback to this.

There also needs to be a political will in these countries to set their grievances aside and focus on building inclusive countries - if Europe could do it after WW2, anyone can.

I`m not that sure that as you put it the U.S. meddling with the Shah was not the reason for Iran becoming a theocracy. The CIA hand in hand with the Shah`s SAVAK secrets police played a major part in murdering any opposition that was opposed to him leaving a vacuum that the Ayatollahs to move into. I`m not sure either that the same would not have happened if the circumstances were not the same in a European or Western country. When we became an independent state, while technically becoming a democracy in reality we became pretty much a Catholic autocratic state.

There appears to be people pushing this narrative that Europe and the Western world will wake up some morning and that democracy will be a thing of the past and we will all be governed by Sharia Law. Personally I believe democracy has much more to worry about from the far right who are pushing this anti Muslim narrative to further their own agenda.