If Kristina Keneally and her Labor cohorts were to be believed, it would not have been “Allahu akbar” the stabber in Sydney cried from the rooftop of a Mercedes yesterday. They’d have you think he was more likely to shout, “Raheem is Great!” before his violent spree, such has been their insistence that I am the real threat to Australia.

Today, a woman lies dead, and Australia once again sees the fruits of fundamentalist Islam and the perverseness that some mainstream interpretations of the Quran have bestowed upon Western nations.

A man of Turkish-Cypriot origin and an apparent Muslim convert is alleged to have murdered a woman and then attempted to stab others in Sydney’s central business district.

There’s no upshot to this. It’s yet another tragedy summoned forth by those unwilling to recognise the rot at the heart of one of the world’s fastest-growing and influential religions: Islam.

I have always been cautious to not lump “all Muslims” together, but only the naive would suggest radicalism and/or fundamentalism were slim to nil considerations within Islam. The statistics I cite in my 2017 book No Go Zones illustrate that: Twenty per cent of British Muslims said they sympathised with the 7/7 bombers who killed fifty-two people on the London transport network in 2005. Twenty-seven per cent of British Muslims supported the deadly attacks on the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, and 12 per cent of young Muslims in Britain have said that suicide bombings can be justified.

Senator Keneally apparently thinks that me pointing these statistics out is “hate speech”. I can find no record of her attacking the left-leaning BBC for doing the same back in 2007.

Because as we repeatedly learn, politics is no longer about the policy, but about the messenger. Discussing the U.S. border crisis was fine until Donald Trump did it. Deliberations over Britain’s membership of the European Union were harmless until Nigel Farage came along. This is evidently because the political establishment believes controlled discourse – a pressure release valve – is acceptable so long as no action is expected in order to curtail the things which ail our societies most. They especially loathe when the messengers emanate from the very communities they have been patronising and paying lip service to.

I spent twenty years in Islam. Senator Kristina Keneally, I imagine, has spent about 20 minutes loitering outside a mosque. Yet she and the Australian Labor Party found it appropriate for them to lecture me on the subject matter.

All this while certain members of the ALP literally stand shoulder-to-shoulder with senior representatives of Britain’s institutionally anti-Semitic Labour Party. A party which has, at its helm, a captain who has called the murderous Islamist group Hamas his “friends”. Who has stood in front of Hezbollah flags replete with its AK-47 logo. Who has excused Irish Republican terrorists and caused a Jewish exodus from the Labour Party and whose supporters have cheered as Jewish Labour MPs resigned the party whip.

I was bemused upon entering the Commonwealth of Australia that I should need to fear being turned away upon entry. Or worse, detained for something I had said, or tweeted. But the CPAC Australia conference I was in town for went off without a hitch. Or rather, went off with the only hitch being an Antifa protest which led to the arrest of a left-wing demonstrator for becoming violent and throwing coffee over a conference attendee.

It is, in fact, not the Right but the Left that throughout Europe, the United States and the UK is frequently on the front foot when it comes to displaying totalitarian characteristics. Such as banning people and restricting their speech; standing alongside anti-Semites; resorting to violence at the first turn when their narratives are threatened, or when political opposition is nearby.

Which is what we saw in Sydney when leftist activists attempted to physically and violently disrupt the conference. In demonising me personally under parliamentary privilege from the safety of the Senate chamber, Keneally clearly put my personal safety at risk.

I have written extensively against Islam and its ideology. Had a psychotic, radical Islamist convert recognised me in Sydney’s Central Business District, I would unlikely be here to reflect on such things.

I was lucky. The same cannot be said for many who have also criticised Islam, including Theo Van Gogh, or Charlie Hebdo’s satirists.

Shooting, or stabbing the messenger, is a literal reality.

Keneally is quick to condemn those who criticise Islam, even someone like me who grew up in and decided to leave the religion. I have never called for violence or retribution against Muslims – or anyone, for that matter.

Keneally, on the other hand, was happy to make comments in ‘coward’s castle’ that potentially could have endangered my personal safety. Or worse. Is this incitement? The same incitement Keneally and her cadre bang on about? Maybe the police should decide.

Raheem Kassam is a bestselling author, Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow, and former advisor to Brexit leader Nigel Farage

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