It was perhaps too profound by half for Emile Herzog to have remarked, as he concluded his Histoire de la France (under the somewhat less juif pseudonym of André Maurois) that ‘The history of France, a permanent miracle, has the singular privilege of impassioning the peoples of the earth to the point where they all take part in French quarrels’. Et alors, the sirens blare through the 10th Arrondissement, and the death count infographics begin to tick merrily away, and the terrorism experts are roped in, like llamas at the petting zoo, to spruik their wares for goggling audiences across the breakfast shows, and we all dutifully quarrel along.

At the very least, it had the peoples of the earth impassioned. Prime Minister Cameron, who is sounding more and more statesman-like on ‘the issue’ every day, manages to argue the case for a more meaningful intervention in Syria without sounding opportunistic or crass. President Obama, who is sounding more and more feckless and undergraduate by the minute, spends the day qualifying an earlier (some would say premature) outburst of self-congratulation for his stellar efforts to ‘contain’ the threat of Isis, while the City of Lights is still smouldering. And as for the coterie of Republican presidential hopefuls, well, the scene resembles red meat day at the bear enclosure.

Cue the hashtags. Cue the spontaneous candlelit vigils. Cue the Opera House illuminated in the tricoleur and that nifty Eiffel Tower thing. How #touching. So what’s next? Niall Ferguson, Mark Steyn et al start taking bets on the time and date of the apocalypse. Then tread in the usual rabble of dour apologists and ‘community’ ‘spokesmen’ to make self-pitying noises about the inevitable ‘backlash’ and who would really prefer it if we’d please refrain from using the words ‘Islamic’ and ‘terrorism’ so close to one another — otherwise who’s to say what the youths might get up to next? No doubt going for a more upbeat tone, our own Prime Minister manages the singular achievement of saying both too much and too little with his (hopefully) off-the-cuff pronouncement that ‘freedom stands for itself’. Not sure if this one’s going to fly. Better give that magic 8-ball another shake. And perhaps the Grand Mufti didn’t get the memo that there’s never been a better time to be an Australian?

It is, by all accounts, a sorry state of affairs, not to mention a sordid one. And yet, for most of us, I suspect that les événements in Paris and Parramatta and Tunisia and Martin Place (remember that?) have become so familiar a scene and have reached so elevated a state of mundanity that even #StandingTogether seems like too much work. Battle of ideas? Sounds frightfully taxing. Civilisational struggle? Better include a trigger warning. On the latter point, to call this darkening scene a ‘clash of civilisations’ would, admittedly, be a simplification most obscene. It is a struggle for civilisation, against millenarian barbarism; between a liberal democratic consensus — that has, admittedly, become mushy in its complacency — and a strand of Islamic theology that is both more authentically religious and more popular than anyone is comfortable pointing out. And, as seems to require constant pointing out, it is as much a struggle within Islam as it is against it; between a vastly outgunned and outnumbered moderate minority, residing largely in the west, and, if the Pew polls are to be believed, the vast majority of adherents of the faith who don’t really see the merit in separating politics from religion.

It might be hoped that these points were uncontroversial ones to make, but to wish it were thus would be to under-appreciate the lowly depths to which our political discourse has bubbled and sunk. And so we must bear witness to the absurd feats of contortionism that political leaders of every stripe self-impose in this country in order to avoid stating the obvious: ‘Islamic Fascism’, seen as rather too confrontational a term to describe fascists who are Islamic, is replaced with the softer, more inclusive and altogether less judgmental ‘Violent Extremism’. In order to get the ghoulish ‘community’ ‘leaders’ all aboard the liberal democratic bandwagon that is Team Australia, we agree to abandon safeguards to free speech. Then we decide to abandon Team Australia. Always best to capitulate pro bono, wouldn’t you say?

Perhaps most sickly of all, however, is what occurred immediately following our most recent run-in with the devotees of lesser jihad. While the blood and glass was still being hosed from the boulevards, our sensibly secular Prime Minister had the good grace to opine that the suicide-murderers were not really acting true to their scripture, but were, in fact, ‘blaspheming’ against the word of the Almighty. Though such theological assurances would no doubt have come as a much-needed wake-up call to the prospective martyrs tuning into Sky in time for Richo + Jones, I would submit, Prime Minister, that the greater problem, in 2015, nearly four hundred years after John Milton, is that a sizeable proportion of a major world religion still believes that there is such a thing as blasphemy, and sees it as fit and proper to enforce its prohibition at knife-point.

And who is it exactly that you’re trying to convince? We hear, incessantly, of those ‘at risk’ of radicalisation; those ‘on the edge’ of violent extremism; those wayward youths, angry and disaffected and just one Danish cartoon ‘trigger’ away from mass atrocity. But to my mind, suicide-murder fits into the same spectrum of activity as playing the bagpipes or barracking for Collingwood: either you’d never thought of doing it, or you’re fully committed to the cause, and thus totally beyond salvation, in this life, or (apparently) the next. So PM, who exactly are the ‘undecideds’ to whom you preach?

Come to think of it, how does one become ‘agile’, ‘innovative’ and ‘embrace the future’ while trying to return society to the seventh century? Perhaps a question for the next quarrel. Or not. It’s time to update my profile picture again, and all this stigmatisation is hardly conducive to fostering an environment of inclusion, is it? Hardly helpful to our mission statement of building cross-cultural partnerships with community stakeholders, are you? And in any case, if you hadn’t already heard, the jury’s in: Team Australia is passé and Real Australians Say Bienvenue. So what’s there to quarrel about, anyway?