Szoke is trying to weasel around the fact that the vicious persecution of Pastor Danny Nalliah and Pastor Daniel Scot by the EOC and VCAT clearly demonstrate that these bodies are deeply prejudiced and even hostile to the principal of free speech.

How can any honest person assert that these agencies are “impartial” when they were complicit in a conspiracy to prosecute two pastors for accurately quoting from the Koran? Let me remind Szoke that it is indisputable that May Helou, a member of the EOC, incited fanatical Muslim converts to lodge baseless complaints against the pastors.

Moreover, there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to suggest that Diane Sisely conspired with Helou, whose loathsome actions amount to inciting religious hatred, in bringing about this disgusting prosecution. So much for this commission’s “stringent standards” of conduct.

Even more condemnatory is the grim fact that though the EOC and VCAT were aware of what Helou and Sisely had done and why the bigoted Helou acted as she did they still persisted with the prosecution. What is more, they even allowed Helou to act as judge and jury. And Szoke’s has got the bloody nerve to call these Star Chamber bodies “impartial”, even though the only people who were vilified were the pastors.

I think it’s time these agencies were relabelled the Dhimmi Committees. Let us be absolutely clear on this. This disgusting gang willingly provided a Muslim bigot with the means to try and destroy two decent men on the grounds of their Christianity. This is a fact that no amount of blustering by the cowardly Szoke can conceal.

Szoke has basically said that I will not be prosecuted because no complaint has been lodged against me. What she has apparently overlooked is that the EOC has already set a precedent. All she has to do is get the bigoted May Helou to incite her fellow Muslim fanatics to do to me what they did to the pastors. So why don’t you, Szoke?

What kind of person is Szoke? She was reported as complaining that Muslims in Melbourne’s northern suburbs had been treated “intolerably”. “It is at times like this”, said Szoke, “that we must be most vigilant about protecting the human rights of all our citizens”. (Unity, the national publication of the United Nations Association of Australia, 28 October 2005 No 439).

Strange, is it not, that the only so-called victims of intolerance she could find were Muslims. How come Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Italians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Russians, etc, were not subjected to the same “intolerable” behaviour, Ms Szoke? And what hypocrisy –– and she has the gall to whine about Muslims being persecuted while her commission, at the instigation of a Muslim bigot, is carrying out a which-hunt against two pastors.

And what is at the root of this alleged persecution of poor put-upon Muslims? According to her: “Fears about terrorist threats have led to suspicions and attacks on innocent fellow Australians”, fears that have been exacerbated by John Howard’s “counter-terrorism measures”. (Ibid.) And does her commission deal with these phoney fears? By railroading Christian pastors. What a bloody hypocrite.

(This intellectual giant seems to have missed the basic point that the terrorists are Muslims: not Christians, Buddhists, animists or Shintoists).

Her claim that she only wants Australians to go “about their daily lives without being abused” stands repudiated by her disgraceful behaviour towards Pastor Danny Nalliah and Pastor Daniel Scot. The EOC and VCAT applied the law selectively with the intention of silencing anyone rash enough to criticise Islam. In doing so they endorsed the process of eliciting false complaints.

The equivalent would be policemen inciting criminals to commit more crimes so that they could make more arrests. We would never tolerate such behaviour and I do not see why the community should tolerate it from a bunch of odious bureaucrats.

If this insufferable band of hypocrites has not got the guts to come after me then how in heavens name can they ever be allowed to sit in judgement on another human being? The solution is to abolish these agencies and sack the authoritarians that man them.

Many people have been asking where the Liberal Party stands on this vital issue. Unfortunately Robert Doyle, leader of the Victorian Libs, supports, with modifications, Bracks’ vile attack on the principal of free speech. However, he privately confessed at a recent Liberal Party function that most of his colleagues are opposed to the law. So where does that leave Doyle?

Fortunately it appears that some Party members are prepared to act on their own. I have been told Liberals for Free Speech is being formed with the aim of challenging Bracks’ blasphemy law. I believe that if Victorians were made aware of just how oppressive these laws really are they would not hesitate to overturn them.

Perhaps Robert Doyle and the meddling and equally convictionless Michael Kroger should bear in mind that the US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made the self-evident observation that if any person really believes in free thought then he will defend freedom not only for “those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate”.

Over to you, Doyle.

Note: My use of the term Islamo-fascist has been criticised as either meaningless or even plain nonsense. The first thing to bear in mind is that the Islamic terrorist movement is totalitarian. In that respect it belongs to the same political genus or family as fascism, Nazism and Marxism, while still being a different species. This is because it has all of those characteristics that define what totalitarianism is.

Let me draw on nature for an example of what I mean. There are eight species of bears, two of which are the polar bear and the Malayan sun bear. Despite the huge physical differences between them they are still bears and they are still dangerous.

Now it is true that Islamic terrorists are not fascist in the sense that Mussolini imagined the term, in that respect critics are right. Nevertheless they are still missing the point. The term Islamo-fascist performs the valuable function of helping to define the enemy by drawing attention to his totalitarian nature.

I’ll admit that Islamo-Nazi is probably more appropriate, and it is a term I have favoured, but Islamo-fascist is what we are stuck with unless someone can conjure up a word that comes closer to capturing the nature of the enemy while garnering popular acceptance.

Gerard Jackson is Brookes’ economics editor

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