We are appalled by the barbaric atrocities perpetrated in Paris on Friday night. Our sympathies and prayers are with the families and friends of those so brutally murdered, and we wish a speedy recovery to all those injured.
It is important that the terrorist attacks are recognised for what they are – further manifestations of a fundamentalist Islamist ideology that victimizes Muslim and non-Muslim alike in its fanatical drive to subjugate any society which does not conform to its perverted interpretation of how Islam should be practised. It is an ideology that is the absolute antithesis of everything Western civilization stands for – democracy, freedom and equality.
Those who carry out moral and intellectual contortions in attempting to blame the West or Israel for these abhorrent attacks should be condemned unambiguously. They are both giving comfort to terrorists and providing despicable murderers with contemptible justifications and rationalizations for their evil acts. Rather, these latest abhorrent atrocities should stiffen our collective resolve to degrade and defeat this extremist Islamism in all its manifestations.
Dr Colin Rubenstein AM
Executive Director, AIJAC
