DHAKA TO SYDNEY, A MISSING LINK IN TERROR NARRATIVE

Failure to call out the resurgence in Islamist violence isn’t helping. Recent incidents in Australia and Bangladesh aren't linked, but there’s a common reluctance to confront the threat head-on

- MAKARAND R PARANJAPE

obvious and easy labeling of ‘antisemitism’. However, such framing risks obscuring the deeper ideological driver: global jihadism. Australian authorities, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have acknowledged the suspects were “driven by Islamic State ideology”.

Why, then, has the largely-liberal Western media hesitated to label the massacre as Islamist terrorism? Part of the answer may lie in ideological sensitivities, particularly in progressive circles wary of stigmatising communities. Albanese’s Labor government, while condemning the act as a “radical perversion of Islam”, has emphasised community cohesion over blunt confrontation of jihadist ideology. Critics argue that such an approach softens and whitewashes the threat. If doctors themselves are afraid to name a disease, how can they ever hope to cure it?