I awake to reports from New Zealand about a series of truly murderous attacks on people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand that has, at the time of writing, only recently occurred. As someone who wishes a peaceful political solution to the problems that the West faces from Islam, I have to head up this piece by expressing my strong condemnation of the actions of what appears to be a team of gunmen.

These actions are both wrong in themselves and, as we may well see over the coming weeks, they may be extremely counterproductive in many ways. Violence is not the way to solve the free world’s Islamic problem, that will only beget more violence. This attack, which some sources are saying has claimed the lives of at least 49 people, may lead to retaliatory violence coming from various hotheads from an Islamic culture that has shown itself ready and willing to use violence, sometimes against non-Muslims but often against other Muslims. This, in turn, will stoke further violence and so it will go on. It would be far better in my view for elected governments to deal with their nation’s Islam related problems by going after the ideology of Islam itself via legislative means and treating it like the threat it is, rather than have these sorts of vigilante terrorists. The problem has always been with the ideology of Islam itself and rarely those who follow it without being fully aware of its true nature and who are often decent people in spite of Islam rather than because of it.

According to the various press reports I’ve seen, this was an incredibly well organised attack by a gang of gunmen who chose at least two different mosques in Christchurch as targets. An eyewitness report carried by the Daily Telegraph stated that a man named Len Peneha saw a man emerge from the Al Noor mosque in central Christchurch after the shooting at 13:45 local time. The man that Mr Paneha saw was, as he believes, carrying a semi-automatic rifle, dressed in black and wearing a military style ballistic helmet. Mr Paneha said that the gunman dropped the weapon and ran off. Mr Paneha then went into the mosque to see if he could help and found a scene of complete carnage. Other press reports are stating that three possibly four of the alleged assailants have been taken into custody. One of the shooters is said to be an Australian, however I’m not sure about the others but I presume that they may well be New Zealanders.

This is a truly awful attack that may well be New Zealand’s worse mass shooting since 1943 when 40 people died in a Prisoner of War camp riot when troops opened fire on charging Japanese POW’s. The scale of the deaths here dwarfs many other similar attacks of this sort that have occurred in the West and certainly exceeds the death toll caused by the deranged idiot Alexandre Bissonnette who shot up a mosque in Quebec killing six. From my researches it would seem that this attack has been the biggest and most costly in terms of death toll, for any attack on a mosque outside of the Islamic world, where Muslims slaughter other Muslims in each others mosques on a depressingly repetitive basis.

These attacks in New Zealand have been utterly pointless as well as being murderous and unjust. These terrorist murderers, because that is what they are, unjustly went after ordinary random Muslims, people who may have little or nothing to do with terrorism, sharia promotion, crime or sedition. Those killed were probably not dangerous violence inciting Islamic clerics, they were probably just shopkeepers, car mechanics or office workers, people no different from you or I. Those murdered probably knew little about, and cared even less for. the more unpleasant aspects of Islam and did not deserve to die.

That these attacks were both murderous and unjust is plainly obvious but they are also utterly pointless. These attackers, illustrated by the random nature of their targets, may have not removed one jihadi or one promoter of sharia sedition from New Zealand soil, they have instead killed innocent people in a completely pointless waste of human life. Those killed were more than likely not the nasties of the Islamic world, they were not the hate-filled and treasonous Shamima Begum’s or theMohammed Emwazi’s of this world, people thoroughly deserving of exile and drone strike, but people who were nothing like this.

As someone who clings, some say naively, to the belief in peaceful political change via the ballot box and via non-violent civil disobedience, I have no hesitation in condemning these attacks. I condemn them not just because they are wrong in themselves but also because they are liable to be extremely counterproductive. They are liable to elicit a violent response from elements in Islamic communities and from a far Left that is itself becoming increasingly violent. I worry that any retaliatory violence that occurs as a result of this awful attack will, as this has done, target other innocent people and cause more unwanted death and destruction. I also expect that these attacks will be mercilessly politically exploited by both the Left and by Islamic groups. Expect to see more calls from these quarters for censorship of Islam-critical speech and a great deal of virtue signalling from politicians, along with possible effects on the upcoming Australian Senate and House elections.

Those out there who are calling this attack ‘the shots that are heard around the world’ need to take a good hard look at themselves and think of what they are actually calling for, because what they are calling for are pogroms against all and any Muslims. I have to condemn completely this point of view because I know that not every Muslim is an extremist, yes extremism is a problem in a significant minority of Muslims, but not all are afflicted in this way. There are many Muslims who despise Islam as much as some non Muslims do but they stay in out of fear and social pressure, it is quite likely that among those killed in the attacks in New Zealand may be many of these Muslims in name only and who like the others did not deserve to die.

The contemptible fools who carried out the New Zealand attacks have, like their Islamic terrorist counterparts, taken the lives of innocents and murdered in a horrifically indiscriminate way. There is little difference in my view, at least in terms of murderous intent, between the attackers in New Zealand and the arsehole who shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh, USA last year. When the Pittsburgh attack occurred, it was condemned across the board by decent people, even by those who are vehemently opposed to Islam and who have therefore been smeared as ‘far right’ by the Left. I think that the attack on the mosques in New Zealand should be similarly condemned, even by those of us who are opposed to the ideology of Islam because indiscriminate violence is never right. Such violence is wrong nearly every time. It’s the wrong course of action when lunatics, their heads filled with ‘Zionist plot’ guff shoot up a synagogue or Muslims kill indiscriminately in concert halls in order to please ‘Allah’. It is also the wrong course of action when those opposed to Islam engage in such indiscriminate violence.

The sort of unjustifiable killings that we have seen in New Zealand is not the way to go, it really is not. It does not solve problems, it only makes existing problems much worse. It will make retaliatory violence from Islamic headcases much more likely and will be a recruiting poster for Islamic jihad groups. I urge people to refrain from even thinking about replicating this attack, as no good will come of either this or similar attacks. The aftermath of this attack is not going to end well for anybody, if what I fear comes to pass.

Whilst without a doubt I recognise that the West has various types of Islam-related problems, problems that range from lack of economic contribution by some Muslims right through to the phenomena of Islamic Rape Gangs and Jihad, I also recognise that these are primarily political problems. The politicians that we elected over decades have failed to see that there is a danger posed by this ideology and a significant minority of its followers, but because they rarely live with this ideology and its followers, they rarely experience the problems it brings. Because our Islam problems are primarily political in nature, we therefore need a peaceful political solution to Islam, not nutcase terroristic vigilantes running round with guns targeting, as all vigilantes end up doing, innocent people. I have said it before and I will say it again, it is the ballot box and peaceful protest that is required here, not the bullet. We will not win any war against an appalling ideology like Islam by becoming monsters ourselves, monsters eerily reminiscent of the sort of monsters produced by the Islamic world. Only by shredding this ideology intellectually, mocking it and treating it in law and in society like any other counter-democratic belief system, like Communism or Fascism, will it be defeated.

There is nothing that I could remotely describe as ‘good’ that could come out of this attack and a lot that I would be quite happy to describe as bad which will, I predict, emerge from it. This was the wrong thing to do to the wrong people at the wrong time and at the wrong place. I wholly condemn these attacks and I believe others should too, as they’ve made an already bad situation much, much worse.

My thoughts and prayers are of course with the innocent, no matter what their belief system may be at this time. These prayers are the same whether the victims are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or whatever.