I’ve heard US, UK and Australian political leaders say ad nauseum that Islamic extremists target our countries because they hate our values and way of life. We were told that’s why they bombed the nightclub in Bali killing many westerners, including over 80 Australians. But why don’t they bomb the nightclubs in Singapore where many westerners also turn up? Couldn’t help asking myself that question last night when I was exploring parts of Singapore and came across one street, surely a mile long or more, where there were Moslem mosque after mosque, the entrance of each one marked by scores or hundreds of sandals left by those who went in to pray — and many in trad dress walking to and from those mosques — yet in the same street or not far were nightclubs and bars and scores and more of prostitutes walking the same streets — all in the midst of people working late at night in their shops or repair shops, hundreds or thousands of others just enjoying each others company in the night air. And westerners too — though not all english speaking.
Not that all of Singapore is like that — this was just one part — but it drove home what has been obvious to anyone stopping to think for half a minute about those vacuous claims by US-UK-Aus leaders who pretend and lie to their populations about the reasons their citizens and embassies have been targeted. If they target a nightclub frequented predominantly by Australians it is not because it is a nightclub that the Aussies are enjoying — it is because they are Australians and what it represents to them to be an Australian — as defined before the world by our heads of state. Sure they hate nightclubs, but the don’t seem interested in attacking the nightclubs of Singapore or any of the other what could best be described as non-Islamic values.