'Islamo-facism': the shape of future conflict?

The notion that Islamist terrorism constitutes one of the biggest security threats to Australia has been advanced by various Australian governments in the post-9/11 era. We have been told to prepare for a decades-long fight against ruthless, invisible enemies who hate our way of life and seek to destroy our society. As then Prime Minister John Howard said, ‘[T]hat attack of eleventh of September was as much an attack on Australia as it was on America. It not only killed Australians in the World Trade Centre, but it also assaulted the very values on which this nation is built. These and other views have been repeatedly advanced by Australian leaders. They can also be found in various policy documents such as the two counter-terrorism White Papers of 2004 and 2010 as well as in several reports to Parliament by Australia’s domestic security agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). As of June 2013, the government’s official threat level in Australia remained at ‘medium’ – a terrorist attack could well occur.