His words are highly relevant when culture clash is our daily fare and streets fill river-to-sea with supporters of Gaza’s terrorists.

After October 7’s barbarism and the ongoing massacres of Christians and Alawites in Syria, much of the Middle East is perhaps more aptly described as the Medieval East. Strangling babies, raping women, killing them and dragging their bodies through the streets to be spat upon and beaten by delirious mobs. Hostages are mistreated for long months, then paraded and denigrated as their masked tormentors brandish guns and revel in the cheers of co-religionists who treat them as heroes. Celebrating death, flouting international laws and norms, that’s so much of life and culture in the Middle East.

In the Qatari government’s daily Al-Sharq newspaper, journalist Abd Al-Razzaq Aal Ibrahim wrote that “Zionists and Jews are treacherous and corrupt and full of filth, wickedness and depravity.” Warming to his topic, Jews were also “bats of darkness’’ and the “devils of hell who suck the blood of the nations … and are incorrigibly full of resentment and jealousy.”

And here, too, the medieval mindset is evident and growing more assertive. Southern Sydney Al Madina Dawah Centre preacher Wissam Haddad, to cite one local peddler of florid hated, is being taken to court for sermons in which he allegedly called Jews “descendants of pigs and monkeys” and much worse.

The strangest thing is that a supposedly enlightened West has come to accept these wild-eyed, cartoonish hysterics as valid manifestations of a respectable cultural cohort. This despite Islam’s jumble of scriptures — peace in one breath, merciless slaughter in the next — being so often antithetical to the modern West’s  Judeo-Christian tolerance and compassion.

In these times of intense, fanatical religious fervour on the part of extremist Muslims, we in Australia have seen a submissive political class prefer to parrot the nostrums of multiculturalism rather than utter anything more than pro forma regrets about yesterday and tomorrow’s  anti-Semitic outrages, be they on the Opera House steps, or seen in the flames of a  burning Melbourne synagogue and, in Sydney, a Jewish child-care centre put to the torch.

Islam has a word for such non-Muslims, the sort who submit, who go along to get along: dhimmis

Christian believers, whatever their doctrinal differences, all subscribe to the foundational commendation that one should o ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. I am not a believer in any god, but Jesus’ counsel is the voice of peace and amity.  Christianity’s icons are the dove of peace, the crown of thorns on a heart symbolising love, and the suffering figure on a crucifix. While Jesus forgave even those who crucified him, the Muslims’demanded severed heads and the slaughter of those who did no wrong other than a refusal to bow. Christians turn the other cheek (or are supposed to), Islamic urges slashing it.

Yet we must speak of Islam with respect regardless of its nasty bits — especially when those most at odds with their host country’s traditions are voters in Muslim-heavy electorates. But respect cannot be genuine if the recipient fails to return the favour.

What happens to a society when it tolerates the intolerant? It’s a debate Karl Popper famously teased out in his seminal work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. One online view I’ve come across puts it succinctly:

Popper’s central claim is deceptively simple: unlimited tolerance leads to the destruction of tolerance itself. Imagine a society that welcomes all views, no matter how extreme. Over time, intolerant ideas could infiltrate institutions, erode freedoms, and silence dissent. To safeguard tolerance, Popper contends, a line must be drawn—but where and how? That’s the rub. His framework doesn’t offer easy answers, but it gives us a lens through which to evaluate these challenges.

In a Judeo-Christian country, such as Australia, there is a ready line to be drawn: our border. Given that intolerant Islam and a tolerant West are oil and water, perhaps we should avoid letting them mix.

In our culture, women are celebrated and promoted, accorded equal rights and treated with respect before the law. In Islam they are subjugated, frequently the subjects of genital mutilation, hidden partially or wholly from view and at a gross disadvantage in any sharia court. In our culture, freedom of religion is sacrosanct, whereas in Islam you can practice any religion as long as it’s Islam. In our culture your sexual inclinations are your own business whereas in Islam it’s the state’s business, the state being  conjoined to Islam.