Getting our houses in order

Does Christmas still retain its magic? I sometimes wonder. While there is no lack of the usual kitsch, the spirit of Christmas, the time for proper Christian recollection, seems as elusive as ever.

This year we had Sliema, with its ageing population, reeling after the mugging of two of its elderly residents, one of whom sadly succumbed to her injuries. No amount of blaring Christmas carols and no amount of tinsel will mitigate this growing fear of being caught unawares by some car or motorbike that suddenly appears in one’s orbit like some wild animal. Do not resist. Give them your bag or wallet as your life is worth more than whatever there may be in it.

This Christmas also coincides with an ongoing saga which every day reveals new and shocking details about the agenda and the mindset of a man who, even when a member of the police force and a lawyer to boot, was allegedly organising and planning crimes that would have made Al Capone blush. The power of such pernicious influence in the police corps has yet to be assessed.

Just beneath the tinsel and the baubles, the “all the bests” and the Jingle Bells, we are at the mercy of these creatures of the jungle, criminals and drug addicts turned criminals, the only difference being that one acts with a rational if screwed up brain and the other doesn’t. Yet, it’s a wild world that surrounds us out there and the more the David Gatt investigation reveals the more uneasy one becomes.

Yes, we do need more police presence during both day and night in Sliema and St Julians. We do need regular patrols to ensure there are fewer incidents like those that killed poor Rose Garroni. As it gets colder and colder, less people promenade on the Front and the streets are largely deserted. Not happy with the takings in Ms Garroni’s bag, the perpetrators returned to Sliema from Cospicua where they had gone to buy cocaine to mug another old lady and then planned raiding Ms Garroni’s home! Do these people not have mothers and grandmothers, one may well ask. Not when the power and addiction of a drug like cocaine is concerned they don’t!

Yes, this is symptomatic of a society that has lost its sense of decency. This is what happens when people become less God fearing and the principles of right and wrong fail to be inculcated in the young because modern educational ethics are at odds with the now old-fashioned yet time-honoured methods of proper discipline.

Today’s ways are all conditional to instant gratification. I can just about hear, in my mind’s ear, some younger readers grumble at this. Here we go again. Blame the younger generation. Just for the record I do not blame the younger generation. In fact, I do not blame anyone. What is happening is merely an inevitable progression. It is just the way it is. There has always been crime all around us; all the way back to Cain and Abel. Jealousy and greed engender resentment and anger, which, along with pride, create the right mix to give birth to Crime with a capital C. It always has and it always will. And it can only get worse.

I am sure all of you can come up with 100 reasons for these problems and I am equally sure at least 50 of them will blame the government and another 50 will blame the Church.

These are the two institutions that dominate our lives from cradle to grave and, yet, we are merely using them as whipping boys for the real culprits are us. It is our own mindset that has transformed us all into Nimbys. We have become selfish and our once renowned altruism is today a thing of the past. Yet, neither the Church nor the government nor are we ourselves entirely to blame.

Since 9/11, we have lived in fear. Sandwiched as we are between two superpowers, Libya and Italy, we are but a powerless pawn that is totally dependent on the goodwill, ephemeral as it may be, between the Cavaliere and the Colonel. Our xenophobia has increased and our distrust of fundamentalism along with it. Two recent incidents confirm this; the first was the Air Malta plane that was forced to return to Heathrow when a passenger decided he should pray in the aisle and the second, which I found even more shocking, was that of the Harry Potter series star, Afshan Azad, whose father and brother beat her and threatened to kill her for dating a non-Muslim!

A religion that condones honour killings cannot be tolerated in Western society under any circumstances, which is why unless countries aspiring to join the EU that are predominantly Islamic enact and implement laws to prevent such atrocities both in their own countries and in our midst I am afraid there is no place for them in our Europe, which we would be more than willing to share with them on our terms.

Romanised Christian society today eschews such extremes. There was a time not so long ago that Christianity too resorted to what was called the secular arm to reinforce its stranglehold on society but, mercifully, today this has become but a shameful memory never to be repeated.

To be dragged kicking and screaming back to the violence and superstition of the Dark Ages after all the “freedoms” our ancestors fought for, died for and made so many sacrifices to obtain, is simply unacceptable. Yet, to combat the subtle onslaught of Islam we must get our own house in order.

Yes, the Western world and Malta in particular is going to need wise and prudent guidance as to how it is to cope with the trials, both economic and ideological, that we are bound to face in the near future. There was and still is far more to 9/11 than the threat of Islamification. After a futile and useless war dragging on for nine years, bankruptcy stares us in the face. By pretending these threats do not exist or by sweeping them under the carpet we will solve nothing.