How Murdoch’s own reporters prove he is wrong …

So where do the loyalties of Australia’s 300,000 Muslims lie? Do Muslims swear allegiance to a foreign religious figure? Or to an international church? Or to an alien legal system based on a system of criminal sanctions based on amputation without anaesthetic?

Our nation’s most influential ex-Australian has made his position clear. News.com.au reported Mr Murdoch’s comments to Channel Nine on 26 June 2006 as follows: “You have to be careful about Muslims who have a very strong, in many ways a fine, but very strong religion which supercedes any sense of nationalism wherever they go,"

Certainly if Mr Murdoch’s perspective were coloured by some of the material printed in the op-ed pages of his newspapers, he might be forgiven for believing this simplistic view of an Australian community hailing from over 60 different countries.

Two of Australia’s most prominent Muslim-haters find pride of place as regular columnists for Murdoch tabloids in Sydney and Melbourne. The Murdoch broadsheet regularly publishes articles by Mark Steyn and Daniel Pipes, both of whom are known for their venomous attitudes toward Muslims.

Writing for the neo-Conservative FrontPageMag.com, Sharon Lapkin cites Steyn’s views as follows: “Everywhere in the world, Muslims are in conflict with their neighbours. And as Mark Steyn recently said, every conflict appears to have originated by someone with the name of Mohammed.”

On one occasion, The Australian even published an article by former National Party Senator John Stone who called for the formation of a Queen Isabella Society to commemorate her expulsion of Muslims from Spain in the 15th century. This would be akin to calling for the formation of a Slobodan Milosevic Society in a Bosnian or Croatian newspaper.

Despite the xenophobia projected by some regular Murdoch columnists, The Australian has also reported on Muslim community affairs on a regular basis. One Melbourne-based reporter, Richard Kerbaj, has focussed on a range of Muslim organisational issues, including ethnic ruptures within Muslim peak bodies.

Kerbaj has reported on the ethnic-based divisions within the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC). He has identified the existence of competing Fiji-Indian and Pakistani factions within AFIC. He has also focussed on the ethnic and tribal divisions within the Lebanese Moslems Association and other Muslim groups.

Kerbaj’s work is perhaps the best evidence against Murdoch’s claims. Kerbaj has exposed the severe ethnic divisions within the Muslim community, not to mention the general generational division between Muslims brought up in Australia and those brought up overseas.

If Rupert Murdoch wishes to see his views contested, he need only look as far as one of his most competent reporters and in one of his most respected newspapers.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

RACISM: AIJAC Writer Claims Muslim Cultures Promote Rape

Were the Cronulla riots a response to gang rapes? According to one post graduate student at the University of Melbourne, the answer is yes.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cronulla riots, Sharon Lapkin authored a piece claiming that Muslim cultures promote sexual assault of women.

The article, published in neo-Conservative Front Page Magazine website, claims that gang rapes formed a necessary context to the Cronulla riots. The article also attacks Australia’s status quo of multiculturalism for promoting ...

... cultural relativism ...

... and claims that ...

... Islamic migration ...

... to western nations has brought with it ...

... Third World value systems regarding the treatment of women ...

... including...

... forced marriages, officially sanctioned rape, and honour killings.

Sharon Lapkin described herself in the article as ...

... a former Australian Army Officer and a postgraduate student at the University of Melbourne.

One wonders whether the Australian Army would like to be mentioned in the context of Lapkin's articles defaming Muslim cultures, especially given the presence of hundreds of Australian troops risking their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ms Lapkin is also a contributor to the Australia/Israel Review, published by the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council. Her previous articles for the Review have made farcical claims of al-Qaida plots being hatched by mainstream Muslim organisations in universities and off campus. She has sought to claim that groups with some tenuous ideological link to Middle Eastern Muslim movements are recruiting home-grown terrorists.

Lapkin’s Cronulla effort included the startling claim that Pakistani and other Muslim cultures are characterised by the abuse of women. Among the practices she lists are female genital mutilation, a practice virtually unknown in the Indian sub-Continent among any faith-community.

Lapkin cites claims made by defence counsel for a Pakistani man convicted of gang rape of teenage girls. The convicted rapist instructed his Counsel to argue that ...

... his cultural background was responsible for his crimes.

And Lapkin’s response to this claim?

And he is right.

Lapkin goes onto assert that Pakistanis hail from ...

... a society where officially sanctioned sexual violence is commonly employed as a means to enforce the subservience of women.

There is no doubt that abuses of women do occur in Pakistani society. The writer has himself criticised Pakistan's human rights record, including its treatment of victims of mass-rape such as Mukhtar Mai.

Lapkin’s claims play into the hands of those she descriobes as "neo-Nazis" who participated in (if not orchestrated) the Cronulla riots. She is, in effect, providing ideological and rhetorical ammunition to those very groups. It is one thing to allege that such abuses exist in Pakistan. It is another to claim that the cultures of all Pakistanis promote physical and sexual violence toward women.

And so we see at least one regular contributors to AIJAC publications using clearly racist and xenophobic language to virtually justify one of the worst incidents of racial riots in 21st century Australia.

What makes Lapkin’s claims even worse is that prominent Pakistani and Muslim Australians have refuted statements made on behalf of the convicted rapist. Indeed, when one Muslim religious leader claimed women’s dress made them “eligible for rape”, state and national Muslim peak bodies (not to mention the writer) immediately condemned the sentiments.

Lapkin’s article contains statements about other cultures that are deeply offensive and clearly racist. She attributes specific human rights abuses to all Muslims, and her writing echoes the sentiments of those supporting the Cronulla rioters.

Mark Leibler, National Chairman of AIJAC, recently criticised those who claims Aboriginal cultures promoted violence against women. Leibler was right in taking such a stand.

And so when similar claims are made about the cultures of a faith community closer to Judaism than any other faith on earth (and when such claims are made by contributors to AIJAC’s official publication), we can only hope Mr Leibler will show consistency in showing similar disdain to such clearly offensive sentiments.

Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf


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