CRIKEY: Greg Sheridan catches up on Hamas.

What an extraordinary genius Greg Sheridan is!

On Saturday, he wrote in The Australian:

The failure to understand that Islamist terrorism is a religious, ideological movement, with a coherent if grotesque world view, is one of many failures of Western commentators. Reading the Islamists' documents would be a good place to start in remedying that so far abject failure.

He's right. But the thing is that the failure isn't of genuine commentators and scholars but of neo-Con pundits whose focus isn't on promoting an understanding of such groups but rather on generating as much hatred for them as possible.

HAMAS has been around since 1987. Even a novice like myself has known about the HAMAS Charter for over a decade, which I first read back in 1993 when its English translation was published in the Journal of Palestine Studies. The same journal in 1995 published a major study of HAMAS.

Now, in 2008, Sheridan has discovered the significance of the HAMAS charter.

He's also been chosen as one of our “best and brightest” to sit on his 2020 Summit committee to discuss "Australia's Future Security and Prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world".

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: Natalie O’Brien tries desperately to link Hilaly to bin-Ladin ...

Heck, if it's good enough for Jesus ...


In case anyone hasn’t realised it, I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of some of Sheik Hilaly’s public comments. He’s said things in the past which have been grossly offensive, racist and misogynist.

But I would hesitate to link him to terrorists.

Natalie O’Brien, a senior reporter for The Australian, has no such hesitation. In an article on Saturday March 22 2008, O’Brien reports that Sheik Hilaly

... has rallied his supporters against the publication of cartoons insulting to Mohammed.

O’Brien continues …

Sheik Hilali said the cartoons, published in a Danish newspaper in 2005 - and republished last month - showed the "hatred and envy" felt by the West against Islam …

"The West announces holding a competition for caricatures that insult the Messenger of God, may he be blessed," Sheik Hilali said.

"And the worst drawing, that succeeds in causing the most harm in order to provoke the Muslims and cause them hurt for their prophet, wins the competition. They are determined. They are hateful."

No indication is given as to whether Hilaly said these words in Arabic or English. Yet given that they were delivered in a Friday sermon to a largely Arabic-speaking audience, I doubt Hilaly would have spoken them in a broad “Strayn” accent.

If spoke in Arabic, we have no idea who translated them. Or has O’Brien taken a crash course in Arabic?

What makes O’Brien’s article even more problematic is that she tries to somehow link Hilaly to bin Ladin. How so? By interspersing his report on Hilaly’s pronouncements with pronouncements on the same subject by Usama bin Ladin.

Reproduced are the first seven paragraphs of O’Brien’s article …

MUSLIM cleric Taj Din al-Hilali has rallied his supporters against the publication of cartoons insulting to Mohammed.

His call comes just a day after Osama bin Laden denounced the European Union over the same issue in a new videotape.

At his sermon at Australia's biggest mosque, in the southwest Sydney suburb of Lakemba, Sheik Hilali said the cartoons, published in a Danish newspaper in 2005 - and republished last month - showed the "hatred and envy" felt by the West against Islam.

He said today's sermon at the mosque would be followed by a march to a nearby park to protest against the cartoons.

"The West announces holding a competition for caricatures that insult the Messenger of God, may he be blessed," Sheik Hilali said.

"And the worst drawing, that succeeds in causing the most harm in order to provoke the Muslims and cause them hurt for their prophet, wins the competition. They are determined. They are hateful."
In an audiotape message posted on a militant website, bin Laden warned Europe of a "reckoning" over the cartoons and claimed their publication formed part of "the framework of a new Crusade" in which the Pope "has played a large, lengthy role".

What on earth do a Sydney imam’s comments at a Friday sermon have to do with a tape-recorded message of the leader of an international terrorist network? Is O’Brien suggesting that bin-Ladin ordered Hilaly to mention the cartoons in his sermon? Is she suggesting Hilaly determines the content of his sermons by listening to bin-Ladin tapes?

Or is Natalie O’Brien engaging in the kind of journalism more befitting of the New York Post?

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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