BLOG: Bolt gets freaky ...

You have to admire Andrew Bolt. He genuinely believes in freedom of speech. Including on the internet.

Well, I thought he believed in freedom of speech. But on Q&A last night, Bolt was caught out badly on the ongoing debate on internet censorship. Bolt was caught out trying to push for legislation to extend internet censorship beyond child pornography and onto politics.

Andrew Bolt said last night that the government should also go after "jihadist" material.

ANDREW BOLT: ...should anyone be able to watch and publish and distribute anything at all they like? Anything at all. Like, I don't know, a father having sex with his children. Fritzl, the guy in Austria, videos of him having sex with his daughter. Anything like that, you think there should be absolutely no barrier. Jihadist material. Anything.

An audience member caught Bolt out:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Andrew you really raise my ire with your comment about jihadists, because that's my worry. When does - we don't see the list. We don't know what's on the list and when do we know what's going to get added to the list? And the next thing is not just kids at Monash getting arrested for reading books, it's somebody who goes to a - the issue of paedophilia, reprehensible, yeah, we're in agreement but you just said jihadist. Now, why can't somebody under the ideas of democracy and freedom of speech visit a jihadist site? If it's racial vilification, if it's an incitement to genocide, there's issues in Australia, but we're still talking about freedom of speech--

At this point the Minister Stephen Conroy, whom Bolt was up until this point defending, rejected any call for political censorship on the internet.

Bolt wants political censorship on the internet. Yet Bolt's own blogging practices show to what extent Bolt cannot even comply with existing laws in such areas as racial vilification. Bolt cannot even comply with his employer's Publication Guidelines. How would he comply with political censorship? Unless he wanted to censor everyone else but not himself.

Bolt came out of the episode looking like a goose, and he knew it. He needed to take out his frustration on someone. But he did he choose? A politician?

No. True to form, Bolt blew the dog whistle. His usual gang of racists and bigots are always ready to say what Bolt would like to so (and so often does). Bolt accuses Susan Carland, a descendant of the First Fleet, for allegedly not coming clean with the ABC audience about an allegedly dominant "rejectionist strand" within Australian Muslim circles. Bolt tried to pin Carland into a corner and allege that her comments to a Malaysian newspaper concerning her conversion experiences were somehow identical to Bolt's fear-mongering and hate-speech.

Bolt's attempt to put forward his "Muslims are different" argument (which is virtually identical to the rhetoric of European far-Right parties) failed miderably. He even dragged his father into the discussion.

ANDREW BOLT: Susan, can I just point out when my father came here from Europe as a migrant and then he started teaching immigrants like the Italians and Greeks, I think you're wrong. The suspicion that you say was - this is just what we're seeing a similar version of what those immigrants faced - I think it's completely wrong. That's ahistorical. It's not my experience of it. I'd also point out there are, in fact, more Buddhists in Australian than there are Muslims and we don't hear anything about that. We don't invite Buddhists onto this panel - or Tony doesn't invite Buddhists onto this panel to...

MALE SPEAKER: Next week.

ANDREW BOLT: He's invited you and your husband and, you know, Miss Australia and people like that, but he doesn't do it with Buddhists. There's specifically something in the community itself, as well, and I think, to be honest, you mentioned this yourself in an interview with the Malaysian Star Newspaper only a couple of years ago, where you said within the community, being a new convert from Christianity, you face the calls, from within the community, you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that and you shouldn't make friends with people who weren't Muslim and you should withdraw from society and everything that was haram and you said this was a problem for you and I think that's an acknowledgement there is, in fact, a problem within the Muslim community, a rejectionist strand, which is what makes this different. And I hate to be blunt, I hate to foster - you know, have all these people jeering...

SUSAN CARLAND: No, you don't. No, you don't.

Somehow I could detect some sarcasm from Susan there. Like many of us, Susan will have read the comments on Mr Bolt's blog and read exactly what Bolt fosters.

Bolt must have felt so distraught at his flimsy performance last night that he decided to post not one but two posts attacking fellow panellists. The first, of course, was against Ms Carland whom he claims had contradicted herself. On the show, she said that the rejectionist strand represented a minority among ordinary Muslims.

SUSAN CARLAND: The quick response would be absolutely there are people, a very small minority of people, within the Muslim community that are reluctant to engage with the wider community, but this is more...

ANDREW BOLT: You put it as a majority in this interview and ...

Andrew writes on his blog:

And when I pointed out that in her interview ...

Interview? Did Ms Carland do an interview with the Malaysia Star newspaper? Nowhere in the report did Star reporter Shahanaaz Habib talk about any interview.

Speaking at a dinner talk during the conference, organised by the Muslim Professionals Forum and the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, Carland, who was named Australian Muslim of the Year in 2004, was brutally honest about the treatment of converts at the hands of “born” Muslims.

The reporter was at a function where Ms Carland was speaking. This was no interview. But what about the allegedly dominant "rejectionist strand"? Ms Carland spoke about the treatment converts often get at the hands of "born" Muslims. This was a discussion about relations between cultural Muslims and those who adopt the faith of their own free will.

The list of unreasonable pressures on converts includes telling converts to leave their so-called haram jobs immediately, even if the person had no other source of income.

The newbies are asked to give up hobbies like painting, photography, dancing or playing instruments. They’re advised to move out and sever ties with their kafir (infidel) family and non-Muslim friends, while female converts are urged to get married as soon as possible.

They are often expected to give up their own cultures and take on Arab, sub-continental, Malay or other cultures because these are deemed to be more “Islamic”.

Carland, a lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne, described these demands as not only unreasonable but also “very dangerous” as they made things unnecessarily hard for the convert.

The English language used in both the article and in Ms Carland's quoted statements is fairly straight forward. Apart from the non-Muslim families of converts who choose to follow such absurd rules, how does all this affect non-Muslims? How on earth could Bolt read this as some kind of reflection on an alleged monolithic Muslim mass that allegedly refuses to integrate into mainstream society? What kind of English did Bolt learn at school?

Bolt encourages his readers to judge Ms Carland's alleged dishonesty and double-speak. And as always, Bolt always ensures that the discussion never becomes personal.

I’d like to see her in the full black bee-hive hat instead of the glittery silver number she had on last night. After all, complete submission to the beliefs is what it takes to be a good Muslim. At the moment, she’s just a mouthpiece...for herself. She represents very little other than the new face of opportunism. A real muslim woman living a real life should’ve been on the panel, not her ...

I wonder who’s funding her efforts.
Little Ted of Qld (Reply)
Fri 27 Mar 09 (12:39pm)


I was extremely thankful that Mr Bolt was there and cut straight through the bullshit rhetoric spewed by the Islamic community and their apologists ...
Guffman of Coffs Harbour (Reply)
Fri 27 Mar 09 (12:39pm)

And is so often the case with hate speech, threats of violence raise their ugly head.

Habib replied to nigel
Fri 27 Mar 09 (03:36pm)
... Islam is a backward regressive religion for ignorant and cruel individuals - I will never understand why we let the violent stone age peasants that practise it into Australia ... I believe a jihad should be declared on muslims as they are non believers in our way of life ... they have been the enemy of civilizations like ours for centuries yet we let them here in their hordes - such weakness of mind will surely cost us dearly until we learn to treat such threats with the force they require.

Charming. Nice of Bolt to moderate this remark. Anyway, let's get back to the extraordinary reasoning and logic behind Bolt's supporters:

I watched her on the Q and A web site this morning and wasn’t impressed at all by her but I suspect she thinks she looks pretty good in that hijab and a very fashionable hijab it was, too ...
doc molloy of brisbane (Reply)
Fri 27 Mar 09 (01:08pm)

Lin replied to FOEHN
Fri 27 Mar 09 (04:55pm)
How on earth would Carland know what it was like to grow up in a group discriminated against - she is a white Australian? Did she become a Muslim just so that she could be part of a marginalised group, feeling a little left out?

And Bolt allows a Nazi-era slur used commonly against European Jews to now be recycled against Muslims.

Perhaps Carland was practicing Al-taqiyya - the practice of Muslims blatantly lying to non-Muslims. Al-taqiyya means that infidels cannot believe anything told to them by any Muslim ...
Annabelle of Sydney (Reply)
Fri 27 Mar 09 (01:54pm)

I always wondered whether the close association between the Dutch Right and the Nazis could have survived the Second World War. Anyway, some interesting observations were made about those nasty lefties ...

As for Susan Carland - you exposed her as naive and/or intellectually dishonest. The patent fact that the West needs to acknowledge about Islam is that it is the only religion (in fact it is a social and political system first and religion second) that has a developed doctrine and theology that mandates violence against unbelievers. Furthermore, violent jihad is and has been a defining characteristic of Islam since its beginnings in the seventh century ... The whole ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ movement that is propagated by leftist academics, politicians and journalists needs to be exposed for the intellectual fraud that it is.
Petey of Highett (Reply)
Fri 27 Mar 09 (02:51pm)

Those blasted leftwing politicians. One commenter got to the heart of the matter and summarised Bolt's rather paranoid argument.

Why is it that when you ask somebody who they are they usually will say australian, Italian etc. When you ask a muslim the same question they never say they are Australian or Turkish etc, only that they a muslim. This is the problem, muslims think they are special and don’t want to mix with mainstream society. Being muslim is the only identity they know.
John of Vic (Reply)
Fri 27 Mar 09 (03:13pm)

Muslims are one huge monolith, and they're all out to invade our countries, eat our children, kill our pets, sh*t in our toilets and wipe their backsides with our copy of the Herald Sun so that it makes more sense.

The thing that Australians have to understand is that for a muslim, Islam is their family, their past, their identity and their culture. As such Islam and Allah will ALWAYS come before friends, non-muslims, Australia, Australian laws, non-Islamic laws ... The majority, MAJORITY of muslims will not being overtly fundamentalistic jihadists do accept or quietly condone the true integrity of their fellow brothers who have taken Allah’s word to where they themselves are unable to ... I have worked with muslims and for a muslim-owned company ... I have NEVER met any muslim that represents the best of us humans.
green of sydney (Reply)
Fri 27 Mar 09 (04:35pm)

But by far the freakiest bit of Bolt's blogpost is where he cites comments left on Ms Carland's Facebook address.

UPDATE
Susan Carland’s Facebook community isn’t doing much to prove me wrong, or her the face of a religion of peace:

So now Andrew is obsessed not just with Ms Carland's religious choices. He is also obsessed with finding out who Ms Carland's friends are and what they post on her Facebook page. This is seriously scary stuff.

Poor Andrew Bolt seemd to have completely lost it.

UPDATE I: Bolt believes in freedom of speech, unless you disagree with him. Here is something that appeared on the right hand column of his blog recently ...

Irfan says: Watch out, everyone. Andrew wants to politically censor the internet. Seriously, though, you did come out looking like a prize goose. That explains why you’ve…

But when you go to the actual blog in question, this is what you see ...

SNIP - BANNED
Irfan
(Reply)Fri 27 Mar 09 (07:38pm)

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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