COMMENT: What the halal?

I was sitting in a McDonalds store in Drummoyne munching on a fillet-o-fish the other day when I decided it was time to insult my intelligence. I grabbed a copy of the Daily Telegraph and came across a report by Luke McIlveen that former Guantanamo inmate Mamdouh Habib had been apprehended by police at another McDonalds store in Bankstown .

McIlveen quoted police sources on the reasons for arrest. He also quoted a staff member at the McDonalds. McIlveen then inserted the following piece of information:

McDonald's outlets in the area are certified providers of halal food, catering for the large Muslim population.

What the ... ? What was the relevance of that to the story? Did Habib get arrested for having bacon on his otherwise halal burger? Were the police officers upset because he should have been at the mosque saying his afternoon prayers? Did the slaughtered cow from Habib's hamburger resurrect itself and complain to the police about its flesh being eaten by a former terrorism suspect?

Perhaps McDonalds stores keep the Tele to remind patrons that there is one thing in their stores containing more superfluous fat than their burgers ...

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

RACISM: McIlveen strikes at Lebanese Aussies again

Daily Telegraph reporter Luke McIlveen continues with his monocultural agenda, this time complaining about an alleged scheme to enable Lebanese Australians rescued from war-torn Lebanon to ...

... get priority access to our welfare scheme.

The wording in the first paragraph is quite clear. The forum was designed to cater for Lebanese Australians to gain access to “our welfare scheme”.

Our scheme. Not their scheme. They are Lebanese Australians. We are real Australians. The message and implication is quite clear. The Telegraph is busy continuing with an agenda of demonising Lebanese Australians evacuated from what was the warzone.

The forum included advice on how to get ...

... to the top of the public housing queue.

Wow. How terrible. The sort of advice you could get by visiting your State MP’s office.

And what was the biggest deal about all this? The 3rd paragraph of the article states:

The extent of the support disproves claims from community leaders including Keysar Trad that Australia's response to the Middle East crisis was "racist".

Of course, had Keysar made the same allegations against McIlveen and the editors at the Telegraph, his allegations would have had some substance.

What the Telegraph doesn’t say is that the forum didn’t tell Lebanese Australians how to rort the system, though this is no doubt the impression McIlveen wishes to leave readers.

And they certainly did get that impression of the published feedback is anything to go by.

Once again, McIlveen has managed to engage in thinly disguised racism toward non-Anglo Australians. This time, his hysteria has also resulted in highly defamatory imputations against the Premier and staff of State and Federal Government Departments and Agencies.

The story includes a photo of 3 women at a table of brochures and pamphlets. As expected, 2 of them are wearing hijabs. The photo caption reads:

Generous support ... members of the Lebanese community check their entitlements last night.

Can someone please tell someone at the DT that most Lebanese Aussies are in fact Christians?

I often wonder whether the Telegraph get legal advice before they published their articles. One day they might find themselves in a spot of bother.

It would be interesting to know what Lebanese Aussie reporters employed by the DT think of this hysteria-mongering. The last time Piers Akerman wrote his nonsensical attack on Lebanese-Australian dual citizens and their pleas for evacuation, Lillian Saleh responded with a thinly-veiled critique of Akerman’s position.

(I say it was thinly veiled because she didn’t mention Akerman by name.)

It will be interesting to see if Saleh or one of her colleagues responds to what appears to be McIlveen’s latest racially-motivated monstrosity.

Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf


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