CRIKEY: New SBS show mired in muslim stereotypes ...

There’s more to the SBS documentary Embedded With Sheik Hilaly than just the documentary itself. The embedded person was 26 year old Dave Zwolenski from Brisbane. Yet Dave was drafted by SBS almost at the last minute.

The original star of the show was to be Melbourne stand-up comic and youth worker Mohammed el-Leissy, formerly of the Fear Of A Brown Planet fame and now about to launch an on-stage comedic gameshow called Who Is Abdul Smith at this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. El-Leissy first heard about the proposed documentary via a social networking site. He applied successfully for a role starring in the show, and was flown upto Sydney some 4 times, including a 2-month stint during which he approached various Muslim sects and their leaders. He also visited Camden to visit local Muslims.

El-Leissy told Crikey he’d developed an extensive list of Sydney Muslim contacts which he handed to the producers. The original idea was for El-Leissy to embed himself with more radical imams such as Sheik Abdussalam Zoud.

El-Leissy was to "hang out with rough guys, go on jihad camps and similar stuff". On one occasion, the producers asked him to attend a male-only barbecue where he’d accuse Zoud’s crowd of being sexist before asking why no women were present. El-Leissy refused, believing such questions just played into stereotypes (heck, why can’t a bunch of Aussie blokes have a bbq without sheilas spoiling the fun?). He explained this to the producers, who said that if he couldn’t ask these questions, they had a non-Muslim guy who would. They then sacked El-Leissy.

As it turned out, their Brisbane chap also didn’t get a chance to even appear with Zoud, let alone ask these tough questions of his young male followers. El-Leissy says that Zoud’s crowd wouldn’t touch the show with a 10-foot barge pole.

Still, when you can’t convince anyone to participate in a caricatured picture of Muslims, you can always rely on human headlines like Sheik Hilaly and his interpreter. Their attempts to justify Hilaly’s catmeat comments were just painful to watch, as were the attitudes expressed by other more conservative Muslims on the show.

Narrator Dave said his goal was "to understand what being a Muslim is really like". In relation to issues like marriage and gender relations, I doubt any but the most conservative of culturally Lebanese Muslims would relate to what Dave discovered.

The Age reviewer wasn’t terribly happy with the show accusing its makers of “entrenching prejudices and ignorance”. The tiny number of Hilaly-lovers congregating on this online forum were much more upbeat about the show.

Words Copyright © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: Why the Pope cares more about sexual abuse victims than some News Limited editors ...

Certain columnists and editorial writers from The Australian and other News Limited newspapers has been complaining about ABC Lateline's reporting of the mishandling of sexual abuse complaints made by victims and their families to the Catholic church. Apparently in their eyes, reporting on such matters on the eve of World Youth Day represents an attack on all Catholics and an attempt to tarnish a week of religious festivities for Catholic pilgrims who have gathered in Australia from across the world.

You can catch a summary of that criticism at the ABC Media Watch website here. You can also read a rather sad attempt at a critique of Media Watch here.

Some people at The Oz think that criticising Catholic clergy on the eve of World Youth Day represents an assault on WYD pilgrims and Catholics in general. They seem to think that Catholics are so sensitive that they are unable to handle such reporting. They also assume that Catholics, by and large, are quite happy with the way the Church handles sexual abuse by clergy.

I can understand devout Catholics like Angela Shanahan asking why such matters should be covered at this stage. However, for The Oz editorial writers to ask such questions is sheer hypocrisy.

The Oz editorial writers and columnists had no hesitation in pilloring Hilaly when he made comments disparaging of rape victims. The Oz never cared about the fact that the breaking of its story virtually coincided with Muslims celebrating the holiest day of their religious calender - the Feast of Purity (Eid al-Fitr) to commemmorate the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Worse still, The Oz sheeted the blame for Hilaly's comments to Muslims themselves. Neither ABC Lateline nor Media Watch suggested that ordinary Catholics should be held responsible for the insensitive remarks of Bishop Fisher about the rape victims and their parents.

Indeed, when I suggested that reporting overkill in The Oz was making it harder for ordinary Muslims to pressure imams and religious leaders to remove Hilaly, The Oz editorial accused me of seeking to cover up "Islamic excesses" and even claimed I condoned the kind of radical speech that led to bombings in London and Madrid and the assassination of Theo Van Gogh.

The Oz editorialists aren't against bashing of believers. Nor are The Oz editorialists concerned about defending rape victims. Rather The Oz editorialists will only defend the sentiments of believers it selects. However, The Oz editorialists are happy to do to Hilaly exactly what they accuse the ABC of doing to the Catjolic church.

I urge The Oz editorialists to grab a copy of the al-Mawrid and look up the meaning of the Arabic word nifaaq.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: The Daily Telegraph struggles to retaliate ...

Poor Luke McIlveen from the Daily Telegraph today claims to have exposed ABCTV's Media Watch

... fighting claims of hypocrisy after its website published anti-Semitic comments mocking the Holocaust and claiming a Jewish conspiracy.

McIlveen says the offending comments were placed on the MW forums the day after the episode which castigated the Tele (and, to a lesser extent, the Sydney Morning Herald) for moderating and allowing racist and inflammatory comments on its blog.

It took McIlveen an entire 7 days to discover the comments. By that time, as McIlveen’s Opinion Editor Tim Blair notes on his personal blog, the comments have already been removed. Blair himself first published the comments on his blog on 18 June 2007.

I’m not exactly sure where the hypocrisy on MW’s part is. It’s not as if anyone at MW is suggesting that such views should be aired because they are “held by many Australians, especially in Sydney ”. Nor does anyone at MW suggest that only persons with “bourgeois sensibilities” insist the law be obeyed.

The anti-Jewish comments are appalling. But then, McIlveen quotes MW’s executive producer Tim Palmer saying “the posts remained on the website for a ‘few minutes’ before being taken down” (this is confirmed by Blair’s blog). Further, the removed comments don’t talk about turning Jews into compost or vilifying them for the colour of their skin or other physical features.
Tim Blair wasn’t a happy camper on Tuesday night, after MW was broadcast. Those commenting on his blog were complaining about their posts on MW’s forums not being published. Perhaps the reason for this is that Palmer believed (with good reason) that in fact the comments were posted by Tim’s blog fan club.

As if to underscore the amount of pain the MW expose has caused him, Blair made a highly personal attack on Tim Palmer. However, Blair’s attack on Palmer was nothing compared to his highly defamatory references to an up and coming Australian children’s author.

McIlveen goes to all this trouble to castigate the kinds of comments that his own editor would happily allow to be moderated on his blogs. Clearly, on the Tele’s past of the blogosphere, racism is only wrong when it’s against indigenous people or anyone deemed Muslim.

The Tele’s editorial asks:

Perhaps its opposed to the vilification of Arabs, but has no problem with the harassment of Jews.

The author of that editorial should read the blog of the Tele’s Opinion Editor and ask whether vice versa is true.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007



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