Rex Hunt is a respected AFL commentator and fishing guru. His most recent exploits involved a somewhat amusing spat with residents of the NSW alternative lifestyle hub of Byron Bay following an alleged assault by local youths.
In rather colourful fashion, Hunt described Byron (popularly regarded as an idyllic haunt for backpackers, yoga instructors, schoolies and cashed-up gurus) as worse than Baghdad. Locals were furious. The rest of Australia were most amused.
Yet Mr Hunt’s recent public exposure has had far more serious consequences than verbal exchanges with Byron Bay locals. A frequent commentator on moral as well as sporting issues, Mr Hunt has been forced to admit sexual indiscretions on public radio.
Hunt has condemned himself as a “sleaze” and a “hypocrite” for paying women to provide sexual favours (or at least to keep silent about them) whilst lecturing others on sexual morality. His wife has also appeared on radio to comment on his activities.
Yes, we can condemn Mr Hunt in the same terms as he has condemned himself. But it is also an opportunity to give credit where credit is due. In media terms, for a man constantly in the public eye, Rex Hunt is a uniquely brave man.
In the world of talkback radio, it is rare to find a man prepared to admit his own humanity to his listeners. Mr Hunt’s behaviour may have been disgraceful. But compare Mr Hunt’s conduct and his response to the scandal to the responses of other media personalities.
Shock jocks are known for their flagrant disregard of the reputations of others. How often do we hear talkback hosts insult, malign and defame not just individuals but entire communities.
In the lead-up to the Cronulla riots, a number of Sydney talkback hosts openly encouraged frustrated rioters to take the law into their own hands. They used the worst racial and religious stereotypes to generate hatred toward persons presumed by their appearance to belong to a supposedly offending group.
Rex Hunt may be an unfaithful husband, but his words certainly were not an essential ingredient of one of the nastiest race riots this country has seen since the end of the Second World War. Mr Hunt’s indiscretions did not lead to a breakdown of law and order of such proportions that entire beaches had to be closed up and down the New South Wales coast over summer.
One can only imagine how some notoriously racist Sydney shock jocks would react if their own sexuality was made the subject of public scrutiny. One wonders whether their claims to being protectors and defenders of decent conservative values would survive examination should their known past indiscretions be aired.
I wonder if they would even allow scrutiny of their sexual activities to be even mentioned without their reaching for their lawyers and threatening the alleged offenders with expensive legal proceedings.
Some of these same shock jocks have even gone to the extent of claiming that certain cultures and religions encourage their young men to sexually abuse white-skinned women as some kind of right of passage.
But it isn’t just the ayatollahs of talk back radio that show scant regard to the feelings of others. Some years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the first Bali bombing, a former client of mine was charged with possessing possible explosives. One journalist reported that this fellow had Arabic books in his house and had recently started attending religious classes at the local mosque.
The police involved in the investigation had already ruled out the possibility of terrorism. Yet the journalist involved wanted to use the pages of his Sydney newspaper to spread hysteria about the possibility of terrorism by making reference to a recent religious conversion on the road to Damascus (or in my former client’s case, Mecca).
Ironically, the journalist involved had a distinctly Arabic-sounding surname. His own background suggested that a visit to his own home might reveal Arabic books and possible visits to the institutions of religious denominations at the heart of Middle Eastern conflict. I raised these points on an e-mail group, with a view to levelling the playing field and exposing what I felt was the journalist’s hypocrisy.
Some 4 months later, I received a letter from an in-house lawyer of the media organisation for which that journalist worked. That letter corrected some erroneous assumptions I had made concerning the journalist’s ethno-religious background (I got his Middle Eastern denomination wrong in my e-mail).
More importantly, the letter threatened me with defamation proceedings for daring to question the journalist’s integrity on a private subscriber-only e-mail list. Perhaps the journalist should have realised that sometimes threatening a litigation lawyer with legal proceedings is as effective as threatening a surgeon with a penicillin injection.
To make matters worse, the journalist did not even bother to spend his own money to brief their own lawyers, preferring to use the resources of the company’s legal department to fight a personal legal battle.
Those who lecture others about sexual morality while failing to practise it themselves deserve to be derided. But what is worse? Using the microphone to preach morality while failing to practice? Or using it to behave like fanatical mullahs by preaching hatred toward others?
I’ll take an honest sleaze over a bigotted shock jock or racist scribe anyday.
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
New Blog
I don’t always have the time to update my many blogs with article-size (700-plus word) analyses. But I still like to keep my brain ticking over with short snippets on what I am reading at the moment.
With this in mind, I’ve started a new blog which (I hope) will be updated with some regularity. You can check it out here.
Hopefully, I will have some stuff to write about on this blog in the near future. Anyway, back to my 6-minute units!
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
With this in mind, I’ve started a new blog which (I hope) will be updated with some regularity. You can check it out here.
Hopefully, I will have some stuff to write about on this blog in the near future. Anyway, back to my 6-minute units!
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
When good Police PR compromises better security
It was around 5am in the morning when my mobile phone suddenly rang.“Hi, this is [producer] from [commercial channel]’s morning show. You must have heard about the terror raids earlier this morning. We can arrange a car to take you to Lakemba Mosque. We’d like to talk to you so we can gauge the Muslim response.”
The high profile November raids on the homes of terror suspects gave newspapers plenty to write about. A number of commentators criticised the timing and publicity surrounding the raids. At the same time, Muslim leaders in Sydney and Melbourne felt the raids proved that then-existing anti-terror laws worked sufficiently well to apprehend and protect the community from terror suspects.
Now, in a keynote speech to the Press Council on 23 March 2006, Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has urged reporters and state police media units to cease filming raids on the homes of terror suspects.
Keelty said that filming the raids had caused unnecessary and justifiable angst amongst Muslim Australians. He further added that the way media reported issues related to terrorism has a “deep and abiding” impact on the recruitment of extremists and potential terrorists from within Muslim communities.
Keelty argued that police warrants should be executed without the intrusion of TV film crews whose presence potentially compromised the integrity of police work.
“The fashion of trying to provide film or footage of the execution of search warrants needs to be rethought because it is an intrusion into someone else's property. It is a precious power that needs to be, I think, surrounded by appropriate decorum.”
In the days following the raids, Keelty made his criticism of state police media units known privately to a number of Muslim leaders in Sydney. The Press Council address is the first time Mr Keelty’s criticisms have been made publicly.There is no doubt that Keelty’s views were reflected in the responses of many Muslims to the raids. One need only visit the forum pages of websites such as islamicsydney.com to see how many young Australian-born Muslims took a dim view of the media circus surrounding the raids.
Rightly or wrongly, many Muslims felt that coverage of the raids and the first few days of the trials reinforced community perceptions that terrorism was an inherently Muslim phenomenon.
Images of doors being smashed open, of female relatives of the accused dressed in traditional covering and of subsequent selective leaking of police fact sheets with information linking suspects to mainstream Islamic institutions did not assist in this regard.
Selective leaks by NSW police media units effectively allowed good police work to be hijacked by sectarian agendas of some tabloid columnists and radio talkback hosts.
If the greatest risk of terrorism on Australian soil arises from home-grown locally indoctrinated Muslim extremists, law enforcement agencies must have the support and confidence of local Muslims who have at least as much to lose from terrorist attacks as anyone else. At least 10% of victims of the July 7 London attacks were from Muslim backgrounds, including a young English girl whose surname was Islam.
Of course, NSW Police have been tipping off media outlets about anti-terror raids for the past 2 years. The Sydney Morning Herald reported a NSW Police public affairs officer Kylie Keough as suggesting that the practise of tipping off journalists merely highlighted the good work of police officers.
But good public relations isn’t the be-all and end-all of police work. If the price of good police PR is increased risk of Muslim resentment leading to possible recruitment of extremists, it is too high a security price for Australians of all backgrounds to pay.
Whether police spin doctors like it or not, there are media commentators and editors with clear sectarian agendas. Their ability to distort police information and evidence has led to a tide of feeling in parts of the broader community against any group deemed responsible for terrorism. A sample of the explosive results could be seen at Cronulla last December.
Some motives mentioned by participants in the Cronulla riots (as shown on the ABC Four Corners program on 13 March 2006) illustrate the risks of allowing police information to fuel prejudice. One participant named Luke makes the following remark: “I want this government to stop the growing threat. And I want them to stop appeasing Islam. And to stop appeasing people that follow Islam.”All this may seem unrelated to Mr Keelty’s warnings. Yet misinformation-fed fear of terrorism adds fuel to sectarian fires. The following dialogue sums this up.
LIZ JACKSON: What about reconciling? I mean, a lot of groups have put some effort down here into reconciliation.
LUKE: Sure, sure. But the monster's just going to go somewhere else. It'll rear its head somewhere else. There's always going to be that threat. And I think that paranoia will become part of society forever. Like, as far as I can see. And I don't - I think that's here to stay.
LIZ JACKSON: And what threat? What is the threat you're talking about?
LUKE: Terrorism, you know? It's terrorism.
When paranoia and social division reach such fevered pitch, the terrorists have already won half the battle. Yet given the tendency of even senior government ministers to reinforce existing sectarian prejudice, it is unlikely Keelty’s warnings will be heeded.
The author is a Sydney lawyer and writer.
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Sobering Thoughts On An allegedly American Newspaper
Last Saturday night I had an interesting conversation in Canberra with a group of people who had gotten together to support that progressive bunch known as the Canberra Islamic Centre. Amongst them was a gentleman who had something to do with media.
I made a flippant throwaway reference to an American newspaper that likes to call itself The Australian. I was expressing my frustration at one section of The Oz which provides voice to some of the ugliest views I have ever read since I arrived in Australia as a wee toddler.
Going to school as virtually the only non-Anglo kid at Ryde East Public, I heard lots of nonsense in the playground from other kids. But the taunts I received then were nothing compared to some of the things I read in the columns of Janet Albrechtsen and others claiming to represent conservative thinking.
The fellow I spoke to claimed not to recall the good Doctor making any extreme reference to Muslim cultures. I reminded the chap of Dr Albrechtsen’s claim that Victoria looked like it was on the verge of becoming an Islamic state because of its religious vilification legislation. I also reminded him of the comments she made in relation to the gang rapes that took place in south western Sydney.
I got the feeling my converstaion partner may have had some link with The Oz and appeared to be offended by my suggestion that a newspaper he associated with was printing views which, if said about Jews and Judaism, would be deemed anti-Semitic.
I hope he goes back and reads some of the offending columns and considers the impressions that the promotion of such lunatic-fringe ideas has on even the most conservative people for whom Islam forms perhaps a minor part of their identity.
The gentleman certainly had far more enlightened views about non-Christian religions (if he didn’t, why on earth would he be attending a fundraising dinner for an Islamic centre?). To his credit, the gentleman did provide me with some food for thought which I felt should be shared with readers.
He explained that each section of the paper has its own editors who have separate briefs and engage their own regular contributors. These contributors are given a certain amount of latitude and are deliberately chosen because they represent a certain element of the public conversation.
There is a significant monoculturalist element of the public conversation which wants to read criticisms of matters associated with Muslim cultures. Writers like Kevin Donnelly and Janet Albrechtsen cater for these people.
At the same time there are elements of the public conversation that want to read relatively less conservative and/or multiculturalist views. Writers like Phillip Adams and others cater for these.
He also pointed out that ugly views about certain non-Christian faiths and cultures are also printed in the Fairfax press. I agreed with him in the case of Paul Sheehan and Miranda Devine (and occasionally Gerard Henderson, though he is far more sophisticated in his analysis of sectarian issues).
He also suggested that much of the problem is not that of the paper but rather of those claiming to speak for Australia’s incredibly diverse Muslim communities. On this point, I doubt there can be any disagreement except from those representing the private interests of those benefiting from their continual domination of Muslim institutions.
I guess this is where government-sponsored multiculturalism has its limits. If, by multiculturalism, we mean governments spending money on organisations which then divert funds into private ventures then it is understandable for taxpayers of any denomination to find such activity inherently offensive.
In this regard The Oz has investigated and exposed both the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. But it has also exposed the Hillsong Church. If Islam or Pentecostal Christianity has reputation problems, this cannot be solely attributed to a few op-eds in a newspaper.
Perhaps the most important point the gentleman made is that what gets printed in different sections of a newspaper may or may not represent the entire newspaper. He said that no mainstream newspaper from any camp (Fairfax or News Limited) has a single ideological agenda. Rather, the newspapers try to reflect the national conversation and break news stories that readers want to read.
Further, often a newspaper’s op-ed section will enable the views of certain writers to be projected further so as to counter-balance the perceived biases of a competing newspaper and so as to differentiate itself from its competitors.
In the current environment, with anything remotely related to Islam being painted as violent and ugly, it is sometimes easier for those of us who don’t feel the urge to hate the faith and all its followers to presume every attack is part of some agenda. Conspiracies often make excellent self-fulfilling prophecies.
But we have to learn to be careful not to demonise media outlets just because they give space to those who demonise us. Because chances are the same outlet gives space to the demonising of just about everyone else.
(A version of this was first published on The Webdiary.)
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
I made a flippant throwaway reference to an American newspaper that likes to call itself The Australian. I was expressing my frustration at one section of The Oz which provides voice to some of the ugliest views I have ever read since I arrived in Australia as a wee toddler.
Going to school as virtually the only non-Anglo kid at Ryde East Public, I heard lots of nonsense in the playground from other kids. But the taunts I received then were nothing compared to some of the things I read in the columns of Janet Albrechtsen and others claiming to represent conservative thinking.
The fellow I spoke to claimed not to recall the good Doctor making any extreme reference to Muslim cultures. I reminded the chap of Dr Albrechtsen’s claim that Victoria looked like it was on the verge of becoming an Islamic state because of its religious vilification legislation. I also reminded him of the comments she made in relation to the gang rapes that took place in south western Sydney.
I got the feeling my converstaion partner may have had some link with The Oz and appeared to be offended by my suggestion that a newspaper he associated with was printing views which, if said about Jews and Judaism, would be deemed anti-Semitic.
I hope he goes back and reads some of the offending columns and considers the impressions that the promotion of such lunatic-fringe ideas has on even the most conservative people for whom Islam forms perhaps a minor part of their identity.
The gentleman certainly had far more enlightened views about non-Christian religions (if he didn’t, why on earth would he be attending a fundraising dinner for an Islamic centre?). To his credit, the gentleman did provide me with some food for thought which I felt should be shared with readers.
He explained that each section of the paper has its own editors who have separate briefs and engage their own regular contributors. These contributors are given a certain amount of latitude and are deliberately chosen because they represent a certain element of the public conversation.
There is a significant monoculturalist element of the public conversation which wants to read criticisms of matters associated with Muslim cultures. Writers like Kevin Donnelly and Janet Albrechtsen cater for these people.
At the same time there are elements of the public conversation that want to read relatively less conservative and/or multiculturalist views. Writers like Phillip Adams and others cater for these.
He also pointed out that ugly views about certain non-Christian faiths and cultures are also printed in the Fairfax press. I agreed with him in the case of Paul Sheehan and Miranda Devine (and occasionally Gerard Henderson, though he is far more sophisticated in his analysis of sectarian issues).
He also suggested that much of the problem is not that of the paper but rather of those claiming to speak for Australia’s incredibly diverse Muslim communities. On this point, I doubt there can be any disagreement except from those representing the private interests of those benefiting from their continual domination of Muslim institutions.
I guess this is where government-sponsored multiculturalism has its limits. If, by multiculturalism, we mean governments spending money on organisations which then divert funds into private ventures then it is understandable for taxpayers of any denomination to find such activity inherently offensive.
In this regard The Oz has investigated and exposed both the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. But it has also exposed the Hillsong Church. If Islam or Pentecostal Christianity has reputation problems, this cannot be solely attributed to a few op-eds in a newspaper.
Perhaps the most important point the gentleman made is that what gets printed in different sections of a newspaper may or may not represent the entire newspaper. He said that no mainstream newspaper from any camp (Fairfax or News Limited) has a single ideological agenda. Rather, the newspapers try to reflect the national conversation and break news stories that readers want to read.
Further, often a newspaper’s op-ed section will enable the views of certain writers to be projected further so as to counter-balance the perceived biases of a competing newspaper and so as to differentiate itself from its competitors.
In the current environment, with anything remotely related to Islam being painted as violent and ugly, it is sometimes easier for those of us who don’t feel the urge to hate the faith and all its followers to presume every attack is part of some agenda. Conspiracies often make excellent self-fulfilling prophecies.
But we have to learn to be careful not to demonise media outlets just because they give space to those who demonise us. Because chances are the same outlet gives space to the demonising of just about everyone else.
(A version of this was first published on The Webdiary.)
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
The Daily Telegraph's Disgraceful Front Page Headline
In April 2005, I had something published in a Sydney newspaper about a Sydney sheik who said women who dressed a certain way are eligible to be raped.
I promised myself I would never write anything related to “Muslimy” issues again. The last thing I wanted was to be known as the media’s “village Muslim”. Heck, there are so many other things to write about.
Then the London bombing came along. People claiming to represent me and 300,000 other people who, amongst other things, happen to have Islam as their religion were saying all sorts of crazy things.
Australians were naturally scared, especially with those responsible for the bombing thought to be kids born and bred in the UK. With the exception of leaders in Victoria and ACT, those claiming to represent Muslims were not saying or doing much to alleviate people’s fears. Their inaction forced my hand and my pen.
With John Howard and Peter Costello harping on about Muslim extremists more than Muslims “harp on” (to use Mr Howard’s phrase) about jihad, I now find myself in the same situation.
But this time, my concern isn’t so much about the words of greying politicians in dark suits. I’m angry about a headline.
A young Australian girl of Turkish background falls in love with a young guy and has been in a relationship with him for 4 years. Her terminally-ill mother disapproves of the relationship, and the young girl succumbs to a psychiatric condition which leads her to make a number of calls to Carlingford Court. The calls were in fact bomb threats.
The girl pleads guilty and her solicitor calls evidence from a psychiatrist. I am not sure if Dr Russell White was the girl’s treating psychiatrist, but I’m not sure if it really matters. He is qualified to give his report, and his evidence is accepted by the magistrate and not opposed by the prosecutor.
According to Dr White, this girl’s psychiatric condition has two causes. First, there is her mother’s terminal illness. Second, there is the parental pressure relating to the relationship.
Yet for reasons unknown, this psychiatric condition is reported on the front page of this newspaper with the headline as “Muslim Legal Excuse”. The article suggests that submissions made by her solicitor were incredulous. Hardly one sentence from solicitor Jonathan Anton’s submissions have been quoted with a view to showing that the act of making bomb-threats and the subsequent allegedly poor excuses were allegedly “Muslim” behaviour.
The newspaper has defamed the girl. It has also defamed her boyfriend, her parents, her psychiatrist and her lawyer.
Further, the newspaper has engaged in breaches of the Trade Practices Act 1974. It has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in trade and commerce by falsely attributing certain criminal conduct to Muslim culture.
It is one thing to speak of a clash of cultures. It is another to describe criminal conduct and its explanation as a “Muslim legal excuse”.
The headline represents an insult to all persons who happen to be of Muslim background.
Perhaps my colleague, Mr Anton, might consider advising the young lady to pursue action against the newspaper.
The editor and sub-editor of the paper have behaved irresponsibly in relation to both the headline and the editing of the story. If the girl happened to be Jewish, I doubt they would place as a headline “Jewish Legal Excuse”.
I believe that, should the paper be found to have defamed the girl, damages would be quite substantial. She is already suffering stress as a result of the circumstances outlined in her psychiatrist’s report. Now to have her name and reputation tarnished purely because of her family’s religious background will be a cause of even greater stress.
The Daily Telegraph, its editors and its publishers should be held accountable for their gross misconduct and complete lack of professionalism. It saddens me to say this given that the newspaper has allowed a small number of nominally Muslim voices (including my own) to be printed on its pages. But in the current environment, with Australian Muslims feeling the heat from all sides, the media must learn to behave responsibly.
And if they will not learn voluntarily, they may have to learn through the prospect of court action.
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
I promised myself I would never write anything related to “Muslimy” issues again. The last thing I wanted was to be known as the media’s “village Muslim”. Heck, there are so many other things to write about.
Then the London bombing came along. People claiming to represent me and 300,000 other people who, amongst other things, happen to have Islam as their religion were saying all sorts of crazy things.
Australians were naturally scared, especially with those responsible for the bombing thought to be kids born and bred in the UK. With the exception of leaders in Victoria and ACT, those claiming to represent Muslims were not saying or doing much to alleviate people’s fears. Their inaction forced my hand and my pen.
With John Howard and Peter Costello harping on about Muslim extremists more than Muslims “harp on” (to use Mr Howard’s phrase) about jihad, I now find myself in the same situation.
But this time, my concern isn’t so much about the words of greying politicians in dark suits. I’m angry about a headline.
A young Australian girl of Turkish background falls in love with a young guy and has been in a relationship with him for 4 years. Her terminally-ill mother disapproves of the relationship, and the young girl succumbs to a psychiatric condition which leads her to make a number of calls to Carlingford Court. The calls were in fact bomb threats.
The girl pleads guilty and her solicitor calls evidence from a psychiatrist. I am not sure if Dr Russell White was the girl’s treating psychiatrist, but I’m not sure if it really matters. He is qualified to give his report, and his evidence is accepted by the magistrate and not opposed by the prosecutor.
According to Dr White, this girl’s psychiatric condition has two causes. First, there is her mother’s terminal illness. Second, there is the parental pressure relating to the relationship.
Yet for reasons unknown, this psychiatric condition is reported on the front page of this newspaper with the headline as “Muslim Legal Excuse”. The article suggests that submissions made by her solicitor were incredulous. Hardly one sentence from solicitor Jonathan Anton’s submissions have been quoted with a view to showing that the act of making bomb-threats and the subsequent allegedly poor excuses were allegedly “Muslim” behaviour.
The newspaper has defamed the girl. It has also defamed her boyfriend, her parents, her psychiatrist and her lawyer.
Further, the newspaper has engaged in breaches of the Trade Practices Act 1974. It has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in trade and commerce by falsely attributing certain criminal conduct to Muslim culture.
It is one thing to speak of a clash of cultures. It is another to describe criminal conduct and its explanation as a “Muslim legal excuse”.
The headline represents an insult to all persons who happen to be of Muslim background.
Perhaps my colleague, Mr Anton, might consider advising the young lady to pursue action against the newspaper.
The editor and sub-editor of the paper have behaved irresponsibly in relation to both the headline and the editing of the story. If the girl happened to be Jewish, I doubt they would place as a headline “Jewish Legal Excuse”.
I believe that, should the paper be found to have defamed the girl, damages would be quite substantial. She is already suffering stress as a result of the circumstances outlined in her psychiatrist’s report. Now to have her name and reputation tarnished purely because of her family’s religious background will be a cause of even greater stress.
The Daily Telegraph, its editors and its publishers should be held accountable for their gross misconduct and complete lack of professionalism. It saddens me to say this given that the newspaper has allowed a small number of nominally Muslim voices (including my own) to be printed on its pages. But in the current environment, with Australian Muslims feeling the heat from all sides, the media must learn to behave responsibly.
And if they will not learn voluntarily, they may have to learn through the prospect of court action.
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
Lifting the Media Veil on Costello & Sharia
The media circus
On Thursday 23 February 2006, Treasurer and Prime Ministerial aspirant Peter Costello delivered a speech to an audience at the Sydney Institute. Mr Costello provided some personal reflections on Australia’s developing culture and citizenship. Within a few hours, a veritable media circus began.
Predictably, some News Limited newspapers reported Mr Costello’s words as condemning all Muslims. Some of these papers had provided skewed and distorted reporting of similar comments made by the Prime Minister one week before.
The Fairfax Press, on the other hand, attempted to paint Costello as indulging in dog whistle politics, seeking diversions for the scandal of the Government’s knowledge of kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein’s regime. Others speculated that the PM wanted to be seen to be going further than the PM, taking a stronger stand on policy issues outside his Treasury portfolio.
Speaking before reading
Sadly, most migrant Muslim leaders bought into the circus, many expressing views on the Costello comments without having read the Costello speech. Some leaders accused Costello of deliberately seeking to marginalise Muslim communities by speaking of undefined Australian values and threatening the dual citizenship status of those seen to be opposing such values.
I must admit I initially agreed with them.
Until, that is, I read Mr Costello’s actual speech. I agree that Mr Costello’s “values” test for citizenship will be difficult to translate into workable legislation. Further, his views on sharia are at best simplistic.
Apart from these fairly significant bloopers, Costello’s comments were spot-on. The first two-thirds of his speech are fairly innocuous. But what sent the scribes, pundits and some Muslim leaders scurrying were the final 2 pages of comments on sharia and citizenship.
Australian values are sharia values
Peter Costello said that anyone who believes Sharia can co-exist with Australian law and Australian values should leave the country. Mr Howard described his comments as “fundamentally accurate”.
What neither fail to see is that if Mr Costello’s formulation of Australian values is correct, it might mean non-indigenous Australians will have to pack their bags and return to their motherlands.
Mr Costello says most migrants “become Australian citizens because they want to embrace the things this country stand for.” He lists six core Australian values including economic opportunity, security, democracy and personal freedom.
In 2002, a visiting Indonesian academic lawyer delivered a series of lectures under the auspices of the conservative Centre for Independent Studies (CIS). Professor Muhammad Fajrul Falaakh is Vice Dean of the prestigious Gadjah Mada University, among the top 100 universities in the world. He holds a masters degree from the London School of Economics, and was a Fullbright Scholar in the United States in 2000.
Professor Falaakh is also a senior figure in the Nahdatul Ulama (Council of Theologians), the world’s largest Islamic organisation. NU ‘s membership is more than double Australia’s population.
Falaakh delivered the annual CIS Acton Lecture on the topic of “Sharia and Pluralism in Indonesia”. He listed 5 basic values of Sharia agreed upon by Sharia scholars from all schools of Islamic law.
An edited text of Professor Falaakh’s lecture is still available on the website of the Centre for Independent Studies. If one compares the 5 basic principles of Sharia to the 6 values espoused by Mr Costello, one finds they are virtually identical.
Perhaps this is what Australian imams mean when they state in their sermons that Australia is a more Islamic country than most Muslim-majority states.
Sharia as legal tradition
But then, this should be of no surprise to anyone. After all, sharia is not a synonym for amputations and beheadings. Rather, sharia is the name of a legal tradition, a set of legal principles based on certain values. And those values are identical to the values expressed in the Old and New Testaments.
Further, legal scholars in both east and west are agreed that the traditions of sharia, English common law (from which our legal systems are derived) and European civil law have borrowed from each other and influenced each other. To this day, in a large number of Commonwealth countries, sharia and the common law sit side by side.
Historically, all legal traditions influence and are influenced by each other. This simple fact is taught to first year law students in universities across the world. Many of our fundamental common law doctrines are taken from the works of sharia jurists, and sharia has also borrowed from the common law.
A retired Justice of the NSW Supreme Court has written that alternate dispute resolution procedures adopted in Australian commercial law find their origins in Islamic commercial law. Further, Professor John Makdisi of the St Thomas University in North Carolina has written extensively on how common law and sharia traditions borrowed extensively from each other.
Sharia as ethics and liturgy
Some pseudo-conservative commentators present sharia as a system of medieval criminal punishments. But for some 300,000 Australian Muslims, sharia represents little more than ethics (honesty, enterprise etc) and liturgy (how to perform prayers, weddings and funerals etc.)
As shown above, the ethics of sharia do not pose a problem for Australia. Further, sharia liturgy has been practised in Australia for over a century. Indeed, Australia law allows a number of religious legal systems (such as Jewish religious law) to operate in the contexts of family law, estates and other areas.
The letter and the spirit
Christ, recognised as Messiah by Muslims, castigated rabbis of his time who followed the letter but ignored the spirit of sacred law. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad brought sharia as the outer manifestation of religious values. He also brought an inner manifestation, which has been given a variety of labels by Muslims but which is commonly known in the West as sufism.
A tiny minority of Muslims seek to establish sharia without sufism across the world. They are the source of virtually all terrorist groups in the Muslim world. Their theology is regarded by mainstream Muslims as isolationist and fringe. They distort sharia by imposing it on people without the inner discipline of sufism. They are openly hostile to sufi tradition.
These people seek to destroy Islam from within. They are arguably more of a threat to Muslims than non-Muslims. Hence, the majority of their victims are Muslims. Mr Costello would like to see such people leave Australia. Most Muslims, on the other hand, would prefer to see these people leave our planet.
Charity and distorted perceptions
These people distort our perceptions about sharia. Most Australians regard sharia as purely consisting of draconian medieval punishments. Mr Costello’s own inaccurate comments about sharia are a manifestation of distorted perceptions. Instead of criticising inevitable and understandable ignorance, Muslim leaders need to educate the community about their faith and values.
The Qur’an teaches that when giving charity, give of things you value. Australians have followed this Qur’anic teaching by sharing with Muslim migrants so much they value – wealth, jobs, education and greater liberty to practise Islam than exists in most Muslim countries. Muslims too must share what they treasure – their religious and ethical values. If Aussie Muslims do not share their faith with their countrymen, how can they blame the rest of Australia for not understanding them?
The author is a Sydney lawyer. iyusuf@sydneylawyers.com.au
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
On Thursday 23 February 2006, Treasurer and Prime Ministerial aspirant Peter Costello delivered a speech to an audience at the Sydney Institute. Mr Costello provided some personal reflections on Australia’s developing culture and citizenship. Within a few hours, a veritable media circus began.
Predictably, some News Limited newspapers reported Mr Costello’s words as condemning all Muslims. Some of these papers had provided skewed and distorted reporting of similar comments made by the Prime Minister one week before.
The Fairfax Press, on the other hand, attempted to paint Costello as indulging in dog whistle politics, seeking diversions for the scandal of the Government’s knowledge of kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein’s regime. Others speculated that the PM wanted to be seen to be going further than the PM, taking a stronger stand on policy issues outside his Treasury portfolio.
Speaking before reading
Sadly, most migrant Muslim leaders bought into the circus, many expressing views on the Costello comments without having read the Costello speech. Some leaders accused Costello of deliberately seeking to marginalise Muslim communities by speaking of undefined Australian values and threatening the dual citizenship status of those seen to be opposing such values.
I must admit I initially agreed with them.
Until, that is, I read Mr Costello’s actual speech. I agree that Mr Costello’s “values” test for citizenship will be difficult to translate into workable legislation. Further, his views on sharia are at best simplistic.
Apart from these fairly significant bloopers, Costello’s comments were spot-on. The first two-thirds of his speech are fairly innocuous. But what sent the scribes, pundits and some Muslim leaders scurrying were the final 2 pages of comments on sharia and citizenship.
Australian values are sharia values
Peter Costello said that anyone who believes Sharia can co-exist with Australian law and Australian values should leave the country. Mr Howard described his comments as “fundamentally accurate”.
What neither fail to see is that if Mr Costello’s formulation of Australian values is correct, it might mean non-indigenous Australians will have to pack their bags and return to their motherlands.
Mr Costello says most migrants “become Australian citizens because they want to embrace the things this country stand for.” He lists six core Australian values including economic opportunity, security, democracy and personal freedom.
In 2002, a visiting Indonesian academic lawyer delivered a series of lectures under the auspices of the conservative Centre for Independent Studies (CIS). Professor Muhammad Fajrul Falaakh is Vice Dean of the prestigious Gadjah Mada University, among the top 100 universities in the world. He holds a masters degree from the London School of Economics, and was a Fullbright Scholar in the United States in 2000.
Professor Falaakh is also a senior figure in the Nahdatul Ulama (Council of Theologians), the world’s largest Islamic organisation. NU ‘s membership is more than double Australia’s population.
Falaakh delivered the annual CIS Acton Lecture on the topic of “Sharia and Pluralism in Indonesia”. He listed 5 basic values of Sharia agreed upon by Sharia scholars from all schools of Islamic law.
An edited text of Professor Falaakh’s lecture is still available on the website of the Centre for Independent Studies. If one compares the 5 basic principles of Sharia to the 6 values espoused by Mr Costello, one finds they are virtually identical.
Perhaps this is what Australian imams mean when they state in their sermons that Australia is a more Islamic country than most Muslim-majority states.
Sharia as legal tradition
But then, this should be of no surprise to anyone. After all, sharia is not a synonym for amputations and beheadings. Rather, sharia is the name of a legal tradition, a set of legal principles based on certain values. And those values are identical to the values expressed in the Old and New Testaments.
Further, legal scholars in both east and west are agreed that the traditions of sharia, English common law (from which our legal systems are derived) and European civil law have borrowed from each other and influenced each other. To this day, in a large number of Commonwealth countries, sharia and the common law sit side by side.
Historically, all legal traditions influence and are influenced by each other. This simple fact is taught to first year law students in universities across the world. Many of our fundamental common law doctrines are taken from the works of sharia jurists, and sharia has also borrowed from the common law.
A retired Justice of the NSW Supreme Court has written that alternate dispute resolution procedures adopted in Australian commercial law find their origins in Islamic commercial law. Further, Professor John Makdisi of the St Thomas University in North Carolina has written extensively on how common law and sharia traditions borrowed extensively from each other.
Sharia as ethics and liturgy
Some pseudo-conservative commentators present sharia as a system of medieval criminal punishments. But for some 300,000 Australian Muslims, sharia represents little more than ethics (honesty, enterprise etc) and liturgy (how to perform prayers, weddings and funerals etc.)
As shown above, the ethics of sharia do not pose a problem for Australia. Further, sharia liturgy has been practised in Australia for over a century. Indeed, Australia law allows a number of religious legal systems (such as Jewish religious law) to operate in the contexts of family law, estates and other areas.
The letter and the spirit
Christ, recognised as Messiah by Muslims, castigated rabbis of his time who followed the letter but ignored the spirit of sacred law. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad brought sharia as the outer manifestation of religious values. He also brought an inner manifestation, which has been given a variety of labels by Muslims but which is commonly known in the West as sufism.
A tiny minority of Muslims seek to establish sharia without sufism across the world. They are the source of virtually all terrorist groups in the Muslim world. Their theology is regarded by mainstream Muslims as isolationist and fringe. They distort sharia by imposing it on people without the inner discipline of sufism. They are openly hostile to sufi tradition.
These people seek to destroy Islam from within. They are arguably more of a threat to Muslims than non-Muslims. Hence, the majority of their victims are Muslims. Mr Costello would like to see such people leave Australia. Most Muslims, on the other hand, would prefer to see these people leave our planet.
Charity and distorted perceptions
These people distort our perceptions about sharia. Most Australians regard sharia as purely consisting of draconian medieval punishments. Mr Costello’s own inaccurate comments about sharia are a manifestation of distorted perceptions. Instead of criticising inevitable and understandable ignorance, Muslim leaders need to educate the community about their faith and values.
The Qur’an teaches that when giving charity, give of things you value. Australians have followed this Qur’anic teaching by sharing with Muslim migrants so much they value – wealth, jobs, education and greater liberty to practise Islam than exists in most Muslim countries. Muslims too must share what they treasure – their religious and ethical values. If Aussie Muslims do not share their faith with their countrymen, how can they blame the rest of Australia for not understanding them?
The author is a Sydney lawyer. iyusuf@sydneylawyers.com.au
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Fun with forums ...
I’ve been having some fun times on the forums associated with that magnificent website Online Opinion (OLO). This fantastic initiative deserves our support. I urge you all to donate to keep this superb website alive.
The forums are especially entertaining as they are a place where a variety of nutcases congregate. These are usually the same people who make up the cheer squad for views expressed on the blogs of Tim Blair and Peter Faris.
You might want to check out the comments left on the OLO forum website to my (rather clumsily worded) questions as follows:
“I'd just like to ask B_D, mikijo and all the other armchair Nazis here a simple question. If the Federal Government decided to round up Muslims and have them detained in detention camps, would you support such a move?
Further, would you support laws that would allow persons of Muslim origin to be killed?
I'm just trying to gauge where all this discussion is heading.”
I’d also encourage you to check out the forums associated with Ted Lapkin’s latest attempt to portray all Muslims as a bunch of embassy-burners. I’ve set a few challenges for young Ted. It makes for fascinating reading.
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
The forums are especially entertaining as they are a place where a variety of nutcases congregate. These are usually the same people who make up the cheer squad for views expressed on the blogs of Tim Blair and Peter Faris.
You might want to check out the comments left on the OLO forum website to my (rather clumsily worded) questions as follows:
“I'd just like to ask B_D, mikijo and all the other armchair Nazis here a simple question. If the Federal Government decided to round up Muslims and have them detained in detention camps, would you support such a move?
Further, would you support laws that would allow persons of Muslim origin to be killed?
I'm just trying to gauge where all this discussion is heading.”
I’d also encourage you to check out the forums associated with Ted Lapkin’s latest attempt to portray all Muslims as a bunch of embassy-burners. I’ve set a few challenges for young Ted. It makes for fascinating reading.
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Australian Doublespeak and that nasty "M" word
That nasty ‘m’ word
It’s official: Howard doesn’t like the ‘m’ word. Neither do his supporters, whether they be (at least one) anti-abortion MPs or some allegedly conservative columnists writing about the Cronulla riots in the op-ed pages of that American publication calling itself The Australian.
Which ‘m’ word is that, you may ask. Is it the name Muhammad? Certainly, that’s a word open to abuse in most neo-con circles, especially after an obscure neo-con newspaper in Denmark decided to publish a dozen or so cartoons.
Or maybe it’s that other ‘m’ word, the one that could well be used to describe Australia unless we follow Danna Vale’s advice and make abortion pills a tad harder for Australian (as opposed to, say, Muslim) women to access. I mean, let’s face it: in today’s conservative parties, you can say what you like about Muhammad and Muslims, but don’t even suggest the Health Minister’s rosary could cause any harm to non-Muslim ovaries.
Actually, the word I am thinking about combines both these distasteful alien religious elements. John Howard has declared that he doesn’t like the word ‘multiculturalism’, and his view is shared increasingly by members of his party (both organisational and parliamentary wings) and by his friends at The Australian.
That diplomatically useful ‘m’ word
Howard may not like the word, but successive Australian Ambassadors to Indonesia can’t get enough of it.
The present Ambassador, Bill Farmer, and his brave staff are still nervously housed behind tight security in the fortress-like Australian Embassy building on a main street of Jakarta’s CBD. The building was the scene of a terrorist attack on 9 September 2004 in which 10 Indonesians died and over 200 were injured. The blast was so big that the 100kg Australian crest fell from the embassy wall and crashed to the ground.
Despite their understandable jitters, Farmer and his crew maintain brave smiles as they struggle to find all sorts of novel ways to use the ‘m’ word in almost every press release. The problem is that Indonesian journalists are just as smart as ours. And they can read.
During the last two weeks of January, I travelled with a delegation of young Aussie Muslims on an exchange program sponsored by the Australia Indonesia Institute and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Each year, the Institute sends a delegation of young Australian Muslims to visit a range of individuals, organisations and institutions from across the spectrum of Indonesian opinion. Delegations of Indonesian Muslim youth leaders also visit Australia.
Our delegation consisted of two lawyers, an engineer, a researcher and a police woman. Two of our delegation could speak fluent Bahasa Indonesia. We had to front up before some of Indonesia’s top journos for a news conference. We felt confident we would represent the national interest well, and so did the embassy staff.
Indonesian journos do have internet access
One of the embassy heavies was with us, and she very capably and confidently briefed Indonesian journos about how Australia is multicultural, about how Muslims are all living very comfortably thanks very much, and about how we even have a Ministry for Multicultural Affairs.
The Indonesian journos, of course, had heard it all before. So when it was their turn to speak to us, they had already memorised the relevant offensive lines from the op-ed pieces written by the Stones and Windschuttles and Donnellys that are regarded as reflective of ‘mainstream’ opinion by the head honchos at The Australian.
It became a bit embarrassing listening to the journos throw neo-con mantras in our direction like patriot missiles. In the end, we had no option but to speak the truth. We were cornered by well-researched scribes, and had to somehow weasel our way out.
‘Guys, listen: the stuff you are throwing at us is published in an American-owned newspaper. Seriously. It isn’t reflective of what most Australians think. If it was, it would sell far more copies and be much more profitable than it actually is.’
The journalists just weren’t convinced. One blurted out:
‘But the newspaper is called The Australian. And we know the paper is very supportive of the Howard Government. We have been following it during your last federal election.’
What could we say to that? Indonesian journos, after all, do have internet access. They can also read Latin script, and many can speak fluent English. In fact, quite a few were educated in Australia.
So there we were, a bunch of Australians trying to help the embassy sell a certain official line, and the biggest obstacle in our way was an American-owned newspaper. Yep, some op-ed writers may think they are helping the government, but their infantile rants and imbecilic prejudices are harming our national interests in our own backyard. They are facilitating DFAT spin to be unspun by savvy journalists in our region.
Indonesian press and the ‘p’ word
Howard may not like the ‘m’ word, but President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and most of the politicians and religious organisations in Indonesia are all in favour of the ‘p’ word.
One Indonesian academic from the liberal Muslim Paramadina University in Jakarta told our delegation that ‘pluralism’ is a much more effective and inclusive concept than tolerance or multiculturalism.
Indonesia is not the first country that comes to mind when words like pluralist, liberal and democratic are mentioned. During the decades of Suharto’s ‘New Order’, liberal democracy was in short supply. And we have all heard the horror stories of violence between various Muslim and Christian denominations in Ambon and Sulawesi.
Indonesia isn’t a perfect place. During our stay, we saw plenty of evidence of inter-racial and inter-religious tension. In Indonesia’s university town of Yogyakarta, we visited an interfaith group known as Interfidei. We heard from their (mainly Muslim) workers about the difficulties Christian communities face in establishing new churches.
We were also given the run-down on how Catholicism and Christianity are regarded as separate religions (a sectarian relic of Dutch colonial rule), and of efforts to have Judaism recognised as an official religion. Believe it or not, there are Indonesian Jews living in Surabaya.
But in Indonesia, inter-racial and religious violence and its underlying sentiments are not applauded in the op-ed pages of national broadsheets. Indeed, media ownership in Indonesia is a reflection of the pluralism that Indonesians take for granted. In the world’s largest Muslim country, the highest selling national broadsheet, Kompas, is owned by a Catholic foundation.
Imagine the outcry if Muslim interests bought our own national broadsheet.
(First published in New Matilda on 22 February 2006.)
It’s official: Howard doesn’t like the ‘m’ word. Neither do his supporters, whether they be (at least one) anti-abortion MPs or some allegedly conservative columnists writing about the Cronulla riots in the op-ed pages of that American publication calling itself The Australian.
Which ‘m’ word is that, you may ask. Is it the name Muhammad? Certainly, that’s a word open to abuse in most neo-con circles, especially after an obscure neo-con newspaper in Denmark decided to publish a dozen or so cartoons.
Or maybe it’s that other ‘m’ word, the one that could well be used to describe Australia unless we follow Danna Vale’s advice and make abortion pills a tad harder for Australian (as opposed to, say, Muslim) women to access. I mean, let’s face it: in today’s conservative parties, you can say what you like about Muhammad and Muslims, but don’t even suggest the Health Minister’s rosary could cause any harm to non-Muslim ovaries.
Actually, the word I am thinking about combines both these distasteful alien religious elements. John Howard has declared that he doesn’t like the word ‘multiculturalism’, and his view is shared increasingly by members of his party (both organisational and parliamentary wings) and by his friends at The Australian.
That diplomatically useful ‘m’ word
Howard may not like the word, but successive Australian Ambassadors to Indonesia can’t get enough of it.
The present Ambassador, Bill Farmer, and his brave staff are still nervously housed behind tight security in the fortress-like Australian Embassy building on a main street of Jakarta’s CBD. The building was the scene of a terrorist attack on 9 September 2004 in which 10 Indonesians died and over 200 were injured. The blast was so big that the 100kg Australian crest fell from the embassy wall and crashed to the ground.
Despite their understandable jitters, Farmer and his crew maintain brave smiles as they struggle to find all sorts of novel ways to use the ‘m’ word in almost every press release. The problem is that Indonesian journalists are just as smart as ours. And they can read.
During the last two weeks of January, I travelled with a delegation of young Aussie Muslims on an exchange program sponsored by the Australia Indonesia Institute and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Each year, the Institute sends a delegation of young Australian Muslims to visit a range of individuals, organisations and institutions from across the spectrum of Indonesian opinion. Delegations of Indonesian Muslim youth leaders also visit Australia.
Our delegation consisted of two lawyers, an engineer, a researcher and a police woman. Two of our delegation could speak fluent Bahasa Indonesia. We had to front up before some of Indonesia’s top journos for a news conference. We felt confident we would represent the national interest well, and so did the embassy staff.
Indonesian journos do have internet access
One of the embassy heavies was with us, and she very capably and confidently briefed Indonesian journos about how Australia is multicultural, about how Muslims are all living very comfortably thanks very much, and about how we even have a Ministry for Multicultural Affairs.
The Indonesian journos, of course, had heard it all before. So when it was their turn to speak to us, they had already memorised the relevant offensive lines from the op-ed pieces written by the Stones and Windschuttles and Donnellys that are regarded as reflective of ‘mainstream’ opinion by the head honchos at The Australian.
It became a bit embarrassing listening to the journos throw neo-con mantras in our direction like patriot missiles. In the end, we had no option but to speak the truth. We were cornered by well-researched scribes, and had to somehow weasel our way out.
‘Guys, listen: the stuff you are throwing at us is published in an American-owned newspaper. Seriously. It isn’t reflective of what most Australians think. If it was, it would sell far more copies and be much more profitable than it actually is.’
The journalists just weren’t convinced. One blurted out:
‘But the newspaper is called The Australian. And we know the paper is very supportive of the Howard Government. We have been following it during your last federal election.’
What could we say to that? Indonesian journos, after all, do have internet access. They can also read Latin script, and many can speak fluent English. In fact, quite a few were educated in Australia.
So there we were, a bunch of Australians trying to help the embassy sell a certain official line, and the biggest obstacle in our way was an American-owned newspaper. Yep, some op-ed writers may think they are helping the government, but their infantile rants and imbecilic prejudices are harming our national interests in our own backyard. They are facilitating DFAT spin to be unspun by savvy journalists in our region.
Indonesian press and the ‘p’ word
Howard may not like the ‘m’ word, but President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and most of the politicians and religious organisations in Indonesia are all in favour of the ‘p’ word.
One Indonesian academic from the liberal Muslim Paramadina University in Jakarta told our delegation that ‘pluralism’ is a much more effective and inclusive concept than tolerance or multiculturalism.
Indonesia is not the first country that comes to mind when words like pluralist, liberal and democratic are mentioned. During the decades of Suharto’s ‘New Order’, liberal democracy was in short supply. And we have all heard the horror stories of violence between various Muslim and Christian denominations in Ambon and Sulawesi.
Indonesia isn’t a perfect place. During our stay, we saw plenty of evidence of inter-racial and inter-religious tension. In Indonesia’s university town of Yogyakarta, we visited an interfaith group known as Interfidei. We heard from their (mainly Muslim) workers about the difficulties Christian communities face in establishing new churches.
We were also given the run-down on how Catholicism and Christianity are regarded as separate religions (a sectarian relic of Dutch colonial rule), and of efforts to have Judaism recognised as an official religion. Believe it or not, there are Indonesian Jews living in Surabaya.
But in Indonesia, inter-racial and religious violence and its underlying sentiments are not applauded in the op-ed pages of national broadsheets. Indeed, media ownership in Indonesia is a reflection of the pluralism that Indonesians take for granted. In the world’s largest Muslim country, the highest selling national broadsheet, Kompas, is owned by a Catholic foundation.
Imagine the outcry if Muslim interests bought our own national broadsheet.
(First published in New Matilda on 22 February 2006.)
Monday, February 20, 2006
An Ignorant Australian?
Its advertisements pose the question: “Are you an informed Australian?” But if you believe what has been written in The Australian on 20 February 2006 about Muslim migrants, you will probably end up a bigoted, or at best, ignorant Australian.The Australian newspaper has attempted to paint a picture of a singular Muslim culture hostile to mainstream Australia, showing extreme attitudes toward women, being powered by a sense of “jihad” and showing an inability to adapt to the Australian mainstream.
In the past, The Oz has published numerous opinion pieces supporting or suggesting such a view. The authors have pointed to the alleged inability of Muslim migrants to adapt to Australian conditions. Alternately, they have used Muslims as a scapegoat in an attempt to impose their own cultural monolith on Australia’s multicultural status quo.
Even when parliamentarians have made (and then withdrawn) infantile allegations against Muslim migrants (such as the recent embarrassment with Danna Vale’s contribution to the RU482 debate), The Oz allowed its op-ed pages to be graced with an article by Muslim-hater Mark Steyn supporting Vale’s withdrawn and discredited views.
The Australian has now decided to publish excerpts from an interview with the Prime Minister, excerpts which the paper originally meant to publish on or about 11 March 2006 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Howard government. It is unclear exactly why the paper has chosen to do so at this time.
Mr Howard has made some recent remarks on what he views as unfortunate traits limited to a small minority from within Muslim communities. Some of Mr Howard’s remarks are correct, whilst others are perhaps reflective of popularly-held misconceptions.
This article will not focus so much on what Mr Howard said. Rather, it will focus on the editorial baggage which The Oz has tried to attach to Mr Howard’s comments.
Mr Howard’s words were about a minority, but what The Oz attempts to do is to generalise these traits into characteristics of what it describes as “Muslim culture”.
In an article entitled “Howard hits out at ‘jihad’ Muslims”, George Megalogenis writes about the PM “strongly criticis[ing] aspects of Muslim culture, warning they pose an unprecedented challenge for Australia's immigration program.”
The paper went onto report about how “[t]he Prime Minister also expressed concern about Muslim attitudes to women.”
So we have “Muslim culture” and “Muslim attitudes”. The suggestion is that exists a singular Muslim culture, that it is a migrant culture and that it has implications for Australia’s immigration program.
And what evidence has been presented of a singular Muslim culture? Who knows? Perhaps more importantly, who cares?
The Oz’s editorial of 20 February 2006 provides some background behind the interview with the PM, which was held “to discuss multiculturalism, immigration and the integration into our society of new arrivals”. In this context, Mr Howard “was asked if he was confident that Muslims would integrate as thoroughly as the wave of Asian immigrants of the 1980s and 90s had done.”
The very fact that such a question could be asked shows the exceptional ignorance of the editorial’s authors. It suggests that Muslim migration is a recent phenomenon, and that Muslim migrants all have the same culture. Muslims are painted as a recently-arrived monolithic migrant group.
The reality is that Muslims have been migrating to Australia for over a century. Apart from the descendants of Afghan and north-west Indian cameleers and hawkers, there were a large number of post-war Muslim migrants from Albania and the former Yugoslavia.
Hardly 4 decades after the Gallipoli campaign, Australia relaxed its White Australia Policy to enable migration of Turks from Cyprus and Anatolia. Today, Turkish Australians are some of the best settled migrants in the country. Turks manage more mosques than any other ethnic Muslim group.
If they seriously believe that Muslims make up a singular monolithic cultural group of migrants arriving after the wave of Indo-Chinese migrants of the 1980’s, one wonders which Australia the editors of The Oz have been living in all these years.
The editors claim that “[i]n recent years we have had no one, other than some Muslims, bringing such missionary zeal to the establishment of their own religion and society within our own.”
Exactly what is the problem with establishing one’s culture and institutions isn’t explained. Islam, like Christianity, is a missionary faith. Displaying missionary zeal is not in itself illegal. Neither is establishing mosques or schools. Indeed, the Howard government has been committed to the public funding of independent schools.
Muslim missionary work has been performed in Australia since the arrival of the first Muslim settlers in the 19th century. The vast majority of Muslim missionary work has been peaceful, usually in the form of speeches by imams and visiting scholars.
The Oz editorial laments “… the attitude of some of our latest arrivals who see the relaxed and tolerant lifestyle of their neighbours as some sort of affront to their passionately held beliefs.”
The most recently arrived waves of Muslim migrants (apart from skilled tradespeople, professionals or business migrants) have been asylum seekers from Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa. Apart from one Bosnian charged following the recent anti-terror raids, there is not any evidence of such attitudes being held by any of these categories of asylum seekers. Nor is there evidence to suggest that Afghans or Bosnians or Somalis or other similar groups live and work in ghettoes or enclaves.
The Oz continues: “Since the end of World War II, Australia has prided itself on the ability of everyone to fit in. The waves of Greek and Italian migrants have been absorbed in two generations. They are now no easier to pinpoint than the Scots or Irish immigrants of a century before.”
Exactly the same can be said for Albanian and Bosnian Muslim migrants from the post-war era. It can also be said for many Turkish migrants, whose dress and appearance makes them indistinguishable from other European Australians. One wonders whether The Oz’s editors have ever visited Smithfield or Penshurst in Sydney and attempted to identify a Bosnian Muslim who isn’t sporting a prayer cap.
The Oz goes onto state that “Asian immigrants of the last part of the 20th century are now doing likewise. None of these peoples harboured any hope or desire to imprint their culture over that which existed here.”
So how does one define “imprint” of a culture? Have Vietnamese or Chinese migrants suddenly started only eating meat pies? Is Sydney’s China Town being dismantled? Did we see the last of the Chinese New Years celebrations in late January?
The Oz editorial shows how completely divorced it is from reality in the following lengthy paragraph:
“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for some of our newest Muslim immigrants. They have arrived with attitude. They have a mindset that disapproves of our relaxed and socially unstructured lifestyle. Their young men, raised in the strictures of Muslim households, do not understand, and have no wish to accept, the freedoms young Australian women take for granted. It was this clash of cultures that fuelled the Cronulla riots and which is at the heart of Mr Howard's warning.”
Again, none of the most recent Muslim arrivals had any involvement in the Cronulla riots. The riots were said to be in retaliation for the assault on surf life savers by certain people of “Middle Eastern” appearance. I am yet to meet someone from Bosnia or the Horn of Africa of Middle Eastern appearance. Further, there is no suggestion of involvement by Afghans.
Rather, where there are young Middle Eastern looking men showing bad attitudes to women and the law, they are mainly from more 2nd and 3rd generations of more settled migrant groups – Lebanese and Pakistanis. The boys convicted of gang-rapes were not Afghan or Somali or Bosnian. They were boys from Lebanese and Pakistani families.
In adding editorial baggage to the PM’s recent pronouncements, the editorial writers of The Australian are seeking to paint a coherent picture of a monolithic culture of recently arrived Muslim migrants. But examined against the reality of wave after wave of Muslim migration, the picture painted looks little more than incoherent pieces of paint hurled onto the canvas.
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
Sunday, February 19, 2006
With friends like these ...?
I realise that if New Matilda were a country, it probably wouldn't be ruled by a conservative government. But I am sure it must have some conservative readers, and in my case, at least one conservative writer.
Conservatism isn't very popular in certain quarters. Listening to the way some conservative leaders carry on, it isn't hard to guess why.
I am writing this piece after spending around 2.5 hours with 250 people at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, filming a 60 Minutes show on the Cronulla riots. I heard NSW Opposition Leader and Liberal State MP Peter Debnam repeatedly call for the jailing of '500 young Middle Eastern thugs' who have allegedly been terrorising Sydney for over 10 years.
These kids must have been driving around Sydney in hotted-up cars and harassing people since they were in kindy!
Comments like Debnam's make me wonder whether one needs to fail an IQ test to lead a conservative party these days. But then, so many of today's conservatives are about as conservative as Josef Stalin. They play games with racial and religious tensions, their words parroting the worst rhetorical excesses of tin-pot dictators from the Middle East and Africa. And their media cheer squad of spin doctors and commentators aren't much better.
The Islamic Republic of Victoria?
Dr Janet Albrechtsen is regarded as a media pin-up girl for the conservative side — Australia's very own Ann Coulter. Some might recall Coulter writing in the immediate aftermath of September 11 the following words of wisdom and good sense on the US-based pseudo-conservative website, 'Townhall'
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
Albrechtsen, thankfully, never descends to this level. However, in a recent column for that American newspaper called The Australian, she airs her concerns that, 'Victoria's religious vilification laws are working in ways that make the place look like an Islamic State-in-waiting.'
This comment appeared in an Albrechtsen article after she spent some 15 paragraphs claiming that all Muslims across the Islamic world were getting completely violent and hysterical over the Danish cartoons.
Victoria's religious vilification laws must have been fairly radical legislation. Let me guess: was it called the Ayatollah Khomeini Appreciation Act 2006? Or has Steve Bracks decided to change his title from Premier to Caliph? (See, One Nation had a point: those dimwits south of the Murray should never have allowed a Leb to become Premier!)
In the same article, Albrechtsen made some legitimate points about the hypocrisy of Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons. I have made similar criticisms and comments and had them published elsewhere, including in the Dominion Post (the NZ newspaper that recently published all 12 offending cartoons).
The difference between my criticisms and Albrechtsen's is that I don't regard all Muslim cultures as being absolutely inconsistent with Western values.
Miranda links Osama bin Reagan to Cronulla
Albrechtsen may have her prejudices. Heck, we all do. But at least she writes with vigour, passion and some intelligence.
Miranda Devine, on the other hand, rarely if ever displays much sophistication in her pieces. Her recent column analysing the international storm over the 12 cartoons is an example of this.
In one 900 word article, Devine somehow manages to find a way of linking the ">following:
*Osama bin Reagan;
*The September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington;
*An alleged unofficial policy to go soft on thugs responsible for post-Cronulla reprisal attacks;
*The murder of a Dutch filmmaker;
*A survey by a Victorian teachers' union;
*Driver's licence photos;
*Government initiatives to train home-grown imams.
And what do all these disparate and unrelated things have in common? Does Devine have a clue? Probably not. And who is the sole 'authority' cited by Devine in support of her thesis? None other than US hate-monger extraordinaire Daniel Pipes.
Playing the Pipes of War
For those wanting to see American Talibanism in action, I urge you to visit Daniel Pipes's website. Pipes has visited Australia on a number of occasions, usually at the invitation of the Centre for Independent Studies or some other conservative think tank.
On one occasion, Pipes suggested that 'radical Islamists' should be hunted down and eliminated. He estimated they constituted 10-15 per cent of the world's Muslim population. Considering there are around 1.2 billion Muslims on this planet, this means Pipes wants to see at least 120 million Muslims massacred. Nice chap, isn't he?
Pipes also suggests that the best way for nations to respond to the kidnapping of their citizens in Iraq is to lynch Muslim minorities. His article was reproduced in the Melbourne Age on 15 September 2004.
In the context of the Danish cartoons, Pipes is once again peddling his conspiracy theories about how all those nasty Muslims are trying to take over Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand, the Moon, Saturn, etc.
With enemies like that
Seriously, I could go on and on about Albrechtsen and Devine and their sad excuse for conservative analysis. But ultimately I have to agree that they do have a point. The response of some Muslims in Damascus, Beirut and elsewhere has been completely over-the-top. Where these two commentators go wrong is they take that small minority of dimwits and attribute their stupid behaviour and antics to an entire faith community.
(Albrechtsen and Devine also are completely ill-equipped to talk about freedom of speech when they themselves have supported draconian sedition laws — but that's a separate point that can be discussed on another occasion.)
Writers like Albrechtsen and Devine seem to have a pathological hatred of Islam (I can only say 'seem to have' because I honestly don't know what they really think). But some Muslims claiming to love Islam share a large responsibility in generating that hatred.
In Iran, a newspaper is having a Holocaust cartoon competition. That's just so funny, isn't it? I'm in stitches. Neo-cons produce cartoons and we retaliate against the memory of six million who died unjustly. Gee thanks, guys.
Muslims who go around burning embassies in the name of Islam are as evil and destructive as people who get drunk and stoned and go around singing the national anthem and waving our flag while assaulting anyone deemed 'Middle Eastern'.
If you feel hurt about something, the worst thing you can do is lash out at innocent people. Because when you do, people who can make a difference start to ignore your grievances. They focus instead on the ugliness of what you did.
Muslim protestors need to understand that if they react and respond to every provocation out there, they will be screaming and shouting until the halal cows come home to be slaughtered. They have to remember (if you pardon me mixing metaphors) that they have bigger fish to fry.
The Albrechtsens and Devines of this world are actually doing Muslims a favour. Instead of spending more time hacking into them, I might consider inviting them out to lunch. Then we can talk as human beings and not as opponents in some intra-conservative war.
Sometimes those you perceive as your enemy do you more favours than sycophantic best mates. With enemies like that, who needs dumb friends?
(First published in New Matilda on Wednesday 15 February 2006.)
Conservatism isn't very popular in certain quarters. Listening to the way some conservative leaders carry on, it isn't hard to guess why.
I am writing this piece after spending around 2.5 hours with 250 people at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, filming a 60 Minutes show on the Cronulla riots. I heard NSW Opposition Leader and Liberal State MP Peter Debnam repeatedly call for the jailing of '500 young Middle Eastern thugs' who have allegedly been terrorising Sydney for over 10 years.
These kids must have been driving around Sydney in hotted-up cars and harassing people since they were in kindy!
Comments like Debnam's make me wonder whether one needs to fail an IQ test to lead a conservative party these days. But then, so many of today's conservatives are about as conservative as Josef Stalin. They play games with racial and religious tensions, their words parroting the worst rhetorical excesses of tin-pot dictators from the Middle East and Africa. And their media cheer squad of spin doctors and commentators aren't much better.
The Islamic Republic of Victoria?
Dr Janet Albrechtsen is regarded as a media pin-up girl for the conservative side — Australia's very own Ann Coulter. Some might recall Coulter writing in the immediate aftermath of September 11 the following words of wisdom and good sense on the US-based pseudo-conservative website, 'Townhall'
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
Albrechtsen, thankfully, never descends to this level. However, in a recent column for that American newspaper called The Australian, she airs her concerns that, 'Victoria's religious vilification laws are working in ways that make the place look like an Islamic State-in-waiting.'
This comment appeared in an Albrechtsen article after she spent some 15 paragraphs claiming that all Muslims across the Islamic world were getting completely violent and hysterical over the Danish cartoons.
Victoria's religious vilification laws must have been fairly radical legislation. Let me guess: was it called the Ayatollah Khomeini Appreciation Act 2006? Or has Steve Bracks decided to change his title from Premier to Caliph? (See, One Nation had a point: those dimwits south of the Murray should never have allowed a Leb to become Premier!)
In the same article, Albrechtsen made some legitimate points about the hypocrisy of Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons. I have made similar criticisms and comments and had them published elsewhere, including in the Dominion Post (the NZ newspaper that recently published all 12 offending cartoons).
The difference between my criticisms and Albrechtsen's is that I don't regard all Muslim cultures as being absolutely inconsistent with Western values.
Miranda links Osama bin Reagan to Cronulla
Albrechtsen may have her prejudices. Heck, we all do. But at least she writes with vigour, passion and some intelligence.
Miranda Devine, on the other hand, rarely if ever displays much sophistication in her pieces. Her recent column analysing the international storm over the 12 cartoons is an example of this.
In one 900 word article, Devine somehow manages to find a way of linking the ">following:
*Osama bin Reagan;
*The September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington;
*An alleged unofficial policy to go soft on thugs responsible for post-Cronulla reprisal attacks;
*The murder of a Dutch filmmaker;
*A survey by a Victorian teachers' union;
*Driver's licence photos;
*Government initiatives to train home-grown imams.
And what do all these disparate and unrelated things have in common? Does Devine have a clue? Probably not. And who is the sole 'authority' cited by Devine in support of her thesis? None other than US hate-monger extraordinaire Daniel Pipes.
Playing the Pipes of War
For those wanting to see American Talibanism in action, I urge you to visit Daniel Pipes's website. Pipes has visited Australia on a number of occasions, usually at the invitation of the Centre for Independent Studies or some other conservative think tank.
On one occasion, Pipes suggested that 'radical Islamists' should be hunted down and eliminated. He estimated they constituted 10-15 per cent of the world's Muslim population. Considering there are around 1.2 billion Muslims on this planet, this means Pipes wants to see at least 120 million Muslims massacred. Nice chap, isn't he?
Pipes also suggests that the best way for nations to respond to the kidnapping of their citizens in Iraq is to lynch Muslim minorities. His article was reproduced in the Melbourne Age on 15 September 2004.
In the context of the Danish cartoons, Pipes is once again peddling his conspiracy theories about how all those nasty Muslims are trying to take over Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand, the Moon, Saturn, etc.
With enemies like that
Seriously, I could go on and on about Albrechtsen and Devine and their sad excuse for conservative analysis. But ultimately I have to agree that they do have a point. The response of some Muslims in Damascus, Beirut and elsewhere has been completely over-the-top. Where these two commentators go wrong is they take that small minority of dimwits and attribute their stupid behaviour and antics to an entire faith community.
(Albrechtsen and Devine also are completely ill-equipped to talk about freedom of speech when they themselves have supported draconian sedition laws — but that's a separate point that can be discussed on another occasion.)
Writers like Albrechtsen and Devine seem to have a pathological hatred of Islam (I can only say 'seem to have' because I honestly don't know what they really think). But some Muslims claiming to love Islam share a large responsibility in generating that hatred.
In Iran, a newspaper is having a Holocaust cartoon competition. That's just so funny, isn't it? I'm in stitches. Neo-cons produce cartoons and we retaliate against the memory of six million who died unjustly. Gee thanks, guys.
Muslims who go around burning embassies in the name of Islam are as evil and destructive as people who get drunk and stoned and go around singing the national anthem and waving our flag while assaulting anyone deemed 'Middle Eastern'.
If you feel hurt about something, the worst thing you can do is lash out at innocent people. Because when you do, people who can make a difference start to ignore your grievances. They focus instead on the ugliness of what you did.
Muslim protestors need to understand that if they react and respond to every provocation out there, they will be screaming and shouting until the halal cows come home to be slaughtered. They have to remember (if you pardon me mixing metaphors) that they have bigger fish to fry.
The Albrechtsens and Devines of this world are actually doing Muslims a favour. Instead of spending more time hacking into them, I might consider inviting them out to lunch. Then we can talk as human beings and not as opponents in some intra-conservative war.
Sometimes those you perceive as your enemy do you more favours than sycophantic best mates. With enemies like that, who needs dumb friends?
(First published in New Matilda on Wednesday 15 February 2006.)
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
With freedom comes responsibility ...
One Saturday night around 6 years ago, I was out partying with some Young Liberal mates in Sydney CBD. My mates and I had a deal – they’d buy their own drinks. They’d also buy me lots of soft drink out of respect for my religious sensitivities. They’d get drunk. I’d then drive them home.
I’d also supply the humour, much of it plagiarised from others. On one such occasion, we were walking past what appeared to be some inebriated English backpackers. One of the Poms bumped into me and shouted: “Move out of the way, Paki!”
I turned around after he’d walked past. I thought I’d pay him back with some hilariously insensitive humour. It went something like this.
“Hey Pommy? You got any pictures of your mum in the nude? No? You wanna buy some then?”
It wasn’t my joke. It came from the British comedians Mel Smith and Grif Rhys Jones. My friends were having a good laugh for a short while. Until, that is, when we saw the entire mob of backpackers running our way.
When we finally left them behind, my friends counselled me as best as they could after a few too many.
“Mate, you shouldn’t have said that. Yeah, it was a joke. But you said it about his mother. Even a drunken backpacker gets offended when you insult his mum. You should know that. You could have had us in hospital.”
In Aussie culture, we know there are certain things you never bring up at the dinner table. One is politics. The other is religion.
We are living in a society which doesn’t take religion all that seriously. Freedom of religion basically means freedom from being religious. People take the piss out of religious symbols all the time.
But there are some things you don’t poke fun at. For instance, you don’t poke fun at the Holocaust in front of a Jewish person. You don’t poke fun at the massacres that took place during the Spanish Inquisition or else you’ll offend Jews and Muslims.
And as the world found out after Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” was published, you don’t poke fun at the Prophet Muhammad.
Seriously, I think a lot of Muslims are overreacting (to say the least!) over the 12 cartoons. They are also being manipulated by their kings, generals, emirs and presidents-for-life who are egging them on.
Syria is a police state ruled by a ruthless Ba’ath Socialist regime, the same party that Saddam Hussein belonged to. It’s believed over 50% of the Syrian population belong to one or more secret police forces. If the Syrian government wanted to stop the torching of Danish and other embassies, it could have.
Muslim governments are manipulating the situation to gain popularity from their people. Instead of focussing on the many problems face, Muslim rulers are seeking a diversion to keep their people busy.
And yes, in Western countries newspapers are allowed to ridicule and lampoon anything and anyone within the bounds of the law. But just because something is lawful doesn’t make it right.
As a nation, we were grossly offended when some thugs decided to pull down and defile the Australian flag in retaliation for the Cronulla riots. We value our flag and are offended when it is insulted. It isn’t just a piece of cloth.
Similarly, Muslims get offended when one of their Prophets is lampooned. Some of them are reacting in a stupid and counterproductive fashion. But that doesn’t make publication of the cartoons right.
Across the Tasman, 2 Fairfax-owned papers based in Wellington and Christchurch have published the cartoons. To their credit, Kiwi Muslims have thus far reacted peacefully. They have even offered to write letters to Muslim countries threatening to boycott Kiwi exports.
The newspapers claim they are standing up for free speech. Yet publishing a cartoon depicting a Prophet of Islam wearing a turban looking like a bomb is hardly free speech. It is more like freedom to insult and offend without taking responsibility for the consequences.
New Zealand may lose upto $100 million dollars in exports thanks to the decision of Fairfax papers to publish the cartoons. Australia has more to lose if our media proprietors throw good sense and sensitivity out the window and publish the cartoons.
Our farmers have been through years of drought. Which newspaper standing up for free speech will be ready to compensate or farmers is millions of dollars in export revenue from Muslim countries is lost?
My message to newspaper proprietors is simple. Before you decide to publish, show us the cash you’ll provide to compensate all those innocent Australians whose livelihoods will be affected by your allegedly principled stance.
Just as with power, similarly with freedom comes great responsibility. I hope Muslims learn to calm down and start solving problems more important than 12 offensive cartoons. I also hope newspapers will be sensitive enough to understand that insulting 1.2 billion people isn’t the most rational way to make a point about freedom of speech.
iyusuf@sydneylawyers.com.au
I’d also supply the humour, much of it plagiarised from others. On one such occasion, we were walking past what appeared to be some inebriated English backpackers. One of the Poms bumped into me and shouted: “Move out of the way, Paki!”
I turned around after he’d walked past. I thought I’d pay him back with some hilariously insensitive humour. It went something like this.
“Hey Pommy? You got any pictures of your mum in the nude? No? You wanna buy some then?”
It wasn’t my joke. It came from the British comedians Mel Smith and Grif Rhys Jones. My friends were having a good laugh for a short while. Until, that is, when we saw the entire mob of backpackers running our way.
When we finally left them behind, my friends counselled me as best as they could after a few too many.
“Mate, you shouldn’t have said that. Yeah, it was a joke. But you said it about his mother. Even a drunken backpacker gets offended when you insult his mum. You should know that. You could have had us in hospital.”
In Aussie culture, we know there are certain things you never bring up at the dinner table. One is politics. The other is religion.
We are living in a society which doesn’t take religion all that seriously. Freedom of religion basically means freedom from being religious. People take the piss out of religious symbols all the time.
But there are some things you don’t poke fun at. For instance, you don’t poke fun at the Holocaust in front of a Jewish person. You don’t poke fun at the massacres that took place during the Spanish Inquisition or else you’ll offend Jews and Muslims.
And as the world found out after Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” was published, you don’t poke fun at the Prophet Muhammad.
Seriously, I think a lot of Muslims are overreacting (to say the least!) over the 12 cartoons. They are also being manipulated by their kings, generals, emirs and presidents-for-life who are egging them on.
Syria is a police state ruled by a ruthless Ba’ath Socialist regime, the same party that Saddam Hussein belonged to. It’s believed over 50% of the Syrian population belong to one or more secret police forces. If the Syrian government wanted to stop the torching of Danish and other embassies, it could have.
Muslim governments are manipulating the situation to gain popularity from their people. Instead of focussing on the many problems face, Muslim rulers are seeking a diversion to keep their people busy.
And yes, in Western countries newspapers are allowed to ridicule and lampoon anything and anyone within the bounds of the law. But just because something is lawful doesn’t make it right.
As a nation, we were grossly offended when some thugs decided to pull down and defile the Australian flag in retaliation for the Cronulla riots. We value our flag and are offended when it is insulted. It isn’t just a piece of cloth.
Similarly, Muslims get offended when one of their Prophets is lampooned. Some of them are reacting in a stupid and counterproductive fashion. But that doesn’t make publication of the cartoons right.
Across the Tasman, 2 Fairfax-owned papers based in Wellington and Christchurch have published the cartoons. To their credit, Kiwi Muslims have thus far reacted peacefully. They have even offered to write letters to Muslim countries threatening to boycott Kiwi exports.
The newspapers claim they are standing up for free speech. Yet publishing a cartoon depicting a Prophet of Islam wearing a turban looking like a bomb is hardly free speech. It is more like freedom to insult and offend without taking responsibility for the consequences.
New Zealand may lose upto $100 million dollars in exports thanks to the decision of Fairfax papers to publish the cartoons. Australia has more to lose if our media proprietors throw good sense and sensitivity out the window and publish the cartoons.
Our farmers have been through years of drought. Which newspaper standing up for free speech will be ready to compensate or farmers is millions of dollars in export revenue from Muslim countries is lost?
My message to newspaper proprietors is simple. Before you decide to publish, show us the cash you’ll provide to compensate all those innocent Australians whose livelihoods will be affected by your allegedly principled stance.
Just as with power, similarly with freedom comes great responsibility. I hope Muslims learn to calm down and start solving problems more important than 12 offensive cartoons. I also hope newspapers will be sensitive enough to understand that insulting 1.2 billion people isn’t the most rational way to make a point about freedom of speech.
iyusuf@sydneylawyers.com.au
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Pseudo-conservative monoculturalists lose the plot over Sydney beach riots
Having spent 10 years in the conservative wing of the Liberal Party, I believe I can speak with some authority about conservative philosophy. Here are a few pointers ...Conservatives believe in the maintenance of certain established symbols and values. Conservatives believe in evolutionary and not revolutionary change. Finally, conservatives prefer a working status quo to untested radical reform.
But in recent times, some conservatives have decided to abandon all these core philosophical premises in order to claim that certain sectors of the Australian community need to be marginalised in order to preserve “our culture”.
Often, this has involved marginalising a broad range of ethnic and linguistic communities whose sole common offending feature is their association with the religion of Islam.
Of course, anyone familiar with Islam's religious values and ethics must wonder how such conservatives could find objection with followers of an essentially conservative religious tradition. However, for some conservatives, the facts should not be allowed to get in the way of a good wedge.
Just over 18 months ago, the Bankstown Young Liberals (of which I was a member for some 8 years and executive member for 6 years) held a re-formation meeting at the Croatian Club in Punchbowl. Numerous reports suggest that former conservative Party colleagues of mine used anti-Muslim rhetoric to recruit members.
It seems that wedge politics has become the order of the day in conservative circles. This trend can be found not just in the recruitment practices of allegedly conservative political activists.
The analysis of recent events made by some allegedly conservative commentators and politicians is grounded in the assumption that those with an association with Islam can play no meaningful role in mainstream Australia. The rhetoric bears striking similarity to the allegedly conservative rhetoric used in Europe during the 1920’s and ‘30’s, when persons of Jewish background were blamed for a host of social and economic ills and when being Jewish meant being constantly subject to suspicion.
Of course, one cannot deny that some persons of Muslim background have committed acts of terror abroad and may even pose a threat to Australia. Further, a number of violent sexual crimes have been committed by persons of Muslim background, sometimes with racial overtones.
However, to use these incidents to then claim that migrants of a particular faith cannot integrate and do not make a neat cultural fit in Australia could hardly be described as inherently conservative. And when the claim is made about a faith group comprising of people from over 60 different countries from every part of the world, it can only be inspired by ignorance at best and hatred at worst.
Sadly, such sentiments have found their way into the pages of some respected and widely read newspapers. The Australian newspaper has published three pieces by former National Party Senator John Stone which have suggested that the cultures of Muslim migrants simply do not integrate.
In one piece, Stone even called for the formation of a Queen Isabella Society, in honour of the medieval Spanish Monarch who forcibly converted Jews and Muslims to Catholicism before embarking on a program of terror and mass expulsions we know of as the Inquisition.
And what is Stone’s allegedly conservative solution? Overturn decades of consensus on a non-discriminatory immigration program by ending the migration of all Muslims. For this conservative, even the most radical and revolutionary changes in policy are permissible if it involves furthering one’s pet prejudices.
Now, controversial historian Keith Windshuttle also entered the fray. In a piece published in The Australian on December 16, Winshuttle labelled the Cronulla incidents as “multicultural riots”. His analysis of the Cronulla riots attempted to paint a mixed picture of Lebanese migrants, with the dividing line being religion.
He claimed that Lebanese Christians were more Australian and Muslims because the Christians had produced a NSW Governor and a Wallabies captain. He then asks: “How Australian can you get?” before virtually denying Australianness to the Muslim proportion of Lebanese Australians.
One wonders which Australia Windshuttle is living in. Had he followed ARL football, he may have heard of Hazem al-Masri. Had he read the October edition of the Australian Financial Review Magazine, he would have seen Ahmed Fahour’s name amongst 4 others considered as the most powerful figures in financial services.
Mr Windshuttle described the drunken rioting as merely “mass retaliation” to the “Lebanese assaults on the Cronulla lifesavers”. He then went into an explanation about the causes for one former headmaster from Punchbowl Boys High School bringing what appeared to be a Workers Compensation Claim for stress against the NSW Department of Education.
Mr Windshuttle conveniently fails to mention other “ghetto” schools such as Granville Boys High School, a school with almost equal if not greater proportion of Lebanese Muslim students. This school has produced at least 2 partners of major Sydney commercial law firms and 1 partner of a major insolvency firm, not to mention other people prominent in business and professions.
Somehow Mr Windshuttle is able to extract from this mass of confused information some kind of coherent theory on why our multicultural status quo is to blame for the Cronulla riots. Despite trying to push as many facts as possible into his diatribe, Mr Windshuttle neglects one important point – exactly how does one define multiculturalism? And perhaps more importantly, exactly what is Australian culture?
To presume that Muslim cultures are a monolith and always different from the cultures practised by other Australians involves generating a mythology whose creation requires a rush of blood to the head. Some writers appear to have generated this blood flow by plonking their heads into the sands of Cronulla beach.
Cultural factors were involved in the recent rioting. But to blame the multiplicity of a still-developing and maturing Aussie culture for the lawlessness of young people from a range of backgrounds centralises the trivial and trivialises the central. Those who play the cultural blame-game have missed the point. And in the case of Messrs Stone and Windshuttle, they appear to have lost the plot.
Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and was Liberal Candidate for the seat of Reid in the 2001 Federal Election. iyusuf@sydneylawyers.com.au
© Irfan Yusuf 2005
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Deconstructing the media's terror pin-up boys
If you thought Usama bin Ladin (or should that be Usama bin Reagan?) was the media pinup boy of international terrorism, think again.
Recently, the real pinup boy of international terrorism arrived in Australia. Dr Rohan Gunaratna is perhaps the most frequently quoted “expert” on fighting terrorism to appear in newspapers and on TV.
Dr Gunaratna made some newsworthy claims at a recent conference on terrorism held at Sydney’s Macquarie University. Dr Gunaratna claimed that there were literally hundreds of Muslim Australians ready to stage a terrorist attack of similar magnitude to Madrid in the next 2 years of so.
It was truly terrifying stuff. But then, Dr Gunaratna has made a living out of terrifying statements. His 2002 book Inside al-Qaeda – Global Network of Terror became a best seller. Its release coincided with elite Australian SAS troops moving into Afghanistan on the eve of the full-scale invasion.
But just how expert is this terror expert in his field? How does one become an expert on terror? And why does Dr Gunaratna have such an aversion to the maintenance of civil liberties in the international struggle against politically and religiously motivated violence?
Much emphasis of terror experts has been on the phenomenon of politicised Islam, referred to by Daniel Pipes (another terror expert of questionable credentials) as Islamism.
Pipes makes much of his knowledge of Arabic and his PhD from Harvard University. But which Arabic? Classical (what scholars of English might call Shakespearean) Arabic of the classical sources of Islamic theology? Or the various modern dialects spoken in countries from Mauritania in the west to Iraq in the east?
And what is Pipes really an expert in? His PhD thesis was on medieval European history. Pipes may know plenty about why feudalism may have ended or how the Ottomans may have conquered Belgrade. But of what relevance is this to understanding international terrorism and its Islamist variety?
Dr Gunaratna is unable to claim even a working knowledge of the Arabic language. But the fact is that so much Islamist literature is not even written in Arabic. The Islamist works that inspired the Iranian revolution were largely written in Farsi (Persian), a language spoken in Iran and large parts of Afghanistan.
Iranian Islamist literature is largely focussed on Shia theology. Saudi and other Arab Islamists associated with al-Qaeda regard Shiism as heresy. These Islamists tend to follow various forms of Wahhabi theology, the official theology sponsored by the Saudi government.
Further, many Islamists from the Arab world were inspired by writers beyond the borders of Arab League states. One such writer was Syed Qutb, an Egyptian writer who was sentenced to death during the 1960’s by then Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Qutb frequently acknowledges and cites the works of Pakistani Islamist Syed Maududi, most of whose work was written in Urdu.
In other words, to understand the ideology of political Islam, one needs to have a mastery of at least Arabic (classical and modern), Farsi and Urdu. Most quoted experts do not have this knowledge.
Neither do I. But then, I am honest enough not to address the media as some kind of terrorism expert. Nor do I claim expertise on the subject of political Islam beyond what I have read of English translations of Islamist works.
On at least one occasion, Gunaratna has claimed that al-Qaeda and the Lebanese Shia Muslim group Hezbollah have formed an alliance to support terror in Iraq. Most Lebanese would scoff at such a claim. They know that forces inspired by al Qaeda would never work with a group representing a religious community vying with them for control over Iraq’s future governance.
So how seriously do intelligence people take these terror experts? Melbourne Age journalist Gary Hughes reported on the work of Dr Gunaratna in a piece published on July 20 2003. Hughes reported that most ASIO analysts dismiss many of Gunaratna’s fanciful claims, especially his claim that JI operative Hambali regularly visits Australia.
Veteran Australian journalist Brian Toohey, who rights regularly on intelligence and terrorism issues for the Australian Financial Review, has described Dr Gunaratna’s claims as “plain silly”.
One such fanciful claim was Gunaratna’s suggestion in the November 2001 edition of Review (published by the pro-Likud Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council) that terrorist groups may seek to influence Australian politicians by rallying "10,000 or 20,000 votes" in their electorates.
So how does Gunaratna dance between alleged al-Qaeda informants, marginal seats campaigning and compromising civil rights? One must remember that from 1984 to 1994, Gunaratna worked as an adviser to the Sri Lankan Government during the height of its war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). The Sri Lankan government like many third world governments, had little hesitance in compromising civil rights of its Tamil citizens - at least what little rights they may have had.
During that period, Dr Gunaratna made the laughable suggestion that Australians of Tamil background were shipping weapons and even helicopters and light aircraft to the Tigers.
Gunaratna’s recent claims of some 300 locally-born Muslim extremists ready to wage a terrorist war on their country have been used to support the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill currently before the Parliament. Given the fanciful nature of his previous claims and the scepticism of intelligence experts toward his work, supporters of the Bill would be well-advised not to use his claims unless these supporters wish to compromise the integrity of their cause.
Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney-based lawyer and occasional lecturer in the School of Politics at Macquarie University.
© Irfan Yusuf 2005
Recently, the real pinup boy of international terrorism arrived in Australia. Dr Rohan Gunaratna is perhaps the most frequently quoted “expert” on fighting terrorism to appear in newspapers and on TV.
Dr Gunaratna made some newsworthy claims at a recent conference on terrorism held at Sydney’s Macquarie University. Dr Gunaratna claimed that there were literally hundreds of Muslim Australians ready to stage a terrorist attack of similar magnitude to Madrid in the next 2 years of so.
It was truly terrifying stuff. But then, Dr Gunaratna has made a living out of terrifying statements. His 2002 book Inside al-Qaeda – Global Network of Terror became a best seller. Its release coincided with elite Australian SAS troops moving into Afghanistan on the eve of the full-scale invasion.
But just how expert is this terror expert in his field? How does one become an expert on terror? And why does Dr Gunaratna have such an aversion to the maintenance of civil liberties in the international struggle against politically and religiously motivated violence?
Much emphasis of terror experts has been on the phenomenon of politicised Islam, referred to by Daniel Pipes (another terror expert of questionable credentials) as Islamism.
Pipes makes much of his knowledge of Arabic and his PhD from Harvard University. But which Arabic? Classical (what scholars of English might call Shakespearean) Arabic of the classical sources of Islamic theology? Or the various modern dialects spoken in countries from Mauritania in the west to Iraq in the east?
And what is Pipes really an expert in? His PhD thesis was on medieval European history. Pipes may know plenty about why feudalism may have ended or how the Ottomans may have conquered Belgrade. But of what relevance is this to understanding international terrorism and its Islamist variety?
Dr Gunaratna is unable to claim even a working knowledge of the Arabic language. But the fact is that so much Islamist literature is not even written in Arabic. The Islamist works that inspired the Iranian revolution were largely written in Farsi (Persian), a language spoken in Iran and large parts of Afghanistan.
Iranian Islamist literature is largely focussed on Shia theology. Saudi and other Arab Islamists associated with al-Qaeda regard Shiism as heresy. These Islamists tend to follow various forms of Wahhabi theology, the official theology sponsored by the Saudi government.
Further, many Islamists from the Arab world were inspired by writers beyond the borders of Arab League states. One such writer was Syed Qutb, an Egyptian writer who was sentenced to death during the 1960’s by then Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Qutb frequently acknowledges and cites the works of Pakistani Islamist Syed Maududi, most of whose work was written in Urdu.
In other words, to understand the ideology of political Islam, one needs to have a mastery of at least Arabic (classical and modern), Farsi and Urdu. Most quoted experts do not have this knowledge.
Neither do I. But then, I am honest enough not to address the media as some kind of terrorism expert. Nor do I claim expertise on the subject of political Islam beyond what I have read of English translations of Islamist works.
On at least one occasion, Gunaratna has claimed that al-Qaeda and the Lebanese Shia Muslim group Hezbollah have formed an alliance to support terror in Iraq. Most Lebanese would scoff at such a claim. They know that forces inspired by al Qaeda would never work with a group representing a religious community vying with them for control over Iraq’s future governance.
So how seriously do intelligence people take these terror experts? Melbourne Age journalist Gary Hughes reported on the work of Dr Gunaratna in a piece published on July 20 2003. Hughes reported that most ASIO analysts dismiss many of Gunaratna’s fanciful claims, especially his claim that JI operative Hambali regularly visits Australia.
Veteran Australian journalist Brian Toohey, who rights regularly on intelligence and terrorism issues for the Australian Financial Review, has described Dr Gunaratna’s claims as “plain silly”.
One such fanciful claim was Gunaratna’s suggestion in the November 2001 edition of Review (published by the pro-Likud Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council) that terrorist groups may seek to influence Australian politicians by rallying "10,000 or 20,000 votes" in their electorates.
So how does Gunaratna dance between alleged al-Qaeda informants, marginal seats campaigning and compromising civil rights? One must remember that from 1984 to 1994, Gunaratna worked as an adviser to the Sri Lankan Government during the height of its war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). The Sri Lankan government like many third world governments, had little hesitance in compromising civil rights of its Tamil citizens - at least what little rights they may have had.
During that period, Dr Gunaratna made the laughable suggestion that Australians of Tamil background were shipping weapons and even helicopters and light aircraft to the Tigers.
Gunaratna’s recent claims of some 300 locally-born Muslim extremists ready to wage a terrorist war on their country have been used to support the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill currently before the Parliament. Given the fanciful nature of his previous claims and the scepticism of intelligence experts toward his work, supporters of the Bill would be well-advised not to use his claims unless these supporters wish to compromise the integrity of their cause.
Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney-based lawyer and occasional lecturer in the School of Politics at Macquarie University.
© Irfan Yusuf 2005
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Why the Telegraph beats The Australian on terror
The News Limited terror circus continues in earnest – November 9 2005
I have just been told that today Australian Federal Police officials briefed select Muslim leaders in Sydney. The message they gave was quite clear. They had nothing to do with tipping off media about the raids.
AFP officials told the leaders that operations of such magnitude and sensitivity are generally conducted with the utmost secrecy and that AFP has specific protocols which must be followed in relation to media coverage.
Which raises the question – who told Channel 9 and the other crews? How did they know about the raids? How did the helicopters and infra-red equipment get involved?
The media circus raises the prospect that the accused persons may not get as fair a trial as they might otherwise expect.
In a strange twist, it seems that Sydney’s tabloid Daily Telegraph has been more sensible in its coverage today than its broadsheet brother The Australian. The DT’s editorial did not make a single reference to religion or ethnicity. Indeed, it went out of its way to stated:
“Even should it play out in court that the majority, even all, of the suspects are Islamic, that should not be misinterpreted. Fanaticism is not the sole preserve of Islam, as the evidence of terrorism attests.”
Piers Akerman, often accused of lashing out at anything resembling Islam, was restrained. The bulk of his venom was saved for the “fundamental naivety” of “the ABC and SBS and the Fairfax publications.”
Some of the DT’s stories on the issue were a little over-the-top and with added spice. As usual, they provided a phone number and website for witnesses of raids or acquaintances of the accused to contact the paper. And the linking of suspect Omar Baladjam to the Green Valley Mosque was also a little suspicious.
Yes, it may be true that Mr Baladjam was apprehended on Wilson Road. Yes, the Mosque is on Wilson Road. But then, so is the police station, the McDonalds, the shopping centre and the community centre used for many Hindu festivals. All within close proximity and all on Wilson Road.
I guess the reporters at the DT don’t know the area all that well. Still, on this occasion, notwithstanding the error, they did their job quite admirably.
Some of you may disagree. You might regard their front page headline of “Holy War On Australia” as being provocative. It wasn’t. It reflected the reality that there are people in this country who think it is OK to kill one’s self and others for the sake of some mythical jihad. Trust me. They exist.
It only takes a few of them to create havoc. The sort of havoc we saw in London. These raids were necessary. Now we let the courts decide. The prosecution will present their case. The accused will all have proper legal representation. Independent judges will ultimately decide.
In their relatively honest coverage, the DT have actually done an enormous favour to those who oppose the Government’s proposed Anti-Terror Bill. The DT, their reporters and columnists have praised the actions of police and investigators. They have vindicated the process. In doing so, they have vindicated the current law and shown it to be effective.
The Australian, on the other hand, are forced to tinker with the facts and present a distorted view of reality. They are forced into using the sort of headlines fit for the Daily Truth.
“Osama’s Aussie offspring”. “Cleric’s spiritual spiral”. Even mention of “Mother of Satan” (you have to read beyond the headline to realise this is the name of an explosive).
On page 2 is an article entitled: “Moderate Muslims welcome arrests”. The paper then went onto cite the words of the secretary of “a leading Muslim group”. And what was this group?
The Australian Arabic Council.
In case anyone didn’t know, the AAC is a non-sectarian organisation that seeks to represent Australians of Arab background. Generally that means Australians whose ethnic origins are from an Arab League nation.
In Australia, the majority of Arabs are not, in fact, Muslims. Further, Arab Muslims make up less than 20% of the world’s Muslim population.
The next group cited is the Islamic Charitable Projects Association which belongs to the al-Ahbash sect. This group is known to have close links to the Syrian Government. Some of the group’s leaders in Lebanon were named in the independent UN Investigative Report (the Mehlis Report) as being directly involved in the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.
The editorials were a fairly lame affair compared to previous days when opponents of the Anti-Terrorism Bill were described as “idiotic”. Paul Kelly, as always, was balanced and thinking outside the usual simplistic square and beyond the security –v- liberty spectrum. Even Janet Albrechtsen had a fairly reasonable (actually, I thought it was sensational) article on why feminists need to stand up for non-European women’s rights also.
Yes, the circus continues in earnest. But the animals seem to be calming down.
PS: Waleed Aly's op-ed piece in The Australian on 10 November 2005 was just sensational. Yep, The Australian can get it right sometimes. The message needs to get out there loud and clear. Thick-Sheiks don't represent the broader Aussie Mossie community. And media outlets should stop giving them so much attention.
I have just been told that today Australian Federal Police officials briefed select Muslim leaders in Sydney. The message they gave was quite clear. They had nothing to do with tipping off media about the raids.
AFP officials told the leaders that operations of such magnitude and sensitivity are generally conducted with the utmost secrecy and that AFP has specific protocols which must be followed in relation to media coverage.
Which raises the question – who told Channel 9 and the other crews? How did they know about the raids? How did the helicopters and infra-red equipment get involved?
The media circus raises the prospect that the accused persons may not get as fair a trial as they might otherwise expect.
In a strange twist, it seems that Sydney’s tabloid Daily Telegraph has been more sensible in its coverage today than its broadsheet brother The Australian. The DT’s editorial did not make a single reference to religion or ethnicity. Indeed, it went out of its way to stated:
“Even should it play out in court that the majority, even all, of the suspects are Islamic, that should not be misinterpreted. Fanaticism is not the sole preserve of Islam, as the evidence of terrorism attests.”
Piers Akerman, often accused of lashing out at anything resembling Islam, was restrained. The bulk of his venom was saved for the “fundamental naivety” of “the ABC and SBS and the Fairfax publications.”
Some of the DT’s stories on the issue were a little over-the-top and with added spice. As usual, they provided a phone number and website for witnesses of raids or acquaintances of the accused to contact the paper. And the linking of suspect Omar Baladjam to the Green Valley Mosque was also a little suspicious.
Yes, it may be true that Mr Baladjam was apprehended on Wilson Road. Yes, the Mosque is on Wilson Road. But then, so is the police station, the McDonalds, the shopping centre and the community centre used for many Hindu festivals. All within close proximity and all on Wilson Road.
I guess the reporters at the DT don’t know the area all that well. Still, on this occasion, notwithstanding the error, they did their job quite admirably.
Some of you may disagree. You might regard their front page headline of “Holy War On Australia” as being provocative. It wasn’t. It reflected the reality that there are people in this country who think it is OK to kill one’s self and others for the sake of some mythical jihad. Trust me. They exist.
It only takes a few of them to create havoc. The sort of havoc we saw in London. These raids were necessary. Now we let the courts decide. The prosecution will present their case. The accused will all have proper legal representation. Independent judges will ultimately decide.
In their relatively honest coverage, the DT have actually done an enormous favour to those who oppose the Government’s proposed Anti-Terror Bill. The DT, their reporters and columnists have praised the actions of police and investigators. They have vindicated the process. In doing so, they have vindicated the current law and shown it to be effective.
The Australian, on the other hand, are forced to tinker with the facts and present a distorted view of reality. They are forced into using the sort of headlines fit for the Daily Truth.
“Osama’s Aussie offspring”. “Cleric’s spiritual spiral”. Even mention of “Mother of Satan” (you have to read beyond the headline to realise this is the name of an explosive).
On page 2 is an article entitled: “Moderate Muslims welcome arrests”. The paper then went onto cite the words of the secretary of “a leading Muslim group”. And what was this group?
The Australian Arabic Council.
In case anyone didn’t know, the AAC is a non-sectarian organisation that seeks to represent Australians of Arab background. Generally that means Australians whose ethnic origins are from an Arab League nation.
In Australia, the majority of Arabs are not, in fact, Muslims. Further, Arab Muslims make up less than 20% of the world’s Muslim population.
The next group cited is the Islamic Charitable Projects Association which belongs to the al-Ahbash sect. This group is known to have close links to the Syrian Government. Some of the group’s leaders in Lebanon were named in the independent UN Investigative Report (the Mehlis Report) as being directly involved in the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.
The editorials were a fairly lame affair compared to previous days when opponents of the Anti-Terrorism Bill were described as “idiotic”. Paul Kelly, as always, was balanced and thinking outside the usual simplistic square and beyond the security –v- liberty spectrum. Even Janet Albrechtsen had a fairly reasonable (actually, I thought it was sensational) article on why feminists need to stand up for non-European women’s rights also.
Yes, the circus continues in earnest. But the animals seem to be calming down.
PS: Waleed Aly's op-ed piece in The Australian on 10 November 2005 was just sensational. Yep, The Australian can get it right sometimes. The message needs to get out there loud and clear. Thick-Sheiks don't represent the broader Aussie Mossie community. And media outlets should stop giving them so much attention.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
More Terror Trash from The American?
Sometimes I cannot help wondering whether to continue referring to the national broadsheet as The Australian. Why?Because after tracking its editorial and op-ed slant, it seems to me that the paper just isn’t. It spends so much of its editorial time defending the policies of George W Bush and his allies in the Coalition of the Killing. And that includes defending even the most crazy policies of the Howard Government.
Now, in speaking about The Australian, I am not in any way commenting on many of its fine journalists and columnists. I am talking about its editorial and its pet columnists. And its refusal to allow alternate voices on certain issues to be aired.
I have already shown in three pieces on this blog how The Australian uses all sorts of intellectually dishonest means to push its pet prejudices down the throats of its readers. But the editorial of November 7 2005 on why Aussie Mossies should support the proposed Anti-Terror Bill is a real classic.
I won’t waste my time or that of readers by going through the entire editorial. After all, I have a real job and a real life. I wish I could say the same for some of these responsible for editorials at The Australian.
“… since the Howard Government announced its tough new terror legislation, some of these leaders have drifted badly off message, claiming the laws will victimise Muslims.”
Er, no. The leaders didn’t say it. The President of the Police Federation of Australia said it. And thus far, he hasn’t been proven wrong.
“In fact, the laws do not mention any ethnic or religious minority. If they did target any minority, they would be anathema to Australians -- whose reservoir of tolerance, and commitment to civil liberties, runs deep.”
The laws don’t need to mention any ethno-religious minority. Because every single proscribed organisation listed in the laws is relate to Islam and Muslims. Every single one. Compare that to the US law in which over one-third of proscribed terrorist groups has no relation to Islam (apart from perhaps having Muslim victims, such as the Kahane Chai and the Tamil Tigers).
Yes, it is true that any targeting of minorities is an anathema to Australians. Which explains why I refuse to call that newspaper by its claimed name. And which also explains why that newspaper rarely seems to make much of a profit.
“Let's be clear, the threat to Islam in Australia comes from one direction, and one only: the fundamentalists who wish to hijack this great and dignified religion for their own lunatic ends.”
No, the threat to Islam in Australia also comes from the crazy pseudo-conservative lunatic fringe whose columns get published in The Oz. Fringe writers like Janet Albrechtsen who claims Muslim migrant cultures teach their sons to rape white women. Lunatics like John Stone who is allowed to publish not one but two columns calling for all migration of Muslims to cease. Lunatics like Messrs Steyn and Pipes who write stuff that deliberately incites hatred and venom toward Muslims.
And yes, I will say it. Lunatics that allow such hatred and venom to be printed on a broadsheet that insults the word “Australian”.
“By playing to unwarranted concerns within their community about the new laws, Muslim leaders risk bolstering the prestige of these radicals, whom they should be isolating. Their responsibility is to issue constant and unambiguous denunciations of those who foment sectarian hatred in Australia, or justify terrorist acts overseas.”
How on earth does exercising one’s democratic right in any way bolster the prestige of terrorists? Has the editorial writer gone completely mad? Muslim leaders (many of them lawyers) are repeating the same criticisms raised by prominent lawyers, judges and even former conservative Prime Ministers.
Further, who is really fomenting sectarian hatred in Australia? Which Muslim leader is suggesting their culture encourages boys to rape white women? Which mainstream Muslim newspaper spurts out anti-Christian and anti-Jewish in the same manner as some columnists for The Oz spurts out anti-Muslim hatred?
In a way, I hope the new laws do come into place. At least the ones on inciting sectarian hatred. Perhaps The Oz will have to re-consider before it allows its editorial space to be polluted by some of the trash we often read.
© Irfan Yusuf 2005
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
MEDIA: The Oz goes nuts against its Muslim alter-egos
I am no fan of the salafi thick-Sheiks of Sydney and Melbourne.
My first foray into journalism was to lambast Sheik Feiz Mohammad for his idiotic comments about sexual assault. I followed this up in the pages of the Daily Telegraph with an attack on Feiz and Omran in an article headlined “The loud minority grabs the Muslim limelight”.
But if the thick Sheiks and Mecca News had any equivalent in the mainstream Australian press, the closest thing would have to be The Australian.
Here is a paper that unashamedly prints the vilest and most feral attacks on Muslim Australians. It published not one but two pieces by former National Party Senator John Stone arguing that immigration of Muslims needed to be stopped as Muslim culture did not allow Muslim migrants to adapt to Australian values.
And who can forget the infantile performance of Janet Albrechtsen as she made the claim that Muslim migrants teach their sons to gang-rape White-skinned women. If anything could be worse than this, it was the pathetic defence of the paper’s editor of Albrechtsen’s racist slur.
Just this week, the Op-Ed pages were filled with the hate-filled words of Mark Steyn. Anyone familiar with Steyn’s work would agree with me when I say that, were he to replace “Islam” with “Judaism” and “Muslim” with “Jew”, his articles would read like some of the worst examples of anti-Semitic literature. Steyn just cannot find a nice word to say about Muslims.
Of course, there are some good things one can say about The Australian’s editorial slant. Phillip Adams tries his best to slant things a little the other way. Paul Kelly provides some semblance of balance. Greg Sheridan is OK on Turkey, though not much else.
So when I read The Australian report on “Clerics still preaching hatred of the West” on November 3 2005, I wondered what all the fuss was about. Reading the quotes from the thick-Sheiks reminded me of the sort of stuff Janet Albrechtsen or Mark Steyn might pen on a bad day.
Let’s make a few comparisons. The reporter, Richard Kerbaj, provided single sentence quotes from sermons that probably took a good 40 minutes to deliver. And that time length is a conservative estimate. Given that a fair proportion of people in their congregation don’t work, and given their love of hearing themselves scream until the speakers and ear drums nearly burst, it isn’t unusual to find these guys taking at least a good hour.
The reports had us believe that the thick-Sheiks were attacking the West. Really? Let’s have a selection.
In the sixth paragraph of the article, Harun Abu Talha was quoted as speaking of ...
I have not checked my atlas for a while. But I do recall that Israel is not exactly located anywhere near London or Madrid. And I doubt the Jewish state will be entering the European Union in a hurry.
Of course, one admission the reporter was honest enough to make was hidden in the story.
In other words, the quotes were not only out of context but were in fact translations from sermons delivered in Arabic. Further, The Australian has not bothered to inform us as to whether the sermons were recorded and who provided the translations.
At one place in the article, Sheik Zoud is quoted as saying:
Now I am no Arabic scholar, but I think it would be highly unlikely for a speech in Arabic to have stuff appearing in brackets. I could be wrong, of course. But unless the sermon went with subtitles, the brackets and their contents perhaps may not have been present.
Many of the phrases and prayers quoted by The Australian are phrases that even the most moderate sheiks declare. Take this quote from Sheik Zoud:
The term “mujaheddin” is a generic term that refers to any person engaged in an armed conflict as part of a just war. Who knows which mujaheddin these Sheiks are referring to.
Then again, I have to admit that these thick-Sheiks do bring such attention upon themselves. And I myself have been witness to some of the most frightening prayers being recited by these fringe-dwellers.
But in what way is their speech different to the Steyns and Pipes that feature so frequently on the Opinion pages of The Australian? True, the words are not so blatant. But the messages don’t exactly encourage readers to embrace their Muslim neighbours.
But I might as well dispel that thought. Why? Read the opening sentence of the story.
So Muslim “clerics” are led by Omran and Zoud. A bit like saying Adolf Hitler was the leading figure in modern European politics.
Once again, a very uninformed Australian.
Words © 2005 Irfan Yusuf
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My first foray into journalism was to lambast Sheik Feiz Mohammad for his idiotic comments about sexual assault. I followed this up in the pages of the Daily Telegraph with an attack on Feiz and Omran in an article headlined “The loud minority grabs the Muslim limelight”.
But if the thick Sheiks and Mecca News had any equivalent in the mainstream Australian press, the closest thing would have to be The Australian.
Here is a paper that unashamedly prints the vilest and most feral attacks on Muslim Australians. It published not one but two pieces by former National Party Senator John Stone arguing that immigration of Muslims needed to be stopped as Muslim culture did not allow Muslim migrants to adapt to Australian values.
And who can forget the infantile performance of Janet Albrechtsen as she made the claim that Muslim migrants teach their sons to gang-rape White-skinned women. If anything could be worse than this, it was the pathetic defence of the paper’s editor of Albrechtsen’s racist slur.
Just this week, the Op-Ed pages were filled with the hate-filled words of Mark Steyn. Anyone familiar with Steyn’s work would agree with me when I say that, were he to replace “Islam” with “Judaism” and “Muslim” with “Jew”, his articles would read like some of the worst examples of anti-Semitic literature. Steyn just cannot find a nice word to say about Muslims.
Of course, there are some good things one can say about The Australian’s editorial slant. Phillip Adams tries his best to slant things a little the other way. Paul Kelly provides some semblance of balance. Greg Sheridan is OK on Turkey, though not much else.
So when I read The Australian report on “Clerics still preaching hatred of the West” on November 3 2005, I wondered what all the fuss was about. Reading the quotes from the thick-Sheiks reminded me of the sort of stuff Janet Albrechtsen or Mark Steyn might pen on a bad day.
Let’s make a few comparisons. The reporter, Richard Kerbaj, provided single sentence quotes from sermons that probably took a good 40 minutes to deliver. And that time length is a conservative estimate. Given that a fair proportion of people in their congregation don’t work, and given their love of hearing themselves scream until the speakers and ear drums nearly burst, it isn’t unusual to find these guys taking at least a good hour.
The reports had us believe that the thick-Sheiks were attacking the West. Really? Let’s have a selection.
In the sixth paragraph of the article, Harun Abu Talha was quoted as speaking of ...
... the criminal government of Israel that has been hurting our brothers and sisters in Palestine for so many years.
I have not checked my atlas for a while. But I do recall that Israel is not exactly located anywhere near London or Madrid. And I doubt the Jewish state will be entering the European Union in a hurry.
Of course, one admission the reporter was honest enough to make was hidden in the story.
The message the fundamentalist clerics are delivering to their supporters - mostly in Arabic - is in dramatic contrast to their public statements.
In other words, the quotes were not only out of context but were in fact translations from sermons delivered in Arabic. Further, The Australian has not bothered to inform us as to whether the sermons were recorded and who provided the translations.
At one place in the article, Sheik Zoud is quoted as saying:
No victory (for Islam's brothers and sisters) can be stopped by George Bush or Tony Blair or John Howard.
Now I am no Arabic scholar, but I think it would be highly unlikely for a speech in Arabic to have stuff appearing in brackets. I could be wrong, of course. But unless the sermon went with subtitles, the brackets and their contents perhaps may not have been present.
Many of the phrases and prayers quoted by The Australian are phrases that even the most moderate sheiks declare. Take this quote from Sheik Zoud:
God grant victory to the mujaheddin in Kashmir and Chechnya, and Palestine and Afghanistan.
The term “mujaheddin” is a generic term that refers to any person engaged in an armed conflict as part of a just war. Who knows which mujaheddin these Sheiks are referring to.
Then again, I have to admit that these thick-Sheiks do bring such attention upon themselves. And I myself have been witness to some of the most frightening prayers being recited by these fringe-dwellers.
But in what way is their speech different to the Steyns and Pipes that feature so frequently on the Opinion pages of The Australian? True, the words are not so blatant. But the messages don’t exactly encourage readers to embrace their Muslim neighbours.
…given the radicalisation of the Arab world, and the Arabification of the Islamic world, and the Islamification of much of the rest of the world, in the end you have to fix the problem at source. (The Australian, October 18 2005)OK, one thought just occurred to me. Perhaps the paper is only referring to just some imams. Perhaps the paper acknowledges that not all imams preach hatred of the West or anyone else for that matter.
There are many trouble spots across the world but, as a general rule, even if one gives no more than a cursory glance at the foreign pages, it's easy to guess at least one of the sides: Muslims v Jews in Palestine, Muslims v Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims v Christians in Nigeria, Muslims v Buddhists in southern Thailand, Muslims v (your team here). Whatever one's views of the merits on a case by case basis, the ubiquitousness of one team is a fact. … That's why they blew up Bali in 2002, and last weekend, and why they'll
keep blowing it up. It's not about Bush or Blair or Iraq or Palestine. It's about a world where everything other than Islamism lies in ruins. (The Australian, October 4, 2005)
But I might as well dispel that thought. Why? Read the opening sentence of the story.
MUSLIM clerics in Sydney and Melbourne - led by radicals Sheik Mohammed Omran
and Sheik Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud - are still preaching hatred against the West …
So Muslim “clerics” are led by Omran and Zoud. A bit like saying Adolf Hitler was the leading figure in modern European politics.
Once again, a very uninformed Australian.
Words © 2005 Irfan Yusuf
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Monday, October 31, 2005
The National Observer - Another Example of Aussie Conservatives Doing Uncle Usama's Work
According to the editorial in the Autumn 2005 edition of the National Observer, “Moslem” Australians have not integrated into Australian society. The evidence?
You would think that such a broad-brush claim would provide some evidence from demographic studies. Evidence would be shown that “Moslem” communities live in one area, send their children to different schools and refuse to participate in Australian institutions.
You would think that evidence was shown of how “Moslem” culture is at loggerheads with Australian culture and values. That evidence would be furnished from the sources of “Moslem” culture and theology proving that “Moslems” are not allowed to behave like the rest of Australia.
Finally, you would think that the editor would make up their mind on how the word “Moslem” is to be spelt. In the 6th paragraph, we find the term “Moslem” spelt as “Muslim”.
If you are still holding your breath waiting for evidence on any of these points, please give up now in case you explode. This article is but a typical example of what happens when the attitudes and pet prejudices of some elements of the Lunar-Right are imposed on the rest of the conservative movement.
Immigration Issues
The Editorial praises the mandatory detention policy of the Howard government, and presents it as a largely anti-“Moslem” policy. Really?
My parents first arrived in Australia in 1965. My father was a young PhD student who had won a scholarship to study at the Australian National University. Canberra had a small Indian community, most of whom congregated around the prominent academic and historian known affectionately as “Professor Sahib”.
Associate Professor Rizvi taught Asian history at ANU. He authored numerous books on Indian and Islamic history. Professor Rizvi had a daughter and a number of sons. One of his young sons, Mr Adul Rizvi, entered the public service and rose up the ranks of the Department of Immigration.
Abul Rizvi comes from an Indian Shia-Muslim family. He is currently Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA).
Had the author of the Autumn editorial done his research, he would have discovered that this allegedly anti-“Moslem” policy of mandatory detention is actually being effectively managed and enforced by the son of a now-deceased Muslim academic.
And chances are that, should the desired policy of banning “Moslem” immigration become government policy, the person implementing that policy would be Mr Rizvi.
“Moslem” Schools and Australian Values
The editorial makes the startling claim that “Moslem” schools teach their students to be separate from non-“Moslem” schools. Although I am not an educational administrator and have no experience working in the education sector (apart from the occasional lecture at the School of Politics at Macquarie University), I feel I am qualified to comment on this issue.
During my decade or so as a litigation lawyer based in Sydney, I have acted for at least two “Moslem” schools and one “Moslem” headmaster of a school in industrial relations and other matters. At the same time, I spent my entire High School life at Sydney’s St Andrews Cathedral School.
Like all independent schools, those of the “Moslem” variety are forced to ensure that their curriculum complies with the standards set by the Education Department of the State or Territory they operate within. Indeed, many so-called “Moslem” schools operate in much the same way as Jewish and Christian schools.
If anything, the “Moslem” schools are often criticised by more conservative Muslim parents as teaching too little religion. When I compare the one extra hour a week on Arabic language and Islamic studies to the weekly Chapel service and divinity classes at St Andrews, I would have to say my old school could learn a thing or two from Sule College about going easy on religion.
The Autumn 2005 editorial claims that the establishment of “a network of Islamic schools, where Moslem children will be brought up separately” is further evidence that “Moslem groups” wish to remain separate from the Australian community. Yet when one compares the alleged growth of “Moslem” schools to the burgeoning presence of low-fee “Christian Community” and Anglican schools in outer metropolitan and regional areas, one wonders what all the fuss is about.
The Howard government has always been committed to providing parents with choice about their children’s education. Whether they be Muslim or Jewish or Callithumpian, parents have the right to affordable independent education of their choice. Whilst the Autumn editorial decries the “left-liberal” groups, it shares its abhorrence for parental choice with the most extreme left-fringes of the movement against funding independent schools.
Of course, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of “Moslem” parents do not send their children to “Moslem” schools. The vast majority make use of the State School system, with a fair number also sending their children to Anglican and Catholic schools.
And in what way are graduates of Muslim schools not prepared to integrate? One of my colleagues, Randa Abdel Fattah, is a Sydney lawyer and writer. She works as a commercial litigator in one of Sydney’s largest legal practices, and has just signed a book deal for her novel in the UK. Randa graduates from King Khaled Islamic College in Melbourne.
One would have thought the debate over the alleged refusal of “Moslem” schools to abide by Australian values would have died the same death as the donkey of that famous illegal immigrant Simpson.
“Moslems” and Integration
It is in this area that the Autmn editorial really makes some wild and unusual claims. In doing so, it is clear that the Editor has failed to do any proper research.
In 2004, Professor Abdullah Saeed of the University of Melbourne conducted research into the trends of the Muslim community. The result was a resource manual widely used by Australian governments in understanding the various ethnic and linguistic groups that make up the Muslim communities.
The manual, entitled “Muslim Australians – Their Beliefs, Practices and Institutions”, provides a snapshot of Muslim Australia from the 2001 Census. The following facts were mentioned:
1. The largest ethnic community among Muslims in terms of place of birth are Muslims born in Australia.
2. The ratio of Muslims born in Australia to those born in Lebanon is more than 3:1.
3. Between 1996 and 2000, only 9% of migrants to Australia were of Muslim background.
4. Some 79% of Muslim migrants have taken up Australian citizenship, a much higher proportion than any other migrant faith-community.
If one were to look at various sectors of mainstream Australia, one would find Muslims having a strong presence. The Dean of at least one Sydney Law School is of Muslim background, and Muslims are heavily represented in large commercial law firms at all levels (including as partners).
Some of the most powerful and prominent names in business are of Muslim background. “Crazy” John Ilhan sponsors two football codes and numerous clubs in Sydney and Melbourne. Ahmed Fahour is one of the most powerful figures in the banking sector.
Commentator and Islamic Council of Victoria spekesman, Waleed Aly, writes regularly in mainstream papers on Muslim community and national security issues. Yet his favourite subject of writing is AFL Football.
Muslims have been at the heart of mainstream Australia for over 150 years. The former Mayor of Woomera, a regular critic of the presence of illegal Afghan immigrants in her town, was herself of Afghan descent.
Muslims are also active in politics. I myself ran as a Liberal candidate in the November 2001 elections and scored a 5.1% swing on a two-party preferred basis in a safe ALP seat in Western Sydney. My name and suggested ethno-religious background had little bearing on voters.
The ethnic community that has built the largest number of mosques is the Turkish community. Turks have lived in Australia since the 1950’s. The largest Turkish mosque in Sydney is named the “Gallipoli Mosque”.
“Moslems” and National Security
If it is true that the biggest terrorist threat arises from Islamist extremists, it is also true that Australian Muslims represent perhaps our biggest weapon on fighting terror and its ideological basis.
The Prime Minister recognises the importance of engaging Muslim communities in national security issues. Whilst I disagree with his choice of leaders (most of whom represent first generation migrant issues and have ties to fringe sectarian elements in the Middle East), in principle the setting up of a Muslim Community reference Group is not a bad idea.
Marginalising Muslim Australians is not officially part of the government’s national security agenda. The Government realises that attempts to marginalise Muslims will effectively hand victory to the likes of Usama bin Laden.
The propaganda of groups like al-Qaeda is that Western governments are against all Muslims. Bin Laden and other extremists want Muslims living in countries like Australia to feel marginalised. But when Islamophobes masquerading as conservatives seek to marginalise Muslims, it frees up the time and resources of extremists and enables them to plan further attacks.
The claims made about Muslims in 2005 are similar to those made about Jews in Germany and other parts of Europe during the years leading upto the Second World War. Except that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are being replaced by the Protocols of the Learned Mullahs of Tehran or Kabul or Lakemba.
Conclusion
The Autumn editorial of the National Observer is short on facts but very tall on sweeping generalisations. It is but another example of why so many conservatives are frustrated with the lack of intellectual rigour being displayed on the Right.
Conservative values include respect for the family, free enterprise and maintaining solid working institutions. There is little in Muslim culture which contradicts any of these values. Citing isolated examples here and there will not change this fact.
Finally, I enjoy eating wedges as a main meal or snack. But when wedges become the basis of our public policy and national security, they tend to lack any good taste.
You would think that such a broad-brush claim would provide some evidence from demographic studies. Evidence would be shown that “Moslem” communities live in one area, send their children to different schools and refuse to participate in Australian institutions.
You would think that evidence was shown of how “Moslem” culture is at loggerheads with Australian culture and values. That evidence would be furnished from the sources of “Moslem” culture and theology proving that “Moslems” are not allowed to behave like the rest of Australia.
Finally, you would think that the editor would make up their mind on how the word “Moslem” is to be spelt. In the 6th paragraph, we find the term “Moslem” spelt as “Muslim”.
If you are still holding your breath waiting for evidence on any of these points, please give up now in case you explode. This article is but a typical example of what happens when the attitudes and pet prejudices of some elements of the Lunar-Right are imposed on the rest of the conservative movement.
Immigration Issues
The Editorial praises the mandatory detention policy of the Howard government, and presents it as a largely anti-“Moslem” policy. Really?
My parents first arrived in Australia in 1965. My father was a young PhD student who had won a scholarship to study at the Australian National University. Canberra had a small Indian community, most of whom congregated around the prominent academic and historian known affectionately as “Professor Sahib”.
Associate Professor Rizvi taught Asian history at ANU. He authored numerous books on Indian and Islamic history. Professor Rizvi had a daughter and a number of sons. One of his young sons, Mr Adul Rizvi, entered the public service and rose up the ranks of the Department of Immigration.
Abul Rizvi comes from an Indian Shia-Muslim family. He is currently Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA).
Had the author of the Autumn editorial done his research, he would have discovered that this allegedly anti-“Moslem” policy of mandatory detention is actually being effectively managed and enforced by the son of a now-deceased Muslim academic.
And chances are that, should the desired policy of banning “Moslem” immigration become government policy, the person implementing that policy would be Mr Rizvi.
“Moslem” Schools and Australian Values
The editorial makes the startling claim that “Moslem” schools teach their students to be separate from non-“Moslem” schools. Although I am not an educational administrator and have no experience working in the education sector (apart from the occasional lecture at the School of Politics at Macquarie University), I feel I am qualified to comment on this issue.
During my decade or so as a litigation lawyer based in Sydney, I have acted for at least two “Moslem” schools and one “Moslem” headmaster of a school in industrial relations and other matters. At the same time, I spent my entire High School life at Sydney’s St Andrews Cathedral School.
Like all independent schools, those of the “Moslem” variety are forced to ensure that their curriculum complies with the standards set by the Education Department of the State or Territory they operate within. Indeed, many so-called “Moslem” schools operate in much the same way as Jewish and Christian schools.
If anything, the “Moslem” schools are often criticised by more conservative Muslim parents as teaching too little religion. When I compare the one extra hour a week on Arabic language and Islamic studies to the weekly Chapel service and divinity classes at St Andrews, I would have to say my old school could learn a thing or two from Sule College about going easy on religion.
The Autumn 2005 editorial claims that the establishment of “a network of Islamic schools, where Moslem children will be brought up separately” is further evidence that “Moslem groups” wish to remain separate from the Australian community. Yet when one compares the alleged growth of “Moslem” schools to the burgeoning presence of low-fee “Christian Community” and Anglican schools in outer metropolitan and regional areas, one wonders what all the fuss is about.
The Howard government has always been committed to providing parents with choice about their children’s education. Whether they be Muslim or Jewish or Callithumpian, parents have the right to affordable independent education of their choice. Whilst the Autumn editorial decries the “left-liberal” groups, it shares its abhorrence for parental choice with the most extreme left-fringes of the movement against funding independent schools.
Of course, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of “Moslem” parents do not send their children to “Moslem” schools. The vast majority make use of the State School system, with a fair number also sending their children to Anglican and Catholic schools.
And in what way are graduates of Muslim schools not prepared to integrate? One of my colleagues, Randa Abdel Fattah, is a Sydney lawyer and writer. She works as a commercial litigator in one of Sydney’s largest legal practices, and has just signed a book deal for her novel in the UK. Randa graduates from King Khaled Islamic College in Melbourne.
One would have thought the debate over the alleged refusal of “Moslem” schools to abide by Australian values would have died the same death as the donkey of that famous illegal immigrant Simpson.
“Moslems” and Integration
It is in this area that the Autmn editorial really makes some wild and unusual claims. In doing so, it is clear that the Editor has failed to do any proper research.
In 2004, Professor Abdullah Saeed of the University of Melbourne conducted research into the trends of the Muslim community. The result was a resource manual widely used by Australian governments in understanding the various ethnic and linguistic groups that make up the Muslim communities.
The manual, entitled “Muslim Australians – Their Beliefs, Practices and Institutions”, provides a snapshot of Muslim Australia from the 2001 Census. The following facts were mentioned:
1. The largest ethnic community among Muslims in terms of place of birth are Muslims born in Australia.
2. The ratio of Muslims born in Australia to those born in Lebanon is more than 3:1.
3. Between 1996 and 2000, only 9% of migrants to Australia were of Muslim background.
4. Some 79% of Muslim migrants have taken up Australian citizenship, a much higher proportion than any other migrant faith-community.
If one were to look at various sectors of mainstream Australia, one would find Muslims having a strong presence. The Dean of at least one Sydney Law School is of Muslim background, and Muslims are heavily represented in large commercial law firms at all levels (including as partners).
Some of the most powerful and prominent names in business are of Muslim background. “Crazy” John Ilhan sponsors two football codes and numerous clubs in Sydney and Melbourne. Ahmed Fahour is one of the most powerful figures in the banking sector.
Commentator and Islamic Council of Victoria spekesman, Waleed Aly, writes regularly in mainstream papers on Muslim community and national security issues. Yet his favourite subject of writing is AFL Football.
Muslims have been at the heart of mainstream Australia for over 150 years. The former Mayor of Woomera, a regular critic of the presence of illegal Afghan immigrants in her town, was herself of Afghan descent.
Muslims are also active in politics. I myself ran as a Liberal candidate in the November 2001 elections and scored a 5.1% swing on a two-party preferred basis in a safe ALP seat in Western Sydney. My name and suggested ethno-religious background had little bearing on voters.
The ethnic community that has built the largest number of mosques is the Turkish community. Turks have lived in Australia since the 1950’s. The largest Turkish mosque in Sydney is named the “Gallipoli Mosque”.
“Moslems” and National Security
If it is true that the biggest terrorist threat arises from Islamist extremists, it is also true that Australian Muslims represent perhaps our biggest weapon on fighting terror and its ideological basis.
The Prime Minister recognises the importance of engaging Muslim communities in national security issues. Whilst I disagree with his choice of leaders (most of whom represent first generation migrant issues and have ties to fringe sectarian elements in the Middle East), in principle the setting up of a Muslim Community reference Group is not a bad idea.
Marginalising Muslim Australians is not officially part of the government’s national security agenda. The Government realises that attempts to marginalise Muslims will effectively hand victory to the likes of Usama bin Laden.
The propaganda of groups like al-Qaeda is that Western governments are against all Muslims. Bin Laden and other extremists want Muslims living in countries like Australia to feel marginalised. But when Islamophobes masquerading as conservatives seek to marginalise Muslims, it frees up the time and resources of extremists and enables them to plan further attacks.
The claims made about Muslims in 2005 are similar to those made about Jews in Germany and other parts of Europe during the years leading upto the Second World War. Except that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are being replaced by the Protocols of the Learned Mullahs of Tehran or Kabul or Lakemba.
Conclusion
The Autumn editorial of the National Observer is short on facts but very tall on sweeping generalisations. It is but another example of why so many conservatives are frustrated with the lack of intellectual rigour being displayed on the Right.
Conservative values include respect for the family, free enterprise and maintaining solid working institutions. There is little in Muslim culture which contradicts any of these values. Citing isolated examples here and there will not change this fact.
Finally, I enjoy eating wedges as a main meal or snack. But when wedges become the basis of our public policy and national security, they tend to lack any good taste.
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