REPORT: We are all Latte Liberals

On the final day of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Studio One of the Sydney Dance Company became the venue of a superb Sunday afternoon biff between the Shadow Minister for Family, Indigenous and Voluntary Stuff (and Minister for making Malcolm Turnbull Liberal Leader) Tony Abbott and politics professor – and darling of the so-called left elite – Robert Manne.

The session was moderated by John Howard’s co-biographer Peter van Onselen, who is now editing a book on the future of the Liberal Party. Also on the panel was Phillip Senior, who is contributing a chapter to van Onselen’s book. For some reason, Senior wasn’t on the official Festival program, and he was strategically seated between Abbott and Manne. Senior and van Onselen have themselves co-authored a book on the demise of the Howard government.

Soon-to-be-Dr Senior spoke of how and why the Coalition lost the 2007 Federal election. Unlike Manne, he didn’t believe the Libs had necessarily lost the plot, arguing that even at the time of his lowest electoral fortunes, Howard remained one of Australia’s most popular PMs. Still, the Party could have done much better in the campaign, and spent too much time rabbiting on about past successes in economic management and too little presenting a vision for the future.

But the real battle was always going to be between Abbott and Manne. Like all good academics, the Professor came with a prepared speech. He provided a lucid account of how Howard had turned the Liberal Party into the Australian neo-Conservative Party, and how he transformed the Party into one that could no longer claim to be a Party for all Australians.

Manne pointed out that, as Opposition leader, Howard had resisted the racial and ethnic transformation of Australia. After being elected in 1996, Howard watched carefully the rise of Hansonism and wondered how he could capitalise on the Pauline Hanson factor – which proved powerful enough for One Nation to at one stage capture around 25 per cent of the vote in a Queensland State election. Howard seemed to encourage Hansonite thinking with his attacks on political correctness as espoused by the so-called elites.

Manne argued that Howard’s war on asylum-seekers was used to bring One Nation voters back to the Coalition fold, as well as splitting the ALP’s base between the working class battlers and the inner-city elites.

The events of 9/11 enabled Howard to take this to new lows of political incorrectness. Manne reminded us that Howard was deeply affected by 9/11, having been in the US at the time. Howard then dragged Australia along into every single US foreign policy blunder including the Iraq War, a war which Manne argued was a bigger disaster than Vietnam.

Manne said the Party had lost all credibility in foreign policy, and only honest self-criticism could save it from … er … losing even more credibility. As Howard told the American Enterprise Institute recently, ideas really did matter. The Howard government just had no ideas (or at least the wrong ones).

Joe Hockey probably agrees with Manne about the need for a major re-think, but Tony Abbott certainly didn’t show much agreement on the day. He claimed practical thinking of cabinet ministers had little to do with what he labeled Manne’s "arcane idea of neo-Conservatism". Abbott suggested the best phrase to describe the Howard government was "pragmatism with conservative values". You know the kind. Values like the family, institutions all that other equally arcane stuff.

I’ve praised Abbott in the past for resisting the urge toward political erectness and for being consistent in his conservatism. But Abbott showed little of that during his performance at the Writers’ Festival.

Many audience members were visibly confused when Abbott contradicted Manne’s view that most Australian political pundits had underestimated the power of ideas, presuming that politicians were driven more by pragmatism than ideology. After all, Manne was only repeating what Howard himself had recently told the American Enterprise Institute. Abbott was in effect defending the Howard government by contradicting Howard’s explanation for his government’s success.

Abbott also appealed to populism, claiming that Howard couldn’t have been too indecent if a majority of voters kept voting him in. This proved popular with many in the audience, who nodded in agreement. He said that Manne’s critique of the Liberal Party is as useful as Abbott attempting a critique of the ALP. I just wish he’d told us that back in December 2006 when he penned this piece for the Sydney Morning Herald.

I’m pretty sure I heard Abbott correctly when he admitted that most Liberal MPs don’t have the ability to attract Aussie voters. Certainly many of his ideological opponents in the audience applauded at this remark. They were less enthusiastic about his claim that Brendan Nelson could attract voters because he had sufficient compassion. Yep, just ask the Exclusive Brethren.

Most explosive of all was Abbott’s call for a constitutional change to extend Commonwealth legislative powers. He might be right, but I somehow think we’ll have to become a republic first. States-rights conservatives beware.

Abbott tried to paint himself as the underdog, recognising Tom Switzer, Christopher Pearson and Peter Coleman as the only conservatives in the audience. I’m not sure if many in the audience even recognised these names. This certainly didn’t stop them from agreeing with Abbott’s declaration that Kevin Rudd positioning himself as an economic conservative meant that we were now all conservatives.

Sadly, Abbott lost many of these sympathetic punters when he compared Nelson to "Australia’s most successful conservative leader" – apprarently Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Robert Manne didn’t have it all his own way either. When an audience member asked Abbott and Manne whether they were aware of the concept of peak oil, Abbott may have looked silly for admitting he didn’t know the precise meaning of the term, but at least he was honest. Manne attempted a vague explanation, which lead to a wave of frowns through the audience.

Someone asked Abbott how he thought Australia would look in 2020. Abbott fumbled this one badly by suggesting Australia would look much like it did now. In cricket terms, Abbott delivered a slow full-toss which Manne should have dispatched for six. Instead, it was let through to the keeper.

This was a crucial debate concerning not just the future of the Liberal Party but of Australia as a whole. The fact that there were no clear winners showed to me that even in a feel-good politically correct crowd (such as you’d expect at a Writers’ Festival), conservative politics isn’t completely written off.

Perhaps there is a bit of both Robert Manne and Tony Abbott in all of us.

(First published in New Matilda on 27 May 2008)

POLITICS: Ahok blasphemy trial: Testing times for Indonesia's maturing democracy

In cities and towns across Indonesia, placards and posters in shop windows and on walls of public buildings have been proclaiming three words of celebration: "SELAMAT HARI NATAL".

Most Australians will be unfamiliar with this phrase. My knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia is not good enough to provide a literal translation, but Professor Google tells me it means: "Have a safe and happy day celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ".

Christians make up about 10 per cent of Indonesia's population. Most are Protestant, and they are represented among all ethnic groups and across all islands.

Among their number is the governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama and known simply as Ahok. Unfortunately, this Christmas season won't be a very merry one for Ahok as he faces criminal proceedings before a Jakarta District Court for blasphemy.

Aged 50 and belonging to the Chinese minority, Ahok is successor to Indonesia's President Jokowi who was elected to the top job in 2014. Ahok came to politics following a career in business. His platform in the February 2017 elections is the same as that of his predecessor and ally – fighting corruption, cleaning up the city, battling drug-related crime and improving service provision. All the usual stuff one would expect from the head of a city administration.

As Jokowi has shown, the Jakarta governorship is a useful springboard for higher office. In the upcoming elections for governor, Ahok's main rival is 38-year-old Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, son of Indonesia's former president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and no doubt a future presidential candidate.

Agus Yudhoyono's campaign is also built upon cleaning Jakarta's streets and service provision. But Agus also finds himself the beneficiary of the pseudo-religious antics of one Habib Rizieq, a preacher from the Front Pembela Islam who is believed to be spearheading protests against the incumbent governor.

It all started last September when, during a campaign speech, Ahok claimed certain Islamic groups were using a Koranic verse against him to deceive voters. The verses allegedly state that Muslims should not be ruled by non-Muslims.

Now Ahok finds himself the subject of a prosecution and trial under Indonesia's strict blasphemy laws which are based not on Islamic law but rather on a 1965 Presidential decree prohibiting acts that deviate from Indonesia's six officially recognised religions – Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The law also prohibits defamation of these religions and promotion of atheism. If found guilty, Ahok faces five years in prison.

In case you were tempted to think the trial will be a purely sectarian affair, the five judges sitting on the Central Jakarta District Court panel include three Muslims, a Catholic and a Hindu. Further, three out of 13 prosecutors handling the case are Christian. No wonder Muslim religious extremists are accusing prosecutors and courts of showing favouritism to Ahok.

But for many Islamist protesters, this is a religious and racial affair. In many parts of Java, Muslim and Chinese are almost mutually exclusive categories.

Some protesters at anti-Ahok rallies are showing similar racist attitudes I've seen expressed by "ethnic" Muslim groups in Sydney toward other "ethnic" Muslim groups. Some protest leaders reportedly made provocative speeches calling the governor a pig, while the crowd laughed when the same leaders mocked his Chinese appearance. Too often does sectarian prejudice join forces with racism.

Similar forms of prejudice were directed at another candidate to lead a major world city. Sadiq Khan, Labour candidate for the London Mayoralty, faced similar prejudice though admittedly not involving the kind of extremism as faced by Ahok. Khan was not accused of a criminal offence nor was he tried in front of a public court. However, Khan faced powerful opponents who indirectly linked him to terrorism thanks to his religious heritage and his professional work as a solicitor.

Thankfully for British democracy, the better candidate won the mayoralty, despite being from the Pakistani Muslim minority. Closer to home, Labor candidates Ed Husic and Anne Aly were put through the hoops of anti-Muslim prejudice.

Regardless of how fair and secular a democracy may claim to be, minorities seeking higher office will always struggle. Yet the maturity of any democracy lies in how it treats its minorities. It's debatable whether Ahok's chances are being affected by Indonesia's Muslim majority or only an extreme minority thereof. FPI head Habib Rizieq is himself from the Arab Indonesian minority community. His antics have not impressed Indonesia's largest Islamic group, Nahdlatul Ulama, which has instructed its members not to take part in FPI rallies.

Ultimately it will all rest on the outcome of the court decision. The Jakarta Post quotes Siti Zuhro, a political researcher from the Indonesian Institute of Science, who said the huge turnout to FPI rallies had proven opposition to Ahok remains strong. A "not guilty" verdict would play a role swinging undecided voters. "The opposing voice is still very loud, even if the court acquits him on the charge Ahok's campaign team will still have a tough time to win the election," Zuhro said.

(Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 28 December 2016.)

TRIBUTE: Team Canberra: a city of transience

Recently, Dr Tim Blair, scholar-in-residence at a Sydney tabloid newspaper, penned a landmark article on the cultural geography of a part of Sydney he describes as "Sydney's Muslim Land" (let's call it "SML", shall we?).

SML's main street is a place where one may "not hear a single phrase in English", where "the ethnic mix seems similar to what you'd find in any Arabic city".

Dr Blair concludes that ...

Haldon Street is a monoculture.

I'm not sure what an Arabic city is. I understand Arabic to be a word used to describe a language, not a location. I'm also not aware of many cities in the Arab world whose main drags are named "Haldon". But then, who am I to argue with so distinguished an expert?

Blair also provides a review of 1400 years of Islamic legal, philosophical, mystical, medical, scientific and educational literature in the form of a few extreme Saudi texts. One cannot deny that such literature exists, just as one cannot deny that similar genocidal and racist sentiments are regularly hosted on the moderated blogs of Drs Blair, Bolt and other News Corp scholars.

Pointing one finger at others exposes even the most prominent scholars to having three of one's own fingers pointed right back.

I wonder what would happen if Blair visited a suburb of Canberra. What would he say about the number of Asian eateries in Dickson? Would he complain about how the frequency of Ali Baba kebab shops made Canberra resemble Haldon Street? Would the back of Belconnen be too spicy for his liking? Would he be horrified by the excess of languages other than English being spoken in the embassy precinct of Yarralumla?

Melbourne may boast about being the most liveable city on the planet, but Canberra is certainly no monocultural slouch. Mr Abbott may insist that people migrating to Australia must join something resembling Tim Blair's vision of Lakemba during the 1920s before "certain demographic changes in the area" took hold.

Canberra is a city of migrants, many arriving from interstate to take up positions in the Commonwealth public service. If you've spent all your life in, say, Mackay or Launceston, Canberra's cosmopolitanism may make you feel like you're in another country. Some tabloid columnists might feel they are on another planet.

She was trying to communicate with the checkout girl at the supermarket when a fair-skinned lady came up to her and exclaimed "assalamu alaykum" (Arabic for "peace be with you", the traditional Muslim greeting). The lady turned out to be a Hindi-speaking Jew! They became close friends.

Today, there are many Hindi speakers in Canberra. There are also people speaking Arabic, Turkish, Bengali, Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin and just about every other language known to man and woman. You'll see no shortage of hats, caps, scarves and turbans on heads. And no one seems to care.

People aren't made to feel like migrants in Canberra because most people are migrants. And that includes the politicians, whether they accept it or not. I'd love to see an MP or senator find his or her way around from Fyshwick to Melba without a driver.

People adapt and get along without needing the Chief Minister hectoring them to join "Team ACT" and without having to put up with an MLA calling Mandarin speakers "mongrels" or "bastards". The local papers don't feature articles that demand that an atrocity committed overseas must lead to Canberrans of a similar background vocally condemning the atrocity.

And those who have made Canberra their permanent home cannot stop bragging about the place. Some months ago, I caught up with a seasoned Canberran in, of all places, Taipei. When she wasn't conversing with the waitress in fluent Mandarin, she was reminiscing about the restaurants, the nightlife (!) and even the weather (!!).

A Sydneyphile like me may find the idea of nightlife in Canberra a bit hard to imagine (and its winter even harder to tolerate). But even on the coldest day, it's hard to imagine a Cronulla-style race riot on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin.

Canberra is so comfortable with its diversity. It is a town of transience. Canberra was the first Australian place my parents lived in during the early 1960s, before I was born. Mum tells the story of going shopping for the first time at O'Connor while Dad was at ANU doing his PhD. She barely spoke English (she did her Masters degree in Urdu literature).

Perhaps politicians and pundits who enjoy engaging in cultural warrior antics should spend a month in Canberra and learn why the locals really don't care if the food in the supermarket is halal or why a certain diplomat's wife/husband is wearing a sari or sarong.

And perhaps the tabloid for which Dr Blair writes, which is trying desperately to increase its readership in the ACT beyond McDonald's outlets, might resist the temptation to send one of its columnists to racially profile the nation's capital.

(Irfan Yusuf is an award-winning author and a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Citizenship & Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 17 June 2019.)

COMMENT: An uncomfortable intersection of political interests

On Sunday, thousands of fair dinkum real Aussies will gather at rallies across Australia, raising the Australian flag and shouting slogans. Among the places they'll gather is the central Queensland coastal town of Mackay. Coalition federal MP George Christensen will be speaking. On behalf of Prime Minister Tony Abbott? Reading a message from the PM? Who knows.

A previous Reclaim Australia Rally in Melbourne some months back was characterised by the presence of some, er, interesting people engaging in interesting conduct. A fair few neo-Nazis sporting visible swastika tattoos on shaved heads and/or wearing swastika T-shirts and carrying Aussie flags joined the parade. They were jostling and shouting slogans and carrying placards saying "Abbott! No halal certification" and "No Shariah law!" I doubt even Zaky Mallah would do that sort of thing in an ABC studio.

Christensen certainly has more testicular fortitude than Abbott's frontbenchers who have been ordered not to appear on a certain ABC show whose ratings have gone through the roof. Brisbane's Courier Mail reports Christensen declaring he will defy even the PM's orders and attend the rally.

Reading through the 24 pillars of the Reclaim Australia manifesto, I couldn't help but wonder why Abbott would object. There is a call for "[t]he right to exile or deport traitors", which I guess is akin to Abbott's original call for people engaging in terror-like activities to be stripped of their Australian citizenship even if it was their only one.

Where will Indigenous Australians fit in an Australia reclaimed by the far-right white reclaimers? "Equality at Law", screams pillar No. 3, "No more 'cultural considerations'". That should make Andrew Bolt very happy.

The ideology of Reclaim has a distinctly supremacist feel to it. But in case you thought it was fringe, the reclaimers are singing from virtually the same rhetorical and policy songbook as the federal Coalition on cultural and security matters. Despite trumpeting separation of religion and state, Reclaim's manifesto mentions Christian values and rights numerous more times. How often have we heard Abbott and his ministers lecture us on how Australia has a Christian heritage?

It's true that Coalition MPs tend not to jostle and shout slogans and sport swastika tattoos. But as a former federal Liberal candidate, it pains me to say that in so many ways the more contentious political beliefs on issues like culture and citizenship promoted by the Coalition are effectively the same as those of the far right.

It's hard to say who is influencing who. Certainly the Coalition strategy in the 2001 Tampa election was to destroy Pauline Hanson by mimicking her rhetoric on asylum-seekers. Howard would frequently speak of integration and wasn't too fond of multiculturalism.

Ironically, Tony Abbott held the opposite view. He regarded multiculturalism as a fundamentally sound and inherently conservative social policy. Abbott was one of the few frontbenchers who refused to join the chorus of Muslim-phobic and migrant-phobic hysteria around issues of citizenship and national security. In addresses to various audiences, Abbott recalled what it was like for him and fellow Catholics during previous decades when Catholics were demonised.

Abbott is a victim of the far-right. A former staffer of his walked out to join Pauline Hanson. Abbott and his allies worked hard to ensure One Nation was made accountable for financial irregularities. There was little indication in Abbott's quite brilliant manifesto Battlelines that he would go in an extreme direction. True, he did see Australia as within a broader Anglosphere of nations. But his policy platform did not include stripping people of citizenship for spraying graffiti on public buildings.

If Abbott does give the order to the federal member for Dawson not to attend this rally, it will sound almost hypocritical. I have never seen Tony Jones and the Q&A panel and audience wear swastika T-shirts. There has been no jostling or arrests made, nor are racist slogans tolerated. If Abbott doesn't stop Christensen from attending the Mackay rally, it will show he regards far-right white supremacist extremism as being less troublesome than some kid sporting a marijuana cap and suggesting a minister's rhetoric is pushing Muslim kids to join Islamic State.

It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that events overseas appear to have radicalised the conservative side of politics in Australia than they have local Muslims. Today we see far-right lunatics and their Coalition friends using IS as an excuse to beat their chests. Sikh temples are being attacked as the chest-beaters are happy to attack anything or anyone they deem Muslim. Only God knows what Asian Australians will experience should China decide do more than build islands in the South China Sea.

This all shows that discussions (or lack thereof) on national security in Australia are rarely conducted in a sensible manner. Phillip Adams recently wrote in the Weekend Australian: 

The current liturgy chanted in unison by ministers prime and junior in the Gregorian manner, including Stop the Boats and Death Cult. They are not designed to encourage discussion but to end it. To drown out doubt, debate, calibration, nuance and context.

The results of repetitious paranoid Coalition rhetoric, channelled through ridiculously rabid columnists and shock jocks, will be seen this Sunday. Hopefully it won't be too ugly.

(Irfan Yusuf is PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 17 June 2019)

REPORT: Meet the group that defends Israel by condemning it

An organisation of Israeli Defence Force veterans is attempting to bring to light the reality of life in occupied Palestine. But they are far from anti-Zionists.

The number of protesters on the Gaza-Israel border killed by Israeli soldiers rises each day, recently claiming an infant and a young paramedic. Listening to certain spokespeople in Australia, one is left with the impression that it’s all the fault of others — Hamas, the protesters themselves, the ABC or even The Australian.

It’s the kind of thing I grew up with as a kid with part-Pakistani parentage, where communal and public conversations about Partition and Pakistan are treated with nationalistic fervour. It’s also the kind of thing often seen since 9/11 — public conversation dominated by nationalists from “leadership” organisations.

This brings me to a community event at the Paddington Town Hall, Sydney, on the evening of  June 6 organised by a group calling itself the New Israel Foundation. From that title, I’d normally imagine such an event to be devoted to unconditional support for Israel, with speakers repeating the rhetorical themes I have come to expect from many of my Australian-Pakistani elders: “we are an island of peace surrounded by an enemy many times our size”.

Speaking at the event was Avner Gvaryahu, a special forces soldier from the Israeli Defence Force. Surely this guy will be a hawk, sounding off like Jim Molan or Andrew Hastie. But Gvaryahu said his work with the group Breaking The Silence was about standing up for Israel by opposing the military occupation of Palestinian territories. He said the IDF’s “brutal use of violence, misuse of weapons and beating up Palestinians” was a daily experience for Palestinians, confirmed through the testimonies of IDF soldiers and officers. “You can’t have an occupation without violence. You have to use violence when controlling a people who don’t want to be controlled.”

Gvaryahu spoke of the “straw widow” strategy whereby solders would take over a private Palestinian home and use it as a military post. Virtually always the Palestinian family whose home was overtaken had no involvement in any protest activity.

Gvaryahu is pilloried both inside Israel and by Israel’s supporters outside. He has been called a traitor and has frequently found himself attacked by those who feel he is not patriotic enough. But he soldiers on, even if his audience (including myself) found what he had to say uncomfortable. When asked why he didn’t go with the Israeli majority that elected governments enforcing these policies, time after time, he said

Well, the Palestinians whose houses and lands we occupied didn’t get to vote for these governments. The Occupation isn’t just an Israeli issue. Our decisions are affecting millions of other people. Plus I used to walk around the streets of Nablus and Jenin holding an M16 that had the words ‘Property of the US Government’ on it.

Another speaker at the event was Pulitzer Prize-winning Australian author and former Wall Street Journal reporter Geraldine Brooks, who noted her disappointment that many of her Jewish friends did not wish to attend the event as they “couldn’t bear to hear the discussion”. She said that “even though breaking the silence isn’t currently in the mainstream of Israeli opinion, it is definitely in the mainstream of the Jewish tradition … of having an argument for the sake of heaven”.

Brooks shared a story from September 1987 when she was about to be sent to be the WSJ’s Middle East correspondent. She was told by a Reagan adviser that she wouldn’t need to spend much time in Israel/Palestine as “all the Palestinian kids just want to get educated and make lots of money”. Indeed they may do, which could explain why they are the most educated group in the Arab world. But as Brooks soon found out with the eruption of the Intifadeh that year, Palestinians also worry about other things.

So why does Brooks think such issues are harder to debate in Australia than Israel? 

Look, I get this. Antisemitism is real and rising. I see defamation of Israel all the time, especially in Europe. But that’s not what this is. This is a discussion from a place of love, from wanting Israel to survive … There’s more than one way to love Israel.

Indeed, patriotism need not be the final refuge of the scoundrel. ​

(First published in Crikey on 8 June 2018)

TERRORISM: Terrorism legislation highlighted as Harun Causevic released on bail

During the pre-dawn of April 18, 2015, police raided a number of homes in south-western Melbourne. To say the raids were a media circus would be an understatement. Charges were laid against five young men pursuant to anti-terror laws. The men were accused of plotting to attack police officers as well as citizens gathering to commemorate ANZAC Day. The plot was allegedly inspired by remarks by leaders of Islamic State for young Western men to randomly kill civilians.

In Britain, charges have been laid against two adolescents who have since pleaded guilty to involvement in the thwarted Melbourne attack.

Local media had a field day circus after being fed by police information and allegations against the arrested men. The nerves of Australians were on edge over attacks on the larger-than-usual turnout to the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign. Pundits, terrorism "experts" and politicians appeared in newspapers and on TV screens confirming the narrative of fear. Some months later, Prime Minister Tony Abbott even declared to delegates at a summit on countering violent extremism that "as far as the Daesh death cult is concerned, they're coming after us".

In this environment of hysteria, it would have been a sacrilege to suggest that one of accused, 18-year-old Harun Causevic, perhaps wasn't the best candidate for placement in a maximum security isolation unit. A young man with no criminal record might be spending 23 hours each day in the company of hardened criminals? Still, in tabloid terror terms, the man is already guilty as charged. Human rights aren't an issue.

But now it seems the major terrorism charges against Causevic have been dropped. Causevic wasn't part of Tony Abbott's "death cult" after all. At worst, he was a young man in possession of knives and other weapons. Causevic is now out on bail.

It is easy to blame the police for pursuing these matters. But we must remember police are under enormous pressure to protect us from enemies whom they – and we – barely understand. To think that terrorism experts are still arguing over whether the actions of Man Monis constituted terrorism.

Police are expected to use an arsenal of vague, often poorly drafted and draconian laws repeatedly reinforced over more than a decade and which represent a massive departure from the criminal justice system. And if that isn't enough, the Abbott government is hoping to give them even more powers.

Following Causevic's release on bail, Federal and Victoria Police stated they could legitimately take "overt" action if they had reasonable grounds to suspect someone was planning a terror attack. Defence lawyer Rob Stary sought an apology and an ex gratia payment for his client, claiming there was no real evidence against Causevic. Victorian Police Commissioner Graham Ashton refused to apologise on the basis that "no one acted in bad faith here … With the nature of terrorism offences it is inevitable you will see these types of cases occur."

So police will frequently prosecute terror cases where the evidence is so minor that charges will have to be withdrawn. Meanwhile a young man with no criminal record will remain in the worst form of custody, arrested and then released following a media circus. There are likely to be more young men in Causevic's situation, men whom the community will find guilty until proven guiltier.

The powers given to police and intelligence agents have been abused. In the 2003 case of Izhar Ul-Haque, a 21-year-old medical student, the trial judge described the conduct of ASIO agents as "grossly improper" and "reminiscent of Kafka". The agents were found to have "committed the criminal offences of false imprisonment and kidnapping at common law". The charges against eventually dropped.

Repeatedly reinforced vague laws exist because we have been convinced that death by terrorism is somehow more evil and nasty than death by murder or dying in a road accident with a drunken or stoned driver. Women dying at the hands of their partners weren't deserving of the same protection before their death as potential victims of death by death cult.

Further, the way we define terrorism says a lot about how we view ourselves as a nation. Harun Causevic is of Bosnian heritage. He is European. He is white. Imagine if he had driven up to police carrying not a black flag with white Arabic writing. Imagine if it was a flag of the Australian Defence League or some other white extremist organisation whose members are known to bring weapons to Reclaim Australia rallies and who carry out violent attacks on women. Would he have subjected to a dawn raid? Would he have spent four months in the company of some of the most dangerous men in Victoria?

Before 9/11, our police and intelligence services already had an arsenal of laws to help them keep us safe. Even if it could be argued that the hyper-legislation against terrorism was necessary, imagine how difficult it must be for agencies to do their job properly when under pressure from incompetent poll-driven governments act on the basest (often sectarian) instincts.'

(Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 2 September 2015,)

REFLECTION: Pigeon-holes weren't made for housing humans

In June 1998, I was travelling west through the outer suburbs of Sao Paolo, South America's largest city. On one side of the highway, I saw the guards and high fences of the upper-class sector of Alphaville. On the other side, a huge valley of makeshift houses, yet another favela (shanty town) that housed perhaps 10 times as many Brazilians than its more exclusive neighbouring estate. My hosts told me the residents of the shanty town proudly named their district "Alphavela".

Some days earlier, my hosts collected me from the airport. I told them they would recognise me as being the dark-skinned one wearing an Akubra hat. Lucky for them, I walked through the airport's immigration section wearing the Akubra. My mixed Indian, Turkish and Mongolian ancestry gave me skin fairer than most citizens of the largest nation on the world's largest Catholic continent.

No Reformation took place in Latin America, and the only heathens American evangelists must contend with are those who direct their prayers to the Virgin Mary, often portrayed in devotional statuettes as a black woman. We don't often associate the dark skin, exotic culture and Third World poverty of Alphavella with Catholicism. Few Australian Catholics would recognise the popular beliefs and practices of their Latin American co-religionists.

The Catholic Church has had a major role in the political upheavals of Latin American and other Third World nations. Occasionally, this has involved being on the same side as those engaged in political violence. Yet it has always been taken for granted that the Church, or at least some officials, have supported the cause, not the violence. And it is also taken for granted that Catholics are not a monolith.

Other religious congregations haven't benefited from such understanding. Writing in The Australian on May 21, former Hawke government minister Barry Cohen argued that those who criticise the world's only Jewish state for its breaches of international law without criticising other states are in effect engaging in anti-Semitism.

He cites The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman who argues:

Criticising Israel is not anti-Semitic and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction, out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East, is anti-Semitic and not saying so is dishonest.

There's no doubt that support for Israel is strong in diaspora Jewish communities, especially in Australia whose Jewish community has the largest proportion of Holocaust survivors outside Israel. Yet support for Israel doesn't necessarily mean all Jews support each action of Israel.

There is only one Jewish state. There are more than 57 states that are members of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, spread over four continents. It describes itself as the "second-largest inter-governmental organisation after the United Nations".

We don't ask ordinary Australian Jews to condemn or justify or even hold a position on each statement or action of an Israeli politician or a West Bank Jewish settler. So what kind of leap of irrationality leads even intelligent people to insist a second-generation Australian with some tenuous ancestral or cultural link to Islam to have a public position on, say, the treatment of Christians in Saudi Arabia?

This doesn't just happen in tabloids. A prominent religious broadcaster once lectured me about how "mainstream Australia" expected Muslims to be "screaming the roof down about the treatment of the Filipino Catholics in Saudi Arabia". He said that such a Muslim response "would represent a significant breakthrough for community relations in this country", and challenged me to write an op-ed piece in The Sydney Morning Herald about it.

Naturally, the SMH editors are at my beck and call, ready to publish anything I send them. But more importantly, why must I be held accountable for what happens in Saudi Arabia? After all, I'm not a Saudi. I don't have Saudi ancestry. I've never been to Saudi Arabia. I don't speak Arabic and don't have an Arabic-speaking background. I don't believe in (and indeed frequently criticise) Saudi-style wahhabi theology. I don't represent a Muslim religious body enjoying the benefits of Saudi generosity.

And must my concern for minority rights be solely motivated by good community relations? What if "screaming the roof down" did more harm than good for the minorities involved? I may win brownie points with some religious broadcasters who will go on interviewing nasty Muslim-phobes on their show regardless of what I say (funny how fostering community relations is always a one-way street).

But would the Saudi king stop and say, "Wow, someone with a Muslim-sounding name in Australia wrote something critical of how we treat minorities. Let's build a cathedral in Riyadh."

And would human-rights groups in these countries working on these issues necessarily regard my public outburst as counterproductive? Would I just be making their life harder?

All of us have layers of identity religion (frequently ethno-religion), language, ethnicity, profession or football team. Just because I support the Bulldogs doesn't mean I must publicly condemn hooligan Bulldog supporters. And who am I to assume Raiders' supporters all opposed WorkChoices?

Pigeon-holes weren't made to place humans in.

(First published in the Canberra Times on 11 June 2008)

OPINION: Why so many counter-terrorism laws if no one can define terrorism?

 

What exactly is terrorism? What makes a person a terrorist? Is it sufficient that the perpetrator be a Muslim or non-white? Should an Anglo-Australian who stockpiles weapons in his house for a far-right organisation be treated as a terrorist? What about a white American who attacks black churches and massacres their congregants?

Or does the existence of terrorism depend on the victims' identities? In an editorial last month, The Australian newspaper made this extraordinary claim: 

Apart from innocent civilians and police slain in attacks such as that in London, most victims of Islamist extremism's war on modernity are the Yazidi, Christian and other minorities who've endured harrowing persecution by Islamic State on the frontlines in the Middle East. 

What is it about these minorities? Is it just their religion – Yazidi or Christian?

So what do we make of the hundreds of thousands of Kurdish victims, most of whom are Muslim? What about Shi'ite, Sunni and Alawi Muslims in Syria? What about the Sunni and Shi'ite victims of Islamic State in Iraq? Moving away from the Middle East, what was the background of the 70-plus devotees killed during an IS strike against the shrine of Qalandar Lal Shahbaz in southern Pakistan? Is it only terror when the victims are "our" people?

In mainstream media and political discourse, terrorism is increasingly a phenomenon in which the perpetrator is Muslim and the victim isn't. The reality is less simple. 

In the not too distant past, Nelson Mandela was classed as a terrorist in the United States. He remained on the US terrorism watch list until 2008. 

The life of late Northern Irish polit-cian Martin McGuiness was celebrated at his funeral last week. During his years in the IRA, he wasn't exactly averse to using violence to achieve republican goals.

Many punters aren't aware of the fact that there is no internationally accepted definition of "terrorism". For this reason, the relevant legislation of common-law nations like Britain, Canada and Australia does not define "terrorism". Instead, it speaks of a "terrorist act". Our law doesn't follow South African legislation, which exempts acts "waged by peoples ... in furtherance of their legitimate right to national liberation". Our definition instead follows English legislation, which effectively creates a religion-based causal link. If a religious motive is found, an act can fall within the boundaries of counter-terrorism legislation when, in the absence of such a motive, it might not.

University of NSW legal scholar Keiran Hardy argues that the nexus between religion in general (and Islam in particular) and terrorist acts is likely to remain. This will be the case not because of any necessary link between Islamic traditions and terrorism but because many terrorist groups find it convenient to invoke the language of Islam. Given that terrorist groups make up a tiny population of the world's Muslim population, it means terrorist motives are most commonly pinned on the violent act of someone of Muslim heritage or background. It also gives rise to claims that Muslim theology and culture is necessarily the source of all terrorist violence.

The best evidence for the existence of the relevant motive naturally comes from the perpetrator. Again, this is more easily said than done, especially if the perpetrator was killed before he could be interrogated.

What if the perpetrator was, like the killer who terrified Westminster in London last week, someone with a long criminal history who had a Christian background for most of his life? We know him as Khalid Masood but he grew up as Adrian Elms, and then Adrian Ajao, the son of a white mother and an Afro-Caribbean father.

When he was Masood, he dealt in drugs and slashed a man across the face and even stabbed a man in the nose. As one Christian blogger noted: 

Adrian Elms was a violent Christian before he became Muslim terrorist Khalid Masood ... Islam didn't make him an evil bastard; he was already a nasty piece of work.

But was Elms/Masood an actual terrorist? Place yourself in the shoes of the judicial officer carrying out an inquest addressing this and other questions. Dead men cannot be put on trial. Apart from a statement from Islamic State, which is known to take responsibility for just about anything and everything, what do you have? Unlike with the July 7 bombers, there is no video showing a jihadist motive.

Could Masood's criminal record of drug-related and violent offences be a predictor of ideologically or politically or religiously inspired violence? What about his violence towards his estranged Muslim wife? We know his former employer saw no hint of extremism in Masood other than a strong reaction to a white supremacist group establishing itself in the local area.

Perhaps as a judicial officer, you might study the inquest into the Martin Place siege, carried out by Man Monis, who was also shot during a police raid. The inquest called on a number of terrorism experts, local and from the US. None could reach consensus on whether Monis's actions could be described as constituting terrorism.

Perhaps the real reason there is no consensus on what precisely constitutes "terrorism", "terrorist" or even "terrorist act" is because, ultimately, terrorism is a political phenomenon. How often do we hear the sentence "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter"? The vague nature of terrorism hasn't stopped the Commonwealth from introducing more than 65 separate pieces of counter-terror legislation. Effectively, what we now have is a parallel criminal legal system that criminalises not only terrorist acts but a host of innocuous activities and alliances, which, in our conventional criminal law, would likely not be deemed offences at all.

So what is terrorism? Something that causes people to feel terrorised? Thankfully, most of us won't need to conduct an inquest on the issue.

(Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at Deakin University's Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 31 March 2017)

BOOKS: How a dying Raj fended off Japanese blows

 

THIS year marks the 60th anniversary of India’s partition and the emergence of two independent South Asian states.

It has occasioned much fanfare in India and Pakistan and among diaspora communities across the world.

In the literary world, it has led to a host of historical and biographical works concerning the main events and players from the last days of the British Raj and the independence movement.

Indians of all creeds paid a heavy price in property and lives to prop up the Raj. The independence struggle also cost many lives. Often forgotten are the sacrifices Indians made to defend British colonial possessions in Southeast Asia against Japanese invaders in World War II.

Australian writer Neelam Maharaj has used her debut novel to resurrect the stories of Indian soldiers and their families who fought the Japanese in Malaya and Singapore. Maharaj is familiar with the topic, given that her father fought in the British army and was incarcerated by the Japanese in the notorious Changi prisoner-of-war camp.

Surviving Heroes is based on real-life stories of families directly affected by the war. The story is woven around the lives of Ramesh and Nirmala Kapur. Ramesh is an officer in the British army, the son of a brilliant academic from Lahore. Ramesh is a Hindu, but his parents encourage him to befriend people of all faiths. His closest childhood friend, who also joined the army and fought with Ramesh in Singapore, is a Muslim named Ehsan.

Like many Indian men of his time, Ramesh enters an arranged marriage. Nirmala, a home economics student in her late teens, hails from a middle-class Hindu family from Delhi. Both inherit their families’ staunch patriotism and a strong desire to rid their nation of foreignoccupation.

Ramesh and his fellow Indian soldiers are encouraged by Mahatma Gandhi to join the British war effort. Despite his natural affinity to fellow Asians, Gandhi feared the Japanese would be much worse as colonisers than the British. Gandhi also believed Indians would be rewarded for their war sacrifices with independence. Yet Indian troops were subjected to racial discrimination and humiliation by their British commanders. The Japanese knew this, and they sponsored the highly respected Indian National Congress dissident Subhash Chandra Bose to raise the Indian National Army from among Indian PoWs.

Of course, patriotism combined with war can make scoundrels of even the most loyal. Gandhi strictly forbade Indians from using violence to fight the British. Hence, Indian PoWs joining the INA to fight the British with Japanese help knew they would be regarded as traitors to Gandhi’s non-violent struggle. At the same time, the PoWs witnessed at first hand Japanese brutality against British, Chinese and Malay soldiers, and civilians slaughtered in cold blood. For Ramesh and his colleagues, joining the victors against the enemy at home must have been tempting. At the very least, it would have been seen as the fastest route to joining their loved ones back home.

Some of Ramesh’s closest friends joined the INA’s march through Burma. But when the tide turned, the army was abandoned by fleeing Japanese forces and charged with treason by the British. Its leader, Bose, died mysteriously in a plane crash during the dying days of the war.

Maharaj’s father, on whom the character of Ramesh Kapur is presumably based, also served in Singapore and Malaya but, while a prisoner in Changi, resisted attempts by the Japanese to forcibly enlist him in the INA.

The Kapur family’s secular vision of Indian independence was dashed soon after Ramesh and Nirmala Kapur were reunited. Maharaj’s portrait of the religious riots on both sides of the partition fence is, for me, the most disturbing part of the book. Like the Kapurs, my grandfather was forced to flee his beloved ancestral home in Delhi.

Maharaj’s characters powerfully touch the partition nerve. For them, even the Japanese invaders of Singapore who slaughtered Chinese and other civilians without remorse weren’t as brutal as India’s sectarian killers. The false sectarian patriotism of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh murderers meant that Indian independence became little more than a partition of scoundrels.

Surviving Heroes is a powerful work: the story it contains deserves to be told and retold well after the 60th anniversary celebrations of India and Pakistan come to an end.

(First published in The Australian on 29 December 2007. Surviving Heroes by Neelam Maharaj, Bystander Press, 283pp )

RELIGION: Christmas and Eid thoughts among the cane toads

A decade of primary and secondary education at an evangelical Anglican school was enough to get me addicted to church music. Each Christmas, I try to join friends at Midnight Mass at Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral. It is an extraordinary experience, with both organs playing siultaneously as the choir roams among the congregation in procession singing carols.

This year, I'm joining my partner and her family for Christmas on the Sunshine Coast. It will be my first Christmas in the land of the cane toad. It will also roughly coincide with Eid al-Adha, the most important feast of the Muslim calendar coinciding with the annual pilgrimage known as the Haj.

This year hasn't exactly been a bumper year for relations between the nominally Christian and Muslim sections of the planet. Muslims accuse Christians of taking hypocritical stands in the Middle East, and Christians accuse Muslims of behaving like drama queens in response to a dozen Danish cartoons and one papal speech.

Yet a recent report by a United Nations-sponsored High-Level Group of the Alliance of Civilisations has found that the apparently deplorable state of relations between Christians and Muslims has more to do with politics than theology.

And even the most cursory analysis of the message of Christmas and Eid will reinforce this simple point.

According to Islamic tradition, Abraham had two wives. He first married Sarah, who offered her Egyptian servant named Hajira (Hagar) to Abraham (Islamic tradition says Hagar was from royal stock and became Abraham's second wife). They had a son named Ismail (Ishmael). Eventually Sarah did have a son, despite her advanced years. The Koran describes this as a miraculous process, evidence of God's power to bend His own laws of nature to achieve His purpose.

Abraham's second son was Ishaq (Isaac). Sarah isn't exactly fond of Hagar. Poor Abraham feels Sarah's wrath and takes Hagar and the baby Ishmael into a remote desert wilderness named Bakkah.

Like all mothers, Hagar's primary concern is the survival of her toddler. But where will she find water in this wilderness?

That search for water is what provides the Muslim pilgrimage rituals with much of their meaning. Hagar heads for a hill, finds nothing and so heads in the opposite direction to another hill. She again finds nothing. In desperation, she runs back and forth seven times before setting eyes on her young boy kicking the dirt to uncover a rich spring.

Quickly she builds a makeshift well. Within a short period, the well attracts the attention of other travellers.

Hagar watches her son become a grown man, and receives a visit from Abraham again. The Koran says God orders Abraham and Ishmael to build a temple - a simple cubic structure known as the Kaaba. The temple was a symbol of God's throne on Earth, with humans circling it in the manner angels were believed to circle the actual throne in the heavens.

The valley of Bakkah eventually became known as Mecca . The Kaaba (an Arabic word which means cube) is traditionally draped in a black embroidered cloth. The well kicked to the surface by the infant Ishmael is known as the well of Zam Zam.

Muslims on the pilgrimage also run seven times between the two hills, as well as circling the Kaaba and drinking from the well of Zam Zam. Hagar and Mary were both Middle Eastern women.

The Koran also mentions the Christmas story in some detail in a chapter named in honour of Mary. The chapter begins with John the Baptist (named Yahiya in classical Arabic), born to Zachariah, with both father and son revered as prophets.

Mary is introduced as a chaste woman withdrawing from her family "to a place in the East", locking herself away from the rest of society. A man mysteriously appears in her private chamber. The following dialogue ensues:

MARY: I seek refuge from thee to God Most Gracious: come not near if thou dost fear God.

MAN: Nay, I am only a messenger from the Lord, to announce to thee the gift of a holy son.

MARY: How shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me, and I am not unchaste?

MAN: So it will be: Thy Lord saith: “that is easy for Me: and We wish to appoint him as a sign unto men and as a Mercy from Us”. It is a matter so decreed.

The man was in fact an angel. Christ was conceived miraculously. Following birth, Mary took her son back to her family. Her father was a respected rabbi and Mary was always known for her modesty and chastity. Further Mary had made a vow not to speak to any man for a fixed period of time.

When she was first publicly accused of sexual impropriety, she pointed to the baby Jesus. The Koran thus describes the first miracle of Christ - his speaking from the cradle in defence of his mother. His exact words were:

I am indeed a servant of God: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet. And he hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me prayer and charity as long as I live. He hath made me kind to my mother, and not overbearing or miserable. So peace is on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised up to life again!

I'm not sure if Joseph or the Three Wise Men appear in the Koranic account. But a number of Jesus' miracles are mentioned. These include healing lepers and restoring life to the dead. Also mentioned is Christ's ascension. The sayings of Prophet Mohammed mention Christ's return to earth to establish the kingdom of God toward the end of time.

Both Mary and Hagar were women ostracised by and from family and community. Both were humiliated by social mores that were essentially inimical to the far greater purpose their creator had chosen for them to play. In the end, God provided the means for each of these women to overcome family and social stigma. Hagar through her son's miraculous discovery of a well and Mary through her son's miraculous defence from the cradle.

Both Christmas and Eid stories show how God doesn't judge his creatures by the standards they use to judge each other: even if these same standards are applied in the name of divine religion.

Genuinely religious people, on the other hand, recognise that their creator's mercy is for every person. God sees the hearts of all, whether they be accepted or rejected by the society of men.

Muslims and Christians have a joint responsibility to ensure this message of hope and mercy is not lost. The message should remind us of our shared Abrahamic spiritual roots. Indeed, the things that unite us are far greater in number and importance than those which divide us.

(First published in the Canberra Times on 23 December 2006)

BOOKS: My first textbook of legal practice

HAVING SPENT SIX YEARS AT LAW SCHOOL and then six months of torture at the College of Law, I thought I knew everything there was to know about law and legal practice. Then I started my first job as a solicitor in a general practice at Blacktown. It was sink or swim all the way. I was nervous. I sought help. I rang my uncle (also a solicitor).

After calming me down, my uncle gave me one piece of invaluable advice. He said, 

If a new client comes in and asks you about an area of law you know peanuts about, always read up on it in the Law Handbook.

To this day, his advice rings true. The Redfern Legal Centre’s Law Handbook is without a doubt the best cure to the jitters experienced by graduate solicitors. In fact, even the most experienced practitioner will find it useful. And with the publication of the 6th Edition, the Handbook has become even better. And it is quite current as well, with the law stated as at May 1997.

The new edition appears to be better arranged than previous editions. It is a masterpiece of plain English law, and covers just about every aspect of law as it affects the common person. Scattered throughout the text are summaries of decided cases, which are presented not as legal precedents but more as practical examples of how the law applies in real life. The arrangement of the chapters makes it extremely user friendly.

At the end of each chapter is a useful guide on helpful resources (including internet sites for surfers), as well as a comprehensive list of names and addresses of government departments and other agencies related to the area covered. This makes the book even more useful for a practitioner, combining as it does, a reference, a bibliography and an address and phone directory.

Given that the book is so useful to lawyers, how much more useful would it be to the average non-lawyer? And can you imagine its value if it were translated into common community languages such as Arabic or Vietnamese? A very expensive project, I admit. But certainly one for governments and ethnic community organisations to consider especially in these times of legal aid cutbacks and increasing complexity in the law.

But don’t just take my word for it. Go out and buy one, and see for yourself. With over 75 contributors and at only $60, it’s well worth the investment.

(Published in the NSW Law Society Journal, November 1997)

BOOKS: Trying to bind the gap

In a world of clichés, history is always written by (or at least for) the victorious. But how does one write the history of a time when no clear victor exists, when each side finds multiple internal enemies equally as dangerous as (if not more than) their direct opponent?

The Mediterranean world of the 16th century was one such era. The Catholic Church, still smarting from the loss of Jerusalem four centuries earlier, was in a triumphant mood after removing the last vestige of Muslim rule (and, with it, a glorious civilisation jointly built by Jews and Muslims) from the Iberian peninsula in 1492.

Yet the Catholic conquest of the Muslim kingdom of Granada represented little more than modest Christian compensation for perhaps the bigger disaster, the fall of Constantinople, perhaps Christendom's greatest city, to the Ottoman Turks 39 years earlier.

For each side, one step forward against the other also involved numerous steps back, usually caused more by infighting. In the case of Rome, a rebellious German monk named Martin Luther was poised to lead a theological revolt that would usher in the reformation and centuries of sectarian bloodshed.

Meanwhile, the Sunni Ottoman empire had locked horns with the Shia Persian empire. The Ottomans also had trouble controlling their frontier lands or seizing other Muslim territory in the African continent.

In her latest book, Princeton University history professor Natalie Zemon Davis takes us on a journey into this confused and confusing era, exploring the life of one man who experienced the Catholic and Muslim worlds of his time. The subject of her study is an elusive figure known as al-Hassan bin Muhammad al-Wazzan to Muslims and various names (John Leo, Leo Africanus, Giovanni Leone and Yuhanna Asad) in Italy.

Wazzan was born in Granada during the last days of this Spanish Muslim state. Like many aristocratic Granadan Muslims (and Jews) his family was forced to seek asylum in Fez. Wazzan studied fiqh (classical Islamic sacred law and jurisprudence), then a prerequisite for the ambitious seeking a senior role in the public service of a Muslim ruler. He was fluent in Arabic and Berber and knew a smattering of Spanish and Hebrew.

Wazzan was appointed as roaming ambassador to the sultan of Fez in Morocco, travelling widely across North Africa, the Middle East and Anatolia. He claimed to have travelled to sub-Saharan Africa, including the famous African centre of Islamic scholarship Timbuktu. After extensive comparison of Wazzan's account to other contemporary and later accounts of these regions, Davis concludes Wazzan may have embellished his travel account somewhat.

Much of Davis's book consists of speculations on Wazzan's life, the people he met and those he influenced and was influenced by, all gleaned from a careful reading of his writings and commentary as well as external sources. Lay readers will find it almost impossible to reject Davis's conclusions, such is the breadth of her research (more than 100 pages of notes and 30 pages of works references).

By 1518, Wazzan was in his early 30s and had travelled across much of the Muslim world when his life took a change of direction. He was aboard a ship travelling from Cairo to Morocco when it was seized by pirates led by the brother of a Spanish bishop serving in Rome. The pirates' leader recognised Wazzan's worth and decided to present the diplomat and scholar to the Pope in return for forgiveness of accumulated sins.

Davis introduces her work by noting that Wazzan's arrival in Rome was regarded by chroniclers of the time as less significant than the arrival four years earlier of a white elephant from India, a gift to the Pope from King Manuel I of Portugal. Wazzan soon realised his importance could be recognised if he agreed to go through a baptism ceremony. Davis believes (I think rightly) that Wazzan's conversion, which took place 15 months after his arrival in Rome, was an act of taqiyya, a sacred pretence of leaving Islam to avoid persecution.

That single act of religious deception enabled Wazzan the freedom to continue his scholarly pursuits and work with other (usually non-Catholic) scholars.

Wazzan produced several works, including a text on African geography, which he wrote in Italian. Wazzan's expertise in the theology and politics of the Muslim world were also sought by military strategists in the Vatican who saw him as useful in understanding their Muslim foes.

Perhaps of most interest to readers concerned with supposed clashes of civilisations would be Davis's sixth chapter, which addresses Wazzan's "tension within himself" over his relation to his ancestral and (allegedly) adopted faiths. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Wazzan "was even-handed when it came to the religions of peoples of the book", a lack of bias that some of his "Christian translators found intolerable".

After nine years in Italy and completing numerous scholarly works, including a work on Islamic sacred law and a Hebrew-Latin-Arabic dictionary, Wazzan found himself amid the carnage that accompanied the sacking of Rome in 1527 by soldiers of Charles V. He decided to return to North Africa, settling in cosmopolitan Tunis. Not much is known of his life after that.

Davis's work is an excellent antidote to the flood of allegedly conservative polemics in Western book markets, works that treat conflict between the nominally Muslim and Christian worlds as virtually a foregone conclusion. Having seen both Christian and Muslim camps, Wazzan would have understood the clash to exist more in the imaginations of the antagonists.

(First published in The Australian on May 5, 2007. Trickster Travels: In Search of Leo Africanus, a Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds By Natalie Zemon Davis, Faber & Faber)