OPINION: Wizardry required to govern Oz

 

Tony Abbott has been handed a resounding victory but he is likely to inherit major problems in the Senate

Back in the 1980s, when I was an innocent Sydney teenager, politics was so much simpler and hence so much more boring. We had Labor and we had the Liberal/National Coalition. Labor behaved as Labor should, while the Coalition were as conservative as expected. There was also a third force, called the Australian Democrats, who were boring as all buggery and whose sole responsibility was to "keep the bastards honest" in the Senate. Exactly how this was done went right over my young head.

These days, Labor is behaving like the Coalition while the Coalition's rhetoric sometimes makes me wonder whether they are channelling Genghis Khan. Instead of the Democrats, we have the Greens and a host of independents who often hold the balance of power in the Senate and can make governing almost impossible.

The last six years has seen Australia's Labor Government at war with itself. In 2010, Australians went to the polls, facing an ostensible choice of Labor's Julia Gillard and the Coalition's Tony Abbott. They got a hung Parliament. A handful of independents went with Julia Gillard to form a weak Government.

But over the weekend, the nation decided they wanted a break from unstable government hamstrung by fringe interests spoiling the law-making process. Tony Abbott was handed a decisive victory. Kevin Rudd, who stabbed Julia Gillard in the back after she stabbed him in the back, just managed to hold his seat.

Abbott ran a disciplined campaign with few gaffes. Actually, that isn't quite true. There were some absolute doozies from the Abbott camp. On one occasion he praised Western Sydney candidate Fiona Scott for her sex appeal. Scott went on to tell the ABCTV current affairs show Four Corners: 

[Asylum seekers are] a hot topic here because our traffic is overcrowded. 

When asked to clarify, she replied: 

Go sit on the M4 [freeway], people see 50,000 people come in by boat - that's more than twice the population of [western Sydney suburb] Glenmore Park.

And I thought all the traffic at Bondi beach was the terrible Kiwi drivers.

Scott comfortably won her seat. Tony Abbott has a huge majority in the House of Representatives. He can easily form a government but he has no control over the Senate. Few governments ever have had a Senate majority, but at least they've known who they must negotiate with. But this time around, the Senate looks likely to have an undisciplined unrepresentative selection of minor and single-interest parties holding the balance of power.

In NSW, a mega-libertarian bunch calling themselves the Liberal Democrats confused a swag of Liberal voters. Voters had to complete a Senate ballot paper big enough to wrap around like a sari. The Liberal Democrats were fortunate enough to be placed first on the ballot paper. Their incoming Senator David Leyonhjelm, a former veterinarian, told Fairfax Media, 

Looks like I'm going to be the senator for the donkeys.

Leyonhjelm supports a virtual flat income tax, freedom to carry concealed weapons, an end to bicycle helmets and rolling back the "nanny state".

The madness doesn't end there. In May 2012, billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer approached the Coalition to run as a candidate in the seat of then ALP Treasurer Wayne Swan. Mr Swan's response was: 

The Liberal Party, particularly in my home state, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mr Palmer. 

Palmer was a major donor to the Coalition.

When he fell out with the Coalition and formed the Palmer United Party (PUP), the eccentricities only multiplied. In China Palmer is building a massive ship, the Titanic II, which will retrace the ill-fated voyage of its predecessor. He is also developing his own Jurassic Park on the Sunshine Coast which will contain 160 giant dinosaurs, each of which can move and make some loud noise.

After the election, Palmer and his party will make some serious noise in Canberra. His private jet, painted with PUP colours, has made some noise in the sky. He is still in with a chance to win his Queensland Lower House seat, and there will be at least two PUP senators as well. One of them is rugby league legend Glenn Lazarus, nicknamed "The Brick With Eyes". Sounds like a formidable senate negotiator.

My favourite? The Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party (AMEP) in Victoria who look set to pick up a Senate spot after achieving a whopping 0.52 per cent of the primary vote. Candidate Ricky Muir is just your ordinary Aussie bloke who doesn't mind uploading videos on YouTube of him throwing kangaroo poo at his brother. Muir, who has had a long stint in politics with his 3-month AMEP membership, told ABC: 

If you haven't spent much time in the bush, you go out there and you'll discover that there is poo everywhere.

I guess they don't call Canberra the bush capital for nothing.

Tony Abbott is going to have a hell of a time negotiating with the motley crew likely to inhabit the Senate.

(Irfan Yusuf was a Liberal candidate in the 2001 elections. Politically he prefers to be left right out. First published in the NZ Herald on 11 September 2013)

OPINION: Even cynics cannot deny bravery

Claims among dubious Pakistanis that Malala Yusufzai is now Western puppet ignore her ongoing heroism.

Malala Yusufzai hails from the Swat Valley, a region known as the Switzerland of Pakistan and once a popular destination for middle class Pakistani holiday makers and international tourists. Swat is home to ethnically Pushtun people known for their conservative cultural and religious mores but also for their hospitality. Washington Post correspondent Pamela Constable notes in her book Playing With Fire: Pakistan at War with Itself that ambitious Swati Pushtuns 

... fled to construction jobs in the Middle East; those who stayed behind were described as dreamy and tolerant.

Malala (also pronounced Malalai) is a common name for girls in these parts. It was the name of a famous heroine who spent her wedding day on the battlefield tending to the wounded men of her tribe who fought the British forces at the Battle of Maiwind in July 1880. With no one left to raise the flag, she grabbed it and sang a few couplets of freedom before being struck down by British troops. Spurred on by her bravery, the men made a final assault and defeated the British foe.

That heroic Malala rated no mention in British war chronicles, but she became a heroine for her people. Now things have gone into reverse. Hardly a year has passed since a modern Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman who boarded her school bus. Far from being silent about her, the British press can't seem to get enough of Malala. She now lives in the relative safety of Birmingham where she attends an exclusive school and has even been invited for tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Back home, there has also been a fair amount of adulation, though mixed with strong feelings of resentment toward her Western admirers if not ambivalence toward Malala. Some Pakistanis claim the awards and accolades she has received represent a betrayal of innocent people killed by American drone attacks which have claimed the lives of more than 1000 Pakistani civilians. The West chooses to ignore (and hence implicitly applaud) these deaths as part of the so-called war on terror. Pakistanis read Western newspapers and websites, and can see Malala giving Western rightwing cultural warriors and leftwing do-gooders a new symbol with which to belittle Pakistan.

Prominent Western voices have in years past used a similar fetish to "rescue" non-white Muslim women. In her 2005 scholarly essay The war on terror and the "rescue" of Muslim women, Melbourne academic Dr Shakira Hussein mentions how in the lead-up to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Laura Bush and Cherie Blair (the respective wives of then US President and the British Prime Minister) both used the suffering of Afghan women to justify war. The United States and its allies initially removed the Taliban from power but at the same time allowed its own tribal Northern Alliance allies in Afghanistan to carry out similar, if not identical, forms of gendered oppression. To avenge the deaths of 9/11 victims, a greater number of Afghan victims (including women) were killed.

Given Western ambivalence toward the plight of many Afghans and Pakistanis at the hands of formerly Western backed terrorists and dictators, it's natural they might be a little suspicious of a situation where a young Pakistani girl is plucked out of obscurity by the West. In their eyes, she isn't the first Pakistani to be shot in the head by terrorists, and no matter how much one hates to say this, she probably won't be the last. But now she and her family live in relative safety. Hundreds of other Taliban victims and their families aren't so lucky. Their poverty-stricken voices aren't heard by the over-nourished West, nor are they nominated for international awards. God knows how they'd be treated if in desperation they boarded a rickety boat and headed for Australia.

But one can't help detect a certain conspiratorial tone from some Pakistani cynics. As if a 16-year-old is part of a Western plot to somehow destabilise Pakistan and ruin its image. It takes some guts for a girl who has survived being shot in the head to then visit the White House and tell the world's most powerful man to stop bombing her country. Yet this is what Malala Yusufzai intends to do. It is a task even Pakistan's leaders have failed to take up. Indeed for every finger pointed at Malala, surely three must point right back at Pakistan. Middle class Pakistani critics who emulate Western culture but resent a poor Pushtun girl being congratulated for her bravery should remember that.

As always, such conspiracies are egged on by Pakistan's neighbours. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper recently published a column by Nadeem Paracha which claimed Malala's real name was Jane, that she was the daughter of Hungarian Christian missionaries and that she was left with a Pakistani couple as a gift after they secretly converted to Christianity. The article was picked up as serious news by the allegedly serious Iranian Press TV news agency. It seems some in Iran's official media circles don't recognise Pakistani satire when they see it.

So what is the meaning of Malala? She is a symbol of Pakistani girls just seeking their God-given right to an education. The Prophet Muhammad insisted women and men seek knowledge, but God only knows which prophet the Taliban are following. How ironic that by almost snatching away her life, the Taliban have given her life genuine purpose and her nation's women greater stature. No amount of Pakistani or Western hypocrisy will take that away.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer. First published in the NZ Herald on 16 October 2013)

OPINION: Bigots shield behind conservative facade

 

Liberty and xenophobia don't make comfortable bedfellows. In a community consumed by grossly irrational hatred - including racism and sectarianism - economic and political freedom will never flourish.

This simple fact was taken for granted 140 years ago by American anti-slavery activist Wendell Phillips, who spoke the famous words that are now part of political folklore of Western liberal democracies: 

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Even after the abolition of slavery in the United States and much of Western Europe, paranoid xenophobia has reared its ugly head at times.

Seventy years ago, mainstream newspapers in parts of Europe sought to make Europe's small Jewish minority responsible for economic and political woes.

By 1945, Hitler's regime had massacred millions on the basis of ethnic and religious identity.

Today, irrational hatred is again endangering our fragile liberal democracies. The paranoid rants of Osama bin Laden and his ilk against the Crusader West and against Jews and Hindus, have led to horrific atrocities such as Americans saw on September 11 and that Iraqis see every day.

Since September 11, Wendell Phillips' historic sentiments are fast being abandoned by some so-called conservative Americans who pride themselves as being guardians of liberty. Instead of distancing themselves from the sectarian paranoia of al Qaeda, they mimic the hatred and direct it towards anyone they consider to be associated with Islamist terrorists. Two examples in US politics illustrate the growing environment of American xenophobia. At the last congressional elections, the voters of Minnesota sent America's first Muslim to Washington. Criminal defence lawyer Keith Ellison easily beat his Republican opponent, academic Alan Fine.

Minnesota is a Democratic Party stronghold and Fine had little chance of winning. This didn't stop Fine from playing the religion card. Before polling day, he said: 

I'm extremely concerned about Keith Ellison, Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison, Keith Ellison Muhammad ... I'm personally offended, as a Jew, that we have a candidate like this running for Congress.

Ironically, Fine was condemned by his own brother, who defended Ellison. Things didn't end there for Ellison, who made public his wish to place his hand on the Koran at a swearing-in ceremony. A neo-conservative talkback host from Philadelphia posed this offensive question to Ellison on CNN: "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."

Writing on the conservative commentary website Townhall.com, Dick Prager lamented that Ellison would not take his oath of office on the Bible, but "on the bible of Islam, the Koran". According to Prager, this act undermines American civilisation.

Ellison did swear on the Koran , his critics silenced when it was revealed that Ellison borrowed from the Library of Congress the Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States.

Another example concerns Barack Obama, the Democratic Party senator from Chicago who hopes to be the first African-American to occupy the White House. If his allegedly conservative opponents have their way, Obama's mother's matrimonial choices may be used against him. Obama regards himself as a Christian. He shares his Christian name with millions of Muslims.

His father was a Kenyan of Muslim heritage and nominally of the Muslim religion.

Obama's middle name is Hussein, but he rarely uses that name in public. This doesn't stop the journalistic imbeciles at Fox News from repeating the views of far-right magazines claiming that Obama is, in effect, a Muslim posing as a Christian.

The tabloid TV network cited a story from Insight Magazine claiming that for four years Obama was educated at a madrassah terrorist training school in Indonesia, funded by Saudi Arabia and preaching Islamic fundamentalist Wahabi doctrine.

Anyone familiar with Indonesian Islam knows that most Indonesian Muslim religious schools (known as pesantran, not madrassah) are managed by small communities under the auspices of large religious foundations such as Nahdhatul Ulama, who are very hostile to Wahabi doctrine. Few receive funds from the Indonesian Government, let alone the Saudis.

Later, CNN and Associated Press did some digging and discovered that Obama never attended a pesantran. He attended a state-run school in Jakarta, where most students were Muslim - as you would expect in the world's largest Muslim-majority state.

With Keith Ellison, it was a case of having the wrong religion. But with Barack Obama it was a case of having a mother who twice married men of Muslim heritage.

Yet, as the Washington Post says: 

A President with an understanding of Islam and the developing world would be welcomed by those who too often feel misunderstood and slighted by the United States.

Thankfully, the xenophobia of Muslim-haters can only have so much influence in the Land of the Free. However, the fact that sectarian and racist rhetoric continue to be effective political tools is cause for continuing concern. Effective vigilance must remain eternal if liberty is to be protected.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney-based lawyer and writer. First published in the NZ Herald on 28 February 2007)

ANALYSIS: Three things you don’t understand about the Syrian war

For a start, the rebels are not one big happy family all fighting for a common notion of justice.

My goodness. There has been so much internet chatter among Aussie and Western Muslims about the fall of Aleppo to Syrian regime forces aided by Iranian proxies and Russia. But it’s OK. I doubt the chatter will lead to another 0.002% of Australia’s Muslims heading off to join Islamic State.

Instead, the chatter has largely been outpourings of grief at reports of massacres by the regime. Videos from al-Jazeera English and Channel 4 UK are being shared of civilians in Aleppo recording what they believe will be their final messages to the world. One lawyer of Pakistani Muslim heritage living in the US simply posted the words to U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday.

The group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) — which former PM Tony Abbott wanted to ban and which insists only the revival of some sort of caliphate will solve all our problems — is complaining that a photo of a massive march in Istanbul against the Syrian regime was misappropriated by media organisations that failed to mention that HT organised the rally. For goodness sake, guys!

Yet as with any conflict that affects people living thousands of miles away from its epicentre, much of the discussion and debate has lacked nuance. Among the simplistic notions are:

1. Everyone supports the rebels

This might make sense if the rebels were all united. Luckily for the Assad regime, and sadly for its opponents, the rebels are about as united as the Coalition. Based in Istanbul is al-Majlis al-Watani al-Suri (the Syrian National Council) formed in 2011. A year later, it formed a Syrian National Coalition with a host of other opposition groups, but subsequently left in 2004. The council/coalition includes exiled members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, some Kurds (but not many, given what is seen as Turkey’s influence over the council/coalition), Christians and a few other blokes (lawyer Catherine al-Talli resigned in 2002).

On the military front, things haven’t been much better. There is the Free Syrian Army with numerous militias. Here are the Islamist groups we are taught to hate, often with good reason (e.g. ISIS) and those that are being sponsored (albeit indirectly) by the US.

The civilians themselves support and work with one another if for no other reason than to survive. Writing of her visit to the rebel-held part of Aleppo, one CNN journalist, Arwa Damon, speaks of her encounter with “Sama”:

In Aleppo, at a hospital run by the opposition, I met a young woman who goes by the pseudonym Sama. She was living with the hospital ‘staff’ — now made up mostly of young men and a handful of women, many of whom had no prior medical experience.

Among her colleagues at the hospital are people of different backgrounds — moderate, conservative, Islamist, Salafi — and on a regular basis they debate what the future Syria should look like. In some way, the revolution has brought together individuals who otherwise would have never interacted, to trade ideas and ideologies.

‘We even shout at each other,’ Sama tells us with a wry smile. ‘I was with the revolution from the start, the revolution is one line, it’s not Islamist, it’s for all Syrians and Syrians are from all sects.’

2. The battle is one between Shia and Sunni

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough space for me to explain the historical, theological and political factors that divide these two major sects, a division that goes back over 14 centuries. Suffice it to say that the predominant sect that resembles mainstream Shi’ism is the Alawi (also known as Nusayri) sect. Now if you like, you can spend the next few days reading this magnificent work by an Israeli scholar. Suffice it to say that both Syria and Lebanon have a fair few Alawis and that they have traditionally lived impoverished lives, marginalised by both Sunni and Shia.

The current government in Syria is headed by the Assad clan who happen to be Alawi. The majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslim, but there is a very strong Christian presence, including descendants of Armenians who fled the Ottoman purges, with many settling in Aleppo.

3. Syria is all about ISIS/Islam — nothing else

Then again, mainstream Australia sees this whole Syria thing as a war on Islamic State and nothing else, with the aim being to keep our streets safe, even if other people’s streets turn to rubble. Or they see it as a war within, or between, or even on, Islam. Hence the attitude in many (especially almost alt-right) circles is: yes, it’s very sad that civilians are suffering, but we don’t want any Muslim refugees (potentially carrying the IS bug) here, thanks very much.

And let no one say that “real” (i.e. white) Aussies fighting on the side of the Kurds are doing anything wrong. The Kurds are totally blameless, notwithstanding evidence that they too have been committing atrocities. Our white Christian boys wouldn’t be caught dead fighting with terrorists in Syria.

(First published in Crikey on 19 December 2016)

OBITUARY: Iranian revolutionary leaves a complicated legacy

The guy was the wiliest of wily politicians who co-authored the constitution that created the revolutionary government.

It was 1979. I was in year 4 at Ryde East Primary School. Something terrible happened. It was called a “revolution” and was all over the TV news, which, back in those days, I only watched because I was forced to. It took place in Iran, a country next door to my dad’s country and one whose name I always remembered because it sounded so much like my own.

Before this, Iran had been a really good place where everyone liked America, drank alcohol and dressed all modern and stuff. They had a nice handsome-looking king, but they overthrew him in favour of a bearded man named Ruhollah Khomeini with big nasty beady eyes whose colleagues also sported beards and wore black coats with black turbans. These guys rarely smiled, and their young followers used to scream death to America and death to Israel.

I wouldn’t have known it at the time, but one of the nasty black-cloaked dudes standing with Khomeini and whispering advice into his ear was a pistachio farmer named Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Though he died on Sunday, his legacy remains.

Five years later, as my interest in political Islam grew, there weren’t too many religious books available in English. We didn’t have the internet, and media sources were also limited. Yet whether you watched Eyewitness News on Channel Ten or read the three-in-one rice paper weekly consisting of The Guardian, Le Monde and The Washington Post, the news on Iran was never nice. Our local mosques and imams also didn’t have nice things to say about Iran, despite being all cheery about the Afghan jihadists battling the nasty communists. And the only Iranian voices we ever heard were from those who were fleeing the Shah and the Islamic regime.

But any kid interested in political Islam had to learn about the Iranian Revolution. For these early years, the voice of relative sanity among the Iranian regime was Rafsanjani. Whether American diplomats were being taken hostage by Iranian students or American journalists kidnapped for seven years by pro-Iranian militias in Beirut or the same militias engaging in suicide attacks against Israeli troops, Rafsanjani was always being presented as the good guy. Yet the reality was that such violent excesses were unlikely to have happened without Rafsanjani’s acquiescence or at least knowledge.

The guy was the wiliest of wily politicians and co-authored the constitution that created the revolutionary government before holding just about every major leadership position. Among the positions he held was commander in chief of the armed forces during the 1980-88 war with Iraq. Perhaps the best (and funniest) account of the effects of the war on Iranians living near the Iraqi border can be found in Good Muslim Boy, the memoir of Iranian-Iraqi-Australian actor and author Osamah Sami.

Rafsanjani wasn’t terribly liked by ethnic and religious minorities, including those of the same faith. He also is believed to have played a role in having Iranian dissidents in Europe assassinated, and also was involved in an attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. At the same time, while speaker of the Iranian parliament, Rafsanjani oversaw a system in which Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians had seats reserved for them.

After the war, Rafsanjani was elected president. He held that position twice before losing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s very own version of Donald Trump, in 2005. Hopefully for the world, we won’t be seeing an Iranian Trump win the 2017 Iranian presidential elections.

Rafsanjani went onto hold other influential positions. He also founded a university and wrote a 20-volume commentary of the Koran.

How will he be remembered? Iraqis, including devout Iraqi Shia, will recall him as the man who led a war effort against their country even as they resented Saddam Hussein. Lebanese and Israelis will remember Rafsanjani as the man who gave them Hezbollah. Militias claiming to represent Syria’s Sunni majority will remember Rafsanjani as wavering over Iran’s support for the Syrian regime.

And young Iranians? For them, Rafsanjani was a key leader of Iran’s self-styled Islamic Revolution. This remains at heart an ideological revolution even if most people it rules over have never seen the ideological and political struggles of the revolution’s founders. They have never seen the repression of the Shah, but experience on a daily basis arguably lesser repression of the theocrats. These young people never saw Rafsanjani imprisoned and tortured by Iran’s US-backed Shah and his vicious Israeli-trained SAVAK secret police. They are young people who don’t resent Western culture in the manner of Rafsanjani’s generation. And they are unlikely to share in the millions, which Rafsanjani and his family amassed during his time holding various positions in the revolutionary regime.

(First published in Crikey on 12 January 2017)

REPORT: From peacenik to Israel promoter

 

How did an undergraduate peacenik morph into a spokesman for Israel? asks Irfan Yusuf.

How did an undergraduate peacenik morph into a spokesman for the Israeli army?

The Guy Spigelman I remember was a long-haired hippie-type affiliated with the Labor Students Club (controlled by the Socialist Left faction) and was elected to the Macquarie University Students’ Council on a ticket entitled “Students Against Racism”, his number two being a female student of Jordanian background.

Though active in the Macquarie Uni branch of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), Spigelman was despised by Jewish members of the Liberal Club who saw him as too wishy-washy and too pro-Arab. Spigelman actively sought dialogue with students of Palestinian background.

In 1992, well before the Oslo accords and at a time when Palestinians were still regarded as a nation of terrorists, at a debate organised by AUJS on the topic of whether Israel should withdraw from the West Bank (or as some rightwing AUJS apparatchiks called it, “Judea and Samaria”) and Gaza, Spigelman supported Israeli withdrawal. Admittedly the reasons he used were more to do with Israeli security (he argued that a survey of retired Israeli generals showed most believe that holding onto the territories didn’t palpably increase Israel’s security) than with any right of Palestinians to a homeland. But he did hack into one Jewish student who made some racist remarks suggesting Arabs were inherently irrational and violent.

A 2006 post on Spigelman’s Australian Jewish News blog speculates on the factors that might affect support for Israel in Australia:

Another scenario — and this has been identified by polling undertaken in Europe — is that the world is becoming increasingly concerned with Islamic Fundamentalism and terrorism — and while there is no great love for Israel, there is less love for the Arabs.

This should not provide us with much comfort. We should not rely on the problems the other side has in order to better our position.

The other side? Maybe Spigelman wasn’t as inclusive and ecumenical in his thinking as I may have thought. Still, Spigelman does have some good advice on how supporters of Israel can help their cause:

…I believe the best advocacy is one that is vigilant in engaging all sectors of the society – from the left to the right – combined with encouragement (and not stifling) of informed debate – including criticism when it is warranted.

It’s advice ignored by Israel’s own ambassador in The Age today.

********

A free press comes with responsibilities

Giving a platform to a terrorist group abuses democratic rights.

Yuval Rotem

January 16, 2009

FREEDOM of speech is a fundamental right underpinning the operation of any free and democratic society. However, The Age's decision to publish Khalid Meshaal's "Gaza: the great divide" (Comment & Debate, 7/1) is not an expression of this right.

The value of individual thought, individual determination and individual freedom must all be taken into account when determining whether something is an expression of this right, or merely an insidious expression intended to incite. Meshaal's piece clearly falls into the latter category.

He did not seek to express his opinion based on fact - he sought to inflame anti-Semitic rhetoric, aimed at wiping the democratic state of Israel off the map. Meshaal does not have a right to have his hate-filled rhetoric published. We did not witness column inches dedicated to the writings of Osama bin Laden after September 11 extolling the reasons for the attack; nor to Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Ghufron justifying the Bali bombings.

We should not see newspaper space given to the leader of a terrorist organisation such as Hamas, extolling the reasons for firing rockets on Israel. We do not ask for special treatment, just the same standards that are extended to others.

The tagline named Meshaal as "head of the Hamas political bureau", a label that obscures his true position as one of the supreme leaders of a terrorist organisation. It is not only Israel that deems Hamas to be a terrorist organisation; it is also Australia, Japan, Canada - and almost every democratic nation in the world - because it carries out suicide bombings, stages attacks on civilians and calls for a genocide of the Jewish people. There are independent reports that argue Meshaal is not only a leader of Hamas, but also in charge of military operations. These military operations use human shields, booby trap civilian buildings and aim rockets at civilian targets.

This is not a limitation we seek because we want to restrict the voices of those living in Gaza, nor do we want to silence debate on the current conflict. But discussion must be informed, honest and open.

One of the primary functions of a newspaper is to provide readers with a range of views and opinions. It is not the role of a newspaper to provide a platform for an article replete with invective and misleading statements. By publishing Meshaal's piece, The Age gave legitimacy to the man, the entity he represents and their stated objective.

Deciding not to publish Meshaal would not have been a breach of the right to freedom of speech. It would have been a limitation to preserve the integrity of that right. All democratic nations place margins around the freedom of speech. Many countries legislate against hate speech, defamation and the like. The purpose of this is to ensure that all people enjoy the right not to be discriminated against, and to exercise their freedom of thought, belief and opinion. The decision to publish cannot be an easy one, and there is not always a clear right or wrong. However, editorial decisions must be made within context and with an awareness of the responsibility a newspaper holds.

Israel is the only democratic state in its region and is fiercely proud of this fact. In defending its right to exist as a secure nation, Israel maintains the freedom of the press as a cornerstone of this democracy. Hamas does not allow the citizens of Gaza freedom of expression, nor the ability to publicly criticise their activities. However, it seeks to abuse this very right in democratic and free societies.

In the same way that the Israeli Government does not seek to control the media in Israel, it does not seek to control the media in Australia. However, it does ask that The Age question its responsibilities that come with the platform it provides.

Yuval Rotem is the Israeli ambassador to Australia.

(An edited version of this article was first published in Crikey on 16 January 2009)

OPINION: Shariah-compliant swimming in Geert Wilders’ world

It was perhaps the greatest line ever in a spy flick. Austen Powers (Mike Myers) stands shoulder to shoulder with his father (Michael Caine), facing the villainous Goldmember (Myers). The father takes the lead: 

There are only two things I can’t stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures ... and the Dutch!’

Which in a way sums up the sentiments of a certain Dutch MP now visiting our shores. Geert Wilders will have us believe he doesn’t hate Muslims. He insists he isn’t opposed to multiculturalism. He just doesn’t like cultural relativism. In his eyes, the religious culture of one quarter of humanity is inferior and incompatible with freedom.

As Wilders stated at his recent Melbourne Press Conference: 

I call on all the Muslims in the world to leave Islam for Christianity or atheism or whatever they

want. This will be good for them and also for our free society.

Leave Islam? What exactly does he mean? Is there a single room called Islam with a single revolving door above which is an exit sign? If one wanted to leave Islam, what steps should one take to be accepted by Wilders and his followers?

What should one do to make Wilders feel safe from impending Islamic takeover? And just what on earth are these Muslim types doing differently to everyone else now?

Let’s see. They send their kids to their own schools. As we all know, no other religious congregation insists on doing the same as this 8—10 per cent of Muslim parents. How many Catholics do you know who send their kids to Catholic schools?

It’s unheard of. But for these Muslims, it’s all about passing on their supremacist ideology.

Look at my parents, so insistent that I grow up with Islamic values that they spent thousands of dollars sending me to St Andrews Cathedral School. (It’s true that the school chaplain sometimes told us kids that the prophecy of the ‘666' in the Book of Revelation referred to the Pope, but you know how some Sydney Anglicans are.)

Also, these Muslims don’t follow our laws. They want to impose on us their own Sharia law.

I have witnessed this myself. Have you heard of Sharia-compliant swimming? Come down to my local pool in South Eastern Melbourne where I share the ‘slow’ lap lane with other serious swimmers.

We are a motley crew of different shapes and sizes and colours. One bearded bloke wraps a white turban around his head, which in some people’s eyes might make him the most Sharia-compliant of us. No doubt that would horrify the other turbaned blokes down at his Sikh temple.

Anyway, the other day we were swimming in the lane when some young lads started swimming across us. One even swam under me. I immediately stopped. He had passed and joined his group of scoundrels at the other end of the pool. They were giggling and speaking to each other in Dari.

So exactly who are the Sharia-compliant swimmers? Is it the bloke with the wet turban? Is it the Malaysian-Chinese lady who covers her hair with a rubber hijab? Or is it those nasty children of Islamic asylum seekers who want to set off a chlorinated civilisational war?

In a few weeks, these kids will join other Hazara Australians for a massive festival to celebrate Naurooz. Should Wilders and his friends be afraid of the local council sponsoring the event? Is this creeping Sharia, in the form of a new year’s celebration dating back to pre-Islamic Zoroastrian times, evidence of an impending takeover?

I hope Wilders goes on a tour of Indonesia, once a colony of his country and the largest Muslim-majority state on earth. He can visit the ancient Hindu temple in Jogjakarta and watch Muslim dancers perform a traditional opera based on the ancient Hindu epic tale of the Ramayana. He can drink and dance at any one of Jakarta’s jazz clubs. He can also visit Interfidei, an activist group that stands up

for the rights of religious minorities.

Yes, there are strange and extreme elements in this old Dutch colonial possession. But at election time, the wackos don’t often do terribly well. Indonesia’s thriving democracy has room for everyone.

And indeed there is much more to the Netherlands than Mr Wilders. Just ask Dutch voters, who in the 2012 elections delivered his Freedom Party a massive blow. They currently hold only 15 out of 150 seats. Yes, it is still 10 per cent. But it seems around 90 per cent aren’t buying Wilders’ message of fear and loathing.

And it seems hardly any Australians are either. On that note, I’d better go for a swim.

(First published in Eureka Street on 22 February 2013)

OPINION: Australian politics needs to be dragged from the gutter

There was a time when Aussies wondered about the political immaturity of our relatives across the ditch. Your obsession with the sex lives of your politicians was making you, our soft, cuddly Kiwi cousins, more resemble scratching koalas wounding the fur on each other's faces.

It got to a point when, in September 2006, your then-Prime Minister Helen Clark was point-blank asked by a reporter whether her husband was having an affair. Her response seemed to end the matter.

I've been married for 25 years. I have a happy marriage. I've always had better things to do with my hard-earned money than waste it pursuing smut-mongers.

Ho ho ho, we laughed like a bunch of bloated sun-drenched Santas. Things in Australia could never get so bad.

Fast-forward almost seven years and it is time for you, my Kiwistani brethren, to have a laugh. I wish I could say the last laugh, but it probably won't be, given how damned sexist we ditch-dwellers are.

Ever since Julia Gillard kicked her predecessor Kevin Rudd in the proverbials and took over the top job, all kinds of things have been said about her anatomy, her sexuality and that of her partner of many years.

Where do we start? Perhaps with Ms Gillard's refusal to become Mrs Tim Mathieson and make babies. As far back as May 2007, Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan issued this fatwa: 

I mean, anyone who chooses to remain deliberately barren - they've got no idea what life's about.

This was followed up by Liberal Senator George Brandis who declared: 

She has chosen not to be a parent; she is very much a one-dimensional person.

But obsession with Ms Gillard's private parts goes further. At a recent Liberal Party fundraiser, the following menu included items that were thankfully not served: "Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail - Small Breasts, Huge Thighs & A Big Red Box." And in the last few days, Liberal MP Don Randall tried to inject some industrial policy into the mix by claiming: 

The problem is that the mining industry is being pussy-whipped by Julia Gillard.

I'm not sure what happened to that journalist who asked Helen Clark about her husband's sexuality. But Howard Sattler, Fairfax Radio shock jock from Perth, didn't last long after a lengthy exchange with the Prime Minister during a recent interview. Apparently before the interview, Sattler had cleared with the PM and her staff that it would be a frank exchange that would include aspects of her personal life. Ms Gillard agreed.

What she wasn't expecting (and no doubt what Sattler's listeners weren't expecting) was to answer suggestions that her partner Tim Mathieson was gay because he had worked as a hairdresser. The shock jock's spirited on-air defence of his line of questioning consisted of: 

But you hear it. He must be gay ... You've heard it. It's not me saying it, it's what people say.

This happened this month. This week, the publicly funded youth station Triple J was also caught out when one of its regular commentators suggested that the PM showed way too much up top in Parliament.

And no, columnist Grace Collier wasn't suggesting that Ms Gillard don a burqa.

I don't think it's appropriate for a Prime Minister to be showing her cleavage in Parliament. It's not something I want to see. In my opinion as an industrial relations consultant, it is inappropriate to be in Parliament, it is disrespectful to yourself and to the Australian community and to the Parliament to present yourself in a manner that is unprofessional.

In response (and perhaps as a slap in the chest to South Asian men like myself), feminist Eva Cox declared: 

Men don't have breasts to show.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott, on the other hand, is quite happy to show his breasts and much more on the beach in his role as a surf lifesaver. As an avid bike rider, Mr Abbott's bike shorts are also quite revealing to anyone who cares to look.

With an election due in September, Australian voters can only hope that there is much less talk about sexuality and nether-regions and more about policy.

(Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer, author and former Liberal Party candidate. First published in the NZ Herald on 25 June 2013)

OPINION: Hate that can change the world

Irfan Yusuf writes on what can happen when marginal movements gain momentum.

One of Australian folk singer Paul Kelly's best songs is entitled From Little Things Big Things Grow. It is a tribute to Vincent Lingiari, an Australian indigenous tribal leader whose protest sparked the land rights movement in the Northern Territory and then nationally.

The song's major theme is how the persistence of the powerless can often pay off, especially when more powerful forces decide to take on the cause. Lingiari is described in the song as ...

... lean and spoke very little; he had no bank balance, hard dirt was his floor.

His tribe "were working for nothing but rations". Then Lingiari managed to convince former prime minister Gough Whitlam of the plight of the indigenous tribe. The result was the passing of legislation granting land rights to traditional owners.

Kelly sings the moral of the story: 

How power and privilege can not move a people who know where they stand and stand in the law.

The actions of a few marginalised people can have a snowball effect. The sad reality is that this principle can just as easily be used for evil ends as for good.

In New York, a few marginal people have been taking small steps to deprive a religious minority of its constitutional rights.

Unlike the heroes of Kelly's song, the marginal people at the heart of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque have little or no interest in minority rights or reconciliation.

They have managed to convince not just politicians but influential media, mainly from Rupert Murdoch's empire. The irony is that the man at the centre of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque", Imam Feisal Abdul Raul, has written a book entitled What's Right With Islam Is What's Right With America, which is published by HarperCollins, the publishing arm of Rupert Murdoch's vast media empire.

Sadly, most other parts of Mr Murdoch's empire are busy providing oxygen to the marginalised wingnut brigade who first came up with the idea that nothing representing Islamic culture should exist near what was once the Twin Towers, even if Tower Two itself had a dedicated Muslim prayer room.

As is always the case, these forces never allow the facts to get in the way of their prejudices. Sean Hannity, a Fox News stalwart, interviewed one Robert Spencer, the director of far-right blog Jihad Watch.

In the past, Spencer has used his blog to support, among others, a violent neo-fascist group calling itself the English Defence League, made up largely of former soccer hooligans. Spencer is also associated with the United States-based and notoriously homophobic Christian Action Network.

Many months ago, Spencer joined forces with another far-right blogger, Pamela Geller, to form "Stop Islamisation in America", a franchise of an equivalent far-Right group in Europe.

According to a Guardian report, Geller has written in support of Serbian war criminals and even white supremacists in South Africa.

Geller posts videos on her blog suggesting Muslims have sex with goats and even suggested that President Obama's father was Malcolm X.

Spencer and Geller have for years been treated as marginal figures in conservative circles. They struggled to find money to fund advertisements on the sides of New York buses calling on people to stop the "Ground Zero Mega-Mosque". You'd wonder how such elements could oppose an intercultural project headed by a man with decades of experience and who has represented his country's interests in tours sponsored by the US State Department during the Bush Administration. You'd wonder how they could possibly be taken seriously by anyone, let alone the world's media.

But from little things, big things grow. The Spencer/Geller cause has now been taken on by Republican Party presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.

Geller has appeared on mainstream news channels, speaking on behalf of American values, 9/11 victims and anything and anyone else she can marshal to support her prejudicial fantasies. The result has been, according to Salon.com, that 

... the mosque story spread through the conservative - and then mainstream - media like fire through dry grass ... Geller had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.

A mere 48 hours after the September 11 attacks, Farqad Chawdury was born in a New York hospital. He never met his father Mohammed, a waiter at the Windows of the World Restaurant in Tower One who perished on 9/11.

His mother told a Canadian TV channel about the responses from people: 

When they saw me ... I'm wearing a scarf. There is a hate look.

This year, Farqad turns 9. He still doesn't know how his father died. His mother is too afraid to tell him.

Those who spew hatred on behalf of the victims will soon forget them. Glenn Beck once said: 

[When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining.

Meanwhile, the real victims get on with their lives, generally too busy healing their wounds to care who is pretending to speak for or pillory them.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-Fascist. First published in the NZ Herald on 16 September 2010)

OPINION: Guantanamo a blot on US image

In January, I toured three Indonesian cities as part of a delegation sponsored by the Australia Indonesia Institute. I visited the American Corner at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University's library.

The Corner is a public relations initiative of the US Embassy in Jakarta, consisting of a largish classroom containing a range of books, magazines and other materials about American life and culture in both English and Indonesian.

A particular focus is placed on the status of America's large Muslim minority. Copies of the glossy American Muslim magazines and books authored by Arab and Muslim Americans were prominently displayed. The Corner sought to provide students with a view of American interactions with Muslims that contradict popular Indonesian perceptions.

Not that Indonesian media are exceptionally anti-American, nor blindly towing the line of the pro-US Indonesian Government.

But Indonesians we spoke to from all walks of life were united in their condemnation of one American policy: the continued detainment, often without charge, of some 500 terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Despite attempts at opening communication channels across Indonesia, the White House's refusal to come clean on the extent of torture and mistreatment of Guantanamo prisoners is winning few friends even among otherwise friendlier Muslim communities.

The latest 54-page UN report on conditions at the Guantanamo facility will not help America's cause in the region. The report, prepared by five investigators from the UN Human Rights Commission, calls for its closure without delay.

As expected, the White House rejects the report's findings. It questions the veracity of the report's claims, arguing that investigators did not accept an invitation to visit the facility. But given the US' refusal to allow them unfettered access to inmates, it is little surprise UN investigators were not part of a highly censored and sanitised inspection.

Allegations of torturing prisoners corroborate statements already given by British former detainees and by released Australian detainee Mamdouh Habib. It is possible Mr Habib's allegations will be tested by a court should he bring proceedings against the Australian Government.

It isn't just former detainees with complaints. The recently released book of former Guantanamo chaplain James Yee, For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire, was nowhere to be seen at the American Corner.

Yee's dealings with detainees and guards led him to believe that a large proportion of prisoners had little if any relation to terrorism. As soon as he made noises to this effect, Yee found himself the subject of officially spread innuendo and eventually trumped-up charges of spying.

He was also accused of adultery and downloading pornography on to military computers.

Following eight months of high profile detention and investigation that destroyed Yee's career and marriage, all charges against him were dropped without explanation.

Yee was imprisoned at the order of Major General Geoffrey Miller, who later became embroiled in the first prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.

Reviewing Yee's book, Norman Abjorensen wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that it is difficult to read Yee's account without a rising sense of anger and injustice. The book, Abjorensen continues, brings into sharp focus the inhumane monstrosity that is Guantanamo Bay.

In Australia, at least one South Australian family hopes the UN report will focus attention on one of their own. David Hicks has been imprisoned at the facility since 2002.

Last November, former Veterans Affairs Minister Danna Vale called for Mr Hicks to be released and if necessary tried in Australia.

Mr Howard refused her request, reaffirming his commitment to the Guantanamo Military Commission process. The Prime Minister claimed he'd received advice that even if Mr Hicks was returned to Australia, he could not be charged under Australian law.

He was reported as saying: 

We do not intend to pass retrospective criminal laws. That would represent a very significant regressive move, and it would violate the basis of our criminal justice system.

Within weeks, his Government passed some of the most draconian anti-terror laws containing more retrospective elements than one could poke a stick at.

Canberra's lacklustre concern for the welfare of an Australian citizen is in sharp contrast to the stringent lobbying efforts of the UK and other Western countries with nationals detained at the facility.

It also sharply contrasts with the Government's robust involvement in the welfare of convicted Australian drug smugglers facing death row. It is a disgrace that the Hicks family could end up receiving more support from the United Nations than from their own Government.

Even lawyers appointed by the US military to represent the detainees have stated the Guantanamo military commissions are mere kangaroo courts. Their ultimate result will be a continuing injustice. And as the UN report illustrates, unless the facility is closed altogether, justice will ultimately be denied.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer. First published in the NZ Herald on 23 February 2006)

OPINION: Guantanamo policy is winning few friends in the Muslim world

 

IN 2006, I visited the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta. Before you reach for your National Security Hotline fridge magnets and mobile handsets, I should disclose that I was on an exchange program organised by the Australia-Indonesia Institute and funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Like many others in Indonesia, this university campus had an "American Corner" — a largish classroom with wall-to-wall shelves containing a range of books, magazines and other publications about American life and culture in both English and Indonesian. Computer terminals offered free English-language multimedia materials. Copies of the glossy American Muslim magazines and books by Arab and Muslim Americans were prominently displayed.

Are such expensive public relations steps necessary? What do Indonesian and other non-Western Muslims think of the West? In their recently published book Who Speaks for Islam?: What A Billion Muslims Really Think, John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed analysed data from a mammoth multi-year Gallup study surveying a sample of tens of thousands of Muslims from more than 35 countries and representing more than 90% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims.

Their study found that non-Western Muslims tend not to see the West as a monolith, and Muslims criticised or praised Western countries based on their politics and not on culture and religion. By and large, non-Western Muslims respected and wished to enjoy the benefits of Western-style democracy and the rule of law.

Indonesian media aren't rabidly anti-American. But the Indonesians from all walks of life I met in 2006 were united in their condemnation of one American policy: the continued detainment, often without charge, of hundreds of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Despite attempts at opening communication channels across Indonesia, the White House's reluctance to come clean on the extent of torture and mistreatment of Guantanamo prisoners is winning few friends even among otherwise friendlier Muslim communities. Upsetting Muslims even more are the lacklustre efforts by Western governments (apart from Britain) to make even the slightest fuss over the detention of their own nationals.

Readers will recall the approach of both the Howard government and ALP opposition to the plight of David Hicks. Until this newspaper and prominent Australians such as Dick Smith managed to sway public opinion, Messrs Howard and Downer (and indeed Kevin Rudd) took for granted that Hicks was among "the worst of the worst", a dangerous terrorist receiving his just deserts.

Of course, we now know that even the US Military Commission prosecutor assigned to Hicks' case recently admitted that the evidence against him was weak at best, and that the decision to prosecute Hicks was based more on political considerations.

Now a 21-year-old Canadian citizen named Omar Khadr is to face an infamous military commission hearing. What makes Khadr's case particularly stark is that he was a minor when arrested in Afghanistan.

Khadr is the Toronto-born son of Egyptian and Palestinian parents. US military prosecutors claim his father is believed to have been heavily involved in fund-raising for radical Islamist groups in Toronto and moved the family to Afghanistan. They claim Khadr had received military training — bomb making, combat tactics and rifle marksmanship — before reaching his teens. Much of Khadr's adolescence was allegedly spent in al-Qaeda camps.

Khadr was allegedly captured in July 2002 during a raid on a small Taliban compound in south-east Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. After being shot in the back, he was taken to the notorious Bagram Air Base, where he was often brought to interrogation on a stretcher and denied pain medication. A 2006 investigation into Khadr's treatment while in custody in Afghanistan was mysteriously halted. The Bush Administration has repeatedly refused to allow Khadr's lawyers to view records of his treatment at Guantanamo.

Even if the allegations of US prosecutors against Khadr are true, the fact is that he hardly had a choice in growing up in a household where his father espoused radical views, even encouraging Khadr's brother to become a suicide bomber. One can hardly expect a child to recognise his father's charities were in fact funding extremist groups. No teenager should have to spend years in a steel mesh cage at Guantanamo Bay undergoing brutish forms of interrogation and detained without charge or trial until years have elapsed.

But Khadr isn't the only detainee to have undergone inhumane treatment. Alex Gibney's Academy Award winning 2007 film, Taxi To The Dark Side, to be screened at the Sydney Film Festival in June, tells the story of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar who was deemed a terrorist and who died after being repeatedly bashed during interrogation. The film also exposes torture and murder of alleged terrorists by US interrogators in other locations.

The mistreatment of the Canadian child soldier will be a powerful recruiting argument used by anti-Western and anti-democratic forces in the Muslim world. So often our leaders recite the mantra that extremists and terrorists hate us because of our freedoms and values. Given the silence of Western governments (including our own) about the use of torture in prosecuting this "war on terror", non-Western Muslims could be forgiven for thinking we hate our freedoms and values even more.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer whose work on young Muslims navigating into and out of political Islam was awarded the 2007 Allen & Unwin Iremonger Award for public affairs writing. First published in The Age on 16 May 2008)

OPINION: Innocent victims of evil ideology

Over the past week, there have been two devastating terror attacks. The Nairobi shopping mall shootings included many Western casualties and have been widely reported. The other attack, on a church in Pakistan, has barely rated a mention.

A cynic might suggest Western media regard the shedding of the blood of brown-skinned Catholics by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan ("Student Movement of Pakistan" or the Pakistani Taliban) as less newsworthy than the murders of Westerners by the Somali Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen ("Movement of Striving Youth" or al-Shabaab). But that is a discussion for another time.

What matters now is that we have two sets of victims struck by effectively the same perpetrator inspired by the same demented ideology. Whether the Pakistani Taliban or al-Shabaab, what we have is a global ideology seeking to impose its own demented political theology by force.

Like its al-Qaeda colleagues, the Pakistani Taliban rarely discriminates on the basis of religion. Though calling itself an Islamic group, it will happily spill Muslim blood. Shia mosques and neighbourhoods have been subjected to suicide bombings. Sunni security personnel, soldiers and innocent civilians have been blown to bits by suicide bombers.

But its most recent attack on the All Saints Church at Kohati Gate in Peshawar deliberately targeted one of Pakistan's most disadvantaged faith communities. The service had just ended and the 400 worshippers were leaving the building when two suicide bombers detonated their devices.

Eyewitnesses reported around 100 parishioners lay in pools of blood. At least 80 were dead, more then half of them women and children.

It was the worst attack on Christians in Pakistan's history.

The church was built in 1882 on the design of a mosque, with a dome and minarets. It is one of a handful of churches that service some 60,000 Christians in Peshawar.

So why did this happen? Kamal Siddiqui, editor of the Express-Tribune, writes: 

Pakistanis are dying in large numbers, mostly at the hands of religious militants who insist that their war is with America and not with us. One does not understand the logic of this. But it is an ideology that finds favour with many.

Pakistan is a country where there is too much tolerance for intolerance. On the same day as the church bombing, a mob in the Punjabi city of Sialkot threatened to remove the minarets of an Ahmadi house of worship. The Ahmadis are a small sect regarded by law as non-Muslims. Their houses of worship cannot be called mosques.

When the mob threatened to attack the Ahmadi building, police themselves tore down the minarets.

And so a church in Peshawar can have minarets but not a Ahmadi house of worship.

Pakistan is a country in which all kinds of excuses can be found for division. The Taliban need not try very hard to sow chaos. The chaos is already there. So often Pakistanis complain about American drone attacks. And rightly so. But more Pakistanis are murdered in sectarian violence than by drone missiles.

The Taliban temporarily ruled parts of Pakistan before being driven out by the army. In this respect, they have something in common with al-Shabaab in Somalia.

According to a 2011 report by Ron Wise of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the militia started its life aligned to a moderate (or rather, somewhat less extreme) Somali Muslim party called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

Before that Somalia was a basket case where competing warlords committed all kinds of atrocities against civilians.

Religious leaders in the Somali diaspora are almost unanimous in their condemnation of al-Shabaab. In Minnesota, home to the largest Somali community in the US, local imam Abdul Hashi told journalists, "This type of activity, the killing of innocents, has no basis in, or relationship to Islam," and cited the Koran: "Whoever kills one soul, kills all of humankind, and whoever saves one soul, saves all of humankind."

Which makes the actions of al-Shabaab and the Pakistani Taliban pure evil.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer. First published in the NZ Herald on 26 September 2013)

OPINION: West must gets its own glass house in order

The next budget should be an absolute shocker. Cuts to pensions and the dole and even a "one-off" - a temporary measure to pay for the deficit.

Still, if you don't like it, you can always leave before the next election. There are plenty of places with stronger economies and less fiscally oppressive regimes where you could claim to be an economic refugee. And you won't even get locked up while your application is processed.

Take Brunei. Its population is barely 406,000. Writing in the IFLR1000 (an international guide to commercial law and lawyers) in 2012, Bruneian lawyer Colin Ong notes: 

Tax advantages and incentives are comparable if not better than those offered by other countries in the region. For example, no personal income, capital gains, export, sales or payroll tax is imposed in Brunei Darussalam. 

Beat that, Mr Hockey.

If you obtain permanent residency and reach the ripe old age of 55, you'll get a nice pension. And regardless of age, there are plenty of other benefits. According to Hjh Rahmah Hj Md Said, deputy permanent secretary (professional and technical) at the Bruneian Ministry of Health, Brunei has universal healthcare coverage. She told delegates at a health forum hosted by the Asia Inc Forum in 2012 that men in Brunei had an average life expectancy of 75.5, only 18 months below that of Australian men.

Little wonder Brunei calls itself "Darussalam" (Abode of Peace). Bruneians are healthy and rich. The Sultan of Brunei, whose easy-to-remember name is Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saifuddien Sa'adul Khairi Waddien, has a fair bit of wealth, including a private Boeing 747 and a luxury car fleet that would make John Laws extremely jealous. The sultan is surrounded by more female ministers than Tony Abbott.

Among them is the Bruneian attorney-general, known impressively as Yang Berhormat Datin Seri Paduka Hjh Hayati Pehin Orang Kaya Shahbandar Dato Seri Paduka Hj Mohd Salleh. She'll be responsible for overseeing implementation of the Shariah Penal Code Order 2013 that introduces draconian punishments for certain crimes, and applies only to Muslims. It won't apply to most Australian economic refugees. Unlike us, Bruneians don't treat economic refugees harshly.

The usual bleeding heart ABC/Fairfax types would have you believe that Brunei's tough-on-crime policies will make it an ayatollah's paradise and a living hell for anyone engaging in such innocent pastimes as having consensual sex (or less innocent acts of murder, stealing and rape). As if all sharia-based jurisdictions only concern themselves with penal sanctions, where citizens can be seen walking the streets limbless and/or headless (but certainly not legless unless they desire a good flogging).

One article for The Diplomat carried the misleading headline "Brunei Imposes Sharia Law". But as Dr Ong notes, Brunei has had parallel common law and sharia law systems in non-criminal jurisdictions for years. Sharia courts have "limited exclusive jurisdiction to hear matters of personal law relating to persons that belong to the Islamic faith on matters pertaining to marriage, divorce, inheritance, maintenance of dependants and the estates of deceased Muslims". 

Dr Ong also mentions increasing use of sharia-based financial instruments. It isn't just all chopping and changing. This is hardly new. As far back as 1870, an English translation of the classic 12th century Islamic legal text al-Hedaya ("the Guide") was commissioned by the Governor-General and Council of Bengal. It was a compulsory text in English law schools for those seeking to practise in colonial India. The British understood that their common law system was strong and flexible enough to accommodate Islamic (and Hindu) legal traditions in limited areas.

For 14 centuries, Muslim jurists have been borrowing from Roman, Judaic and other legal traditions. What passes as sharia today is really the illegitimate child of centuries of fornication between different legal traditions.

Speaking of fornication, it's impossible to be prosecuted for "zina" under the Sharia Penal Code if four witnesses to the actual copulation cannot be found. So no swingers' parties in Brunei, thanks very much. And Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy prosecution would be thrown out of court.

However, we should be concerned about the implementation of such punishments in any country. We know such punishments exist across south-east Asia for a range of crimes, including drug trafficking.

But unfortunately we in the West are no longer in a position to lecture others about human rights and capital punishment. We look somewhat silly lecturing brown-skinned Bruneians while happily participating with white-skinned Brits and Americans in wars that often involve the worst human rights atrocities. Our condescension may force Muslims to say that there is more to their faith than stonings and beheadings. But is there more to our allegedly liberal ideals than torture in secret prisons and indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo? Can we claim to be more free when, in the leader of the free world, 32 states and the US military and government all provide for the death penalty?

Indeed, where would Clayton Lockett prefer to be executed - Oklahoma or Brunei?

(Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Citizenship & Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 7 May 2014)