OPINION: Balancing security and individual liberty - when radicalisation becomes a threat to government thinking

We were all radicals in one way or another. Some of us become more radical with age. Tony Abbott's views on abortion (at least as expressed in his book Battlelines) were quite radical for a man who once wanted to become a priest. It's unlikely that today's Murdoch tabloid columnists would have shown as little respect for an official war narrative as Keith Murdoch.

Radical ideas are needed for individual and social reform. But sometimes radical thinking is seen as a threat to all of us, especially when they turn violent. The consensus these days is that the most dangerous form of radicalism is radical Islam. This consensus has a ring of truth to it, though it is also used by anti-Islam radicals with a distinctly sectarian (and at times violent) agenda.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his media allies, the Commonwealth has tried its best to avoid pointing the finger. Funding for "deradicalisation" projects has been awarded to a range of organisations from the ethno-religious Lebanese Muslim Association to the non-sectarian People Against Violent Extremism (PAVE) to Centacare in Cairns.

Emphasising the non-sectarian nature of counter-"radicalisation" measures can get you into some trouble, as the Turnbull government recently discovered following the release of its "Preventing Violent Extremism & Radicalisation In Australia" kit which has been sent to school teachers across Australia.

The criticism hasn't just come from the "usual suspects" – civil libertarians, Muslim community advocates and the Greens. Some professional education groups have been critical of the idea that one kit can solve all teachers' problems. Instead, as the Global Learning Centre stated in a recent press release, 

Preventing violent extremism and radicalisation in our students is not about targeting individuals. It's about creating a more cohesive and connected community. This is a challenge that involves us all … Australian teachers are more desperate than ever to develop globally-ready classrooms.

Teachers cannot counter a narrow view of the world unless they have a broader and more cosmopolitan view. Kids need to be taught that being good citizens of Australia and of the globe are not mutually exclusive.

The "kit" (which, according to one of its main authors Emeritus Professor Gary Bouma of Monash University, was never meant to be used as a kit) has also been ridiculed for the examples it gives of "radicalised" young people "cured" of their radicalism.

The booklet distinguishes between mere "radicalisation" ("[w]hen a person's beliefs move from being relatively conventional to being radical, and they want a drastic change in society" and which isn't necessarily bad) and when "it becomes a concern to everybody, including families, communities and law enforcement, if a person begins to advocate or use violence to achieve a political, religious or ideological goal".

The definition of advocating or using violence has been the butt of many jokes on social media, especially the hashtag #freekaren on Twitter, named in honour of the case study "Karen". Karen's interest in environmental protection led her to attend a forest camp where she and others would "disrupt logging activities by barricading areas that were being logged, spiking trees, and sabotaging machinery". Scuffles broke out between her group and loggers, and she was arrested.

The scenario may sound laughable, but the booklet's authors were obviously trying to show that violent extremism can take many forms and may not harm everyone. Unlike Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram whose targets of choice are almost exclusively Muslims.

But you wouldn't believe it if you believed everything you read about terrorism fed to a tabloid by the former prime minister's office. Tony Abbott just loved talking about the "death cult" that was coming to get us all. It made his government look tough, even if it was accompanied by ridiculous stunts such as the recent Australian Border Force fiasco in Melbourne. It also gave oxygen to far-Right extremists who were rarely seen as a threat.

The Abbott government's policies might be described as a case of "militant democracy", when democracy compromises itself and its values in order to fight its perceived existential enemies. Abbott told Australians they would need to be prepared to enjoy less freedoms to fight terrorism. He used this reasoning to justify citizen stripping and other laws.

At least in his rhetoric, then Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed discomfort with where all this was going. On July 7, 2015, Turnbull lectured the Sydney Institute on "balancing security and individual liberty".

"It is a balance our Government has, I believe, got right," Turnbull remarked. But the expression was wrong. And those with dissenting views were dismissed.

If, as Prime Minister, Turnbull wishes to sell Mr Abbott's militant democracy to us, he needs to appreciate that counter-terrorism isn't just an issue affecting "vulnerable groups". He also must be prepared to be ridiculed. Australians no longer take their liberties lightly.

(Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 1 October 2015)

REVIEW: Hilarious book by an Iraqi-Iranian-Australian artist

What’s it like to live on the fringes of society, to be an outsider. First, second and third generation Muslim of migrant heritage often complain of being marginalised. But what would it be like to be a marginal person in more than one home country?

Osamah Sami’s family knows exactly what this is like. His late father, a religious scholar and leader to a Shia congregation in northern Melbourne, grew up in Iraq as a young man keen on reading foreign newspapers. Tortured by the regime of Saddam Hussein, he fled to Iran.

Osamah was born a foreigner. Despite belonging to the same religious denomination as the Iranians around him, Osamah was an Arab, not a Persian. His mother made him wear a long robe, not jeans like his Iranian friends.

But worse still, Osamah’s family were Iraqis living in Abadan, a border town. He and his neighbours lived under the shadow of Iraqi bombs, mortars, missiles and gas raining down on the city during the 1980’s war between Iran and Iraq. They also suffered from the constant suspicion and prejudice from those deemed more Iranian, more Shia and more Muslim than those who spoke Arabic. The language of the Prophet and the language of the enemy were one and the same.

Things weren’t made easier by the fact that Osamah’s father and uncles were fighting in the Iranian army, possibly against their former Iraqi relatives and neighbours. Amongst the drama and tragedy, the author manages to insert much laugh-out-loud humour.

Indeed, tragicomedy is an appropriate description of the book. Osamah’s childhood reflections of the hypocrisies of Iranian theocracy make an excellent antidote to those who would make us believe that the solution to our woes necessarily lay in the Islamic state. All the religious police in the world could not stop Muslims from identifying more by their tribe or sect. Kurds did not cease being Kurds. Iraqi Shia Muslims were still deemed Iraqis and potential enemies of the state. All this during the age of jihad against thee Great Satan and its cronies.

There were no long term prospects for Osamah’s family. The family moved from Abadan to the university city of Qom, where his father pursued studies to become a religious scholar. Later he was invited to Melbourne to officiate for religious ceremonies. Eventually, the family applied to migrate as refugees.

Much of the book is structured around a visit the adult Osamah made to Iran with his father. They arrived at the city of Mashhad in 2013, enjoyed a traditional falafel roll together and returned to their hotel. Osamah went for a walk while his father quietly moved onto the afterlife. Whilst dealing with his own grief, Osamah also had to deal with Iranian bureaucracy. “Policy is policy,” he would be told whilst forced to leave his Australian passport in the hands of anonymous officials in Mashhad before travelling some 900 km across a huge desert to Tehran.

Good Muslim Boy is a superbly hilarious read that will make you realise that even the most religious place can be filled with testosterone and even an imam’s son can get upto no good while maintaining his father’s affections. Terrific.

(First published in AMUST on 31 July 2015)

OPINION: Why should Muslims speak about terrorism?

It’s a common refrain. Muslims in Australia rarely have anything useful to say about terrorism. Each time the Federal Government decides it wants to add yet another layer to the already bulging layers of terrorism law, Muslims (with a few notable exceptions) seem almost disinterested or incapable of making a sensible contribution beyond boycotting meetings with the PM or complaining about racism. It’s as if they cannot address the changing law itself.

Then again, few other Australians, including our political leaders, have much sensible to say. Perhaps the only sensible thing our Prime Minister has said on the subject was soon after the Martin Place Siege in which three persons (including the gunman) lost their lives.

Andrew Lynch, Nicola McGarrity and George Williams, in their recently published Inside Australia’s Anti-Terrorism Laws and Trials, state that 

... we should be wary of letting those who wish us harm determine how we live as members of a free and democratic society. Abbott acknowledged the limits upon security in a liberal society when he said, in the aftermath of the Sydney siege, that even if Monis had been on agency watchlists and monitored 24 hours a day ‘it’s quite likely, certainly possible, that this incident could have taken place, because the level of control that would have been necessary to prevent people from going about their daily life, would be very, very high indeed.

This makes far more sense than hysterical references to the “Death Cult” or insulting remarks that Muslims need to say their faith is one of peace as if they really mean it. It also underscores just how important the efforts of ordinary Muslims are when they report suspicious persons and activities to their authorities, and when their testimony is crucial to the small number of successful terrorism convictions.

You can’t eliminate risk by throwing legislation at it. The law cannot solve everything. The above mentioned authors note: 

By the end of 2014, 64 separate pieces of anti-terrorism legislation had become law. 

These additional laws and the current raft of citizenship stripping laws would have been unlikely to stop Man Monis from murdering two innocent Australians.

The growing complexity of anti-terror law is such that the average Islamic society or council or federation committee would have little hope of understanding how it all fits together. We can’t expect religious bodies to have much useful to say on terrorism law reform. At best they can (and should) defer this to experts within their communities – lawyers, public policy experts and lobbyists.

And that assumes they all have the same approach to this issue. National security is tied up with other areas of government policy, including foreign policy. It is naïve to imagine that all Muslims in Australia have the same views on, say, the Syrian or Iraqi conflict. Opinions on the Syrian government have been divided within Lebanese Muslim circles since before the Lebanese civil war started in the 1970’s. For many in downtown Punchbowl and Preston, Hezbollah is the enemy when they were once heroes.

Sectarian divisions have turned political. How are these divisions to be managed? How much dialogue is there between Sunni and Shia? Has this translated into a common approach to addressing the issues raised by proposed laws?

Absolute unity isn’t what’s required. We don’t stop celebrating Eid just because we cannot agree on which day to celebrate it on. We shouldn’t have a base approach to civil liberties, democracy, citizenship, national security and foreign fighters just because some of us despise Assad more than others. Even if Muslim bodies don’t feel comfortable talking to the media or the politicians about terrorism, they can still talk to each other and to their members about the issue. And if they then decide to contact their local MP or even a Minister, they can at least honestly say that they have consulted with community members.

(First published in AMUST on 31 July 2015)

OPINION: The fuss over the burqa is out of kilter

 IN ABOUT six months, a cross-party French parliamentary committee of 32 MPs will prepare a report examining whether the wearing of the burqa (an outfit, usually black, that covers a woman's full body, including her face) in public represents a threat to French secularism. They'll also determine whether to ban it being worn in France.

The committee was formed after French President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed the French Parliament on June 22 and described the burqa as "a problem of liberty and women's dignity" and "not welcome in France".

Sarkozy further claimed that the burqa was not a religious symbol at all, but rather "a sign of subservience and debasement", which created "women prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity".

Of course, even if Sarkozy regarded the burqa as a religious symbol, he might still ban it. In the past, he hasn't been averse to banning the open display of religious symbols in French state schools.

Sarkozy was originally behind the push to proscribe the hijab (headscarf) from state schools, only to subsequently oppose specific legislation, introduced in 2004, which saw the wearing of all religious symbols in state schools prohibited.

Many French, and indeed many Australians, find the various shades of religious head covering adopted by Muslim women somewhat troublesome. Women draped in black represent one of the most potent stereotypes of Islam in the West, one reinforced by media images. When one Sydney Muslim man called for polygamy to be legalised, the Herald Sun website carried a photo of two burqa-clad women crossing the street. The website of its Sydney equivalent regularly carries photos of burqa-clad women in any story even mildly related to Muslims. On August 8, 2007, in a story on an investigation into a refugee housing project run by a main Muslim body, The Daily Telegraph showed the image of the top half of a fully veiled woman's face.

It's unclear exactly what proportion of Muslim women wear any sort of head covering when in public, though anecdotal evidence suggests only a minority do. Among those who cover, the vast majority seem to follow the religious consensus and restrict themselves to merely covering all or part of their hair. This can take the form of a more fixed hijab (as commonly worn in the Arab world and South-East Asia) or a loose shawl draped over the head (common in Iran and South Asia).

The vast majority of Muslims in France are from North Africa where the face veil is rarely worn. This naturally raises the question: with such a tiny minority wearing such a veil, why is Sarkozy using his precious time talking about this issue?

Sarkozy's remarks are reminiscent of former prime minister John Howard's frequent references to alleged non-integration of Muslim Australians. Yet in one radio interview Howard declared 99.9 per cent of Muslims were perfectly integrated. I wondered at the time whether his repeated emphasis on the 0.01 per cent non-integrated was little more than an attempt to create an environment where the 99.9 per cent were made to feel uncomfortable.

No women in my family cover their hair. However, my maternal grandfather, who lectured at the relatively liberal Aligarh Muslim University in India, insisted the women of his household practise a form of traditional aristocratic seclusion known as purdah. Though associated with Indian Islamic culture, purdah was also practised in many upper-class north Indian Hindu and Sikh households.

It was common in those days for wealthy women to go out shopping while seated in a special palanquin (called a dholi). This was basically a large, comfortable, box-like structure with plenty of cushions for aristocratic women to laze on while their male servants (or even male relatives) would carry them. The curtains around the box had a screen through which the women could peek and decide which shop they would visit.

Women's quarters in 1950s Aligarh homes were places where women enjoyed themselves, freed of any domestic duties, their husbands or fathers employing servants to perform all cooking and other chores. Men were expected to lavish gifts on their female relatives (and in-laws) using the household income, which women were usually responsible for managing (I'm sure to their own advantage). Men were also expected to do all the shopping for food and other household needs. Women only shopped to buy clothes, jewellery and other luxury items for themselves.

Of course, the situation for the aristocratic Indian woman in purdah was a far cry from impoverished women living in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Purdah did not stop my mother from completing high school and a bachelor's degree. The idea of banning women from education or work would be anathema to most Muslims, including the one in four of South Asian heritage.

France has the largest Muslim population of any country in Western Europe.

By focusing on a tiny minority of Muslim women, Sarkozy risks alienating the majority of French Muslims, including those who agree with his basic proposition that the burqa is offensive and degrading to women.

(Irfan Yusuf is author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist, published by Allen & Unwin. First published in the Canberra Times on 6 July 2009)

OPINION: Terror suspects denied the basic rights given freely to others

 

Even those suspected of war crimes get a fair trial and good treatment.

THIS month tens of thousands of Bosnians marked the 14th anniversary of the massacre of about 8000 men at the town of Srebrenica in the Republic of Bosnia Herzegovina in 1995. The Age reported that "every year, more victims' bodies are recovered from mass graves found in the area. This year among the 534 victims, there are 44 teenagers. Four were 14 when they were killed."

Srebrenica had been declared by the UN as a "haven", with a few hundred Dutch peacekeepers "protecting" the area. The International Court of Justice recently ruled that the massacre constituted genocide.

But it wasn't just men who suffered in the genocide. In her 1996 book Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia Herzegovina, American academic Beverly Allen writes of systematic "genocidal rape" of women by soldiers, paramilitaries and even civilians. Many took place in concentration camps while others happened at special facilities set up for the purpose in such locations as "restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, factories, peacetime brothels, or other buildings; they are also animal stalls in barns, fenced-in pens, and arenas".

As Allen points out, all such sexual crimes 

"... constitute the crime of genocide as described in Article II of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide". 

Yet Amnesty International noted that following the conviction last week of two Serbs at the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, not a single person has been charged for mass rapes and other sexual crimes by the tribunal. In the case of the two convicted, prosecutors did not even investigate allegations of the abduction and rape of women.

One of the men believed to have orchestrated the Bosnian genocide in the mid-1990s is Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. He was arrested about a year ago and sent to the UN Detention Unit in the Hague where he faces trial at the tribunal. Karadzic's war cost about 100,000 lives, according to the most conservative estimates.

A CIA report cited by The New York Times estimates his army was responsible for about 90 per cent of all war crimes in that conflict. Yet when one compares Karadzic's treatment in custody to that of thousands of terrorism suspects since the US declared its "war on terror" after the September 11 attacks, one cannot help wonder whether genocide is regarded as a less serious crime than terrorism.

Karadzic deserves a fair trial and humane treatment in custody, and he is certainly receiving both. He has the benefit of more than 30 people assisting him, including attorneys, consultant academics and paralegals, seven of whom are believed to be paid for by the tribunal.

Among those who have helped Karadzic is Melbourne University academic Kevin Jon Heller. Writing on the Opinion Juris blog in January, Heller describes a meeting he and his assistant "Peter" had with Karadzic at the UN Detention Unit, which Heller says is 

"... located in a very nice part of The Hague; indeed, it is abutted by a series of pretty little row houses. As an American, that was a bit of a shock - we hide our prisons in the middle of nowhere, especially those that house inmates convicted of the very worst crimes."

But what of those not convicted of the worst crimes? What about those merely suspected, as opposed to convicted, of terrorism? American prisons may be "in the middle of nowhere", but for years the CIA hid its prisoners in places whose precise location no one to this day knows except the agency, the detainee and his/her torturers.

Heller reports his client wore "casual clothes" and offered him a choice of drinks from "the blue plastic box full of drinks [and] snacks". Compare this to Guantanamo detainees, many of whom were kept in cages or metallic cells 2.4 by 1.8 metres, and dressed in orange jumpsuits, shackles and hoods.

The following scene would be impossible for a lawyer acting for a Guantanamo detainee to imagine: 

"He then gave Peter a Fanta grape soda - his favorite, Dr Karadzic told me - and asked me to choose between that, an orange soda, and a Coke. Following in Peter's footsteps, as I often do, I went grape."

But it isn't just Karadzic who gets the kind of treatment terror suspects can only dream of. Heller cites his assistant as follows: "Peter told me an amazing, and more than a little surreal, story about sitting with Dr Karadzic in the same room and watching Charles Taylor shoot baskets in the exercise yard."

So former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor gets to "shoot baskets in the exercise yard" while most Guantanamo inmates barely get to see sunlight an hour a day.

We don't know about how much sunlight, if any, detainees in secret CIA prisons get to see. And the thousands kept at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, often detained for years before being released without charge, don't even have access to lawyers or an appeal mechanism to challenge their detention. Then there are an untold number of terror suspects whose interrogation and torture is contracted out to foreign governments in a policy of "extraordinary rendition" started by the Clinton administration and continued under President Barack Obama.

Which all goes to show that if you are known to have orchestrated genocide and other war crimes, you can expect somewhat better treatment from the allegedly civilised world than if you are suspected of being on the wrong side of the "war on terror".

(Irfan Yusuf is the author of Once Were Radicals (Allen & Unwin, 2009). First published in the Canberra Times on 27 July 2009)

LAW: Are we on our way to becoming a police state?

The greatest comic cop ever to grace a Hollywood screen was Frank Drebin, lead character in the cult comedy The Naked Gun. Readers may recall a fiery exchange between Drebin and the LA mayor in which Drebin proudly declares: 

"Well, when I see five weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the park in full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's my policy."

The mayor wasn't impressed. 

"That was a Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar, you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!"

Thankfully our police officers are not as keen to fire at someone in a toga or similar exotic dress. Our police understand that killing or severely injuring a suspect doesn't automatically bring justice to victims. Justice is done in court before a judge (and possibly jury), with police evidence tested by counsel for the accused.

But we are now living in the age of terrorism which, as far as the Commonwealth Parliament was concerned, didn't exist before 9/11. So before 9/11, there was no separate offence or regime to cover terrorism.

Since then, the Commonwealth has been behaving as if more Australians were being killed in terrorist attacks than by sharks or in motor vehicle accidents. The result is that our police and intelligence agencies have been given extra powers.

Extra, unprecedented powers. And then more powers. And if that isn't enough, even more powers. Not only are terrorist acts (defined very broadly in the legislation) criminalised, but so is conduct ancillary to terrorist acts. Organisations that so much as praise a broadly defined terrorist act can be banned without any judicial review. People can be held incommunicado if they are suspected of having information related to a terror offence. Incommunicado. Suspected.

What we have aren't just a few amendments or a new offence. As the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department noted at a conference in September 2006, what we now have is ...

"a whole new area of criminal law and law enforcement procedure".

With all these additional powers come additional complications for officers on the ground as well as for commanders in HQ. Police officers are seasoned professionals. They are trained to deal with a wide variety of situations. Australia does not need to become a police state for police to earn the respect of communities they work to protect.

However, in their enforcement of counter-terrorism laws, police have made serious errors. These errors were present in the case of Harun Causevic, the accused Anzac Day terrorist, whose terrorism charges had to be dropped for want of evidence.

The unprecedented nature of our new terrorism legal system presents a major challenge to our individual liberties. Chest-beating conservative politicians tend to be keen to forget individual liberty when it comes to criminal law. The racial hysteria surrounding terrorism is such that all kinds of religious observance (even halal meat certification) is treated as a possible avenue of terrorism. If a senior religious scholar speaks of terrorism's "causative factors", he is howled down and lampooned by politicians and pundits who are happy to explain away their own cultural warrior fetishes using the most dubious "causative" explanations.

In this environment of fear and hysteria, and with so many counter-terrorism laws unused, NSW police are being given powers to shoot terror suspects engaged in hostage-style attacks without making some effort to "contain and negotiate". According to some counter-terrorism experts, negotiations don't work with terrorists whose sole aim is to cause as much damage as possible before achieving some kind of demented martyrdom. This betrays a rather simplistic understanding of terrorists and their motives.

And how will police know whether the person they're dealing with is such a terrorist? Is it their shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greater")? Is it by their name? By their holding up a flag that isn't quite the IS flag? Hopefully it won't be that simple, though details of the policy and the training remain under wraps.

And in case you thought this policy and training was in response to the horrific attacks in Paris, AAP reports that 

"senior officers say the new policy and a training program for every officer in NSW has been in the works for several years". 

Indeed, in an interview with Radio 2UE, NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas referred to the Mumbai attacks, in November 2008, as an instance in which 

"you have a mobile enemy force, which moves through places and kills people … we would be mad to continue to say we will do nothing but contain and negotiate".

Of course, the ideal is to minimise loss of life – including the life of the terror suspect. Terrorists aren't the only people who take hostages or to hold suicidal fetishes while doing so. Our sum total of knowledge of terrorism will hardly be helped if suspects are merely identified and shot dead.

These powers need to be used sparingly, if at all. Guidelines need to be clear, and there is no reason for them to remain unpublished, for the protection of both the public and police officers themselves.

(Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 20 November 2015)

POLITICS: At least God has the Commonwealth on His side

 

The 2014 budget hasn't given young and future voters much to cheer about. A swag of youth-related programs have been slashed, especially in regional areas. Often these are places where businesses are shutting doors, where workers are being laid off and where the only jobs available often involve flipping burgers in return for a few dollars.

And if you are unlucky or too depressed to do this kind of work, you may find yourself with no income source for six months. Apart from your parents, that is. Conservatives are all about family values, you know.

You might choose to study. No upfront fees! What a bargain! And enough debt to make getting married, having babies and putting a roof over their head almost impossible.

There was a time when the Liberal Party stood for the "forgotten people", the people who didn't have a union or truckloads of cash and capital to back them up. Vulnerable individuals.

But that seems like ancient history today. There are plenty of vulnerable individuals today, especially with union membership falling. But instead of providing opportunity, modern Australian liberalism is all about kicking vulnerable individuals in the guts.

So to whom can young vulnerable individuals turn? What should they do? Jostle a few past and present female MPs? Hold placards upside down on national TV?

Hiding in the detail of Joe Hockey's 2014 budget is a clue. Young people could do with a dose of good old-fashioned religion. An injection of taxpayer funds to empower God is what's called for.

John Howard injected $90 million into a pastoral care scheme. Howard knew public school teachers were spending too much time sorting out the great unwashed kids whose parents were too selfish to invest in decent grammar school education. Too much money for beer and cigarettes, and not enough for chapel, Latin classes and rugby.

Money for wealthy public schools also got shared among the poor struggling private schools. The result was that all schools could claim funding under the National School Chaplaincy Programme.

The scheme was a huge success. By July 2011, a 28 per cent of state schools had taken the dosh. Writing in Inside Story on July 21, 2011, Monica Thielking and David Mackenzie noted: 

"The initiative had its critics, but generally the education sector welcomed the additional resources."

Also happy were the chaplaincy providers, most of whom were faith-based. Here was a chance to spread the word.

One spokeswoman from ACCESS Ministries was quoted saying: 

"[I]n Australia we have a God-given open door to children and young people with the Gospel. Our federal and state governments allow us to take the Christian faith into our schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples."

This missionary zeal was nothing new. Back in the 1980s my school was making us year 10 boys spend one hour each week for an entire term being indoctrinated by Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live?.

This series of videos presented the European Enlightenment as an atheistic tragedy, the French Revolution as a series of guillotines (OK, he got that one right) and modern "secular humanism" as responsible for everything from the Holocaust to the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Schaeffer's solution? Bring God back into public life, into the public square, into government. Spoon-fed theocracy. That's where my parents' school fees went.

Seriously, though, the chaplaincy scheme is a good idea so long as governments recognised that not everyone believes that the Son of God was sent to die for our sins. And that some youth problems are too tough even for prayer.

The very hint of the Commonwealth funding direct preaching in schools (even if this isn't generally the reality) doesn't sit well with voters. Even if Chris Pyne and Tony Abbott scream until the Christ comes home that states and territories are funding less godly counsellors and psychologists.

Which is exactly what is happening. An extra $245 million has been found in the budget for the chaplaincy program. But schools don't have the option of having a not-so-religious social worker to fill the role.

When it comes to our kids' pastoral needs, at least God has the Commonwealth on His side. But not in other areas of school life.

Chris Pyne has already indicated he wants a reviewed curriculum for schools which puts emphasis on Anzac Day and our Western civilisation. God's children mustn't be pacifist and certainly mustn't have a black-armband view of the past, even if His son was a Palestinian Jew.

The culture wars are alive and well in our schools. God help our kids.

(Irfan Yusuf is an author and PhD candidate at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 23 May 2014)

POLITICS: Halal: much ado about nothing in particular

Mackay is a central Queensland city of mixed fortunes. Blessed with riches thanks to its proximity to the Bowen Basin, a region that produces 80 per cent of Queensland's saleable coal, not to mention gold, silver, limestone, gemstones and magnesite. Tradespeople and even truck drivers could easily earn a six-figure salary, buy a hotted-up ute or two (or three or four) and a swag of investment properties.

But times started getting tougher as coal prices started going down and the BHP-Mitsubishi Alliance began trimming its workforce. Queensland Resource Council chief executive Michael Roche was quoted by ABC on October 4, 2014, as saying: 

"This has been some of the toughest times for the coal industry in about 20 years."

With such a potentially large economic blow to the city and its surrounds, you'd think the Federal LNP member would be run off his feet consulting with mining companies, unions, smaller contracting businesses and other stakeholders. You'd think the recent G20 Summit in Brisbane and talk of free trade agreements with China and India that would see key tariffs scrapped on resources would have the local MP talking up his region to visiting dignitaries instead of just a short chat (through interpreters) with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Canberra.

Instead, the federal member for Dawson, George Christensen, is too busy harming another major export industry simply because it may have some connection to a religious culture he doesn't like very much.

Lots of people in this country object to aspects of Islam. Lots of Muslims choose not to practise aspects of their own faith. There are plenty of different sects and denominations and rulings and interpretations of various Islamic teachings on everything from how to place your hands when standing in prayer to how long a bloke's beard should be.

Of course, where there is religion, you'll always find money. The Vatican wasn't built in a day, and nor was that massive clock tower overlooking Mecca. In Australia, some Muslim individuals, religious institutions and private companies make money out of certifying certain foods to be halal.

And what does it mean if you eat something halal? Basically it means you transform into a jihadi monster with a massive beard covered with a black burqa. Your love of beer disappears and you develop an urge to vote for the Greens if IS or Hamas is not on the ballot paper.

Relax! I was just kidding. Basically the word "halal" means religiously permissible to consume or do. Having sexual intercourse with your spouse is halal. Drinking water is halal. Going fishing is halal. Driving to work is halal. Learning how to say "thank you" in Mandarin is halal. Xi Xi.

When it comes to food, strictly speaking only certain foods require certification. I've never heard of fish in Australia being certified. Why? Because religious regulations state that what comes out of the sea is always permissible.

Many Muslims cannot see the point in certification. As far as they're concerned, if it doesn't contain alcohol or pig meat, just eat it. I tend to belong to this school of thought except when on Sydney Road, Brunswick, or Auburn Road, Auburn. Other Muslims go to the extent of publishing a list of ingredients, emulsifiers and colourings that are not halal. Apparently Emulsifier 007 is not halal as it makes you attractive to lewd women.

In areas with plenty of Muslims who like plenty of saturated fats, fast food outlets take advantage of the forces of supply and demand. If you look closely, you'll notice halal certificates taped to the wall at your McDonald's outlet. If you object, chances are there are 10 others nearby without the certificate.

Some readers may be wondering what all the fuss is about. They might wonder how Christensen came up with the idea that halal is used to fund extremist groups and sharia ("robbing women of all of their marital property rights") and burqas and all that other nasty stuff. And that food companies are being as deceptive about halal as they are about how obese their ingredients are making many of us.

It all sounds rather kosher, and that's because it virtually is. Halal certification operates in a similar way and on similar principles to kosher certification. Animal slaughter processes are almost identical. Companies in the United States, Israel and South Africa are making a huge profit exporting their stuff to kosher supermarkets. I doubt the money goes to some wacko settlement in the West Bank or a Beth Din court in Israel that deprives women of their marital property rights. Of course, the availability of this stuff doesn't stop many Jews from eating a Big Mac, halal or otherwise.

Many Dawson voters would have hoped their federal MP would have moved beyond his university days when he wrote material blaming Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus and labelling women as "stupid". They must have cringed when they heard him blame live cattle export to Indonesia on "the religion that actually inspires the torture of cattle there". Sadly, if halal-certified Australian food manufacturers lose export markets, it will be Australian workers (including many in Christensen's own electorate) who will lose the most. Nothing halal about that.

(Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and award-winning author. First published in the Canberra Times on 22 November 2014)

TRIBUTE: Peter Andren we need you more than ever to keep our MPs honest

It's often said that the major problem with our Parliaments is they are inundated with lawyers. As a lawyer myself, I admit that we are excellent at splitting hairs. Our plain English skills also leave a lot to be desired. Little wonder one of our most complex pieces of legislation – the Social Security Act – is barely understood by most lawyers let alone Centrelink clients. Yet anyone falling foul of Centrelink rules, even accidentally, can expect all the resources of the Department of Human Services to come down on them hard.

One advantage of having so many lawyers in Parliament is that they all understand financial trust. They are trained in how to honestly handle other people's money through trust accounts. Law graduates can only become lawyers if they pass an exam on trust accounting. Once they start practising on their own account, solicitors can expect regular visits from the trust account inspector.

Which explains why our MPs are so scrupulously honest about their parliamentary entitlements. They know they are handling money provided on trust by taxpayers. They know that if they do the wrong thing, all hell could break loose.

In theory, at least. Once out of law practice, our ex-lawyer law-makers have gained a reputation for ignoring, bending, stretching if not flouting the rules regarding spending other people's money.

The few MPs who speak out against the rorts tend to be those elected as independents, as opposed to career party hacks. One of these, a former Federal Member for Calare in central NSW, is sadly no longer with us. But we do have Peter Andren's 2003 memoir, The Andren Report: an independent way in Australian politics.

After being elected to Parliament in 1996, Mr Andren increased his majority in 1998. Despite attacking the government's position on asylum seekers, he won again in 2001 with a primary vote of over 50 per cent and a two-candidate-preferred vote of 75 per cent. Many in his electorate would have despised some of his political positions, but they appreciated his honesty and preferred not being represented by a party hack. Maybe it helped that Mr Andren was not a lawyer but rather a local and prominent broadcast journalist.

One of Mr Andren's chapters is titled "Lurks, Perks, and Rorts". As a new MP, he was shocked by 

"... just how deep the publicly funded well from which members of Parliament drank. I was immediately shocked at the generosity and virtual accountability of the members of Parliament's travel allowance scheme … MPs had for many years used travel allowances to pay off mortgages for property in Canberra".

Mr Andren was for some time at the centre of the 1997 scandal surrounding former ALP Senator and deputy president of the Senate Mal Colston. When Mr Colston wasn't supported for the plum job by the ALP, he resigned and sat on the cross benches before the incoming Howard government offered him the job with its $16,000-plus pay rise. Eventually Mr Howard had to refer 

... a series of allegations involving misuse of entitlements, Commonwealth cars and postal and travel allowances … to the Commonwealth police.

At the time, Mr Andren was visiting a young offenders' prison farm in his electorate. One inmate asked him a rather logical question: 

How come that bloke Colston can't be charged, when I'm in here for 16 months for stealing a car and possessin' dope? 

Eventually charged, Mr Coston's charges were later dropped.

Following questions from Mr Andren, a number of Coalition MPs and Ministers were forced to amend their records. One minister was forced to pay back $8740 to the Department of Administrative Services. One senior cabinet minister, a minister and an MP who admitted to repaying false travel claims of around $9000 resigned or were sacked. Two of Mr Howard's staffers were also made to resign for covering up the secret repayments.

In September 1997, Mr Andren questioned Mr Howard about 

... members given the opportunity to correct and amend their signed-off travel claims prior to enforced scrutiny … and before their tabling and publication in this house. 

He also asked when MPs would acknowledge that 

... the TA [travel allowance) and overseas travel system had been systematically abused and rorted over many years. 

Mr Howard's response was to accuse Mr Andren of making "a cheap shot" and engaging in "generalised smears". Mr Andren was then ejected out of the House and into the arms of an adoring media and public.

Mr Andren found neither side wanted to engage in reform, but were happy to accuse each other of rorts. After a vicious attack from Peter Costello, a Labor Senator from Tasmania was found in his Canberra flat with slashed wrists. But Mr Andren knew the system was rotten and pursued the matter.

"I realised I was not the flavour of the month among government and Labor members of the house … who had been part of a system that regarded the lurks and perks of office as something of a right than a privilege".

Peter Andren died in 2007, his quest to end the rorts unsuccessful. Since then, Australians have had to put up with the Peter Slipper affair, Choppergate and numerous other examples of MPs taking advantage of a rotten system. Meanwhile, we are constantly being lectured about the end of the age of entitlement. Essential services such as legal aid are slashed.

Voters deserve better than this cartel of rorts. If only we had more Peter Andrens to clean up the mess.

(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 5 August 2015)

OPINION: The terror of anti-terror laws

Last June, I was sitting in a KL restaurant with some Malaysian lawyers. I was explaining to them the intricacies of Australia's new anti-terror laws and the negative impact these had on civil liberties.

In particular, I was telling them about a special new order known as a "control order". This order enabled internal security officials (including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation or ASIO) to approach a judge and obtain an order that someone be detained or their movements be restricted for a certain fixed period (usually a week or two).

I was surprised when one lawyer's face lit up.

Irfan, you people are so lucky in Australia. Here in Malaysia, we have this legal beast called the Internal Security Act whereby innocent people can be locked up for months!

Another provision of Australia's anti-terror laws is one which allows the Federal Attorney-General to declare a particular organisation to be placed on a list of terrorist organisations. Once an organisation is placed on the list, anyone deemed to be a member or supporter of that organisation could be prosecuted and jailed. I am offering no awards for anyone guessing which religion all banned organisations are linked to.

In this respect, Australian law is similar to laws enacted in the UK and US. Following the London bombings on July 7, 2005, the Blair government tried to have one specific organisation (known as Hizb ut-Tehrir or HT) banned. He knew this group had already been banned in countries - the bastions of democracy and human rights - such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

On Dec 24, 2006, The Observer newspaper reported that senior police and the Home Office opposed Tony Blair's efforts to have HT banned, fearing such a step "would serve only as a recruiting agent [for] the group". A similar debate has raged in Australia, with many State Governments calling for HT to be banned and the Federal Government resisting.

HT has operated in Australia freely and ineffectually for decades. Its platform is the establishment of an international caliphate in Muslim-majority states. HT believes that the solution to the many problems facing Muslims is the establishment of a caliph who will implement the sacred law of Islam (known as sharia) as the law of the land.

Paranoid columnists

In recent times, the Australian branch of HT has made headlines with its seminars, many of which have deliberately provocative titles. Yet their meetings would be lucky to attract 400 people, despite plenty of free advertising from the hostile press. Compare this to the typical Friday prayer service at the Auburn Gallipoli Mosque (one of the largest in Australia), which each Friday attracts 5,000 people. Remember that Friday is a working day in Australia, and even the most hostile newspapers don't bother with Friday sermons.

HT's radical rhetoric has provided more paranoid columnists and commentators with plenty to talk and write about. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on Jan 27, Miranda Devine claimed that HT was a bigger threat to Australian social cohesion than the white supremacists who orchestrated the racial riots at Sydney's Cronulla Beach.

A report in the Melbourne Age cited Anglican minister Dr Mark Durie who alleged HT was "a major world force for radical political Islam, with links to terrorist groups". The report didn't remind readers that Durie was and remains a supporter of Danny Nalliah, a radical Melbourne Christian preacher who has called upon his supporters to call for the destruction of Hindu and Buddhist temples.

HT recently made headlines again with their Jan 28 conference whose theme was "Khilafate". They invited two guest speakers, including the Chairman of HT's Indonesian wing Dr Ismael Yusanto. The Federal Government condemned Yusanto's presence in Australia, though their condemnations soon ended when the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Jan 29 that Yusanto had been invited by the government to speak at a security conference only three years earlier. Further, Yusanto is known to be a regular guest at the Australian embassy in Jakarta.

I attended the conference for most of the day. Hardly 400 people were in attendance, many of them present were there to show support for a group they otherwise disagreed with but which they felt was being unfairly targeted.

For many young Australian Muslims, HT is a temporary ideological pit-stop on their way to more refined and sophisticated Islamic thinking. HT thinking provides them with a simplistic device to understand their troubled world.

Double-standards

HT speaks of double-standards when it comes to human rights and fighting terror. It criticises Western governments sponsoring tyrannical rulers, generals and kings in many Muslim countries. It speaks of restoring some collective dignity to the Muslim ummah (faith-community).

Such views often resonate with young Muslims tired of seeing their faith maligned and their sentiments ignored by Australian governments and peak Islamic bodies. Perhaps one good antidote to stem the perceived growth of HT influence is for Australian governments and political parties to start involving Muslim Australians in the foreign policy discourse.

When the Australian government and Muslim peak bodies ignore the views of young people, the youth are often pushed into the waiting arms of fringe groups like HT. Fifteen years ago, I used to go to Muslim youth camps with HT's Australian leaders. In those days, they were young teenagers with sharp tongues for whom a Muslim youth camp was one of the few opportunities they got to escape their difficult household. They went onto achieve an extraordinary degree of academic success.

Although I now detest HT's isolationist ideology, I can understand its attraction. I could so easily have become addicted to the same kind of thinking. Those were the days when radical political Islam was regarded by Western governments as an antidote to what was considered the bigger enemy of communism. I can understand how HT's Australian followers ended up where they are. It could so easily been me also.

A good way to turn HT into a real security risk is to ban them using anti-terror laws and send them underground. This will galvanise support for HT amongst even mainstream Muslim Australians who feel marginalised and ignored by governments and peak Muslim bodies. Time will tell which way the government inevitably goes.

(IRFAN YUSUF is a Sydney-based lawyer, writer and blogger whose articles and reviews have appeared in various newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald , Melbourne Age , Canberra Times , Australian Financial Review and New Zealand Herald. First published in malaysiakini on 15 February 2007)

OPINION: Care needed lest terror beget terror

Perpetrators of Boston tragedy must be brought to justice, but not at the cost of more innocent lives.

When that tragic bomb blast shook the vicinity of the Boston marathon finishing line, few people on this side of the world would have known about it immediately. I only heard of it while browsing at a bookstore in Dandenong, a suburb in southwest Melbourne that is famous for its large Indian, Sri Lankan, Afghan and other non-Anglo communities. Each community has a separate area in the Dandenong town centre where restaurants, food markets and clothing shops can be found.

As I picked up Salman Rushdie's memoir, the sounds of a popular music station Fox FM could be heard on the store's radio. Instead of the usual techno, two DJs were discussing at length a bomb blast. I listened closely and found out a bomb attack had claimed the lives of at least two people near the finishing line of the Boston tragedy. Among the victims was an 8-year-old boy.

The voices of these radio hosts weren't of the usual excited and chirpy mode. Instead, they sounded sombre. It was only appropriate when discussing an event so extremely tragic. They spoke about the loss of loved ones, of the young boy who lost his life and of the American nation in mourning.

One announcer spoke of the possibility that this was a terrorist attack. She suggested this might only be the case if the attackers were from overseas. So how would we describe the attack if those responsible were Americans? I guess you can't expect political sophistication from everyone.

In Australia, there has been saturation coverage of the Boston tragedy. And with good reason. Many Australians study and work in the United States. It is perhaps our closest ally, a country with whom we share a cultural and linguistic affinity.

But one wonders what Afghan shoppers listening to the radio at this bookstore must have been thinking about all this focus on Boston's victims meant when similar tragedies happen in Afghanistan every week at the hands of not just terrorists but also coalition forces.

Afghans from the Hazara ethnic group have especially been targeted for ethnic and sectarian reasons in Pakistan. In recent days, bombings across Iraq have claimed the lives of more than 50 people and injured 300 in the lead-up to local elections on April 20.

This kind of thing happens in Iraq perhaps once a month. Apart from in the Shia Muslims of the southern marsh areas and some Kurdish cities and towns, this generally wasn't happening when Saddam Hussein was in power. But isn't Saddam's oppression of his own people one of the main reasons used by the Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq in the first place?

If the Boston attack is indeed an example of international terrorism, one wonders whether a large number of anonymous innocents will die in the hunt for Boston's perpetrators. It seems that when the United States is a victim of terror, it cannot help but terrorise others. Within the first year of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Coalition forces killed more Afghan civilians than were killed on 9/11.

The vast majority of victims of al-Qaeda, the Taleban and Saddam Hussein have been people belonging to faiths and cultures that Western cultural warriors love to associate with terrorism. It is hard to resist the conclusion that what we are again seeing is a situation where all terror victims are equal but some are more equal than others.

Still, talking about terror and terroristic reprisal may be premature. President Obama has mentioned this was a terrorist attack though he has refused to declare which group are the prime suspects.

It won't be easy for investigators to determine who was responsible. Pressure cookers stuffed with gun powder and nails are the weapons of choice for terrorists and criminal gangs across the Third World, from India to Central Africa.

We should hope and pray the perpetrators are found and brought to justice. However, we should also hope the Obama Administration doesn't use this incident to commit acts of terror on others. Perhaps the sign held up at a school peace rally by 8-year-old victim Marty Richard should be the guiding principal. 

"No more hurting people."

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer. First published in the NZ Herald on 18 April 2013)

OPINION: Australia turns its back on the desperate

 

The beachside Sydney suburb of Manly is home to many an Aussie boat-owner. Indeed locals (including the abundance of Kiwi settlers) will tell you that the most enjoyable way to get to Manly from the city is by boat. Manly is also the heartland of Tony Abbott, the conservative Opposition Leader who is also desperate to become Prime Minister.

In the 2010 elections Mr Abbott almost made it to the top job with the slogan of "Stop The Boats". Until some days ago, this mantra should have been Mr Abbott's ticket to the PM's house. Mr Abbott has effectively capitalised, indeed monopolised, on the love-hate relationship many Aussie voters have with boats.

In Mr Abbott's electorate, just about every punter owns a boat. Elsewhere, owning one is just about every bogan's dream. But boats are also a nightmare because they're often the vessels that bring dark-skinned unwashed illegal immigrants to our shores. The 5600 boat people that flooded the country in 2010 represented a huge threat to our migration system and our security compared to, say, the 53,900 harmless overstayers largely from Europe and North America.

So who is to blame for this influx of boat people? Is it the bullets and nooses and torture chambers of the God-awful governments, militias, mullahs, juntas and civil wars these people are fleeing? Is it crazy theocrats like the Taliban our brave troops are fighting in Afghanistan and our American allies are cosying up with in peace talks in Qatar?

Since 2001, Australian politicians have had a simple answer. The blame for the influx of asylum seekers lay with the asylum seekers and the people who smuggle them here. Boat people are "queue jumpers". People smugglers, often former asylum seekers themselves, are a bunch of crooks.

Mr Abbott's solution - send in the navy to turn any boats around so they can go back to where they came from. Almost always that means Indonesia. Too bad for Mr Abbott that many Indonesian leaders find this approach inhumane and impractical. And Indonesia knows our Opposition will take their opposition seriously.

Now Mr Abbott faces a new Prime Minister who is just as ruthless. A few days ago, Kevin Rudd signed a deal with Peter O'Neill, leader of Australia's impoverished northern neighbour and former colony Papua New Guinea. Mr O'Neill has agreed to house unlimited numbers of boat people on the remote northern island of Manus or in other facilities.

Mr Rudd has instructed the Immigration Department to place advertisements in local newspapers declaring "If you come here by boat without a visa YOU WON'T BE SETTLED IN AUSTRALIA". A version of this message in video form is also in Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Sinhalese, Tamil and Vietnamese.

Mr Rudd has effectively closed the door to asylum seekers arriving by boat and has thrown away the key in the direction of Port Moresby. A recent issue of the Economist rates Port Moresby as the 139th most liveable city in the world, below Karachi and Harare. Manus Island would unlikely make any list of liveability. It's true that PNG has at least acceded to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, but they have sought exemptions on providing basic services to refugees such as employment, education and housing.

But that's not all. Catherine Wilson writes in Crikey: 

Female asylum seekers will find themselves in a society grappling with very high levels of gender and sexual violence, with inadequate law enforcement. Last year the World Bank reported that violence victimisation rates in PNG were among the highest in the world and violent crimes were on the increase.

Bleeding heart do-gooders like myself are frothing at the mouth and penning editorials on how Mr Rudd's new policy is tougher and less humane than anything Mr Abbott ever came up with. And that's exactly the message Mr Rudd wants to get out there. On asylum seeker and border protection, Kevin Rudd sounds more like Tony Abbott than Tony Abbott. At least that's how it will look until Mr Rudd wins the election and then reviews the policy in 12 months time.

Retired Brigadier Gary Hogan, a former Australian Defence Attache to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, recently wrote for the Lowy Institute: 

A cargo cult mentality is alive and well in PNG and this afforded the necessary levers for the Australian Prime Minister to pull so deftly in his game-changing policy statement, which will almost certainly stem boat arrivals in the near term, until people smugglers and Australian activists are able to find paths around the absolutist decree that even legitimate asylum-seekers will now not find sanctuary in Australia.

Australia, a huge and sparsely populated island continent whose European incarnation was established by criminals arriving in boats, has turned its back on desperate boat people who have in the past made terrific citizens. Still, our loss could be Kevin Rudd's gain. Which I guess is really all that matters.

(Irfan Yusuf is an Australian lawyer and author. First published in the NZ Herald on 25 July 2013)

RELIGION: Jewish leaders defend Muslims

Some years back, a Malaysian prime minister had turned blaming Jews for the world's ills into an art-form. He blamed the Jewish heritage of at least one currency speculator for Malaysia's currency woes.

He then banned Schindler's List, a Steven Spielberg movie concerning a German businessman who saved some Jews from the Nazi death camps.

He even accused Jews of ruling the world by proxy, something which must have angered his Muslim supporters. I can just imagine how they would have responded.

"Does Dr Mahathir Mohamad think the Jews are stronger than Allah?"

... they would (or should) have asked themselves.

Muslim leaders in Australia at the time were silent over Mahathir's blasphemy. Jewish leaders were incensed. Australian politicians were too busy giving their shirt measurements for the next APEC summit to worry about the allegedly recalcitrant Asian leader.

Now, it seems Mahathir has an ally in such verbal gymnastics. And one from, of all places, a tiny strip of the earth's surface which Jews might rightly claim control of. Recently, a visiting Professor of Chinese and Islamic history from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem made some remarks about Muslims in general and Muslim migrants in particular.

On Thursday, Feb 15, 2007, the Australian Jewish News reported the comments of Prof Raphael Israeli, who teaches Chinese and Islamic History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Israeli happily gave the newspaper's readers some advice on how the "war of words" was insufficient to oppose what he described as "this threat of Islam".

National headlines

"You have to adopt some kind of preventative policy. In order not to get there, limit the immigration and therefore you keep them a marginal minority, which will be a nuisance, but cannot pose a threat to the demographic and security aspects of a country And one of the big possibilities is Australia, so they will continue to come legally, or illegally, and settle here, and when they get to the rate of the 10 percent like in France, then you will see life will become untenable."

At one point, Israeli takes a cue from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, claiming:

"Then they control whole sections of the economy, there are areas in France where you cannot be elected to Parliament without the support of the Muslims and so on. And therefore, by increasing their numbers they start to have an impact on the social, economic, political and cultural nature of the country."

Israeli concludes his conspiracy theory as follows:

"Muslim populations, which are very often minorities, very often abuse that hospitality and use democracy, openness and tolerance to their benefit, to spread their faith and to intimidate their hosts, and very often, to impose their standards and values upon them."

Israeli's comments made national headlines. He was lambasted by many in the mainstream media. He claimed that the Australian Jewish News had misconstrued, misunderstood and/or misquoted his words. But when asked to clarify his position on Muslim migration to Australia, Israeli said that countries whose Muslim populations reached a "critical mass" (usually 10%) would "have problems", and that this was "the general rule, so if it applies everywhere, it applies in Australia."

Muslim leaders silent

And just like the situation with Mahathir's remarks about Jews, Muslim leaders are largely silent. Jewish leaders (believe it or not) are by-and-large incensed. And Australian political leaders are too busy grovelling to visiting US Vice President Dick Cheney.

Thus far, only one Muslim community leader has spoken and written against Israeli. Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman and Melbourne lawyer Waleed Aly wrote a devastating critique of Israeli's remarks in the Melbourne Age on Feb 19, 2007. Here's how Aly disentangled Israeli's argument on the 10 percent Muslim minority scare:

"Rwandan Muslims were once held in low esteem. They were traders in a land where farmers held prestige. Moreover they were socially and politically negligible, constituting roughly five percent of the population, and largely confined to the unspectacular neighbourhood of Kigali. Then came the genocide of 1994 in which tribal violence between Hutus and Tutsis claimed 800,000 lives.

"Meanwhile, Kigali was a sanctuary. Muslims, both Hutu and Tutsi, resolved that they would stand against the genocide. When Hutu militias surrounded the neighbourhood, Hutu Muslims refused to co-operate. They hid Tutsis - Muslim and Christian - in their homes and in their mosques. Now, Islam in Rwanda is booming. Masses of Christians, incapable of returning to the churches in which their families were slaughtered, sickened at the thought of praying next to those who massacred them and listening to priests who sanctioned it, have converted to Islam. Today, Muslims constitute around 15 percent of the population."

Aly was alone among Muslim leaders. Not a single imam made a public statement. Nor did any leaders of Muslim organisations. So why would Muslim leaders be silent on such an outrageous attack on Muslim migrants?

They were too busy lobbying and being lobbied for votes at the upcoming elections of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), Australia's peak Muslim body. The town is burning, and the foremen are too busy fighting over who should be given the keys to start the fire truck.

Jewish leaders to the defence

In an ironic twist of fate, Australian Jewish leaders were more effective in protecting and defending Muslim communities from Israeli's venom. On the same day his comments were reported, one of his sponsoring organisations (the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council) issued a press release rejecting his comments. They further state that they 

"... will not be co-hosting any of his further appearances in Australia".

The CEO of the Sydney-based New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, said Israeli's comments 

"... do not reflect the position of the Jewish community and are unhelpful in the extreme". 

He reminded us of the Jewish community's 

"... strong record in fighting racism and condemn[ing] all expressions of bigotry".

Meanwhile, the only defence of Israeli came from the stable of newspapers owned by ex-Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch. His only broadsheet newspaper, The Australian, commissioned a column from Israeli which was published on Feb 22. He accused Jewish leaders of being two-faced, hypocritical and spineless for 

"... statements that were geared to placate Muslims".

The same newspaper published an article by a former Australian politician who claimed Australia's "Muslim problem" was a bigger threat than global warming and climate change.

Israeli also claimed in his defence that he had "been researching Islam in Europe". Yet anyone reading his resume on the Hebrew University website will discover the man has written virtually nothing on European Muslims in peer-reviewed academic journals. In fact, even Israeli's Chinese history credentials are nothing to boast about. He has not taught in mainland China even once, his only visit in the region being to Taiwan.

So there you have it, dear readers. Jew attacks Muslims whose leaders remain silent while Jewish leaders defend Muslims. Only in multicultural Australia!

(IRFAN YUSUF is a Sydney-based lawyer, writer and blogger whose articles and reviews have appeared in various newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald , Melbourne Age , Canberra Times , Australian Financial Review and New Zealand Herald. First published in malaysiakini on 6 May 2007)