RELIGION: An Irreverent Guide to the Aussie Hajj

 

Recently one of my favourite editors announced he was packing his bags, partner and kids off to the Iberian peninsular. I was a little confused at first as to why he was going. I thought it might be some kind of pilgrimage.

I went to his farewell at his house in the inner-city of Sydney . Lots of wine and beer was flowing, none of it down my throat but plenty of its fumes up my nostrils. Once we were in a sufficient state of intoxication, I think I remember us having the following conversation:

HIM: So are you gonna visit me over there?

ME: Maaaate [in Tony Abbott style], I'll only go if you take me on pilgrimage on the road to Santiago de Compostella.

HIM: Mate [this time less like Tony Abbott], when are you taking me to Mecca?

ME: You've got a point there. Still, they should let you in this time, now that you've grown a beard!.

I guess that's the problem many non-Muslims face. They simply can't get into Mecca even if they wanted to. I mean, I'm sure plenty of Aussies would absolutely relish the opportunity to spend a fortnight in a desert wilderness enjoying the 45-plus degrees celcius heat (without having an ice-cold VB as a consolation prize), the noise, the crowds, the pick-pockets, the rudeness of Saudi customs officials and police etc etc. What better way to spend Christmas?

An Aussie Hajj-a-holic's guide to the pilgrimage

For those of you who ever wondered what it was like to go on the Hajj - the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, now located in the modern (and I use that word in its broadest possible sense) Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - here is a step-by-step guide to the experience.

No, not my experience. I've never been. In fact, I'm not allowed to go until I've paid all my debts. Though my exceptionally South Asian mum has. In fact, she's already been there three times. And worse still, she wants to go again! I reckon it's because she wants to commune with God. Though I could be wrong.

"I vaant to go a-ghen, to get aveh frum yoo and yoor faadhar. Olvez mek me doo-ing iss-stoopid cooking!"

(Trans: I'd go again just to get away from you and your father! When are you two gonna learn to cook??)

Yep, she's a bit of a Hajj-a-holic.

The crowd

The first problem mum points out is with the crowds. If Byron Bay and Sunshine coast locals thought they had it bad with schoolies and toolies, they should spare a thought for the people of Mecca. Each year, over 5 million people visit this sacred Muslim city.

The biggest numbers are at the time of Hajj, the sacred pilgrimage all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it are expected to make at least once in their lifetime. This year, over 2.7 million people are expected to converge on this ancient city for this annual assembly of monotheism.

The pilgrims come from just about every part of the planet. Despite the enormous cultural, linguistic and sectarian differences amongst Muslims, there is a surprising degree of consensus when it comes to the rituals of the Hajj. These ancient rites date back 1,400 years and are based on an even older story.

The Hajj story

Some people in Australia talk about "Judeo-Christian" values, as if they haven't quite figured out that there are at least 3 monotheistic faiths that emerged from the Middle East. And that's not including all the other monotheistic faiths (such as Sikhism).

Really, what we should be talking about are "Abrahamic" values. The triplet faiths of Islam, Christianity and Judaism all respect and honour Abraham, an Iraqi chap regarded by all three traditions as the father of ethical monotheism.

According to Islamic tradition, Ibrahim (Abraham) married an Egyptian woman named Hajira (Hagar) who bore him a son named Ismail (Ishmael). He also took a second wife Sarah (pronounced slightly differently in Biblical English) who bore him a second son Ishaq (Isaac).

For some domestic reasons, Ibrahim feels the need to leave his first wife in a desert valley named Bakkah with the baby Ismail. Like all good mums, Hajira's primary concern is the survival of her toddler. But where will she find water in this wilderness?

The well and the cube

She heads for a hill, finds nothing and so heads in the opposite direction to another hill. She again finds nothing. In desperation, she runs back and forth around 7 times before setting eyes on her young boy kicking the ground to uncover a spring. Quickly she builds a make-shift well.

Within a short period, the well attracts the attention of other travellers through this area. Hajira watches her son become a grown man, and receives a visit from Ibrahim again. Ibrahim and Ismail are ordered to build a temple in honour of the one true invisible God. The temple was a simple cubic structure, in the direction of which people would pray.

The valley of Bakkah eventually became known as Mecca. The cubic temple is known as the Kaaba (an Arabic word which just means "Cube"), and is traditionally draped in a black embroidered cloth. The well kicked to the surface by the infant Ismail is known as the Well of Zam Zam.

The age of pilgrims

The elders teach that the reward for a successful Hajj is nothing less than forgiveness of all sins and paradise. In many Muslim cultures, this means people tend to leave performing Hajj to the end of their life. In the Indian sub-Continent, where my parents come from, people tend to perform Hajj after their kids have grown up, married and left home. Cynics (like my dad each time his wife books her Hajj package at the travel agent) recite an old Hindi/Urdu phrase which can be roughly translated as: "After eating several thousand mice, the fat cat finally decides to head off for Hajj!".

In places closer to our shores, people tend to go much earlier. In Malaysia, it's common for young couples to treat the Hajj as a kind of spiritual honeymoon. According to the Prophet Muhammad, a person who married has completed half the faith. So if you're a boofy bloke like me and you are lucky enough to marry some gorgeous Malay (apologies for the tautology) princess, it's like a heavenly 2-for-1 deal. You've got guaranteed loss of your virginity, gain of half your faith and your sins forgiven in one go!

And for those who believes neo-Con fictions about Islam, the deal doesn't even include the fictitious 72 heavenly virgins!

Multicultural Aussie Hajj

Each year Australia sends a few hundred people to perform Hajj. When they come back, they're given the honorific title of "Hajji" or "al-Hajj". If their Hajj was successfully completed, they should come back with their sins are washed away and as pure as the day they were born.

(Anyone who has had to deal with Saudi officials at Jeddah airport will know why forgiveness of one's sins is furnished so readily.)

In Australia, the Hajj trip is performed by people of various ages. More young people accompany their elderly parents on this difficult journey.

Then there are the different nationalities and their interesting idiosyncrasies.

Hajj Hansonisms

In Mecca, all street signs are in various languages. But there are certain signs you'll only find in Urdu, Bengali and Hindi. These signs simply state: "Spitting here is forbidden!". Or something like that.

Why? Across the Indian sub-Continent, people chew a special blend of nuts and paste wrapped in leaf known as paan which they chew and spit out into gutters or even against walls, leaving a nasty and distinct reddish-brown stain.

Turks travel in large groups and are extremely fussy about cleanliness. In one part of the Hajj, all pilgrims stay in tents on a plain called Mina for the night. The place becomes tent city for the night, with a range of facilities including toilets and kitchens. You know you're in the Turkish section because tents look shiny-new, the sand looks like someone has rubbed Mr Sheen into it, and the toilets are spotless to the extent you could make a sandwich on their floors.

Cronulla rioters will be pleased to note that according to a reliable source (my mum), Lebanese pilgrims basically spend most of their Hajj sitting around cracking jokes and drinking coffee strong enough to keep you awake until the next Hajj.

Nigerians are tall and heavy-set. A major part of the pilgrimage is to circle the cubic temple seven times in an anti-clockwise direction, all the while shouting "Labayk! Allah humma Labbayk!"(roughly translated as "I'm here, Oh Lord, I'm here" though if you're on the receiving end of the rampage, you should read "My God! Here they come!!"). It's generally not advisable to slip if you find yourself in their path. When you see a group of them with arms clasped rushing toward you screaming the prayer, it's scarier than seeing 500 All-Blacks doing the Haka.

I

 have no idea what Kiwi pilgrims are like. I doubt they scream the Haka at any stage of the rituals. Plus people at Hajj tend to use sheep for slaughtering purposes.

And what the dinky-di Australian pilgrim do at Hajj? Maybe throw a halal shrimp on the bbq, have a game of sand cricket and sink down a few non-alcoholic VB's.

Hajj dress code

Despite the weird and wonderful characteristics of various cultural groups at Hajj, everyone dresses the same. Blokes wear a white-coloured two-piece towel thing, and ladies wear some additional stuff which is also white coloured. If you landed in Mecca at Hajj time and you didn't know where you were, you'd think it was a huge toga party. Except at this party, everyone is praying and no one gets pissed or stoned.

Despite this, Mecca does have some rather nasty features found in big secular cities. UK stand-up comic and columnist Shazia Mirza often talks about her Hajj during her routine. She was circling the Ka'aba when some dude pinched her behind. She turned around but couldn't recognise the culprit in a sea of sacred togas. She kept going when, within a moment or so, it happened again. She turned around, and again she couldn't locate the deviant.

Later, Shazia caught up with her sister, who also complained of being pinched. Shazia then relates to her audience: "We both concluded it was the Hand of God".

Boom boom!

(Don't panic. I didn't just let off a bomb.)

Meanwhile, back home...

Believe me, the party isn't just happening in Mecca. Across the world, Muslims celebrate their own party. In fact, it's the biggest feast of the year, and is known as Eid al-Adha (or Bayram for Turks, Hari Raya for Indonesians/Malays, Baqrah Eid for South Asians etc).

Thankfully, this year Eid and Christmas (or Hari Natal for all you Indonesians out there) are both happening around the same time. But for Aussie employers with Muslim employees, it's a huge pain in the butt. Here's why.

Aussie Lunar-tics

I'm sure all you (non-Orthodox) Christians find celebrating Christmas fairly straight forward. For a start, you at least know when it is. But spare a thought for us Muslims. The absence of any central priestly or scholarly authority in Aussie Islam means that we simply cannot agree on when the feast is to be celebrated.

Imagine being office manager in a medium-sized law firm in Sydney's CBD. It's Tuesday afternoon. Sekire (pronounced "Shakira"), a law clerk of Turkish ancestry, approaches you to confirm her leave on Wednesday to be at home helping mum with the cooking while her fiancé, brothers and dad go to the mosque for Bayram prayers. Her community's imams have settled religious festival dates until 2,987 A.D.

Then high-powered solicitor Suraina approaches you on Wednesday morning to take Thursday off for Hari Raya Haji. Her family and her metro-sexual husband (apparently the managing director of Petronas) are flying in from KL for the occasion. She only found out last night it was Hari Raya. She assures you a barrister had been briefed and will attend her hearing on Thursday.

Then on Friday morning, you get a call from the barrister's clerk. Thursday's hearing was adjourned to this morning, and the barrister Mr Yusuf can't make it as he heard last night that the Bakra Eid moon has been sighted.

But heck, don't blame us lay Muslims. Blame our lunar-tic mullahs, imams, sheiks, hojjahs, maulanas etc who can't seem to agree on how to calculate the beginning and end of lunar months!

The End

So that's the end of my slightly irreverent look at Hajj. For more information, go to your local mosque and convert. Then get on the first plane you can to Mecca, and you might arrive in time for the last rites.

(First published on ABC on 19 December 2007)

OPINION: The evolution of Liberal Party attitudes to the less well-off

 

Just six days before Christmas, federal Treasurer Scott Morrison was boasting about his grand plans for tackling the deficit. He told us a huge pot of savings being made to the mid-year economic fiscal outlook (or MYEFO) arising from, amongst other things, a welfare fraud prevention crack-down worth some $4 billion over four years. The MYEFO-related announcements dominated headlines, with much made of the move against "welfare fraud", also known in tabloid speak as "rackets" engaged in by "dole bludgers".

Then over the past few days, a host of Centrelink recipients had their worst nightmares confirmed thanks to a computer-generated letter. How many must have imagined they were being treated as one of Morrison's welfare cheats being cracked down on.

Imagine if, in early January, you received such a letter from Centrelink along with an SMS message. What would you do? You could ring Centrelink and wait on line for 40 minutes or so. Or you might decide to get independent legal advice. Most solicitors will be on holidays. In fact, most solicitors know very little about the complex area of social security.

If you can't afford a private lawyer (honestly, how many Centrelink recipients can?) you'll have to wait in line for an appointment with your local Legal Aid office or a welfare rights lawyer (assuming they're not on vacation). Thanks to cuts to legal aid and community legal centres, you'll find it difficult to get an appointment in time.

Should you manage an appointment, you will be told to get together your bank statements, tax papers and other financial information. This should be easy assuming you don't suffer from a mental illness, physical disability and/or intellectual disability. And/or assuming you yourself aren't interstate visiting family for the Christmas and New Year period.

Overpayments are often the result of human error on the part of Centrelink staff. Yet this won't stop Centrelink from deducting from your existing payment, something they can do without informing you. They can also place a 10 per cent fine unless you can establish you had a good excuse.

But that's not all. If Centrelink believes you have deliberately or recklessly made false statements or not advised Centrelink of your change in circumstances, they might decide to refer your matter to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. This means that you not only could have your sole source of income radically reduced but could also face the prospect of a full blown criminal prosecution.

And all this thanks to a draconian system of computer-generated comparison and correspondence, put in place by a Commonwealth government which allegedly combines Liberal and Conservative values in the best tradition of Sir Robert Menzies. Apparently Menzies was fond of making threats against some of the most vulnerable individuals in the community. When it comes to people on Centrelink, traditional values of protecting the rights of individuals and families is thrown out the door for the same of mantras of selective economic rationalism.

Today's federal MPs have access to comfortable offices, to staffers and spin doctors and have chauffers to drive them around in plush Commonwealth cars. They have the benefit of extensive expense allowances which they don't mind using and at times abusing.

Recently it's been reported that Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has managed to spend $4000 on a dinner he hosted. At a luxury hotel. In Washington. That doesn't include his return flights likely to be business class.

Meanwhile Health Minister Sussan Ley has stood aside pending an investigation to her spending $13,000 on flying a private aircraft on ministerial business when she could have used commercial airlines. One such visit involved buying an investment property on the Gold Coast. At least one taxpayer (yours truly) is most impressed that Ms Ley piloted the plane herself.

Labor MPs have had their own travel rorts. But it has been a long time since a Labor government hectored vulnerable punters on Centrelink. True, today thousands more single parents are surviving on Newstart crumbs, thanks to so-called "reforms" introduced during the term of prime minister Julia Gillard. The change disproportionately affect women (and their children), such as the severe restrictions on access to the parenting payment. Labor also oversaw rule changes that make it harder for genuinely disabled people to access the DSP.

Labor tends to introduce draconian changes to Centrelink by stealth, without providing suitable headlines about "dole bludgers" and "Centrelink cheats" for tabloid newspapers whose boss chooses not to pay tax. Coalition MP's, on the other hand, scream the belt-tightening message from the rooftops.

Coalition MPs cherry-pick the legacy of Robert Menzies. They wax lyrical about the need for individual rights and liberties to be protected, especially from unions, special interest groups and minorities. It is true that Menzies spoke of his party as being Liberal in the sense that it believed "in the individual, his rights and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea".

But it's also true that he insisted that 

... the purpose of all measures of social security is not only to provide citizens with some reasonable protection against misfortune but also to reconcile that provision with their proud independence and dignity as democratic citizens. The time has gone when social justice should even appear to take the form of social charity.

Menzies recognised that even the poorest of individuals deserve dignity. What true Liberal wouldn't? Perhaps one hoping to join the Centrelink queue after the next election.

(Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 January 2017)

OPINION: NZ's race relations a lesson to Aussies

 

My South Asian mother taught me two golden lessons in life. First, always be wary of the prayers directed against you by those who feel wronged. They might reject God, but God certainly hears and responds to them.

Second, sometimes you should say sorry, even if you yourself did nothing wrong, if it soothes someone's pain.

Australia's former neo-conservative Prime Minister John Howard used his position repeatedly to preach against what he called the black-armband view of Australian history. He openly spoke of Australia's allegedly Judeo-Christian roots, focusing on a 220-year cultural status quo while ignoring 40,000 years of indigenous Australian culture.

In response to reports of widespread sexual abuse of children in some indigenous communities, supporters of Howard's monocultural monologue in the commentariat penned articles and flooded the airwaves with claims that indigenous cultures all promote sexual violence against women and children.

Howard fostered a warped racism in which newer Australians expressed a fraudulent patriotism by insulting the cultures of the first Australians. It was the highest wave in Howard's monocultural perfect storm.

In 1995, the then Labor Government commissioned the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission to investigate and prepare a report on the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families by compulsion, duress or undue influence. The result was a 689-page report, Bringing Them Home.

The report's introduction reads: 

The truth is that the past is very much with us today, in the continuing devastation of the lives of Indigenous Australians. That devastation cannot be addressed unless the whole community listens with an open heart and mind to the stories of what happened and, having listened and understood, commits itself to reconciliation.

The report recommended that reparation be made in recognition of the history of gross violations of human rights. This should include acknowledgement and apology by every Parliament. All Australian state and territory Parliaments have formally apologised. This includes Parliaments where John Howard's Liberal Party sat on the Government benches.

By the time the commission's final report was released, John Howard was into the second year of the first term of his Prime Ministership.

He rebuffed the report's recommendations for an apology from the Commonwealth Parliament, claiming there was no reason why a generation of non-indigenous Australians should apologise for the actions of a previous generation. He also said an apology would open the floodgates of compensation claims. (He never questioned the rights of non-indigenous Australians in the same circumstances to legitimately make a claim.)

But times have changed. Last November, Australians of all backgrounds and colours soundly rejected Howard's disgraceful legacy. Howard's defeat was so emphatic that even voters in his own seat turned on him.

To use my mother's South Asian wisdom, we non-indigenous Australians as a whole have reached a stage where we feel the need to lift the curse of indigenous Australians that hangs over our heads. We realise a national apology is the first step.

If a small number of indigenous communities are dysfunctional, much of the blame lies with decades of indigenous families being forcibly broken up. These generations of broken families are referred to as the Stolen Generation.

Australians are beginning to yearn for a kind of Waitangi tang. Commentators are now making reference to the Treaty of Waitangi. As usual, all the best Aussie ideas are coming from across the Tasman.

Both Australia and New Zealand are young nations built by indigenous people and migrants. Both are former British colonies. Both are English-speaking liberal democracies with legal systems based on the English common law.

But unlike Australia, New Zealand's early European settlers entered into some kind of treaty recognising the special association of indigenous people to the land. The cultural tang of Waitangi is absent from Australia, where indigenous peoples, by and large, live in a state of institutionalised disadvantage.

For an outsider like myself, it seems the influence of Maori culture on all New Zealanders is far more apparent than the influence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders on mainstream Australian culture. And Maori culture is shown a greater degree of both official and unofficial respect than Australia's indigenous cultures.

Last month in Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Anita Quigley wrote: 

While New Zealand may look with envy at our booming economy and feel unease at the number of its citizens moving here, it has achieved something far more valuable: a united nation. Sadly, and to all our shame, we cannot say the same.

The cohesive and integrated lives of Maori and Pakeha is by no means perfect, but it is far better than the ever-increasing ugly gulf between Aborigines and white Australians.

Why is it that our neighbours across the Tasman seem to have got race relations relatively right and we so wrong?

... In 1840 there was the momentous Treaty of Waitangi and in 1869, nearly a century before Aborigines were given the vote, all Maori men could cast theirs.

Indigenous Australians have been getting a raw deal at the hands of the non-indigenous for more than two centuries. An apology won't heal the scars completely, but it is a good first step. With Howard gone, the conservatives have seen the light.

Hence, on the first day of sittings on Wednesday February 13, 2008, the Commonwealth Parliament's apology to the Stolen Generation was bipartisan if not unanimous.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer. First published in the NZ Herald on 14 February 2008)

REVIEW: Moments of Clarity

 

Zighen Aym, Still Moments: A Story about Faded Dreams and Forbidden Pictures, ZAWP

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. 

These words of James Madison, who served as US President from 1809-17, would now seem almost prophetic. If you were to believe your average columnist from the New York Post, America is at war with a foreign enemy represented domestically by millions of Americans who have some link to Islam. You would also read all kinds of justifications for American lawmakers to curb civil rights of some with a view to protecting the freedoms of others.

The rhetoric is well-known to us all. Muslims flew two planes into the World Trade Centre in September 2001. Muslims blew themselves up and killed over 50 people in London in July 2005. Muslims are threatening terrorist attacks to disturb the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It’s always the Muslims, you know. OK, so not all Muslims are terrorists. But that fact is that all terrorists are Muslims. The veritable tsunami of hatred has but one goal – to justify racial and ethnic profiling. We have to profile these Muslims so that we can catch terrorists. Since virtually all terrorists are Muslims, the best way to stop terrorists is to profile Muslims. If that means making them feel uncomfortable and insecure, so be it.

But exactly how does it feel to be profiled? And what impact does such profiling have not just on those being profiled but also on those doing the profiling? These are the issues raised in Dr. Zighen Aym’s short book Still Moments. In a mere 65 pages, Aym educates us on a range of issues. This isn’t just a book about racial profiling. It’s a book with numerous themes which reflect the experiences of so many migrants to the United States and other Western countries.

Aym first arrived in the United States in January 1977, an engineering student of Algerian nationality and Berber ancestry. He returned to Algeria in 1982 before returning with his wife to the United States in 1990 to commence his postgraduate studies. We often read about Algeria, though usually in the context of terrorist acts committed by various extremist groups. So often is the conflict in Algeria simplistically described as one between an (allegedly) moderate secular government and (allegedly) typically violent religious fundamentalists.

Aym’s book provides a context to the Algerian conflict rarely discussed by Muslimphobic pundits and supporters of political Islamist groups such as the Algerian FIS. Aym provides us with a glimpse of how many ordinary Algerians viewed the political situation in their country – critical of the incumbent FLN regime’s corruption and despotism but ill-disposed to ex-FLN officials who aligned themselves with a modernist form of political Islam. Aym and his family lived through these troubled times. Like so many Algerian families, Aym’s family suffered its own casualties in the crossfire between militant supporters of the regime (most often in the army) and militant opponents. A photograph of Aym’s 19 year old sister-in-law Fatima appears. She was killed in a car bomb in Algiers in 1977.

How did Aym compare America with his homeland? We get a glimpse of this in the beginning of the second chapter:

I dreamt of America when I was in North Africa in the early 1990’s. ‘You will see. Our life in America will be so different from here,’ I remember telling my wife as we stood on the balcony of her parents’ home in Notre Dame d’Afrique, a hilltop suburb of Algiers overlooking the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. ‘Laws protect people and dreams come true,’ I explained to her … [W]e wanted to shield ourselves from the violence, repression, and injustice that had been plaguing Algeria for the last fifteen years. In America, we wished to find freedom, tranquillity, and plenty of opportunities to pursue our dreams.

Such visions of the West are shared by migrants and asylum seekers of all faiths and nationalities. One of my own colleagues, a middle-aged lawyer of Vietnamese background, once told me of how he fled Vietnam to avoid the wrath of communist forces from the north. In Australia, he was able to pursue his legal studies after working for years as an interpreter.

Liberal democracies provide millions with opportunities that many more millions living in despotic regimes could only dream of. But what happens when liberal democracies see despotism as the only way to fight perceived external threats?

Aym’s book describes two incidents of such despotism which directly affected him. Both were triggered by his interest in photography. One is in Algeria in 1986, when he was with a friend in the Algerian coastal city of Bejaia. His friend had left to buy a newspaper when Aym took out his camera and aimed at cargo ships as they were being unloaded at port. Aym was soon stopped by a policeman who reminded him of the alleged external threats Algeria faced from “foreign powers, especially the imperialists and the old colonialists.” Aym was taken to the police station for questioning.

The incident in Bejaia is mentioned in the context of another brush with police, this time as Aym was getting his kicks whilst photographing railway tracks, spider webs and barns along the famous Route 66. Aym’s wife warns him that his photography hobby might land him in the same sort of trouble in the United States as it often did in Algeria. It turned out she was right.

Aym is first interviewed by a police officer on Route 66. He was then contacted by an FBI agent. Aym describes both processes in great detail, perhaps too much detail for some readers’ liking. Aym was fortunate enough to have a lawyer with him during his FBI interrogation. Apart from some flashbacks to late 20th century Algeria and a solid dose of disillusionment in the entire law enforcement regime of the Patriot Act, I wasn’t exactly sure what damage Aym suffered by the time I had finished the book.

Then again, perhaps I am being too cynical. Perhaps it isn’t fair to compare the experiences of Dr. Aym to, say, those of former Guantanamo inmates such as Australia’s David Hicks and Britain’s Moazzam Begg. Perhaps I, unlike Dr. Aym, have been fortunate enough to have been sheltered (thus far) from the ignominy of being grilled about why I attended a rally protesting against the visit of a visiting dictator.

Despite the frustration I felt on searching in vain for a climax to the sudden and anti-climactic end to Still Moments, I still felt the book was well worth reading if for no other reason than that it provided me with an important window into Algeria’s modern history and politics. It’s good to know that the only real opposition to Algeria’s murderous generals were the equally murderous “Armed Islamic Group” (GIA).

And certainly Dr Aym is a superb photographer. He isn’t a bad writer either. I hope he writes and publishes more on Algerian ethnic politics.

(This review was first published in AltMuslim.com on 16 April 2008)

OPINION: Aus­tralia still fight­ing other peo­ple’s wars

 In the early hours of April 25, 1915, Aus­tralia and New Zealand en­tered World War 1.

Nei­ther coun­try was be­ing di­rectly in­vaded or even threat­ened.

The Anzac troops were off­loaded on the beaches of Geli­bolu (or Gal­lipoli as we know it) at the Can­nakale penin­sula of west­ern Turkey. The land­ing was part of a dis­as­trous war strat­egy de­vel­oped by their Bri­tish war com­man­ders.

The young men were part of an im­pe­rial army, fight­ing for King more than their own coun­try. As if to un­der­score just how much this bat­tle was the war for for­eign pow­ers, one of the most char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally Aus­tralian sym­bols of the cam­paign was the im­age of Simp­son and his don­key trudg­ing through the hills above Anzac Cove res­cu­ing the war wounded.

The re­al­ity, of course, is that John Simp­son Kirk­patrick was an English il­le­gal im­mi­grant who joined the war ef­fort in Aus­tralia by ac­ci­dent when he boarded a ship car­ry­ing Anzac troops to the front­line. Kirk­patrick was not seek­ing to fight but rather just a free ride back home to Mother Eng­land.

Yet for many non-Ir­ish dig­gers, be­ing Bri­tish did not make you any less Aus­tralian. In fact, even us­ing Aus­tralian sym­bols to the ex­clu­sion of Bri­tish ones was re­garded as ex­tremely provoca­tive. In a re­cent book re­view pub­lished in The Can­berra Times, Frank O’Shea writes about Ir­ish re­turned sol­diers caus­ing ma­jor con­tro­versy when they marched in 1920 un­der the Aus­tralian flag, not the Union Jack. In do­ing so, they ef­fec­tively de­clared that they had fought for Aus­tralia rather than for Bri­tain The Ir­ish in Aus­tralia were Aus­tralians as well as Ir­ish, whereas the loy­al­ists were Bri­tish first and Aus­tralian second.

Try telling the drunken racist ri­ot­ers at Cronulla that they should also be hold­ing up the Union Jack!

Few Aus­tralians know that New Zealand lost a much higher pro­por­tion of troops than Aus­tralia. Over 85 per cent of Kiwi troops were killed or wounded, com­pared to 50% of the Aussies.

The com­par­a­tively lesser Aus­tralian war losses may ex­plain why Aus­tralians are still much keener to par­tic­i­pate in other peo­ple’s wars than their cousins across the Tas­man. The largest New Zealand force in the Viet­nam War was hardly 540 men, al­though over 3000 Ki­wis did vol­un­teer to join the war ef­fort.

Since then, New Zealand has been far more cir­cum­spect about its mil­i­tary and even broader se­cu­rity re­la­tions with the United States. In a 2003 pa­per pub­lished by the Strate­gic Stud­ies In­sti­tute of the US Army War Col­lege, Dr Andrew Sco­bell notes that New Zealand had made its in­volve­ment in the war con­di­tional on it re­ceiv­ing the im­pri­matur of the United Na­tions. Even then, New Zealand’s in­volve­ment would be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing lo­gis­ti­cal and hu­man­i­tar­ian as­sis­tance and spe­cialised mil­i­tary forces such as med­i­cal, en­gi­neer­ing and mine clear­ance units.

Com­pare this to the gov­ern­ment of then Prime Min­is­ter John Howard. Sco­bell notes that Howard, apart from for­mer Bri­tish PM Blair, was the staunch­est sup­porter of a US-led mil­i­tary ac­tion against Iraq. More­over, Aus­tralia is one of the few coun­tries ready and will­ing to pro­vide com­bat forces for a con­flict with Iraq. In do­ing so, of course, Aus­tralia has also placed it­self in the fir­ing line of a variety of in­ter­na­tional ter­ror­ist groups.

Iraq is not the only for­eign mil­i­tary ad­ven­ture in which Aus­tralians are in­volved and which is go­ing rather pear­shaped. How many Aus­tralians ex­pected the Tal­iban to suc­cess­fully re­group and fight so hard af­ter their crush­ing de­feat in 2001? Aus­tralia’s new Defence Min­is­ter, Joel Fitzgib­bon, has been call­ing on Nato com­man­ders to re­con­sider mil­i­tary strate­gies in Afghanistan that are clearly fail­ing and have al­ready cost Aus­tralian lives. Not to men­tion that ter­ror­ists now have two rea­sons to eye Aus­tralia.

Per­haps the most shame­ful as­pect of Aus­tralia’s mil­i­tary his­tory is its mis­treat­ment of In­dige­nous ser­vice­men and women. Thou­sands of In­dige­nous Aus­tralians fought over­seas, with many hun­dreds giv­ing the ul­ti­mate sac­ri­fice to de­fend their na­tion. Yet the dead were buried in un­marked graves whilst the sur­vivors were in­el­i­gi­ble for re­turned ser­vice­men land grants or even mem­ber­ship of Re­turned Ser­vices League (RSL) clubs.

Un­til re­cently, Abo­rig­i­nal exser­vice­men were forced to march at the back of Anzac Day pa­rades or­gan­ised by the RSL. As the Na­tional In­dige­nous Times news­pa­per ed­i­to­ri­alised on Anzac Day in 2005: 

So black­fel­las were good enough to fight along­side white Aus­tralia, but that’s where the new-found equal­ity ended. How could this hap­pen in a na­tion that de­fines it­self by the noble dig­ger? The tech­ni­cal an­swer is be­cause Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple weren’t con­sid­ered Aus­tralian cit­i­zens un­til the ref­er­en­dum of 1967, so they didn’t qual­ify for all the ben­e­fits that comes with be­ing an Aussie.

So un­til 40 years ago, In­dige­nous Aus­tralians were cer­tainly fight­ing the wars of a coun­try that did not recog­nise them as its own. What dif­fer­ence ex­ists be­tween this and fight­ing for a for­eign power?

And thanks to the com­pul­sory quar­an­tin­ing of pen­sions as part of the North­ern Ter­ri­tory In­ter­ven­tion in Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ties, many in­dige­nous exser­vice­men are hav­ing their pen­sions com­pul­so­rily quar­an­tined.

With big­ger bat­tles against pro­found In­dige­nous dis­ad­van­tage to fight at home, why does my gov­ern­ment con­tinue to fight oth­ers’ wars over­seas.

(Ir­fan Yusuf is a Syd­ney lawyer and writer. First published in The Press of Christchurch on 25 April 2028. Also published on the Planet Irf blog here.)

POLITICS: A Confederacy of Dunces

These days conservatives are just gob-smacked at their own inability to land a decent smack on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s gob. Desperate to gain traction with an old agenda that the public is tiring of, the right has been looking for inspiration in some curious places.

On the political front, Tony Abbott talking up Peter Costello is sounding more like Billy Birmingham impersonating Bill Laurie ("I love him! I wanna boof him!! Get him up here!!!").

And if Michelle Grattan is to be believed, it seems Costello’s publisher might have a greater say in Brendan Nelson’s political future than the party room. The other day in The Age, Grattan quoted MUP CEO Louise Adler as saying: 

Our advice would be to all our authors – including Peter Costello – that before publication they minimise media appearances.

Meanwhile, in Kevin Rudd’s home state, conservatives have decided their fortunes are best served by merging into an entity whose name sounds like some weird Kiwistani soft drink.

On the allegedly intellectual front, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a former Dutch far-Right MP) wants to give Kevin Rudd lessons on the thought of neo-liberal author FA Hayek. Hirsi Ali might do with a few lessons on honesty and integrity herself, especially when it comes to filling out immigration forms. It was revealed in May last year that she manufactured key facts used in her asylum application. Her Dutch parliamentary colleagues abandoned her and she resigned in disgrace after being offered a lifeline by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Rebecca Weisser, opinion editor of The Australian and a huge fan of Hirsi Ali, writes:

 After the dinner, the Somalian-born Hirsi Ali said she would send Mr Rudd a copy of Hayek’s seminal 1944 work The Road to Serfdom. ‘I know he’s a busy man, so I’ll highlight the relevant sections,’ she said. ‘Hayek was a critic of larger government, a bureaucratic hand, to achieve social justice and in sharing income'.

(If a certain piece authored by said Weisser is any indication, she might also have some interesting things to teach Rudd on serfdom and slavery, which she claims was as much the fault of the enslaved peoples as it is of the West. According to her, recent efforts by some of the beneficiaries of that exploitation to apologise for it and make amends amount to "an orgy of muddled self-castigation".)

Hirsi Ali’s hubris is astounding. On the one hand, she claims to be a student of Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich August von Hayek. I can’t claim to be an expert on Hayek, but I did learn a thing or two about him when I attended a weekend Liberty and Society workshop organised by the Centre for Independent Studies in July 1996. The CIS is the think tank that invited Hirsi Ali and a number of other guests to visit Australia to speak at their recent Big Ideas Forum.

Our instructors included one Professor Wolfgang Kasper, who provided us with a set of notes entitled "Liberty and Prosperity". On page 17 of those notes, Kasper refers to volume 1 of Hayek’s book Law, Legislation and Liberty to discuss and differentiate two ways in which the interaction of diverse human actions can be coordinated or ordered.

The first of the two ways is an arrangement under which "commands are passed from top down and individual agents obey, in other words, a made or organised order".

The second arrangement is "a spontaneous or grown order in which independent people with diverse individual goals interact on the basis of some shared rules (institutions) and discover and test new knowledge in the feedback of signals they send each other".

And Hayek’s conclusion? That in modern complex societies, organised order just doesn’t work. Rather, what governments need to do is provide institutional rules like private property rights, the rule of law, contractual freedom etc. And that the most enduring and desirable social orders and institutions are the ones that emerge spontaneously from civil society.

Sounds good? Enduring social orders through spontaneity and freedom? I think it sounds quite OK. And I reckon so does Kevin Rudd. But what about Hirsi Ali?

Well apparently she has little or no idea of what Hayek is on about. How could she when she openly advocates the closing of faith-based independent schools and imprisoning those teaching intelligent design.

I’d like to offer my CIS seminar notes to Hirsi Ali. I’ll even highlight them in case she is too busy writing her next children’s book.

With such light-weight political and intellectual forces at his disposal to attack Rudd, is it any wonder those close to Peter Costello are predicting he will almost certainly retire from politics?

And as if to reinforce the intellectual eccentricity on the allegedly conservative side, Hirsi Ali was joined by an American global warming sceptic who still supports the Iraq War and who wanted the United States to invade Iran back in 2006!

If this is the best intellectual and political opposition so-called conservatives can offer Rudd, he can probably look forward to at least as many years in the Lodge as his predecessor. Aussie voters won’t need Hayek to convince them that spontaneously voting for Rudd at federal elections will make the country far more enduring.

(First published in NewMatilda on 5 August 2008)

OPINION: 'Australian way' too tarnished to serve as Kiwi economic blueprint

 

Phill Rennie from the Australian Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) warned Kiwi readers the other day not to choke on their cornflakes by the fact that Aussies were earning at least 30 per cent more than their Kiwi cousins. His solution for Kiwis left me choking.

In 1996 I was settling into a new job in a civil and commercial litigation practice and editing a conservative youth magazine. I attended a weekend junket organised by the free market ayatollahs at the CIS.

It was basically a crash course designed to convince us that the neo-liberal capitalism of the Friedmans and Hayeks of this world would save us all from oblivion. In practice, it meant turning our faces toward Wellington, the new Mecca of prosperity where Sheik Roger Douglas was rolling out his Kiwi Kapitalist Kaliphate.

Now, 12 years on, the CIS free market muftis have reversed their fatwa. Mr Rennie effectively suggested Kiwis should adopt some of the same policies Aussie voters rejected in the last federal election. As if we expect our transtasman cousins to drink the dregs of beer we coughed up and spat out.

Among these policies was an industrial relations revolution taken to the fullest extent in 2005 in the form of Work Choices. That policy made former conservative Prime Minister John Howard so unpopular that he not only led his Liberal Party to a massive defeat but even made Howard the first post-War Australian Prime Minister to lose his own seat in a general election.

Work Choices involved effectively removing any unfair dismissal remedy for at least 80 per cent of all Australian workers. Imagine a situation where 80 per cent of the work force feels like they have no job security and can be sacked at any time.

Who'd be stupid enough to take out a mortgage? Who would want to take on any other major long-term financial commitment? And what kind of commitment will workers give to their employers, knowing their jobs are forever on the line?

Of course, free market fundamentalists will tell you that Work Choices increased real wages in Australia and led to record lows in unemployment. But how much of that is caused by policies which effectively remove basic employment safety nets?

Interestingly, now what is left of the allegedly Liberal Party in Federal Parliament is at loggerheads over whether to scrap the old Work Choices policy. It seems some conservatives are still living in denial.

Rennie also says that Australians are better off on a range of social indicators including life expectancy, infant mortality, income inequality and even suicide rates. That may be the case for White Australia and for later migrants. But the average life expectancy of indigenous Australians is at least 15 years lower than that of other Australians.

Howard's so-called Northern Territory Intervention has had less to do with fighting child sexual abuse and more to do with removing long-held indigenous property rights and dismantling successful indigenous job-creation projects.

Indeed, the intervention (which the CIS and sadly the new Rudd government largely support) could only be implemented by removing it from the reaches of Federal Racial Discrimination Law. In other words, the entire program is built upon institutionalised racism.

So why are Australians (at least white fellas) earning more than Kiwis? Why do we have a booming economy? Rennie is spot-on about tax rates, business regulation and government spending.

At last year's 30th anniversary dinner of the CIS, Executive Director Greg Lindsay gave Howard a good ear-bashing over the volume of public sector spending, particularly on middle-class welfare.

Howard ignored that lecture, and went into the election with billion dollar promises, even offering to subsidise private school fees!

And so we had a situation where Australians who wanted to vote for a fiscally responsible Liberal government had little option but to support the Australian Labor Party.

If the Clark Labour government is to improve the prosperity of Kiwis, it might follow the lead of Kevin Rudd's Labor.

But Helen Clark would be well advised to avoid the discredited excesses of the Howard era. Unless, of course, she wishes to lose not just the election but also her own Beehive seat.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and former Federal Liberal Party candidate. First published in the NZ Herald on 20 December 2007)