OPINION: Come on Aussie

The ABC program Compass recently aired an episode looking at the Sikhs of Woolgoolga, a small town just north of Coffs Harbour.

I was in "Woopi" (as it's known to locals) on New Years Eve in 2006 with my fiancé, who shares the Punjabi heritage of many Sikhs. We were both moved by the sight of the gorgeous gurdwara (temple) on the hill overlooking the Pacific Highway, a building I had in previous times confused for a mosque.

The next day, sitting in an internet café in nearby Sawtell, I read an editorial in the national broadsheet entitled Haunted by ghosts of submissions past. The editorial spoke of Cabinet papers from 1976 that have recently been released under the 30-year rule.

The then PM, Malcolm Fraser, had apparently received some advice about nasty Lebanese Muslims entering the country, but failed to act on it. Apparently Fraser's relaxed immigration laws saw the arrival of thousands of Lebanese Muslim immigrants which some authorities claimed, lacked "the required qualities ... necessary to become good Australians".

And which migrants are deemed to have these required qualities? Would devout Sikh men sporting beards and turbans qualify? What about Sikh women wearing modest and exotic-looking dress?

Such sentiments are most often whipped up by newspaper editorialists and columnists who claim certain cultures are a threat to the rest of us. The sad reality is that these sentiments all too often miss their target.

I don't see too many Lebanese men (Muslim or otherwise) sporting turbans and beards. And how many prejudiced pundits could tell the difference between a Woolgoolga Sikh and a Lakemba Muslim?

Some years back I heard a Sydney shock jock make imbecilic remarks about how Lebanese looked. I rang to tell him I knew many Lebanese with blonde hair and green eyes. He laughed at my suggestion: "Huh! As if Lebanese could have blond hair and green eyes." What planet was that caller from?

After 10 minutes, he was handed a piece of paper which he read out. It was a phone message from Tony Stewart, the State MP for Bankstown in South Western Sydney. Stewart invited him to breakfast and guaranteed at least 500 Lebanese people from the Bankstown electorate would attend, all of whom had blonde hair and green eyes!

The sad reality is that it's often Sikhs who suffer more from such sentiment, despite not being Middle Eastern, Lebanese, Arab or Muslim. Sikhs also cop the flack whenever a bunch of idiots decide blowing themselves up is an appropriate way to achieve political reform. Because Sikhs look more Muslim than most Muslims, they are inevitably caught up in anti-Muslim backlash.

In fact, after the 7 July London bombings, the situation became so bad that many Sikhs started wearing badges that said "Don't freak, I'm a Sikh!".

Yet there has been centuries of interaction between Sikhs and Muslims in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. Some of the most sacred shrines of the Sikh faith are in Pakistan. Sikh and Muslim aid organisations are working together to alleviate the suffering of Pakistani Sikhs and Muslims displaced by the recent fighting between the Pakistan army and the neo-Taliban.

Those close cultural and language ties are carried on in Punjabi communities down under. In June, I was fortunate enough to attend a traditional Punjabi wedding in Hamilton, New Zealand. It was a relatively short affair: it only lasted three days. That's short by Punjabi standards.

The groom was a New Zealander of Punjabi heritage and Muslim faith whose grandfather first settled in the country in 1920. The bride had recently arrived from the Punjab region of Pakistan. On the Friday night we gathered at an Indian community hall next door to the local bridge club for the henna night. The groom and his entourage of five groomsmen were decked out in embroidered cream-coloured kurta pajama (Indian slacks and long shirt down to the knees) and green and yellow shawls over their shoulders.

The groom even wore those awesome embroidered shoes with the pointy toes. He walked in surrounded by his groomsmen who carried a large red veil over his head as some kind of makeshift marquee. A single musician accompanied them carrying a dhol (a large drum) hung around his neck and playing a pulsating tune.

Around 30 minutes later, the bride walked in, decked out in a bright yellow outfit. She was led into the main hall where the ladies decorated her and each other's hands and feet with ornate henna designs. Us poor blokes were relegated to a smaller room adjacent to the main hall, though that didn't stop us from partying hard.

What I've described could have just as easily been a Sikh henna night. Indeed at least half the guests that night, including the musician, were Sikhs. Hindu, Sikh and Muslim women all sang and danced in the same language as their ancestors had done at weddings in Punjab for centuries.

One of the groom's oldest family friends, a softly-spoken local Sikh businessman, explained to me in his broad Kiwi "eksunt" how to perform the traditional bhangra dance.

"Well, it's basically standing up and doing a combination of jumping in the air, kicking a football, changing a light bulb, weaving a rug and turning on a tap while shrugging your shoulders."

He told me that this ancient dance was often performed at harvest celebrations in Punjabi villages. Tonight it had infiltrated the fog of Hamilton. The following night at the wedding, the Muslim groom had little hesitation in wearing a ceremonial pagri (turban) almost identical to that won by observant Sikh men.

Punjabi and other Asian cultures and religions have thrived on both sides of the Tasman since well before the wave of post-war European migration. Anyone who claims these cultures don't belong in Australia are denying our nation's history. They should learn to integrate and adopt Australian values.

That, or they should spend some time among some turbaned Aussies in Woolgoolga.

(First published in ABC The Drum on 2 September 2009)

RELIGION: On reclaiming Christianity from the West

 

Sitting near my keyboard is an iftar invitation. The word iftar is an Arabic word used to describe a gathering where people break their Ramadan fast. My invitation was to join friends and colleagues of Mr Issam Darwich, a religious scholar of Lebanese heritage. He lives and works in the south western Sydney suburb of Greenacre, home to a large Arabic-speaking population.

But this was no ordinary iftar invitation. Issam Darwich is the local Bishop of the Melkite Catholic Community. Yet if Bishop Darwich telephoned a talkback radio station and announced he was holding an iftar for Ramadan, what would listeners assume to be his religious affiliation?

And so we live in a country where the name of a Catholic bishop isn't readily identified as Christian. Aren't we a nation built upon a Christian ethic? Don't we have an established Christian heritage? Aren't Western culture and civilisation distinctly, uniquely and inherently Christian?

It isn't for me, a non-Christian, to be telling Christian readers how they should understand their faith. I have some exposure to Christianity, having spent a decade studying at Sydney's only Anglican Cathedral school. Then again, many Anglicans wouldn't accept exposure to the Sydney Diocese as counting for much.

The way mainstream Australia understands Christianity affects me as an Australian non-Christian. It also affects many Christians who don't meet the Christian stereotype. I often blame my stigmatisation and marginalisation on people stereotyping me on the basis of my faith. Yet the worst and most damaging stereotype of all is that of Christianity. And ironically, Christianity is subjected to inaccurate stereotypes allegedly for its own protection.

So I often put up with having Christianity rubbed in my face by politicians known for their Christian devotion. I'm not just talking about the likes of Peter Costello who spend so much time pleasing Pastor Danny Nalliah at my expense. I'm also talking about Tony Abbott, one of the few Howard Government ministers who openly supported multiculturalism and refused to use Australia's “Christian heritage” to wedge out non-Christians from the mainstream.

During an episode of ABC TV's Q&A on August 27, Mr Abbott claimed, “I think everyone who has grown up in a western country is profoundly shaped and formed by the New Testament, because this is the core document of our civilisation”. In other words, he linked being Christian with being Western.

He went on to make both Jews and Muslims feel somewhat left out of the “western civilisation equation” when he described the Koran as “the Old Testament on steroids”.

As a South Asian Muslim, I'd like to think many Christian believers would be as incensed by attempts to treat Christianity as a uniquely Western phenomenon as I am when Islam is treated as a uniquely Arab phenomenon. Talking about monolithic and mutually exclusive Christian and Muslim “civilisations” and “countries” is nonsense.

This fixation with Christianity as a Western faith defies Christian reality. We often forget that Dili and Manila have probably a higher proportion of their populations Catholic than most Australian cities.

I wonder how many Catholics often associate the skin tones, exotic culture and poverty of the world's largest Catholic continent with Catholicism. How many Australian Catholics would recognise the popular beliefs and practices (such as adorning churches with a dark-skinned Jesus) of their Latin American co-religionists?

Naturally if I were to make an ambit criticism of Christianity based on the extreme poverty and draconian politics of Latin America, Catholics would be justified in poking their fingers at me and ridiculing my simplistic reasoning.

Much prejudice in Australia directed toward Muslims arises from our understanding that they are mainly Arab or Middle Eastern. Much is made by tabloid columnists and shock jocks when persons of “Middle Eastern appearance” are apprehended by the police.

It's as if being Christian and being Middle Eastern are incompatible. Yet the vast majority of Australians of Arabic-speaking heritage are, in fact, Christian. More importantly, Christianity itself is a Middle Eastern faith. The city of Bethlehem is today a town in the occupied West Bank, and the liturgy of churches in the area where Christ was born is conducted largely in a Middle Eastern language.

In his book From the Holy Mountain, a book which all Western Christians should read, Scottish writer William Dalrymple visits a Syrian church where hymns are sung in the language of Jesus. Not just the words but also the music of these hymns dates back to within a few centuries of Christ. It's likely that very similar hymns were sung by the early Church, if not by the disciples. Yet these had a distinctly Syrian flavour to them.

The Suriyani (indigenous Syrian) Church is one of the oldest organised churches in existence, and to this day one can find churches in Syria where Muslim worshippers take part in Christian liturgy side by side with their Christian neighbours.

Australia and other Western countries don't have a uniquely Christian heritage. South America, Arab League states, Turkey, Iran, Africa and South Asia (to name a few) all have an indigenous Christian heritage. Maybe we would stop stereotyping non-Christians when we stopped stereotyping Christianity.

(First published in Eureka Street on 14 September 2009)

OPINION: What does a terrorist look like?

Recently a Sydney criminal lawyer was awarded $40,000 compensation after NSW Police wrongfully arrested her. And her crime? 57-year-old Andrea Taylor was accused of taking a photo of two police officers while they were doing a random train inspection on her way to a bushwalk at the Royal National Park. They apparently detained her at Kogarah Station in front of onlookers for some 30 minutes. Later when Taylor complained of the incident at the cop shop, officers recorded the incident as her committing a terrorist act.

You can read about it all in the Sydney Morning Herald here. Though I wonder, looking at Ms Taylor's photograph, whether she fits the profile of a terrorist. As we all know, terrorists are supposed to fit a certain profile. They're meant to look rather Middle Eastern and have names like Isa bin Maryam (or "Jesus son of Mary", for the linguistically challenged).

Maybe if Ms Taylor looked somewhat different or wore one of those Darth Vader hats on her head, she might have been more easily arrested for a terrorist offence as soon as she was arrested. And no doubt some in our media would have facilitated the arrest being as soon as culturally reasonable in the public eye.

The fact is that there is no agreed definition of terrorism. The more intrusive anti-terror laws become, the more their enforcement relies on profiling. Just as John Howard introduced his draconian laws in September 2005, the President of the Police Federation of Australia issued a statement confirming that certain groups (he collectively identified them as "Muslims") would be directly affected by enforcement of the new laws. The Federation even called upon the government to legislate so that police officers were indemnified for civil action.

The practice of racial profiling has become so absurd that it affects even the most prominent individuals. If you don't believe me, imagine this scenario.

You're a foreign-looking brown-skinned bloke who shows up to an international airport in New Jersey in the United States. You front up to customs and immigration. The officer can't quite figure out whether you're Middle Eastern, Afghan or Indian. He asks who you are. You show him your Indian passport. He then addresses you.

"Mr Khan. What brings you to the United States?"

"I'm here for a community function and a shooting."

Now of course, if the immigration officer was a regular consumer of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and a regular reader of Mr Murdoch's New York Post, he'd almost certainly assume your surname and your wish to engage in some "shooting" were somehow linked and would detain you for some time. But what if you were the biggest megastar in the world's biggest film industry? And what if the thing you were shooting wasn't innocent Americans but rather a movie whose rights have been bought by one of Mr Murdoch's companies?

Shah Rukh Khan (popularly known as "King Khan" or "SRK") is more than just a huge Bollywood star, movie producer and host of India's Kaun Banega Crorepati (literally meaning "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Ten Times Over"). He is the recipient of numerous Indian and international honours including the 'Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters) by France in 2007. SRK is also a cricket entrepreneur, and owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders that includes Australian international players Ricky Ponting and David Hussey. And like all true celebrities, SRK can be found greeting admirers at Madam Tassauds.

But all that meant nothing to the immigration dudes at the ironically named Liberty International Airport in Newark where SRK was detained and questioned for around two hours. He interpreted it as a case of profiling based on his surname. The Indian government was furious. This surely must affect millions. Khan is among the most common surnames of South Asian Muslims. Prominent Khans include a former Pakistani cricket captain (Imran) and the Secretary General of Amnesty International (Irene).

The irony of all this is that Khan's next movie is entitled My Name Is Khan and is based on the true story of an Indian Muslim man suffering from Asperger Syndrome who is detained in the United States and deemed to be a terrorist due to his "suspicious" behaviour. Such a diplomatic incident is priceless publicity for the film. And Newscorp, whose Fox News channel helps create a climate that makes such profiling inevitable, will now benefit from the added publicity given to a movie that seeks to counter it.

(First published on ABC on 27 October 2009)

OPINION: Orlando massacre: for a minority of a minority, two worlds collide

 

Barely a few days after Americans of all faiths and backgrounds came together to celebrate the life of the great American Muhammad Ali, the unifying spirit of that event has been spoiled by the spilling of blood. Early on Sunday morning at an LGBTQI venue in Orlando, some 50 people were gunned down. While shocking, news of a mass shooting in the US is not new. The fact that the gunman proclaimed to be Muslim, the weapons he used, the ease with which he could procure them, is also not new. Attacks on people because of their sexuality, again not new.

There has been plenty of conversation about whether this was an indiscriminate act of violence or a deliberate terrorist attack. The gunman's religious heritage, his marital discord and his family background were the subject of speculation even before all the victims had been identified. But the real elephant in the room was in fact the victims. Whether orchestrated by Islamic State or not, this was a targeted attack on people from the LGBTQI community in a place that was theirs, a space they believed was a safe one.

This event is fast becoming a moment for LGBTQI people who grew up in Western Muslim communities when their two worlds could collide. Perhaps Western Muslim communities would finally appreciate and speak about homophobia among them with the vigour they speak about Islamophobia directed against them. Perhaps Western Muslim communities would finally understand that LGBTQI Muslims are part of their community, albeit marginalised from within as well as from without.

Will Western mosques, imams, leaders and those claiming to speak for the faith and the believers recognise that all sinners are equal and none of more equal than others? Or will Western (including Australian) Muslim communities be too busy trying to deflect the inevitable hatred from themselves?

Or at least from their straight selves. In this respect, Muslims won't be alone in effectively airbrushing the pain of their LGBTQI minority.

Remarks by so many public figures in the US and Australia almost ignored the fact that the victims of the Orlando attacks for killed because they were LGBTQI people. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull mentioned the direct victims of this atrocity, the LGBTQI community of Orlando, but described the incident as an attack on all, arguably diluting recognition of the essentially homophobic nature of the crime. Commentators and pundits even question whether this was in fact a homophobic act. Worse still, some even pointed fingers at the mourning LGBTQI community and accusing them of "hijacking" the pain and horror of what happened in Orlando for their "own" purposes.

Let's be honest about this. The attack on the Orlando club was primarily a homophobic attack. The gunman's family have described his homophobia. The gunman went to a nightclub at 2 am with an assault rifle and he stayed there for three hours, killing gay people during the heavily publicised Pride Month – a time and in a place where they not only felt safe but so safe they felt that they could celebrate their identity and the community they had built around them. There should be no question about this and yet in the minds of so many of our leaders and our media, this central fact has had to compete with speculations and prejudices and frivolous punditry.

Discussion has naturally turned to the possibility of a similar incident happening here. Experts speculate on law enforcement arrangements, on intelligence and on the strength of "radical Islamists". Yes, this is all important. But please, let's not forget the many ways in which LGBTQI victims are affected. Imagine if an LGBTQI venue was attacked in Sydney or Melbourne or Canberra. What if, among those killed, was a same-sex couple from Britain celebrating their honeymoon?

What if one survived, but had to be faced with the prospect of their spouse's Australian death certificate stating the words "never married"? At a time when the survivor should be mourning, s/he would find her/himself fighting for legal recognition of their relationship, for rights to the deceased loved one's body, and their funeral arrangements.

Should we use the Orlando shootings as an excuse to patronise and lecture our Muslim minorities about the homophobia in Muslim tradition, we might be prepared to acknowledge that our own Western attitudes and laws and even our (allegedly) Christian heritage aren't exactly lacking in similar traditions and attitudes. It's easy for some in our broader community to say with pride that only "those" Muslims have sufficient hatred to commit such an attack, as if the average American or Australian Muslim can only be seen as a potential IS fighter. Would our lectures be so stern if the Indiana man apprehended by police around the same time as the Orlando massacre had used his weapons to carry out a deadly attach at the LA Pride Festival in West Hollywood? And why do we persist in the fantasy that Muslims have a monopoly on homophobic violence and terrorism?

When our social attitudes and laws are stripped of homophobia, we can then point the finger with some confidence at minority attitudes. Although one wonders if pointing fingers ever achieved anything. Finger-pointing and blame are the strategies favoured by those unable to overcome hatred and rage, those who cannot handle difference. In this time of mourning, please spare us your superiority complex.

Haneefa Buckley works at a brand development and consumer insights agency based in Sydney and is a gay Muslim. Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer, author and PhD scholar at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship & Globalisation, Deakin University.

(First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on June 14 2016. This article was again published in the Planet Irf blog on 23 June 2017)

RELIGION: Who is the loudest and ugliest religious donkey?

 

Donkeys are gorgeous animals. But when they open their mouths, an ugly sound emerges. 

The braying of donkeys is used as a metaphor in the Koran for a kind of dialogue that is in reality a collision of loud monologues. It is stated in chapter 31:

And be moderate in your movement; and lower your voice: verily the most unpleasant of voices is the braying of the donkey. 

Sadly, discussion of religion in Australia too often sounds like donkeys competing to see whose braying is the loudest and ugliest. Evangelical atheists will have us all believe secularism involves keeping all religion out of public life. Self-declared Christian lobbyists will spread misinformed messages about sexual orientation. 

But perhaps the loudest braying was heard on Saturday when a small group of louts hijacked what should have been a peaceful protest. Why they were offended by a 14 minute D-grade trailer produced by a porn film maker is anyone’s guess. But they did have the right to protest within the bounds of the law.

One of the purposes of law, religious or secular, is to ensure that people’s emotions don’t get out of control and become destructive. Islam is a religion with its own legal tradition. The law is derived from various sources, and mostly governs our relationships with our creator, our families and ourselves. 

It also governs our relationships with those who offend us. An example is found in the early days of the prophet Muhammad’s mission when he visited a nearby town. The town’s leaders made snide remarks toward him. They even sent their own children to pelt him with stones until his feet and legs bled profusely. 

Muslim tradition states that Muhammad prayed of his own inabilities, in response to which an angel was sent offering to crush the town’s inhabitants. He refused the offer, expressing a wish that someday the descendants of that town would become believers. 

It is the Creator’s wisdom that none of the violent Sydney protestors were present with their prophet on that day 14 centuries ago. They would have drowned out his voice, maybe trashed the streets of that town and assaulted its children. They may have even brought their own children to carry placards declaring that anyone insulting their prophet should be beheaded.

This instance of Muhammad’s mercy is no doubt replicated in other scriptures and faith traditions. Just as are instances of war and conflict. The last century is replete with instances of crazy Muslims attacking Sikhs for being Sikh, of crazy Hindus attacking Catholics for being Catholic and crazy Catholics attacking Protestants for being Protestant. And the crazed antics of these fanatics is more often than not based on reactionary politics, land disputes or other ungodly motives than some profound theological issue. 

We don’t expect everyone in the Sutherland Shire to apologise for the drunken freak show that took place on the beach in December 2005. Because we understand that many, especially local shopkeepers, despise the rioters. Cronulla is a community but it is not one singular monolithic community. 

Not all Christians need to answer for what Cardinal Pell or Archbishop Jensen say. And not all Buddhists need to condemn the massacre of Rohingya and other non-Buddhist communities in Myanmar which are often orchestrated and encouraged by local monks. 

If only certain self-declared Muslim leaders understood this before they make statements on behalf of that fictitious entity called ‘the Muslim community’. The Muslim community in Australia just doesn’t exist.

There are some 400,000 people who choose to tick the ‘Muslim’ box on their census forms. They do it for different reasons. Some belong to sects that don’t regard other sects as within the fold of Islam. Some feel greater cultural affinity to non-Muslims who speak their language or who have the same ancestry. 

Mosques in major Australian cities continue to be divided along ethnic and linguistic lines. Many perhaps took no offence to the movie that others were protesting about. Certainly most were too busy enjoying the lovely spring weather to worry about shouting loud slogans in defence of their prophet. 

When self-appointed Muslim religious leaders and organisational heads claim to speak on behalf of an entity that exists only in their heads and in their government funding proposals, it merely makes all 400,000 census tickers an easier target for inciters of other kinds of rioters — for shock jocks and tabloid hate-scribes. When you insist there is a singular Muslim community, it because easy to ask: ‘When is that community going to rein in its extremists?’ 

Religion is supposed to elevate our speech and our conduct, not transform us into donkeys. 

(First published in Eureka Street on 10 January 2013)

OPINION: Asylum seekers good for Australia's soul

 

It must have come as a shock to his conservative Australian fans. Appearing on ABCTV’s Q&A panel in April, conservative humorist P. J. O’Rourke turned his acidic wit on fellow conservatives who wanted to limit the number of asylum seekers entering the country. 

While his fellow panellist, deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop frothed at the mouth about how ‘since last August there has been an increase in the number of people arriving by boat’ and how ‘the people smugglers are back in business’, P. J. had this to say: 

You know, we in the States have much, much more experience with being all wrong about immigration than you do. I mean 36,000 you said in Italy? ... We laugh. That’s a day in the United States. And we are so wrong about it. I mean, build a fence on the border with Mexico, give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry, you know ... the thing is when somebody gets on an exploding boat to come over here — they’re willing to do that to get to Australia — you’re missing out on some really good Australians if you don’t let that person in.

His very wide and very humorous tirade went even further: 

Let them in. Let them in. These people are assets. One or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later ... I think conservatives are getting this wrong all over the world, I really do. 

So today’s asylum seekers are tomorrow’s ‘really good Australians’ and ‘assets’. O’Rourke gave hard-headed conservatives more than just ‘bleeding heart’ reasons to show compassion to refugees. He reminded us that compassion also paid economic and nation-building dividends. 

That was also the message delivered to the National Press Club on 11 August by exiled World Uighur Congress leader Rabiye Kadeer. A number of innocent Turkish-speaking Uighur men have been kept at the Guantanamo gulag waiting to be resettled. It took our American allies some seven years to realise the men posed no threat to anyone. 

‘All of the Uighurs in Albania, Bermuda and Palau are living very normal and productive lives — so we’d be happy if Australia took the four’, Kadeer was quoted in The Australian. 

The plight of the Guantanamo Uighurs in Albania, Europe’s poorest nation, came to the attention of the international media in 2007 when Al Jazeera English broadcast a 24-minute documentary called A Strange Kind Of Freedom. The program detailed the experiences of four Uighur men who had been dumped in Albania with no apology from their American captors and no explanation for their 54 month detention at Guantanamo.

But how did these men end up all the way from Western China to Afghanistan and then Pakistan? The men fled China due to their support for the East Turkestani/Uighur independence movement. They ended up in Pakistan via Afghanistan in 2000, and were sold for a mere $5000 each to the Americans before being transferred to Guantanamo. But despite living in limbo and separated from their families, these men are not sitting on their hands feeling sorry for themselves. Two of the men are training to become pizza makers, and they are all attending Albanian language classes. They receive some government assistance.

At one stage, Albania was the only country willing to take the Guantanamo Uighurs. Now some Uighur men have also settled in small Pacific Island nations which have no Uighur or other Turkish-speaking communities. Which raises a simple question — if an impoverished nation like Albania and North Pacific island nation of Palau can accept Uighurs, why can’t a wealthy nation like Australia? 

Australia doesn’t exactly have a good record in welcoming even its own citizens who were former detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The fact that credible reports showed our men, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, were also abused and tortured did not move our political leaders (apart from Bob Brown and a few other lonely voices) to place pressure on the United States. 

Indeed, a profile of former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer published in The Australian on 9 September 2008 showed him having a good laugh when mention was made of the torture of Australian detainees and the practice of water-boarding. 

And if a recent Red Cross survey on attitudes to torture is any indication, it seems many Australians have a fairly lax attitude toward torture. Some 47 per cent of those surveyed said they believed it was acceptable to torture prisoners of war in some situations. 

That’s POW’s, not former ‘enemy combatants’ and ‘suspected terrorists’ such as the innocent Uighur men our country is being asked to adopt. Australia has established Uighur and Turkish communities and could easily accommodate the few remaining ex-Gitmo Uighurs. If we refuse them, we won’t just lose the opportunity to have good citizens. We’ll also lose another piece of our collective soul.

(First published in Eureka Street on 14 August 2009)

OPINION: Laughing at Islam

When I was at uni, my best mate’s girlfriend took me to a pub. She probably did it just to shock me. I was rather devout back in those days, and the idea of going to a place filled with beer and cigarette smoke wasn’t exactly spiritually appealing. 

The pub we went to was the Harold Park Hotel. There was a new comedy show playing. Two wisecracks named Peter Saleh and Anthony Mir calling themselves the ‘All Aussie Are Boofta’ show were performing. After the show, she told me: ‘I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be disgusted. So I laughed.’ 

Peter (now known as Akmal) was of Egyptian heritage. I’m not sure what Anthony’s heritage was. They poked fun at all things Arab, Lebanese etc. From taxi drivers to suicide bombers — nothing was sacred. The show ended with a battle of the toilet graffiti. Peter spoke of visiting a petrol station dunnie to take a slash. On the wall, some redneck had scrawled: ‘F*cking Arab terrorists go back to F*ckistan’. Or something like that. Below this in kindergarten-capitals, a ‘fresh-of-the-boat’ cabbie from Bankstown responded with ‘ALL AUSSIE ARE BOOFTA’. 

It wasn’t terribly sophisticated. A purist might say it was racist. But it sure made the audience laugh. Including me. This was more than just ‘Shuddupayerface’ ethnic humour. Arabs and Anglos could laugh together at themselves and each other. Everyone could see that conventional fears were about as much of a threat as the on-stage gags. 

It’s all good and fine to respond to prejudice by marching through the streets or penning a pompous and outraged op-ed for fine publications like this one (God knows, I’ve done both). But perhaps the most effective and most difficult ways to tackle prejudice and fear is to laugh at it. And to get both potential racists and potential victims (two interchangeable categories of people) to laugh with you. 

These days, people are scared shitless of suicide terrorism. Australia hasn’t had suicide bombers attacking its churches as has been the case in Pakistan. Mother England has. London’s home-grown 7/7 bombers targetted its public transport system, killing over 50 people. Pundits and politicians railed against Muslims, terrorists, Pakistanis, converts, etc. 

The Daily Mail had a daily field day. The Guardian pumped out plenty of opinion pieces from self-styled Muslim spokespeople responding to the latest attempt at collective blame by some MP. Evangelists and evangelical atheists were weighing in on the discussion. Self-styled ex-terrorist terrorism experts were writing books and setting up thinktanks and making a fortune.

It’s the kind of circus a satirist like Chris Morris would thrive on. His film Four Lions was based on three years of researching terror cells and speaking to imams, law enforcement officials and academic experts. According to Dr Imed Labidi of the University of Minnesota: 

Unlike official profiles and the claims of political discourse in the United Kingdom and the United States which ... produced a ‘regime of truth’ about terrorists as maliciously intelligent, meticulously organised, highly calculated, well trained, extremely dangerous, blindly faithful to their radical doctrines and irrational ideologies, Morris’ terrorists up end these truisms. They are the antithesis, the antiheros, and the opposite of terror suspects’ official profiles ... Morris’ dark humor aims at debunking terrorism as an inevitable, imminent, and almost unstoppable threat. 

‘What academic hogwash,’ I hear some of you say. We all know that ‘all terrorists are the product of an imaginary universal Islamic radicalism and Al Qaeda, the mysterious and supposedly sophisticated international terror network that operates out of caves and deserted faraway lands’. That’s why we are docile enough to accept intrusive laws that eat away at our civil liberties. Surely terrorists aren’t morons manipulated by smart masterminds that would never send their own kids out on a mission.

Here’s Dr Labidi again: 

Two of the film’s characters ... could easily be standins for captured airline terror suspects Richard Reid, known as the shoe bomber, and Umar Faruk Adulmutalib, who concealed explosives in his underpants and burned himself before he was discovered. They each, characters and real life terrorists alike, proved that the official discourse on who jihadists are can be opposite of expectations. 

In Australia, our fear of Islamist terrorism extends to paranoia about Catholic and Hindu Tamil and Christian and Bahai Iranian boat people. The irrationality of these fears is real, even if they at times sound ridiculous. If they weren’t real, there is no way Fiona Scott would have become Member for Lindsay after her laughable remarks blaming asylum seekers for the state of the traffic. Asylum seekers are just one of the subjects covered by Australian tax consultant turned satirist and comic Nazeem Hussain in his SBS series Legally Brown. Hussain is one half of the comedy duo Fear Of A Brown Planet and appeared in the Australian version of skit comedy show Balls of Steel as investigative reporter Calvin Khan.

The show features a combination of stand-up and skits which do more than just poke fun. But not all will find Hussain’s humour a blast. Writing in The Australian, Chris Kenny objected to Hussain’s appearance on Q&A which Kenny described as ‘highly disturbing and dangerous’ and ‘an apologia for terrorism’.

As an editorial writer, Kenny spends much of his time manufacturing the conventional fears that push the likes of Hussain to resort to such extremes of comedy. Kenny pontificates: ‘If this is the message we get from a young, modern and moderate Muslim Australian, then we all have a lot of work to do.’ And if this is the best allegedly conservative pundits have to offer, Hussain and his fans continue to have plenty to laugh about.

(First published in Eureka Street on 18 October 2013)