OPINION: For the love of Islam, fight the terrorists

Different reasons are given for the Bali terrorist attacks. Australian Prime Minister John Howard describes it as an attack on democratic Indonesia, an attempt to destabilise the country and punish it for adopting a more democratic model.

South Australian magistrate Brian Deegan, who lost his 22-year-old son Josh in the 2002 Bali bombing, says it was an attack on Australian foreign policy.

I have my own theory which does involve a short history lesson. I believe the Bali bombing was an attack on Indonesian Islam.

Some 700 years ago, Yemeni traders brought Islam to this part of the world, the centre of Southeast Asian trade.

The various indigenous merchants had no system of accounting and the Yemenis introduced the systems still in use today including resolving commercial disputes based upon sharia law. In Indonesia, when people think of sharia, they don't think of chopping hands and stoning adulterers. They think of banking and finance and trade law.

Most Yemeni traders came from a tribe known as the Bani Alawi, direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. In the towns and villages around Penang and Aceh, you will find more direct descendants of the Prophet than in Saudi Arabia.

And the People of the House (as Muslims refer to the Prophet's descendants) are known for certain qualities. They are scholarly. They are soft-hearted and compassionate. They are calm. They are spiritual. They inspire love, not hatred.

The Yemeni traders were Sufis who brought a kind of Islam that focuses on spiritual purification and social reform. Sufis work with people of all faiths in an effort to bring peace and prosperity to the world.

In New York, a Sufi imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf regularly hosts dinners with Jewish and Christian New Yorkers. In India, the poor and depressed of all faiths and no faith find refuge at the tombs of Sufi saints. Sufism is a grassroots religion in just about every Islamic country, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

The terrorists' version of Islam has no room for Sufis. The terrorist religion is about war, not peace. It is about hatred, not love. Sufis teach that you bring people closer to you and your faith through love and service to others. Terrorists teach that you convert people by killing them, by bringing tears to the eyes of their families and loved ones, by driving fear into their communities.

The terrorist vision of Islam is winning no friends in the world's largest Islamic community.

The latest bombing has taken place in the final week of the sacred Islamic month of Sha'ban. Orthodox Sunni Indonesians see this month as a time to prepare for the beginning of the sacred month of Ramadan.

Traditionally, the shedding of blood during Ramadan and its two preceding months is strictly forbidden. The terrorists have flouted this taboo which finds its source in the Koran, the scriptures regarded by millions of Indonesians as the literal word of God.

Terrorists bring out the worst in themselves and others. Orthodox Sufi Islam brought peace to this region of the world. Today, the terrorist ideology masquerading as Islam is bringing war and violence and tears to the region. Those who care about Islam should be at the forefront of fighting terror.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney-based industrial lawyer and occasional lecturer in the Department of Politics at Macquarie University in Sydney. First published in the NZ Herald on 4 October 2005. Reproduced in full on the Aussie Mossie blog)

ESSAY: Muslim Life in Sydney

Sydney is a city made for postcards. Its gorgeous harbour is adorned by a giant steel arch bridge and an eggshell opera house. Locals affectionately refer to the bridge (which carries motor vehicles, trains, pedestrians and bicycles) as the Coat Hanger. The harbour has enough water to allow tens of thousands to travel by ferry. Each New Year’s Eve, the Coat Hanger forms the backdrop to a spectacular multimillion dollar fireworks display. Within the city’s greater metropolitan area are some of the world’s finest beaches, at least three national parks and a host of rivers.

And over a hundred mosques. Perhaps the best known of these is located deep in the geographical heart of greater Sydney. The Auburn Gallipoli Mosque combines a stereotypically Australian name with an architecture perhaps better suited to the Ottoman Europe. It is named in honour of the peninsula where Turks, Australian and New Zealand troops (the latter known as ANZACs) met in battle for the first and last time during the First World War. The Turks were led by one Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The ANZACs were misled by their British commanders into a colossal defeat. Last year, 2015, marked a century since that fateful conflict. Australians gathered on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey and at memorials across Australia. New Zealanders did the same, though Aussies tend to forget the contribution their Kiwi cousins made at that battle. In the fog of war, Australia and the new Republic of Turkey forged a lasting friendship. Celibolu (the uncorrupted version of the place’s name) is a place of secular sacredness, a battleground where Australians celebrate a military prowess born in crushing defeat, not to mention a tendency to fight other people’s battles.

The Gallipoli Mosque is one of numerous managed by Turkish communities. It consists of a large shallow dome circled by smaller half-domes and seated on two square storeys. Two tall thin minarets stand either side. The interior is spectacular, with a plush red carpet and walls hand-painted with calligraphy. The structure is big enough to rate as a medium-sized mosque in Istanbul, but in Australia it is certainly something to write boastfully to Istanbul about.

By contrast, Sydney’s oldest mosque (known appropriately as the Sydney Mosque), is a converted church purchased by the local Turkish community in 1975. The last time I visited, the floor was at a distinct angle. Facing Makkah, it felt like one was praying uphill; I almost slipped back.

Turkish mosques are dotted throughout greater Sydney in places where Turks historically lived and worked. Just south of Sydney (in Australian terms it is ‘just south’, despite being 90 kilometres from the city centre) in the suburb of Cringila sits the Bilal Mosque. Decades ago, Cringila was a hub for many Turkish migrants and their families. Generations of Turkish men and women were employed at the steelworks until the largest of these closed down. In place of steel, Wollongong now boast numerous kebab outlets. Turkish mosques are financially self-sufficient and usually named in honour of their locality instead of a Middle Eastern monarch or dictator. The imam is provided by the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Vakfi) who pay his wages. Turkish imams generally deliver Friday sermons in Turkish and Arabic and often rotate between Turkish mosques.

That the Turkish Muslim communities are well-established in Sydney and in surrounding regional towns is largely due to a 1967 agreement between Australia and Turkey. It allowed for the mass migration of Turks. Anthropologist Liz Hopkins notes that under the agreement, Turks were deemed White Europeans notwithstanding their Muslim religious affiliation. This suited the self-identification of the migrants themselves and of their ancestral homeland which saw itself as European and white. These ‘white’ Muslims were not mere guest workers as was the case in Germany and other parts of Europe, but were eligible for Australian citizenship; which most took up.

The 1967 Treaty was one of a raft of radical changes made to Australia’s immigration policy which saw the end of a system in which being deemed White was essential to be considered fit for migration. The Commonwealth of Australia was founded in 1901 as a marriage of convenience between existing British colonies. One of the first legislative acts of its Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, popularly known as the White Australia Policy. Upon its enactment, Chinese workers were expelled as were South Sea Islander bonded labourers (effectively slaves). Indigenous Australians were not White enough to be considered anything, despite many fighting and dying in battle (including at Gallipoli).

Before the Turks arrived, white-skinned European Muslims from what was then Yugoslavia, Albania and Cyprus settled as part of a large wave of post-WWII migration. A small number of Lebanese and Syrian Muslims also managed to sneak in, perhaps pretending to be Greek.

During the mid-1990s, Yugoslav Muslims became known by the label of ‘Bosnian’. Not much was known about these people, though I do recall one law professor named Alija Izetbegovic, who went on to become the first Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, appearing on Amnesty International pamphlets as a prisoner of conscience. ‘Actual’ Bosnians did enter Australia as refugees. Many identified as Muslims, while others were deemed Muslim by default thanks to the ethno-religious assumptions and prejudices of the armies and militias they fled. Some found comfort living in Auburn, near the Gallipoli Mosque, while others chose to live near more established mixed ‘Yugoslav’ communities largely untouched by communal madness.

Turks may be a key feature of Sydney Islam, but I never knew much about them when I was growing up. My own family sneaked into Australia in 1965 when my father won a PhD scholarship at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra; and we eventually ended up in Sydney in 1970. When I was growing up, Muslim and Indian were synonymous. Muslims were brown-skinned people who watched long-winded Indian movies without the need of subtitles. A Muslim woman in my childhood imagination wore a sari or shalwar kameez and cooked very spicy food. Many Muslim men tied handkerchiefs around their heads when praying. Sofas were moved, white bed sheets were laid out on the floor, incense sticks burned and books in strange languages were read when a Muslim died.

Once a month, we Muslims would drive out to Bondi Beach to what was then Sydney’s only Indian spice shop. It was managed by a friendly old couple. The husband wore an embroidered cap on his head and his wife wore a small headscarf. They spoke Hindi. Yes, they were Muslims too. At least in my mind they were until, years later, I was told Uncle Isi Moses prayed on Saturday and did not go to a mosque on Friday.

No doubt for many Muslim migrants Islam was part of a broader project in preserving ancestral language and culture. Religion often played second fiddle. The result was Lebanese Muslims spent more time with Lebanese Christians, Cypriot Turks all had Cypriot Greek accountants and lawyers and Yugoslavs were just Yugoslavs (apart from a small number of Croatian nationalist folk constantly chased by law enforcement and security agencies for being ‘terrorists’). And half my ‘Muslim’ aunties sported red dots on their foreheads.

In their multiculturalism, Sydney Muslims are a microcosm of Sydney and broader urban Australia. Most Muslims, like most Australians, live in coastal cities. According to the 2011 census conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), some 45 per cent of Muslims live in Sydney. They have migrated from over 180 different countries, many from nations (such as Lebanon, India, Fiji, Sri Lanka and South Africa) where Muslims live as minorities. Though multicultural, Sydney’s Muslims are no longer just a migrant phenomenon. The largest group by place of birth are those born in Australia. And second in line are Muslims born in Lebanon.

For some strange reason, being Lebanese and being Muslim are considered by many Australians to be one and the same. It’s as if your average Aussie imagines downtown Beirut to be full of bearded men and burqa-clad women. The irony is that most Lebanese in Australia are not Muslim. The ones that identify as Muslim come in all sectarian shapes and sizes. The Ithna Ashariyya (Twelver Shi‘a) community is dominated by competing Lebanese religious and political factions. Their main mosque is located in the southern suburb of Arncliffe, close to the international airport. Surrounding the mosque are large blocks of units. Down the road is a small commercial district with shops, restaurants and the compulsory shisha outlets.

A short drive from Arncliffe is the village of Lakemba. In popular imagination, Lakemba is the Muslim heartland of Australia. According to the 2011 Census, 51.8 per cent of the population are Muslim. Roman Catholics are a distant second at 12.3 per cent. Nutty right wing journalists looking for shock and horror quotes and sound bites jump in a cab and head straight for Lakemba. Tim Blair, a columnist on Australia’s Daily Telegraph even took the ‘risk’ of staying overnight in a room above a pub. He found what he was looking for:

Lakemba may be only 30 minutes from the centre of Sydney, yet it is remarkably distinct from the rest of the city. You can walk the length of crowded Haldon St and not hear a single phrase in English. On this main shopping strip the ethnic mix seems similar to what you’d find in any Arabic city. Australia may be multicultural, but Haldon St is a monoculture.

I have travelled far and wide, but I have never come across streets in ‘Arabic’ cities named Haldon Street. To those familiar with Lakemba, Blair sounds like Donald Trump describing parts of London. But Blair’s assessment represents something close to the views of ‘mainstream’ red-top tabloid readers. I have, however, heard Lakemba locals laugh off the stereotypes with their own corrupted names – Lakembanon and Lebkemba.

The reality, however, is quite different. You’d expect a stereotypical Lebanese or Arab area to have an average household size of far in excess of 3.02 persons (we all know they breed like rabbits). But would you expect the largest ethnic group by ancestry of an Arabic city to be from Bangladesh? Or to have major communities originating from China, Greece, India, Pakistan, Vietnam and Indonesia. Indeed, Lakemba can hardly be describes as an ‘Arab monoculture’.

But Lakemba has acquired a somewhat unsavoury reputation for specific reasons which have caused much grief and embarrassment. The Imam Ali ben Abi Taleb Mosque is located on Wangee Road, a residential street packed with blocks of units and the rear of a primary school playground. The mosque is managed by the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA), a body whose representatives often appear in mainstream media (including Mr Blair’s own newspaper) as representatives of ‘the Muslim community’. 

Yet, according to LMA’s own membership rules, the ‘community’ does not include women, who are barred from holding full membership; and men are ineligible for a Lebanese passport! (I am not sure anyone is actually looking for one.) 

The mosque’s former imam, Sheikh Taj Din Al-Hilali, an Egyptian who spoke through an interpreter, often gave speeches which made headlines. Frequent targets of the Sheikh’s speeches were Jews and women. In 2006, he made international headlines with a sermon claiming that women who dressed inappropriately were like ‘uncovered meat’ for cats to eat. ‘Whose fault is that: the cat’s or the uncovered meat’s?’ Some 500 persons were present in the mosque to hear his speech. Within weeks, millions more read about it on the web.

But Sheikh Hilali was no firebrand Salafi with a beard fit for a ZZ Top guitarist. Instead he was a mainstream al-Azhar educated Mullah. He established the Muslim Women’s Association, spoke out against domestic violence and was very popular with young people. He was also very physically fit for his age. When he was in a tracksuit and sunglasses, you’d swear you were in the presence of Viv Richards.

The Shaikh has now retired, but his major Lebanese Sunni factional enemies are still active. They include a contingent of Salafi Muslims, some of whose imams have also made headlines of their own with colourful views relating female dress to sexual violence. One young Lebanese Salafi imam claimed women who dressed in an inappropriate manner were ‘eligible for rape’. When asked to clarify, he said he was only referring to Muslim women who didn’t wear hijab. My elderly Indian mother, who doggedly refuses to wear anything on her head except when performing the prayer or listening to Qur’an, was not impressed.

Amongst Sheikh Hilali’s other enemies is a curious group from Lebanon who follow one Ethiopian cleric named Abdullah Hareri al-Habashi. Known as Ahbash, the group directly compete with the LMA on numerous Lebanese Sunni fronts. The rift between the Ahbash and LMA has split major extended families and village cultural associations. The irony is that, doctrinally speaking, there is little difference between the Ahbash and the LMA congregation. Both follow the Shafie school of law, reject scriptural literalism, celebrate the birthday of the Prophet and both are Lebanese (which, in Sydney terms, are essential articles of faith). 

Which often makes it impossible for an untrained non-Lebanese eye to tell the difference between the two. Until, that is, you mention Ibn Taymiyyah, the fourteenth century Syrian literalist theologian and jurist. The Ahbash cannot stand him and unambiguously denounce him as an apostate. The LMA crowd, Sheikh Hilali and his successors prefer not to regard ibn Taymiyyah as a traitor to Islam. In an Ahbash mosque, or indeed at a mawlid gathering, the very mention of Ibn Taymiyyah can lead to serious strife. The same goes for any of those recent hard-line religious scholars who take their inspiration from Ibn Taymiyyah – such as Syed Qutb, Hasan al-Banna or Abul Ala Maududi, the founders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami, respectively.

No doubt both Ahbash and the LMA band would have doctrinal differences with the followers of Abu Shu’ayb Muhammad ibn Nusayr, a disciple of the eleventh Shi‘a Imam Hasan al-Askari. The followers of ibn Nusayr are known as Nusayriyya or Alawis. A small Lebanese Alawi community is present in Sydney. They operate a mosque, a comprehensive school and a youth centre. However, they have gone to ground since the beginning of the civil war in Syria. Occasionally anti-Shi‘a and anti-Alawi violence has spilled onto the streets of Lakemba. 

A small group of Lebanese Sunni hotheads and thugs have also been prominent supporters of ISIS and have made their way to Syria. One Sydney thug, Khaled Sharrouf, made international headlines when a photograph of himself and his son holding a severed head of an ISIS opponent appeared in the press.

But competing factions, denigrating comments about women, and severed heads only tells a tiny part of the story of Sydney’s Lebanese Muslims. The community has also made major contributions to public life. On the Australian Labor Party (ALP) side (for some reason the ALP uses American spelling for its name), two names are highly respected. 

Jihad Dib is a former high school principal, who transformed a troubled state high school in a disadvantaged area riddled with crime adjacent to Lakemba into one of the best performing schools in Western Sydney. Dib now represents the electorate of Lakemba in the Lower House of the New South Wales State Parliament, Australia’s oldest Parliament. 

In the Upper House, Labor has lawyer Shaoquett Mouselmane who was the first person of Lebanese Muslim descent to be elected in any Australian parliament. Born in the village of Konin in Southern Lebanon, Mouselmane’s family moved to Sydney in 1977.

Also on the Labor side in the Australian House of Representatives is Ed Husic who represents the large Western Sydney electorate of Chifley. Husic’s father, Hasib, migrated to Australia from Bosnia some fifty-five years ago, part of the large post-World War Two wave from Europe. His father was a welder, his mother a stay-at-home mum of three children. After pursuing an Arts degree, Husic became active in the trade union movement and the ALP.

Both Jihad Dib and Ed Husic have faced problems with their names. Jihad has acquired unpalatable connotations; and Ed does not quite shield Husic despite his white European heritage. In his inaugural speech in May 2005, Jihad explained:

In accordance with custom, I was named after my paternal grandfather as the first son of the eldest. That was a time when my name did not have the same connotations that it carries today, a time when the true meaning was clearly understood. My grandfather’s name, Jihad, is an Arabic word that means to strive and to improve one’s self, to overcome struggle and to help others improve their lives. Jihad is charity, jihad is service, and jihad is support of others. It is a name used by people of different faiths because they know its true interpretation. It is this meaning of ‘jihad’ that I want people to know.

Ed was given the name ‘Edham Nurredin’ by his parents. When he first stood for election in 2003, Husic’s political opponent, a conservative and an active member of the Pentecostal Hillsong Church, questioned his Muslim identity. A number of her campaign workers frequently mentioned to voters that Ed refused to use his ‘real’ name. Husic was forced to defend himself. In a speech to the Sydney Institute in October 2005, he declared:

The first time that many people knew I was Muslim was during the campaign. And many of these people had known me for 10 years…

Just before election-day, I learned about the distribution of another pamphlet, this one claiming that I was a devout Muslim fighting for a better deal for Islam in Greenway. The sheet was a dummied version of one of my campaign ads, designed to mislead a reader into believing it was put out by me. I was also told there was a phone banking campaign that repeatedly rang voters with identified strong religious beliefs to let them know that I was Muslim. … Obviously there was a big, organised effort to keep this issue alive. Was Ed a real dinkum Aussie? Could he be relied on? Would he be fighting for you or for Islam? …

I always considered myself as a regular Aussie, who happened to be Muslim. But when I woke up the day after the election I didn’t completely feel like a regular Aussie any more. I actually felt – for the first time in my 34 years – that I had this brand stuck on my forehead. I might not have understood or appreciated what it was like to feel part of a sub-group that was treated differently – but I got a good sense of what it was like.

To the Left of the political spectrum, there is engineer and academic Dr Mehreen Faruqi who sits in the New South Wales Upper House for the Greens. Faruqi migrated from Pakistan with her family twenty-four years ago and has been a citizen for twenty-two years. She joined the Greens a decade ago ‘because of the Party’s strong commitment to supporting refugees, multiculturalism, human rights and the environment’. She too has faced a fair amount of criticism – but from the other side, the believers ‘including Muslims and Christians for being a strong public advocate of LGBTQI rights and marriage equality’. How does Faruqi handle this? Australia’s political culture does the job for her. She says

Fortunately, we live in a secular state and in my view everyone has a right to practise their religion freely, but no one has a right to impose it on others.

Apart from issues of multiculturalism and identity, Muslims in Sydney – like Muslims everywhere – are also living in the shadow of terrorism. Around a hundred Muslim Australians have joined ISIS; and some thirty jihadis are reported to have been killed. To emphasise their connection to Oz, these characters (quite a few of them are converts), append ‘al-Australi’ to their real or assumed names – such as Abu al-Bara al-Australi!

There have also been two recent incidents in Sydney that have been deemed terrorist attacks.The first of these was the siege in Martin Place in December 2014 by Man Monis, an Iranian-born self-styled religious leader also known as ‘Shaikh Haroon’, who orchestrated a lengthy siege of the Lindt Café which ended when he and two of his hostages were killed during the storming of the premises by police. Evidence given by court-appointed expert witnesses has disputed whether the incident represented a terrorist attack, though media reports and statements by politicians and some representatives of law enforcement agencies have treated it as such. 

The second was the first allegedly Islam-related terrorist attack to be carried out by a minor, Mohammed Farhad Jabar, who shot and killed police worker Curtis Cheng outside police headquarters in Parramatta. Jabar, from a family of Iranian-Kurdish heritage, was fifteen years old and attended a local high school. Again, the incident is being treated by many as a terrorist incident with questions being raised about diverse issues such as mosques, Muslim leaders, and religious backgrounds of Muslim high school students.

Meanwhile, life goes on for Muslims in Sydney. They are like Muslims everywhere. Sunni, Shi‘a, Alawi, Salafis, conservative, liberals, moderate, fanatics. All human life is there – as they say. Some are fighting over irrelevant doctrinal differences. Some are deeply misogynistic and cannot help denigrating women. But most are making an invaluable contribution to Australia. Though let’s get some perspective, after all, more people in Sydney are being killed or wounded by great white sharks.

(First published in Critical Muslim Issue 31, 2016)

OPINION: Rise, Sir Salman!

 

Writing in The Guardian on June 19, Muslim Council of Britain official Inayat Bunglawala recalls the heady days of 1989 when he, by his own admission, was a "book burner". He wrote ...

For many young Muslim students at the time the situation was fairly straightforward. The Thatcher government had banned Peter Wright's 'Spycatcher' and had gone to court to prevent its distribution. Surely, Rushdie's novel, which had caused such offence to hundreds of millions of believers, deserved a similar fate?

I remember being rather puzzled as to why Rushdie's defenders were so vigorous in arguing for the right to offend Muslims. Muslims were not writing books making fun of Christ and other revered religious figures. It seemed to be a deliberate attempt to mock deeply held beliefs.

Somehow, all this emotion seemed to have passed right over my head. It wasn't as if I lacked religiosity or a commitment to Muslim causes. 

By 1989, when Khomeini had issued his fatwa for Rushdie's death sentence, I had already read (and in some cases, almost memorised) the works of various Islamic (and Islamist) writers - Syed Maududi, Syed Qutb, Maryam Jameelah, Ali Shariati and many more.

Yet for some reason, I could never understand how Muslims could be offended by Rushdie's novel. To me, it was quite clear cut. If you don't like the novel, no one is forcing you to read it. If you want the novel to be a failure, the worst way to start is to give the author lots of attention.

I realise this approach won't make me very popular in some Muslim circles. Why?

Well, in some Muslim circles, people violently protest when a foreign country bestows a title on one of its citizens. In some Muslim circles, people protect the honour of their religious figures by doing exactly the opposite of what these figures taught them.

Notice how I'm saying 'some' Muslim circles. Thus far, violent threats and responses to Sir Salman have come from MPs and merchants in Pakistan and Iran. There have also been strong words from PAS in Malaysia. Some Arab countries have also murmured quiet disapproval. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, there's hardly a murmur.

Anger over knighthood

That hasn't stopped many Western newspapers from pretending Muslims are angrier than they really are. Even on the edges of Western civilisation, the editorial in The Press (a Fairfax newspaper published in Christchurch) on June 25 speaks of "(the) renewal of death threats against Rushdie, in the wake of his knighthood" as representing "British Prime Minister Tony Blair fighting the right sort of war against Islamic terrorism". It seems that the view from New Zealand is that "(the) reaction in the Muslim world has been led by extreme groups".

Perhaps back in 1989, many Muslims were baying for Rushdie's blood, with fatwa flying around like blades, ready to decapitate him. Perhaps then Rushdie personified the battle between Western modernity and medieval religion.

What protests do we see now? At the time of writing, Pakistani protests were generating crowds of up to 2,000 people. Given Pakistan's population, this is the equivalent of 20 protesters holding placards in Sydney's Town Hall Square. Pakistani merchants have also offered some 200,000 rupees for anyone who beheads Rushdie. That should be enough to buy the average Malaysian family a nice dinner at a fast-food outlet.

Then, of course, we have a Pakistani Council of Religious Scholars who, in a fit of unscholarly anger, decided to take revenge by awarding an honorary title to Osama bin Ladin. Hopefully they can find him!

Certainly many Britons are angered by the decision to grant Rushdie a knighthood. Some on the British Left are angry that he has accepted an elitist award; nationalists resent that a man who, after millions were spent securing him, abandoned Britain in a huff and puff to enjoy the high life in the United States. One MP claims he would find more literary merit in the Yellow Pages.

I can't say I've read the Yellow Pages cover to cover. I've also never read an entire Rushdie novel. Hence, I am in no position to comment on his literary worth. However, I have read a number of Rushdie's articles and reviews.

The first Rushdie review I read was in the mid-1980s. Rushdie reviewed Edward Said's autobiography 'After The Last Sky'. I was in high school at the time and my father used to subscribe to The Guardian weekly. Like many Aussie kids of my age, I accepted the conventional wisdom that the Palestinians were regarded as terrorists. Rushdie showed to me that there were in fact two sides to the story.

I also read a series of articles by Rushdie about communal killings in India. His coverage of the communal riots in Gujrat in 2002, in which over 3,000 innocent civilians (mainly Muslim and Christian) were massacred by Hindu militants, was haunting. Women and children were targeted, as they are in every communal riot. In the immediate aftermath, Rushdie wrote of Indians' 

... particular gift, always most dazzlingly in evidence at times of religious unrest, for dousing our children in kerosene and setting them alight, or cutting their throats, or smothering them, or just clubbing them to death with a good strong length of wood.

An imam once told me that God can even manipulate the devil to bring misguided people back to the fold. I know of at least one friend who told me she would not have been Muslim had it not for her reading Rushdie's work on Muslim cultures.

How many Muslim Rushdie-haters remember him as the author of 'The Moor's Last Sigh'? This novel castigated Hindu religious chauvinism in India, and lampooned the head of Mumbai's Hindu fascist RSS party Bal Thackeray. The Indian government of the day effectively banned the book and Hindu militants threatened Rushdie with their own 'fatwa' .

I admit I was offended at first by the few extracts of 'The Satanic Verses' that I read in a pro-Iranian newspaper called the Hong Kong Muslim Herald . I never actually read the entire novel, so I cannot comment on the context within which these extracts were placed. In fact, I never even bothered to check if those extracts exist in the novel.

Fiction and reality

Again, I ask the question: How can fiction be blasphemous? And where does fiction end and reality begin? Or vice versa? I ask myself this question each time I scan the opinion pages of some of Murdoch newspapers. So much fiction in such a small space!

Some weeks back, The Australian published an article by a Canadian Muslim who would like to be Rushdie if only she could write better. Irshad Manji thrives on controversy and is desperate to get a fatwa to improve her book sales. Her major claim to fame is that she re-discovered the concept of ijtihad (roughly translated as independent juristic reasoning), a claim she shares with Osama and a host of other Muslim controversialists.

Irshad's article laments the recent response of some Pakistani lawmakers to the recent award to Rushdie of a Knight Bachelor for his services to literature. Why they were so angry beats me. Perhaps they were jealous Rushdie could still be regarded as a bachelor despite being married to a Bollywood actress.

What made Irshad particularly upset was that Pakistani MPs spent so much time worrying about Rushdie and so little time focusing on issues of poverty and women's rights. Quite wisely, she did not blame Islam but rather "hypocrisy under the banner of Islam". I doubt many Muslims would disagree with her, though that didn't stop cultural warrior sub-editors at The Australian from giving this article the headline 'Islam the problem'.

In fact, I'm not aware of anytime during the thousand-year-plus Muslim renaissance when Muslims had a problem with allegedly blasphemous books. In fact, Muslims almost turned blasphemy into an artform. On the eve of the Crusades, a Syrian Muslim scholar named Abul Hasan al-Ma'arri (his surname indicating he was from the town of Ma'arra in Syria) was told about these nasty uncivilised European crusader thugs who even resorted to cannibalism. And his response?

There are only two classes of people in this world - those with lots of religion but little intelligence and those with lots of intelligence but little religion!

Around the same time, in the Spanish Muslim city of Cordoba, one Sheik Musa bin Maymoun bin Abdullah al-Qurtubi was placing the finishing touches on his famous Arabic theological text called 'Dalalat al-Hari'in' (Guide to the Perplexed). The Sheik-cum-physician devoted part of the book to comparing the three Abrahamic faiths - Islam, Christianity and Judaism. He concluded that Judaism was superior to its younger spiritual twins.

You'd think that, writing this kind of hubris, he thought himself some kind of rabbi. Indeed, he was! Jews regard him as Moses Maimonides. Muslim rulers of his day honoured him. Among them was Saladdin, who appointed Maimonides as Chief Medical Officer of his army. Yep, the Muslims liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders with the help of an allegedly blasphemous rabbi!

Some hostile non-Muslims (or, in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ex-Muslims) quote verses from the Qur'an in an effort to show that I believe in beating wives or slaughtering infidels. They want you to believe that I am a threat to you. I despise their antics because I know they are quoting the Qur'an out of context in an effort to have you suspect me. They distort the meaning.

So there you have it. I don't want you to despise me and other Muslims. I want you to believe me when I tell you that the verses being quoted are being taken out of context. At the same time, some Muslims are quite prepared to quote a work of fiction by a novelist as an excuse to cause him harm. Makes sense?

Muslims needn't worry about the likes of Rushdie. The poor fellow is very much yesterday's man, even forced to play himself (and do so rather terribly) in 'Bridget Jones' Diary' just to remain visible. Despite his marriage to a lingerie model, he has been awarded the Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II.

Muslims need not punish Sir Salman any further. Unless, of course, if we want him to remain relevant.

(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 The New Zealand Herald . He recently interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali for NewMatilda.com. First published in malaysiakini on 3 July 2007)

OPINION: Minorities stomped as India flirts with fascism

Conventional wisdom tells us democracies are inherently stable and that the realities of electoral politics are such that democratically elected leaders can never enforce extreme agendas. But how true is this? Can democracy ever be used in the service of extremism? Perhaps we might find some answers in the world's largest democracy.

India is famous for its economic miracle, its IT revolution and its colourful Bollywood culture. Australians are keen to do business with India, and many skilled migrants and overseas students from India are settling in Australia. The Rudd government even considered selling uranium to India, presuming its status as the world's biggest democracy makes its nuclear program less dangerous than that of Iran or Pakistan.

Yet the plight of India's religious minorities has generally been overlooked by Australian governments and commentators.

India's majority faith is Hinduism, an inherently pacifist and tolerant religion. Notwithstanding the caste system, Hindu societies have traditionally practised liturgical and doctrinal pluralism. Mohandis Gandhi's basic philosophy of ahimsa (or non-violence) was influenced by Hinduism, while his struggle against apartheid during his early years as a lawyer in South Africa was inspired by verses of the Koran dealing with jihad (or striving for justice).

Gandhi envisaged a truly civilised and democratic independent India which zealously protected its minorities. He fought both the British Raj and communal extremists who incited bloodshed between religious communities. His assassination occurred at the hands of extremists of his own Hindu faith. In recent decades, these forces have re-emerged in mainstream Indian politics.

The spirit of Gandhi's assassins was present in the various social, educational and political organisations linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which ruled India federally from 1998 until 2004 and which continues to be the ruling party in various Indian state legislatures.

In 2002, BJP activists in Gandhi's home state of Gujrat systematically murdered at least 2000 Muslim and Christian civilians and made 150,000 homeless. Police stood by and watched as these atrocities took place. State government workers carried lists of Muslim- and Christian-owned businesses and properties which were destroyed. The Gujrat Chief Minister, Narendra Modhi, praised the attackers. He remains Chief Minister.

In recent times, there has been much discussion of the precarious position faced by Christians in Muslim-majority states such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Unfortunately, minority rights have become an issue of double standards. We rarely hear Australian Muslim religious bodies and lobbies talking about the plight of non-Muslim minorities in Muslim-majority states.

Meanwhile, many Australian Christian religious groups seem to only address persecution of Christians when used as a wedge to marginalise local Muslims. Allegedly conservative self-styled groups like the Christian Democratic Party and the Australian Christian Lobby often agitate on behalf of persecuted Christians in the Middle East (except when Israel is involved) while ignoring instances of Christian and Muslim minorities suffering together.

Hence the almost deafening silence over the events in Orissa and other Indian states, where activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a movement forming part of the BJP opposition, have terrorised Indian Catholic communities and institutions.

The VHP regards Catholicism as a foreign faith, despite its presence in India for at least a millenium. Catholic welfare groups are accused of pressuring lower caste Hindus to convert to Christianity. The majority of Catholics are either former Dalits (untouchables) or from indigenous tribal groups.

Recently, a senior VHP leader was murdered in the Eastern state of Orissa. Maoist rebels claimed responsibility. However, VHP leaders blamed Catholics. Over 40 churches and 11 other Christian institutions were destroyed by VHP supporters. One female missionary was burnt alive and dozens other Christians murdered. Tens of thousands of Christians continue to hide in jungles, hunted like animals by VHP thugs.

Yet the silence among Australian Christians about the suffering of India's Christian communities is as deafening as the silence of Australian Muslims towards Muslims in Darfur. Even politicians claiming to champion Australia's Judeo-Christian heritage are silent about the Orissa massacre.

There are 18 million Catholics in India, more than in Canada and England combined. Yet as Father Raymond de Souza lamented in a recent article for Canada's National Post, anti-Christian violence by VHP and BJP extremists 'cannot be checked if it is not even noticed'.

But in case we sit triumphantly on our laurels and imagine such a state of affairs never happening in the West, we should remember that the Holocaust ended only 60 years ago and mass-graves are still being dug up in parts of Bosnia.

Has the West learned its lesson on the dangers of democracies flirting with fascism? If recent election results in Austria and Switzerland are anything to go by, it seems not. Last October, a Swiss far-right party whose election posters featured white sheep kicking out black sheep gained a sizeable vote. Following recent elections, parties openly sympathising with Nazis could well form Austria's next government.

Selective indignation on human rights abuses compromises not only our faith but our very humanity. In democracies, electorates choose governments who reflect their own attitudes. Fascism doesn't cease to be fascism just because it gains control at the ballot box. 

Just ask the Catholics of Orissa.

(Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer. First published in Eureka Street on 01 October 2008)

OPINION: Darling of cultural warriors

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is persona non grata in many Muslim circles. Fiercely independent and with little concern for the sensibilities of others, she is not afraid to take Muslims out of their comfort zone.

The writer, award-winning human rights activist and former politician openly states that she is an ex-Muslim, and that she does not believe in any divine figure.

Given the suffering she went through as a child in war-torn Somalia and through genital mutilation, I cannot help but admire her to some extent. Suffering generates its own reverence.

Many Muslims have attacked Ayaan for her ignorance of Islam as well as for her links with far-right groups in the Netherlands - which gave her political asylum and where she became a member of Parliament - and now in the United States. She certainly has become a darling of cultural warriors who are fond of her 'insider' critique and 'exposure' of aspects of Islam and Muslim cultures which Muslims allegedly try to hide.

Whatever one may think of her leaving Islam, Ayaan's knowledge of the Muslim societies she condemns is certainly lacking. I discovered this during a robust 45-minute discussion with her on June 5 in Sydney. Our discussion covered political, social, cultural and theological issues.

Ayaan was in Australia as a guest of the Sydney Writers' Festival. Although she was chief guest, many in the writers' establishment were sceptical of her. After being exposed as an immigration fraud (she had used the word "fraud" to describe her asylum application during an interview with Dutch journalist), she left the Netherlands in disgrace.

Some years back, a number of Australian writers' festivals had made a huge issue of Norma Khoury, the author of 'Forbidden Love', a book dealing with the "honour killing" of her Jordanian Muslim friend Dalia. Norma claimed to be in hiding in Queensland, allegedly fearing for her life from Dalia's family members. Her book became a huge bestseller and was used by cultural warriors to attack Muslim cultures and to reinforce the stereotype of violence in Muslim families. Norma was regarded as an untouchable figure in Australia.

However, taking enormous personal risks and following an 18-month investigation in three countries, then literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald Malcolm Knox declared her a literary fraud. The writing establishment and her publishers ended up with egg on their faces. It's little wonder so many have been cautious about embracing Ayaan.

Doubts about claims

I must say I have my own doubts about her claims. I reviewed her book 'The Caged Virgin' for The Australian in October 2006. The book is a collection of speeches and articles delivered and written mainly during her period as a Member of the Dutch Parliament.

In May last year, following the broadcast of an investigative programme on Dutch TV, Ayaan admitted to telling lies about her migration status. The Dutch journalists exposed her as a serial liar who made numerous claims about her family, her past, the countries in which she lived and the circumstances of her allegedly forced marriage.

Those revelations led to Ayaan resigning from Parliament and the downfall of the conservative Dutch government. To many of her Dutch former supporters, she was a hypocrite who happily campaigned for other asylum seekers to be forcibly removed for telling less significant untruths than the ones she told.

It's unclear whether Ayaan will last very long in the lap of conservatives in America, where she is attached to a think-tank. I have many doubts about her knowledge of her ancestral faith, but I have no doubt about her ability to speak her mind. Her views on abortion and creation science will not sit well with an American conservative establishment that builds its support base on conservative protestant Christians.

She openly describes herself as pro-choice, though she doesn't believe that abortion should be seen as a form of contraception. In this respect, it is ironic that her views are probably close to those of the mainstream position of the Syariah which she so despises.

Furthermore, she believes that creation science should not be taught in schools. She regards creationism as unscientific, an attempt by religious people to impose religion on secular education. Christian conservatives will therefore have two reasons to dislike her.

Ayaan is also insistent on the separation of religion and state, a staunch secularist who openly opposes anything that she believes compromises secularism. In this respect, her opposition to the current government in Turkey is most unusual. She told me that Turkey is a staunchly secular country and that the AK Party wants to re-unite religion and state. She also claimed that the party wants to implement Syariah as the law of the land. Her evidence was that the justice minister allegedly tried to change Turkish law to make adultery a criminal offence.

I'm not sure if her claims are true. Even if they are, how is declaring adultery a 'mere' criminal offence an example of implementing Syariaha when Islamic law insists that this be treated as a capital offence with a mandatory death penalty? And was the proposed crime one of adultery or one of public indecency (having sexual intercourse in public), regarded as a crime in many Western jurisdictions?

Ayaan's commentary on Turkey is just one example of a tendency to talk about issues way beyond her league. She suggests Kemalist secularism involves a separation of church and state.

As far back as 1981, Turkish political scientist Dr Binnaz Toprak wrote in 'Islam And Political Development in Turkey' that the 

Kemalist version of separating Church and State took a different form from what is generally understood by the term. Mustafa Kemal's programme of secularisation defeated its own purpose. Religious institutions were not separated from the State but rather became subservient to it.

Sweeping statements

Ayaan's most unusual claim is that the dominant strand of Islam in Indonesia is wahhabism, and that Saudi Arabia funds the majority of Indonesian religious schools. I asked her if she had been to Indonesia.

She replied: 

Do I have to go there to know a self-evidence truth? Do I have to have lived in Salem to know of witch hunts?

When I asked for evidence for her claims about Indonesia, it was clear she was the one conducting the witch hunt of the world's largest Muslim country. She stated that religious schools in Indonesia are called "madressas". She looked confused when I used the term pesantran, and even more so when I spoke of an organisation called Nahdatul Ulama which runs Indonesia's largest network of pesantran.

Her evidence that al-Qaeda influence in Indonesia is growing is based on the number of Indonesians who took part in protests against the Danish cartoons on Prophet Muhammad. I'm not sure how protesting against cartoons is evidence of al-Qaeda membership.

I cited a report in the Asian media which said some 600 people took part in the protest at the Danish embassy. That's 600 people in a city of nine million. Could ideas which only galvanise 0.0067 percent of a community represent evidence of a substantial growth in their popularity?

She then claimed that Muslim extremists in Indonesia are calling for Syariah law to be implemented.. I asked whether she had any evidence of this in terms of Indonesia's electoral politics. She had no idea. I advised her of a speech delivered to conservative Sydney think-tank The Centre for Independent Studies by legal academic and Nahdatul Ulama leader Mohammad Fajrul Falaakh. He said that in each successive Indonesian election since independence, the number of seats held by pro-Syariah parties has actually reduced.

Ayaan is happy to make sweeping statements about a diverse range of societies whose only common feature is some element of Islam. She has not travelled through Muslim countries and met Muslim communities.

One would think that, as a former Dutch MP, she would have had occasion to meet many Indonesians living or studying in the Netherlands. Indonesian and other sources of classical Islam are freely available in universities such as Leiden, also home to the respected International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World. The country has no shortage of scholarly material on Islamic cultures and theology, almost none of which is reflected in this book.

Yet none of this appears to have left any impression on Ayaan. I left the interview feeling sympathy for her, after all the terrible suffering she went through as a child, but more so for all the Islam-haters out there who could not find a more credible "insider" to promote their cause.

(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 The New Zealand Herald . He recently interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali for NewMatilda.com. First published in malaysiakini on 25 June 2007)

OPINION: Tony Abbott getting it wrong on the Roingya

 

Something is very rotten in the state of Myanmar. By any measure and any definition, a tiny ethnic minority of Myanmar is the subject of genocide. This is not something recent, even if it has been largely ignored by Western governments and media. It has been going on for more than a decade.

Something is also very rotten in the Commonwealth of Australia. Our nation is a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention. Previous Australian governments have cited the convention to provide refugees from across the world, from Bosnia Herzegovina to Vietnam and Cambodia to China to parts of the Middle East. Some have come by boat, others by plane. But since the Keating government introduced mandatory detention of asylum seekers, the rot has set in.

So who are the Rohingya? And why, as Tony Abbott has so eloquently put it, can't they "come through the front door and not through the back door"?

Quite simply, as is the case for most refugees, pretty much all doors are shut. No queues are established for them to stand in a neat line. Other ethnic groups (such as the Karen and Shan) have also been persecuted by Myanmar's military junta, some even taking up arms to protect themselves.

The Rohingya live mainly in the Rakhine state of western Myanmar, a region they have called home for centuries. Though numbering barely one million, they have been stateless since they were collectively stripped of their citizenship in a 1982 citizenship law that recognised 135 ethnic groups. Since then they have been driven out of their homes and forced into virtual concentration camps and small villages where they are deprived of medical care.

But don't take my word for it. In April 2013, Human Rights Watch released a report accusing Myanmar's sort-of civilian government of "crimes against humanity" and "ethnic cleansing". Some 200 people were killed in one incident in which Rakhine Buddhists attacked Rohingyas with state authorities standing back. The report mentioned attacks in some 13 townships. The dead were buried in mass graves.

When they are not being burned alive and raped, ethnic Rohingya are being driven from their homes into enclaves at the mercy of religious chauvinists led by a highly organised Buddhist movement. Just about every respectable human rights body has documented this.

These people are regarded as "Bengalis" by the Myanmar government and hence are denied citizenship despite their ancestors living in the area for centuries. Bangladesh (literally "home of Bengalis") regards the Rohingya as Burmese. Some Rohingya refugees are living in camps in Bangladesh as stateless persons. Unlike Australia, Bangladesh hardly has the resources to permanently settle them.

Conditions in the camps are atrocious. Aid workers from Doctors Without Borders and the UN High Commission for Refugees have been detained by authorities. The camps are squalid and disease-ridden.

Among those at the forefront of anti-Rohingya rage in Myanmar civil society are Buddhist monks like Ashin Wirathu, who describes himself as the "Burmese bin Laden" and uses the same rhetoric as used by the likes of Fox News presenters and our own Reclaim Australia.

Not even Myanmar's otherwise brave opposition leader Nobel Prize Winner Aung Sang Suu Kyi has much to say in defence of the Rohingya. And neighbouring countries, keen to cash in on Myanmar's liberalised market, are too busy imagining the dollars and rupiah and ringgit.

So the Rohingya have no army and no policy force to protect them. Their sources of humanitarian aid are harassed by local authorities. They are constantly attacked by religious fanatics. There is no queue for these people to jump. No country in the region wants them. Even the governments of allegedly Islamic countries have little pity for them, offering little more than some kind of temporary protection.

They are to today's south-east Asia what European Jews were to Europe during the 1930s and '40s. The numbers were much larger in Europe, and the history of Christian persecution of European Jewry was much longer and more brutal. But the ideology was much the same. Even the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, part of the US Holocaust Museum, warned that the Rohingya were a "population at grave risk for additional mass atrocities and even genocide". Their fact-finding mission in March found "early warning signs of genocide."

Genocide. In our own backyard.

But Tony Abbott simply refuses to allow any Rohingya to settle here. Nope nope nope. It sounds as tacky as the old Rosella advert. "Not Reffos again". No No No. "Not Mozlems again". No no no.

We're often told that being sympathetic is a leftwing fetish. Those of us (like me) who see ourselves as more right than left (or indeed than wrong) feel we have to be tough on boat people. When pressured to show some compassion, we talk about nasty people smugglers. And it's true that they are nasty.

But as conservative American writer and humourist P.J. O'Rourke says, we are the ones who miss out when we close the door on the desperate. As he told his Q&A audience in 2009:

You know, my people came over to the United States in a completely disorganised way. Doubtless by way of people smugglers [...] I really believe in immigration ... Let them in. Let them in. These people are assets. [O]ne or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later ... Oh, I think conservatives are getting this wrong all over the world, I really do.

Tony, you're getting it wrong. Close the doors? Lock the gates? Miss out on good future citizens? Showing less humanity than a country with no hesitation to execute our reformed smugglers? Nope. Nope. Nope.

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

OPINION: We can slap away Eddie McGuire's 'mussie' comment. The real problem is the use of 'footy'

What on earth was Collingwood boss Eddie McGuire on about when he described Victorian Sports Minister John Eren as a "Mussie"? Or should that be "Mossie"? Or is this the new slang for "Muslim"? And why should non-AFL people like myself care?

Because apparently McGuire was being racist. And racism affects us all. Apart from Muslims, of course. Muslims aren't a race but rather some invading alien species from the Planet Gsjhtr%$hj.

Personally I don't see what the big deal is.

It isn't the first time I've been named an extremely annoying insect. At my all-boys Anglican Cathedral school, there were three non-Anglicans who wore our non-believing hearts on our sleeves. Brian was Jewish, Tim was an atheist though his Catholic heritage made him a non-believer among super-low-church Anglicans. I was the Muslim.

We'd give our school chaplain hell, but we also happily threw dirt at each other using unfortunate stereotypes. When the stereotypes no longer stuck, we had to use more novel approaches.

One morning, Tim approached me all excited. 

I killed one of your type in the shower yesterday. I slapped him dead just as he was about to bite me and suck my blood.

I was confused.

Tim clarified with a question. "Aren't you a Mossie?"

Brian made sure everyone in our year knew Tim's new terminology. Soon blokes would find a mosquito buzzing around in the playground, point to it and ask my permission. "Do you mind if I flatten one of your cousins?" Another would remark: 

How come you never seem to have mosquito bites? Oh yeah, I forgot. They never attack their own.

Some years later at university, I befriended an Anglo-Australian Muslim convert. Dave who had been around the mosque and religious organisation scene for more than a decade. Like many converts during the 1980s, Dave was not made to feel very welcome in a scene dominated by "ethnic" Muslims who treated converts with disdain or distrust. Convert experiences were very similar to those of young Muslims like myself who resented religious spaces that treated Islam as cultural relics of life "back home".

I mentioned to Dave about how I was referred to as a "Mossie" at school. He had a good chuckle.

Mate, that's nothing. One of the earliest converts in Sydney was a bloke named Yusuf. He was doing a PhD and was organising activities for converts.

Yusuf understood that converts were often subject to pressure from fringe Muslim groups. He knew converts needed educational programs that reflected Australian norms so he produced a newsletter which was sent to more than 500 converts across the country. It was the 1970s and with no email or Facebook back then, it was all cut and paste and licking stamps onto handwritten envelopes.

The newsletter was for Australian Muslims, for Muslims who saw Islam as something for Australia and not just a carbon copy of whatever was happening in Ankara or Lahore or Tripoli.

And the name of this publication? The Aussie Mossie. Apparently the subheading was: "Watch out or we'll bite!"

Yes, Australian Muslims had a sense of humour, an understanding of Australian abbreviation and even an ability to rhyme.

Muslims have been happily describing themselves as "Mossies" for more than four decades. So much for not integrating.

Nowadays, the biggest group of Muslims here are those born in Australia. Most of us are Aussie Mossies. Thanks to events happening overseas, we're getting a rough ride. We're told to say our faith is one of peace like we really mean it. Our ladies are subjected to both domestic violence at home and non-domestic violence on public transport. Across the country, crowds of thugs and neo-Nazis are holding rallies to reclaim the country from us.

There are some real haters out there. But I'm not sure if Collingwood boss Eddie McGuire is one of them. For starters, spotting the Sports Minister as a Turk isn't something that should come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about McGuire.

Seriously, McGuire grew up in Broadmeadows. He knows a Turk when he sees one.

But there is one thing I'm deeply offended about, not so much as a Muslim and as a decent human being.

The story about McGuire's comments was placed on the Fairfax website headed "REAL FOOTY". Fancy describing a game where huge men wear tiny shorts as footy, let alone real footy. I'm deeply offended and demand an apology.

And if it's true that the minister prefers to play "soccer", well I'm happy he leads by example. Because REAL footy is played throughout the world with feet, not hands.

(Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at Deakin University and has no interest in AFL. He is the author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist. First published in the Canberra Times on 17 June 2019)