The Daily Telegraph is having an absolute field day with the Sydney protesters. Yesterday’s front page featured some rather angry faces on the front cover. The words “Muslim unrest” featured at the top of pages four and five. They haven’t had this much fun down at Holt Street since October 2006 when the headline “YOU HEARTLESS IGNORANT MAN” was splashed over the front page along with a photo of a besieged Grand Mufti.
Many Muslims in Sydney haven’t been this embarrassed since Shaykh Hilaly’s infamous cat-meat comments. Readers may recall the then Mufti of Australia made remarks linking women’s dress to s-xual assault. And it wasn’t just tabloid newspapers condemning the man. Politicians, commentators and others weighed in, calling for Hilaly to resign.
Many in Muslim communities also echoed these calls. Many, that is, apart from a fair swag of those currently claiming to speak on behalf of Sydney Muslims in relation to the recent rioting in Sydney over the weekend.
On that occasion, many of these organisational heads felt the urge to publicly support and defend Hilaly. They made excuses for his remarks — that we were missing the context, the true message was lost in translation, etc. The media were collectively blamed. And Muslims who openly spoke out against Hilaly were condemned as traitors to the cause.
It’s the same kind of rhetoric now being used by supporters of the protesters on Facebook and other social media forums against these spokespeople. One can only imagine what is going through their minds as they listen and watch some “leaders” on the radio and TV. “Oh great, so now you’re condemning us for using the same messages you used six years ago?”
In short, there are some credibility issues that need to be addressed. Or perhaps another way of looking at it is that some people have finally grown up and realised that “they” are not all out to get “us”.
(These observations don’t extend to all Sydney spokespersons, nor to the people at the Melbourne-based Islamic Council of Victoria, which openly called for Hilaly’s resignation. When Waleed Aly joined Randa Abdel Fattah on Lateline the other night and spoke about denial and siege mentality, he used the same themes he used as spokesman of the ICV during the cat-meat saga. On that occasion he also correctly noted that support for Hilaly was limited to a tiny but substantial pocket in a few suburbs of south-western Sydney.)
Yes, the broader community does need to be reassured. Thankfully we now have spokespeople who can speak without interpreters. But the rhetoric of “we condemn this” needs to change.
Why not mock the mockers? When Newsweek recently published a front-page story on “Muslim Rage”, it promoted it on Twitter with the hashtag #MuslimRage. Visit that hashtag today and you will find lots of people poking fun at the idea.
Humour can sometimes take you much further than self-righteous condemnation.
The prosaic facts remain: The right to reject a religion, to leave it, to lampoon it, to question its assertions, to ignore its prescriptions and proscriptions, is a basic post-Enlightenment human right which is under attack when a cult which denies the right of dissent establishes itself in a free country. Does Islam respect the right of dissent (even where it has temporal authority)? If it calls for punishment of dissent, away with mincing apologetics. It has to be resisted, while fully respecting the rights of consenting adults to apply its dicta to themselves.
Wow, well said.
When one considers the universal Islamic use of lying to further the cause, why would any of them be believed? Promises made to non-Muslims [Kuffar] are obviously non-binding in the Muslim mindset. Did Yasser Arafat or Sadam Hussein ever tell ther truth to the Kuffar, calling for peace in English and at the same time, more terror in Arabic? Official guidelines regarding lying are numerous in the Islamic literature, so to actually convince the Kuffar of Muslim honesty is a very big task for them. Especially when they have to compete with the obviously Islamic Sheik Feiz Mohammed, and many other like-minded individuals who seem to be immune to the religious and racial vilification laws of Australia.
From my readings it is clear that Muslims must commit to jihad (Qur’an 2:190) and failure to do so makes them a hypocrite (Qur’an, footnote to 2:190, p39 King Fahd edition) and are obliged or compelled to lie to defend and advance their faith (Qur’an; 2:225, 3:28, 8:30, 9:3, 10:21, 16:106, 40:28, 66:2, and others, and Hadith; Bukhari 32:6303, 49:857, 50:369, 52:269, 84:64-65, and others, also reported by Muslim). Two forms of lying are practiced on non-believers; these are taqiyya (to fabricate an untrue story) and kitman (to change meaning by omission of information).
These ploys are used to gain the trust of non-believers, thereby turning the tables and making them vulnerable to defeat, even death. An early example, one of many, describes the murder of the poet Ka’b bin al-Ashraf, at the Prophet’s request (Bukhari 50:369). A more recent example is from 9/11 Flight 93; the hijackers told the passengers that there was a bomb on board, but that everyone would be safe as long as their demands were met. This was untrue, but these devoted Islamists were willing to ‘slay and be slain for the cause of Allah’ (Qur’an 3:169-171, 4:74, 9:111 and others) and correctly employed Taqiyya in order to assist them in committing mass murder.
As I said, a big job if it is even possible.
Seriously, what Dion Giles said! Except he said it far more eloquently than I can muster at this point.
Excellent comment Dion, though in practical terms an immediate about face on giving tax free status to religions and using taxpayer money to fund religious schools has to be considered as a matter of priority. There is little difference between Cory Bernardi and his lot and these lunatics we now have to put up with as well. They both suck up public funds and pay no tax on income to spout their beliefs and indoctrinate children. Cory only wants to take away our human rights and treat gays and women badly. Muslims on the other hand want to behead us as well.