Category Archives: Australia

Australian Senator moves motion condemning Green Left Weekly

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Green Left statement: Senator’s bid to intimidate media & Muslim community is outrageous

Independent newspaper Green Left Weekly today slammed attempts by Liberal Senator Brett Mason in the Senate to inflame anti-Islam sentiment and intimidate a media outlet that opposes this.

Liberal Senator Brett Mason moved a motion in the Australian Senate on September 18 to condemn Green Left Weekly for publishing articles that criticised the NSW police in the September 15 protest by Muslims in Sydney. Justifying the motion, he said: “Is there anything more toxic in the politics of this country than the self-loathing of the Green Left Weekly and the moral vanity of the Australian Left, both beholden as they are, as they always have been, to outmoded notions of political correctness?”

Mason’s motion also sought to place the entire blame for the clashes on “the violence perpetrated by Islamic extremists” – helping fuel an already hysterical campaign against Muslims in the media.

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Melbourne protest against Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Senior Muslim community leaders have refused to sanction any further protests against the anti-Islamic film that has set off riots globally, but two women in their 20s are pressing ahead with a mass pro-Islam rally in Melbourne on Sunday to protest against what they describe as a decade-long campaign against Muslims.

In the wake of the riots that erupted in Sydney last weekend, a Facebook page has been launched inviting more than 1800 people to the rally and calling on Melbourne’s Muslim community to “stand up against racism and rally in defense of Islam”.

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Wilders wants visa to speak in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert Wilders, who has compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, has been invited by the Q Society to give speeches in Melbourne and Sydney.

The Federal Government has not yet made a decision but Multicultural Affairs Minister Kate Lundy described Mr Wilders as “an extreme-right politician promulgating views that are out of step with mainstream Australia”.

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Australia: inquiry into multiculturalism swamped with racist submissions

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Federal Government inquiry into multiculturalism has been swamped with anonymous Islamophobic and racist submissions. The draft report is due out soon and will be released as tensions run high from recent protests in Sydney and around the world.

Of 513 submissions many are anonymous and contain lines such as: “I do object to the current policy on immigration allowing predominately (sic) Muslim so called refugees into this country they are the biggest manipulative group around, are lying deceitful and dangerous.”

Many of them have very similar themes; that multiculturalism has failed, that Muslims are to blame, that they threaten democracy in Australia and refuse to assimilate.

The submissions have been accepted by the inquiry into the “economic, social and cultural impacts of migration (which will) make recommendations to maximise the positive benefits of migration”.

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Australian senator links violence to multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sydney protest September 2012South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has linked violent scenes between Muslim protesters and police in Sydney to multiculturalism, just days ahead of a major speech by businessman and migrant Frank Lowy.

Mr Lowy is to deliver the inaugural Australian Multicultural Society lecture on the benefits of a multicultural society at Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday.

“The naive cling to the romantic idealisation of the generations of migrants who have successfully settled in Australia, thinking things will continue just as they have in the past,” Senator Bernardi said in a post on his website on Monday.

“They proclaim multiculturalism as a triumph of tolerance when in fact it undermines the cultural values and cohesiveness that brings a nation together.”

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Australian Islamophobe smears Richard Bartholomew

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Winds of Jihad

Over at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion Richard Bartholomew has been engaged in an argument with Joel Richardson, right-wing Christian fundamentalist author of various wacko books including The Islamic Antichrist. Richardson published an article at WorldNetDaily claiming that there is “epidemic of child brides throughout the Islamic world” and that there are today “approximately 51 million” such cases worldwide. Bartholomew does a good job of debunking these claims, much to Richardson’s annoyance.

In the course of this dispute the Australian blogger “Sheik Yer’Mami” – real name Werner Reimann and a deeply repellent individual even by the standards of the collection of racists, cranks and sociopaths that make up the “international counterjihad movement” – rallied to the support of Joel Richardson by posting a piece at his Winds of Jihad site in which he accuses Bartholomew of “whitewashing Mohammedan pedophilia”, and claims that it shows that Bartholomew himself “supports pedophilia”.

As it happens, Reimann himself has been accused by one of his critics of having had links to a paedophile ring in Australia. I’m sure Reimann would vehemently deny this allegation and argue that it is a vile slur on his character. So why does he think it’s acceptable to post a baseless charge of support for paedophilia against Richard Bartholomew?

Planning authority rejects Islamophobic campaign, gives go ahead to Canberra mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gungahlin mosque

Canberra’s Muslim community has described planning approval for the territory’s second mosque as a “victory of goodwill”.

The ACT Planning and Land Authority yesterday approved Canberra Muslim Community Inc’s application to build a 500-capacity mosque on The Valley Avenue in Gungahlin.

In their assessment, ACT planners found surrounding roads could cope with traffic generated by the mosque and that the proposed 43 on-site parking spaces were sufficient. Planners also said several objections to the mosque on religious and cultural grounds were found to be “irrelevant” and “unsubstantiated”.

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Australia: parliamentary inquiry into multiculturalism finds widespread prejudice against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The head of a federal inquiry into multiculturalism hopes to push back against the notion that all Muslims in Australia want to impose Sharia law.

Labor’s Maria Vamvakinou describes this as a myth and a “fault line” in the community, along with the perception that Muslims do not want to integrate with mainstream Australia. She also wants migrants to be described by their ethnic origin as opposed to faith, to overcome the trend of grouping all migrants from Afghanistan or Iraq as Muslims.

The Joint Standing Committee on Migration has uncovered wide-spread prejudice against Muslims in its inquiry into multiculturalism.

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ACT government to make religious vilification illegal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The ACT government will propose changes to the territory’s Discrimination Act to make religious vilification illegal.

Attorney-General Simon Corbell will introduce a bill in the Legislative Assembly next week in response to the secret campaign by the Concerned Citizens of Canberra against the Gungahlin mosque. The bill will make it unlawful to publicly incite hatred, contempt or ridicule of a person based on their religion.

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Publisher’s attack on Muslims provokes backlash from Australian Jewish community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert MagidAn article on illegal boat people by the publisher of Australia’s main Jewish newspaper has ignited a storm of protest, with some critics savaging it for “vilifying Muslims” and promoting “xenophobic, Islamophobic and heartless sentiments.”

Titled “Curb your compassion,” Robert Magid’s article published in last Friday’s Sydney and Melbourne editions of the Australian Jewish News argued that illegal Muslim boat people are queue jumpers who deprive sanctuary to legitimate refugees.

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