Category Archives: Australia

Queensland: mosque protest turns ugly with pig’s head posted on fence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The battle to stop a mosque being built in a Gold Coast hinterland estate is turning nasty, with a pig’s head posted on a fence and signs publicising the Islamic project vandalised. The Sunday Mail believes police were called after a pig’s head splattered with red paint was hung on a fence at the site.

The incident has sparked fears of a protracted hate campaign against the Muslim community. The words “terrorists” and “Go back to Afghanistan” were scribbled across planning signs outside the property in Alkira Way at Worongary. A resident, who asked not to be named, told the Sunday Mail: “This place will become a war zone. There are old people living here who are scared.”

Police at Mudgeeraba were called to remove the pig’s head and have spoken to residents about the unrest in their quiet rural suburb. “We’re aware of an incident at that address. We are continuing to investigate,” a police spokesman said.

Sunday Mail, 23 October 2011

On Utøya: new collection of essays analysing Breivik’s terrorist attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On UtoyaIn a challenging new book, a collection of Australian and British writers respond to the terrorist attack by Anders Breivik, and attempts by the Right to depoliticise it.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik, a right-wing writer and activist, killed more than sixty young members of the Norwegian Labour Party on Utøya island. Captured alive, Breivik was more than willing to explain his actions as a ‘necessary atrocity’ designed to ‘wake up’ Europe to its betrayal by the left, and its impending destruction through immigration.

Breivik’s beliefs – expressed at length in a manifesto, ‘2083’ – were part of a huge volume of right-wing alarmism and xenophobia that had arisen in the last decade. Yet Breivik, we were told by the Right, was simply a madman – so mad, in fact, that he had actually believed what the Right said: that Europe was in imminent danger of destruction, and extreme action was required.

On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe is a response to this attempt to deny responsibility, and any connection of Breivik’s act to a rising cult of violence, racism, and apocalyptic language. The editors and authors shine a light on Breivik’s actions, and argue that they cannot be understood abstracted from the far Right racist and Islamophobic social and political conditions in which it emerged.

Organised, written and produced within three months of the killings, On Utøya is a challenge to anyone who would seek to portray this event as anything other than it is – a violent mass assassination, directed against the left, to terrorise people into silence and submission to a far-right agenda. It concludes with an examination of the manufacture of hate and fear in Australia, and considers what is needed in a Left strategy to deal with the growing threat of far Right organising.

Edited by Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and Tad Tietze, with essays by Anindya Bhattacharyya, Antony Loewenstein, Lizzie O’Shea, Richard Seymour, Jeff Sparrow and the editors.

More details here. Tad Tietze’s essay “Depoliticising Utøya: Anders Breivik as ‘madman'” can be read here.

Q Society organises speaking tour for Robert Spencer in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Q Society announces:

America’s outspoken researcher and bestselling author on Islamism and Jihad has accepted our invitation to Australia. Robert will speak in all major cities between 26 November and 3 December 2011. At this critical time comes a unique opportunity for Australians to gain valuable insights from one of the foremost experts in this field. An issue which now troubles and concerns so many. The key theme for his first Australia tour is Socio-Political Jihad – Conquering the West without Swords, Guns or Bombs.

The Q Society has produced a video in which Spencer announces his imminent arrival in Australia.

For more on the Q Society see here.

Jewish Community Council of Victoria calls for ban on HT

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Victoria’s Jewish community wants a radical Islamic group banned, claiming it poses a security risk.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in several countries, is due to hold a conference against the Afghanistan war in Melbourne tonight. The group’s Australian branch has also recently criticised a new counter-terrorism website launched by the Federal Government.

Victorian Jewish Community Council president John Searle said yesterday that Hizb ut-Tahrir’s beliefs were contrary to those of most Australians. “They peddle a very virulent form of anti-semitism and anti-Zionism, and they are the sort of group that would encourage home-grown terrorists,” he said. “We are not happy that they are here at all. We don’t believe they are a desirable influence on young minds.”

Mr Searle said the Jewish community council wanted the group banned and was concerned that speakers at tonight’s event could inspire people to take extreme actions. “They are certainly at the very extreme end and extremists do not produce any good results for anybody,” he said.

But Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Uthman Badar denied the group was extremist or anti-Semitic. “The claims made about us are based on hearsay,” he said. “We are happy for them (Jewish community members) to come down and have a look at our conference.”

Herald Sun, 14 October 2011

MP wants to extend NSW face coverings legislation to Queensland – but claims he isn’t targeting Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Sunshine Coast MP says he may be accused of discrimination in wanting stricter identification laws in Queensland.

Independent Peter Wellington plans to introduce a Private Member’s Bill into State Parliament this afternoon requiring people wearing face coverings or motorbike helmets to remove them when needed for identification. Mr Wellington says the proposal is modelled on recent legislation in New South Wales and can be used by police, court and prison staff and JPs. He says the law is not meant to target women who wear burkas.

“It’s not about trying to discriminate against different religions,” he said. “What it’s saying very clearly … in Queensland there’s one law for everyone. There’s one indisputable standard of cooperation that we all have to abide by and that is if the police want to identify you for a range of purposes you have to reveal your face.”

ABC News, 13 October 2011

Australian news show promotes rabid Islamophobes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Today TonightThe Australian news and current affairs show Today Tonight has already established a reputation for irresponsible anti-Muslim scaremongering.

So it is no surprise that a recent news report claims that Darebin Council in Melbourne is “spending ratepayers’ money” on Muslims to “help them spread their faith”.

In fact the council’s project aims to “dispel myths and misconceptions about Muslims and Islam”, which is rather different from Today Tonight‘s characterisation of the initiative as “funding council workers to spread the word of Islam”. And the money doesn’t come from local ratepayers but from the government’s national counter-extremism fund.

The news report centres on an organisation that it says has “launched a public crusade” against the Darebin Council project. This turns out to be the rabidly Islamophobic Q Society, which campaigns against the “Islamisation of Australia”. Two of the group’s members feature heavily in the report, including its deputy president Vickie Janson, who has written a book entitled Ideological Jihad and promotes the view that “Islam is a totalitarian ideology”. The Q Society website, which is shown complete with a photo of Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer, is also given a plug.

Today Tonight demands to know why public money should be spent on persuading non-Muslims that Islam does not represent a threat to them. The answer, of course, is because it is necessary to counter the effect on potentially violent bigots of the Islamophobic propaganda spewed out by the likes of the Q Society and Today Tonight itself.

Sydney schoolboy was beaten ‘for being a Muslim’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A schoolboy from Sydney’s north was brutally bashed and verbally abused by more than 20 students for being Muslim, the boy has claimed. Hamid Mamozai, 15, was allegedly hit up to a dozen times by two fellow students at Asquith Boys’ High School on Wednesday as several more cheered and hurled racial abuse from the sidelines.

“[They were saying] hit him more, hit him more, he deserves it, you terrorists, go back to where you came from, go blow something up,” Hamid told Channel 10. He said he was kneed in the face four of five times and hit up to 15 times in the face. Hamid was taken to hospital unconscious and with internal bleeding but suffered no serious injuries.

Najia, Hamid’s sister, said he had been subjected to racial abuse at the school for up to two years and was “emotionally and mentally sick” because of it. “The boy is scared … he doesn’t get out of the house,” she said.

His mother, Hosna, who fled war-torn Afghanistan 20 years ago, said she had repeatedly complained to the school to no effect. “I just want to know why this is happening, why the principal doesn’t care that students are being bullied, why don’t they stop it? I want other parents to know why this is happening,” she said.

Asquith Boys’ High declined to comment last night. In response to inquiries from the Herald, a spokesman for the Department of Education said one student had been suspended for 20 days and the police had been informed. Teachers provided immediate assistance to Hamid and called his family and an ambulance when the incident occurred, the spokesman said. Hamid and his family have been offered counselling and the school has arranged to meet with Mrs Mamozai this morning.

“Racism is not tolerated by Asquith Boys’ High School, which disciplines students engaged in such behaviour and supports students subjected to it,” the spokesman said. “Disciplinary action has been taken against students who have previously used racist language to the injured student. Due to the police investigation, it is inappropriate to comment further on the incident at this stage.”

Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September 2011

Australia: Greens move to censure Cory Bernardi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Greens today will ask Parliament to condemn Liberal senator Cory Bernardi for offering to help controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders in his trip to Australia.

Mr Wilders has compared the Koran to Mein Kampf, called the prophet Muhammad a paedophile and said Islam was not a religion, rather it was a totalitarian ideology.

Last week it was reported that Senator Bernardi met Mr Wilders and offered to help him when he visited Australia, prompting calls for Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to dump him from the front bench.

The Age understands some Labor MPs have inquired about meeting Mr Wilders should he visit Australia.

Greens spokesman for multiculturalism Richard di Natale will move that the Senate condemn the invitation by Senator Bernardi to Mr Wilders and call on the Senator to withdraw that invitation; and if not for Mr Abbott to intervene.

”Senator Bernardi has expressed similar views in the past and there should be no room for extremists like Bernardi on Tony Abbott’s front bench,” Senator di Natale said.

The Age, 14 September 2011