Category Archives: Australia

More evidence of Cory Bernardi’s anti-Islamic views

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cory Bernardi (2)The Liberal senator accused of supporting a self-confessed Islamophobic Dutch politician has asked a Sydney Muslim to “publicly denounce” fundamentalist Islam before he corresponded with him.

Arch-conservative South Australian senator Cory Bernardi has been under fire from moderates in his own party for extending an invitation to visit Australia to Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

Yesterday, more evidence of Senator Bernardi’s anti-Islamic views were revealed when the online Muslim forum muslimvillage.com published a letter from the senator to a Sydney Muslim.

Senator Bernardi was responding to concerns expressed by the man about his comments regarding Islam. In the letter he declared Islam had been linked with hate speech, terrorism, gang rapes, racism, segregation and isolationism.

He wrote: “You have identified yourself as an Australian Muslim. I would be interested to know if you subscribe to fundamentalist Islamic practices. If not, I ask then for evidence that you have publicly denounced the above mentioned practices and the preachers who advocate for non-engagement of Muslims and ‘infidels’.”

The Sydney man replied and listed types of extremism associated with other religions.

On August 12, Senator Bernardi wrote another letter stating the man was ”incapable of critically analysing the actions of Islamic fundamentalists”. ”In the absence of your condemnation, one can only conclude you agree with their conduct.”

The Age, 8 September 2011

See also “Is Cory Bernardi Australia’s Geert Wilders?”, MuslimVillage.com, 7 September 2011

Cory Bernardi invites Geert Wilders to Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cory BernardiControversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders is coming to Australia with the support of senior Liberal senator Cory Bernardi.

Mr Wilders, who controls the balance of power in the Netherlands’ parliament, has outraged Dutch Muslims by comparing the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and calling the Prophet Muhammad a paedophile.

In a statement to Foreign Correspondent, Senator Bernardi confirmed he has offered to help arrange meetings and a schedule for Mr Wilders in Australia. “I hope to be able within … this year, or maybe the beginning of next year, to visit Australia,” Mr Wilders said.

“I met one of your senators, Senator Cory Bernardi, not so long ago. He invited me to help him at least when I would visit Australia, and I will certainly do that as soon as I can. We all face immigration also from people from Islamic countries. We all see that, for instance, that is something that Senator Bernardi and now I believe also others in Australia is fighting against.”

Senator Bernardi’s approach is in marked contrast to Britain, where in 2009 the home secretary tried to ban Mr Wilders as an undesirable person.

ABC News, 6 August 2011

See also the Herald Sun, which reports Bernardi as saying of Wilders: “I think he’s got an important message to heed. Any rejection … of Mr Wilders’ attempt to come to this country would be a tacit admission that extremism or fundamentalism are already dominating public discourse.”

Victorian Labor MP Rob Mitchell is quoted as saying: “Australia is no place for a freak show; Geert can take his views back to the gutter he got them from.”

Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Kate Lundy called for opposition leader Tony Abbott to “clarify if he supports his parliamentary secretary bringing out such a divisive figure and promoting his extreme views”.

Promoting sharia hysteria down under – Maryam Namazie arrives in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Maryam Namazie with Douglas Murray
Maryam Namazie with Douglas Murray at an OLFA meeting in London in January

In Britain, Maryam Namazie’s campaign against sharia law has earned her plenty of hate mail. But what really bothers her is the silence of parts of the media and the inaction by the British government over what she says are sharia’s attacks on the fundamental rights of Britain’s Muslim citizens.

Her group, One Law for All, has been fighting since 2008 to stop what she describes as the rise of political Islamism in Britain.

She is in Australia for a week-long speaking tour in the hope of helping ensure this country learns from the mistakes of Britain, where sharia tribunals enjoy a form of legal recognition in family law. “You are facing quite a lot of similar issues in Australia. It might not be as entrenched as it is in Britain, but you can see a lot of similarities,” Ms Namazie said.

Ms Namazie, who is an Iranian exile, said any form of legal accommodation with sharia “is like trying to incorporate apartheid into a non-racist system of law – they are simply incompatible”.

Yet she says her message is frequently ignored by some British newspapers and broadcasters. “A lot of the media that is considered liberal does not want to touch it because it is seen to be racist.”

The Australian, 23 August 2011

Melbourne’s mayor accused of attack on Santa

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert Doyle has compared burqa-wearing Muslims to Santa Claus.

Melbourne’s Lord Mayor yesterday said banning the burqa for security reasons could equally apply to people dressed as Santa. “After all, he’s got that red cap with the white band pulled down low over his forehead and then he’s got this false beard that hides most of his face in the lower part. So maybe those guys should be banned because you can’t really identify them,” he joked.

But anti-burqa senator Cory Bernardi said that Santa had no place in the debate. “It surprises me that the thought bubble from Robert Doyle would question one of our great cultural traditions in defence of something that is so alien to most Australians,” he said. “Unfortunately, there are already too many instances when our cultural traditions and celebrations have been abandoned to appease the disease of political correctness.”

A group of Victorian youths held an anti-burqa protest on Monday in response to the case of a Sydney woman who, because of identity issues caused by her wearing a burqua, successfully appealed against a jail sentence for deliberately making a false statement.

Cr Doyle said that calls to ban the burqa were offensive and a sign of prejudice and that there were procedures in place for police and customs staff who needed to properly identify someone wearing a burqua.

Herald Sun, 20 July 2011

See also Helen Szoke, “Burqa rally is about stoking fear not promoting security”, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 July 2011

Jail for refusal to remove veil in New South Wales

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Australian authorities said motorists who refused to take off face-covering veils such as the burqa when asked to do so by police could be sent to jail for up to a year.

Under the changes to laws in New South Wales state, police will be able to ask drivers to remove helmets, masks, the face-covering niqab veil and the all-body garment the burqa. Refusal to do so would incur a fine of Aus$220 (US$228), but in the most serious cases could result in up to a year in jail and a fine of Aus$5,500.

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Australia: ignorant bigot organises ‘Ban the Burqa Day’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A national day of protest demanding the burqa be banned has raised fears it could provoke Cronulla riot-style hysteria. Almost 14,000 people have signed up for Monday’s “Ban the Burqa Day”, which urges protesters to wear a balaclava or mask. But Islamic leaders labelled the event racist.

Organiser Kye Keating, 20, instigated the protest with two friends via Facebook after Sydney woman Carnita Matthews used her burqa to quash a jail sentence for deliberately making a false statement to police. “This event is not aimed at race, it is not aimed at religion,” Mr Keating said. “It is just aimed at concealing your identity in a public place. If everyone is not allowed to do it, no one should be allowed to do it.”

But many have said they are disappointed with Mr Keating’s apparent lack of knowledge on the topic after he appeared on Nine’s TODAY this morning. “I’m not the most educated on this subject, I just had an idea,” Mr Keating said on Nine.

Viewer Natasha Kastermans said: “It was great that this got heard on the TODAY show, but seriously you knew you were going to go on there and you had nothing constructive to say about it… FAIL.”

David Thatcher said the “Ban the Burqa Day” was absurd and irrational. “The vast majority of Muslims, and groups that represent Muslims, support the police in verifying the identity of women who wear burkas,” he said.

The furore comes after the Baillieu Government revealed this month it would investigate if there was a need in Victoria for laws, being adopted in other states, that empower police to force Muslim women wearing a full veil to reveal their faces.

Islamic Council of Victoria director Nazeem Hussain said that fewer than 3000 Muslim women who wore burqas in Australia had no problem taking the garment off for police, who have power to demand identification. “This kind of mass demonstration, this mass show of intolerance is just that,” Mr Hussain said. “I would say it’s hysteria reminiscent of Cronulla.”

Muslim community spokesman Keysar Trad said women chose to wear the burqa for religious observance, not to hide their identity. “All I see beneath that call is bigotry and intolerance,” Mr Trad said.

Liberal backbencher Bernie Finn, who supports banning the burqa in some places for security reasons, said people were entitled to express concerns about the garment.

Herald Sun, 14 July 2011

Another setback in the struggle against the Islamisation of Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ban the burqa idiotFollowing on from the Australian Defence League’s flop in Sydney last weekend, another “ban the burqa” protest was held yesterday in Brisbane.

Organised by the Australian Patriots Defence Movement, an organisation that claims affiliation to the EDL and was launched following the broadcast of the TV documentary The Great Divide, the demonstration managed to attract 20 supporters, who were heavily outnumbered by counter-protestors.

See “Anti-racist rally confronts bigots”, Direct Action, 6 August 2011

And “Anti-racists confront far right rally”, Green Left Weekly, 6 August 2011

Update:  Apparently undeterred by the minimal support for Saturday’s protest, the APDM intend to hold a further “ban the burqa” demonstration in Brisbane on 27 August.

Setback for struggle against Islamisation of Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ADL demonstration July 2011The massed ranks of the Australian Defence League rallied in Sydney on 30 July to protest against sharia law. Judging by photographic evidence, there were fewer than 40 of them.

A contributory factor in the poor turnout might possibly have been that the ADL’s leader Martin Brennan has been arrested and is currently held in a detention centre facing charges of being an illegal immigrant.

New South Wales: Liberal Party adviser ‘terminated’ after anti-Islam comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joseph AdamsThe O’Farrell government has been embarrassed by a Liberal adviser who posted anti-Islamic comments online, including a description of the Prophet Muhammad as ”the first terrorist of Islam”.

Joseph Adams, who worked in the electorate office of the Smithfield Liberal, Andrew Rohan, was sacked on Friday. Mr Adams had angered some of his 1000 Facebook friends – which include 15 state government MPs and four ministers – with selected excerpts from the Koran which he said prove Islam promotes killing, not love.

He was labelled a “bigot” and the ”biggest f—ing racist ever” by shocked friends. A record of his posts between March 24 and June 17, obtained by The Sun-Herald, show the criticism only spurred him on to make more offensive remarks.

“The religious babble you refer to is Islam,” he commented on June 4. “There was no war. It was terrorism. Muhammad was the first terrorist in the name of Islam.” He followed up with: “Why are you getting upset? I’m not the one who is teaching others to kill in the name of Islam. Mohommed is not my hero.” On March 24, he taunted “friend” Faten Dabs with the comment: “If you leave Islam it is HALAL for you to be EXECUTED. Lol. No wonder people are afraid to leave Islam.”

After being branded a bigot on Facebook , he responded: “Your biblical quotes are as ridiculous as your comparisons. I guess you never paid attention at Sunday school. Jesus spoke in parables. Mohommed on the other hand gave orders to kill. You seem to like standing up for killers and murderers. Is Ivan Milat a good person too? Perhaps you think Hitler was a great Prophet too? After all he did put a book together called Mein Kampf. Don’t waste our time here Aaron. The only bigot here is someone with an uninformed view.”

Mr Adams, who identifies himself as an Australian of Assyrian Christian descent, told The Sun-Herald on Friday that he was not ”thinking politically” when he made the remarks.

“Rather than listen to what people say about the Koran I decided I would read it myself,” he said. “It was nothing political, it was out of pure emotion. I didn’t think it would be used against me and people would accuse me of being racist. What I did was a mistake, I did not think it would be used for political purposes. In my mind I was living in a free society where we value free speech. Why should religion be a taboo subject?”

But the Premier, Barry O’Farrell, did not agree. Late on Friday a government spokesman said in a statement: “The comments were totally inappropriate and the staff member has already been terminated.”

Sydney Morning Herald, 10 July 2011

NZ Muslim women ‘regularly’ told to remove veils

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two veil wearing Muslim women, living in New Zealand, say they are often asked to remove them. They were speaking on TV ONE’s Close Up about the case of a woman who was refused entry to a bus because she was wearing a burqa.

The incident happened when the woman, a student from Saudi Arabia, was trying to board a bus in Auckland in May. The student, who was wearing a veil with only the eyes exposed, was left crying on the street after reportedly being shouted at by the driver. However, it was not an isolated incident as two days earlier a driver for the same company told another woman to remove her veil.

In Australia, three non-Muslim women wearing the burqa immediately felt the weight of stares when they stepped out into a city centre, as part of a television programme to gauge the public reaction. In a mall they were subjected to verbal attacks from women with comments like “I’d pull it off you right now” and “We can’t see your eyes”.

New Zealand Muslim woman Farzana Saheb told Close Up the reaction in New Zealand  to her wearing the full burqa and veil varies a lot. “The sort of remarks you can see happening in Australia, that does happen on a regular basis sometimes to us,” she said. “Some people say ‘take it off’ while others will come up to you and say ‘you know you don’t have to wear that here.’ And some people do come up to you and ask nicely ‘so why do you have to wear that?’. And that’s I think the best way to come up to us because we’re very willing to just explain our belief to you.”

Another Muslim woman living in New Zealand, Moveena Rasheed said: “If you’re in a mall or you’re walking people come up to you and say ‘remove that, why do you need to wear that’.” Rasheed said she “totally understands” why people find it disquieting to only see people’s eyes and not their faces. “And so I think it’s important how we react as well. It’s very important when I see someone reacting in a very negative manner that I do have an understanding that it’s something new for him or her. I think we need to take a step to educate ourselves.”

She said New Zealand is a tolerant and diverse country and she was surprised and saddened that the woman concerned had to go through the experience of not being allowed on a bus.

TVNZ, 5 July 2011