Category Archives: Australia

NSW Opposition won’t support veil ban Bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The NSW Opposition says it will not support a Bill seeking to ban the wearing of burqas and other face veils in public, delivering a final blow to the hopes of its author, the conservative MP Fred Nile.

The Christian Democratic Party MP introduced the Bill in June, even though the same Bill was voted down by the NSW Upper House in May.

Two weeks ago NSW Premier Kristina Keneally announced that Labor MPs would not support the proposed legislation, giving it little chance of success. “Such a ban has no place in multicultural NSW,” she said.

Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell said today that the Coalition had also decided it would not back the burqa ban Bill. “We decided last week, the Liberal-National parties, that there shouldn’t be discrimination,” Mr O’Farrell told Macquarie Radio.

Herald Sun, 10 September 2010

Australia: NSW government opposes veil ban bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NSW Premier Kristina Keneally says her government will not support a ban on the burqa, the head and body veil worn by some Muslim women, because “such a ban has no place in multicultural NSW”.

Christian Democratic Party MP Fred Nile had called on both major parties to allow members a conscience vote on his private member’s bill, which was introduced into Parliament in June. Mr Nile wants NSW to follow a growing number of European countries trying to ban women from wearing in public the burqa and the niqab, a veil with a narrow opening for the eyes.

However, at an interfaith dinner with about 300 religious leaders last night, Ms Keneally announced that cabinet had decided to oppose the Full-face Coverings Prohibition Bill, which is modelled on legislation recently passed by the Belgian Parliament.

“We are fortunate to live in a largely harmonious state where differences in language, culture and faith are rightly seen as things which enliven and strengthen our society,” Ms Keneally said. “It is in this spirit that the NSW Government has decided to oppose the bill seeking to create a criminal offence of wearing a burqa in public places.”

Sydney Morning Herald, 24 August 2010

Australia: judge orders witness to remove niqab in court

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Australian judge has ruled that a Muslim woman must remove her full veil while giving evidence before a jury in a fraud case. The judge in Perth said she did not consider it appropriate that the witness appear with her face covered.

The prosecution said the woman – identified only as Tasneem – would feel uncomfortable without her niqab, which would affect her evidence. But the defence said the jury should be able to watch her facial expressions. The 36-year-old woman’s wish to wear the veil was a “preference”, said defence lawyer Mark Trowell QC and was “not an essential part of the Islamic faith”.

The woman is a witness in a case against the head of an Islamic school accused of gaining work funding by inflating student numbers. She has lived in Australia for seven years and has worn the niqab since the age of 17, only removing it in front of her family and male blood relatives.

BBC News, 19 August 2010

Australian Muslims condemn media misrepresentation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Australian-Muslim families have good relations with other Australians, and feel safe and happy here. But they are furious with the media for depicting Muslims as terrorists and criminals, a report for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship reveals.

“The families felt strongly the media was gunning for Muslims; it was a huge concern for them,” said Ilan Katz, the director of the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW, and a co-author of the study. The research is part of a wider project commissioned by the department to understand the concerns and needs of Muslim Australians.

Sydney Morning Herald, 12 July 2010

Far-right racists protest against HT in Sydney

Posted on by Bob Pitt

APP protest against HT

The stage appeared set for two opposed cultures to clash in Sydney’s ethnically mixed working-class suburb of Lidcombe yesterday. But if any outright antagonism had been going to happen between the Australian Protectionist Party and Hizb ut-Tahrir, police were determined not to allow it, keeping the groups at a distance from one another.

The APP met in a small park to express their need to “protect” the Australian way of life. Around the corner from Australian flag-waving protesters, Muslims from around Sydney and overseas gathered in a local conference hall to discuss the “Struggle For Islam in the West”, with the Hizb ut-Tahrir.

“Infidels ‘r’ us!” read one APP placard, as members marched past the conference centre. After regrouping in the park around the corner, the APP contingent mustered for another lap of the town centre and yelled “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Islam must go”and “No sharia law”.

Nick Folkes, the Sydney organiser for the APP, believes that the HT should be banned in Australia and thinks that practising sharia law should be illegal in Australia. “Sharia law is an archaic legal system that treats woman as second-class citizens,” he said. “We’re not asking them to change their skin colour or religion. But if they come here, they must reject sharia law.”

The Australian, 5 July 2010

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Australian MP calls for bar on HT … and debate on banning the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Michael JohnsonPreachers of Islamic extremism should be barred from Australia, a federal MP says. Michael Johnson, a lower house independent, has also called for a debate on banning the burqa.

He said Prime Minister Julia Gillard and his former boss, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, needed to repudiate the leadership of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global Islamic group which wants Australian Muslims to reject democracy. “Join together and repudiate the extremism of this global movement and … guarantee that none of its international preachers ever receive a visa to step on to Australian soil again,” Mr Johnson said in a statement.

The release was issued in response to an article in The Australian which reported Hizb ut-Tahrir leaders urging participants in a western Sydney conference to join the struggle for a transnational Islamic state.

Mr Johnson said Australia’s Judeo-Christian heritage promoted inclusion, openness and transparency. “It is not our culture to exclude, nor is it one that aims to suppress women’s rights of equality, openness and full political participation,” he said. “Therefore, let us have a full and fearless debate on whether women should be required to wear the head to toe covering niqab, or the burqa.”

Mr Johnson’s comments make him potentially the most vocal Queenslander to criticise a minority group since Pauline Hanson said in her 1996 parliamentary maiden speech that Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians”.

AAP, 5 July 2010

Johnson evidently suffers from an irony by-pass. You’ll note that he calls for representatives of a peaceful if highly sectarian Islamist organisation to be denied entry to Australia, while simultaneously declaring that “it is not in our culture to exclude”. Clearly Australia’s “Judeo-Christian heritage”, is not without its contradictions.

Australia: right-wing bigot introduces veil ban bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Christian Democratic Party MP Fred Nile has succeeded in introducing a bill to ban the wearing of the burqa in the NSW Upper House. Mr Nile introduced his private member’s bill, seeking to ban the wearing of the burqa and other face veils in public, shortly after 8pm (AEST) on Tuesday.

Last month, a debate on the same bill was voted down by the NSW Upper House.

Greens MP John Kaye said only the four Greens MPs and Family First MP Gordon Moyes voted against introducing the bill on Tuesday. “Last month the coalition and the government did the right thing and said no, they would not allow the Upper House to be home to this kind of racist dog whistling,” Mr Kaye told AAP on Tuesday. “This time they caved in.”

Mr Kaye said Mr Nile’s bill has opened the door to a “dangerous and divisive attack on one of NSW’s communities”.

“Letting loose the ugly bigotry that lies behind this bill will only encourage hostility to the Muslim community,” he said. “While no woman should be forced to wear a burqa or any other form of clothing, this absurd bill will do nothing to enhance the rights of women.”

The bill has been adjourned until September 2010.

AAP, 23 June 2010

See also Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 2010

Call for veil ban in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

For obviously superficial reasons, I’ve always associated Belgium with expensive chocolates, rather than political acts of bravery. That changed with its decision to ban the burqa. For a tiny country to be prepared to publicly reject this symbol of oppression gave me great hope that other open societies like ours could follow suit.

Since then, of course, an Australian MP, Senator Cory Bernardi, inflamed the Muslim community by describing the burqa as the “preferred disguise of bandits” in the wake of it being used by an armed robber in a Sydney shopping centre.

Notwithstanding the Senator’s cultural foot-in-mouth routine, far greater politicians have also expressed opposition, such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who described the burqa as a “sign of subservience” and said that, in France, “we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity”.

And so it should be in this country that a stand is taken to expressly reject the eye-slitted, head-to-toe covering that renders a woman a shapeless non-person. On the basis of human decency and basic equality between the sexes, that position would seem a no-brainer but incredibly such a move is seen by some as intolerant.

What is it about the Australian condition that makes us feel as though we have to continuously apologise for who we are and what we stand for? Tolerating the burqa is not about multicultural harmony, it merely allows us to turn a blind eye to subjugation.

Liam Bartlett in the Sunday Telegraph, 30 May 2010

Australia: Combat 18 members charged with gun attack on mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Canning mosquePolice have charged two men believed to be part of a Perth-based extremist group who allegedly fired shots at a mosque. Police believe the men were responsible for the incident at the Canning Mosque on February 4, where shots were fired into the dome roof of the building. The men are allegedly involved with the national extremist group Combat 18.

Cannington Detectives charged a 24-year-old High Wycombe man and a 25-year-old Greenmount man with criminal damage, discharging a firearm and possession of an unlicensed firearm. A 19-year-old man from Kalamunda was also charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm.

Insp Rob Anderson from South East Metropolitan District Office said police believed the charges would spell the end of the Combat 18 group’s presence in the state. “As a result of today’s operation, we are confident that we have more or less eliminated that faction within WA,” he said. “It is a neo-Nazi organisation – its very title is based on the initials of Adolf Hitler. WA Police are committed to eradicating such hate crime within WA – there is no place for such crime here.”

Turkish Islamic Association of WA president Huseyin Aksakal said the incident had brought the local community “tighter and closer”. “It is a bit concerning, because WA shouldn’t have any hate crime at all, and I’m just happy they’ve eliminated one aspect of it,” he said.

Perth Now, 25 May 2010

The veil is a ‘war against women’ and Australia should ban it too

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It would seem there are some things in Australia we are not allowed to discuss. A ban on the burqa is clearly one of them. But the time has come to get over our fears and cultural fragilities – and grow up. The call to ban the burqa is receiving serious consideration in European parliaments. And it should here, too.

Belgian legislators voted last month to outlaw the burqa in public places. On Wednesday, a bipartisan resolution passed by the French parliament deploring the burqa – on the grounds of “dignity” and “equality of men and women” – was presented to the French cabinet, and a ban is expected later this year. Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada are also grappling with the issue.

But in Australia, in a sign of cultural timidity and intellectual weakness, we seem intent on shunning any meaningful debate about the burqa and its place in a liberal democracy.

Virginia Haussegger in The Age, 21 May 2010

Haussegger quotes Malalai Joya in support of her argument, omitting to inform her readers that the Afghan politician has condemned proposals to ban the veil, on the grounds that it is “against the very basic element of democracy to restrict a human being from wearing the clothes of his/her choice”.

See also “Nile vows to continue fight against the burqa “, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 2010