Category Archives: Australia

Irshad Manji: denial is scourge of Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irshad Manji writes an open letter to Australian prime minister John Howard, much along the lines of John Ware’s Panorama witch-hunt, attacking mainstream Muslims and urging Howard to adopt an aggressive approach towards those attending today’s summit on religious violence. Yes, that’s the same John Howard who has been criticised for excluding more radical Muslim voices from the meeting, leading to accusations that he was only interested in talking to those who would tell him what he wanted to hear.

The Australian, 23 August 2005

Read this letter and ask yourself – is it any wonder that Manji is enthusiastically applauded by the likes of Daniel Pipes, Melanie Phillips and Anthony Browne, and almost universally loathed by her fellow Muslims?

Continue reading →

Muslim convert rejects radical label

Posted on by Bob Pitt

British Muslim, Abdur Raheem Green, has been blocked from coming to Australia. Mr Green attempted to board a plane from Sri Lanka to Wellington on Monday. The plane was due to make a one-hour stop in Brisbane en route. “I was told I could not board because the plane had to stop in Australia,” Mr Green told The Australian.

A man described by some Australian media as one of Britain’s most radical Muslim converts starts a speaking tour today for New Zealand Islamic Awareness Week. Abdur Raheem Green, who rejects the radical label, had been due to speak at the Auckland University of Technology on Monday but the public lecture was cancelled because he had to change his flight plans when he was refused entry to Brisbane for a one-hour stopover. Mr Green said he was told when checking in at Sri Lanka about three days ago that he could not land in Brisbane but was given no reason by the Australian High Commission.

New Zealand Herald, 9 August 2005

See also ABC News, 11 August 2005

The ban followed a right-wing campaign against Abdur Raheem Green, aimed at depicting him as a violent extremist.

Australia considers outlawing Hizb ut-Tahrir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia will be banned if intelligence authorities judge it a terrorist threat, the Australian PM said Monday, August 8, days after the UK declared it would ban the controversial Islamic group. “If ASIO tells us that an organization like this … does represent a threat, then we’ll take action to ban it,” Howard told Macquarie Radio, CNSNews reported Monday.

Islam Online, 8 August 2005

Muslim leaders hit back at terror cell claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Representatives of Melbourne’s Muslim community have hit back at Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty’s claims of terrorist cells operating in Australia, saying they know nothing of them.

The secretary of Melbourne’s Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi el-Naji said he was shocked by Mr Keelty’s estimate that up to 60 suspected Islamic extremists were operating in Australia. “It’s shocking, it’s quite the opposite to what they have been saying,” he said.

After recent ASIO raids in Melbourne and Sydney resulted in no arrests or charges, Sheikh Fehmi said he felt reassured there were no terrorists in Melbourne’s Muslim community. “The raids that have been done on Muslims involved no charges and the police said everything was under control and that they have no fear,” he said.

The Age, 3 August 2005

See also here and here.

Australian police ‘targeted’ Muslim convert over library books

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Melbourne university student says the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has questioned him because he borrowed library books about terrorism and suicide bombings. The Muslim convert, known as Abraham, says he was targeted by investigators while borrowing the books for PhD research at Monash University into the role of Islam in martyrdom.

Abraham says the AFP drew an unfair link between his Muslim name and his topic of study. “Obviously, they’ve had access to my library records,” he said. “I don’t know if the phone has been bugged. I don’t know if they are watching my movements. They are drawing a linkage between a person with a non-English speaking name and saying ‘okay, well this is suspicious activity’.”

Abraham says there are dozens of students studying similar subjects but he is the only one who has been interviewed, despite espousing a moderate approach to Islam.

ABC News, 26 July 2005

See also ‘Aussie Muslim leaders hit back at Howard’, Islam Online, 25 July 2005

Another article blaming multiculturalism for the London bombings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Since the London bombings several columnists – from Tariq Ali in The Guardian to Phillip Adams in The Australian – have argued that the British brought them on themselves because of Britain’s intervention in Iraq. Well, they’re half right. The British (more precisely, their ineffectual governments) did bring those bombings on themselves.

“The Blair Government’s intervention in Iraq is not to blame. Rather, successive British governments have persisted in the multiculturalist folly that a nation can be built on separate but equal cultures. Moreover, under Tony Blair in particular, Britain’s immigration policies and border controls against illegal immigrants have become international jokes, and now a national tragedy.”

The Australian, 22 July 2005

‘It’s time we accepted the difficult truth: many of the Muslims we invite to live in Australia want to destroy us’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Isn’t it becoming terribly clear that Islam – at least the Islam of Australia’s Arab sheiks and imams – is hostile to our society? … Isn’t the evidence that some cultures – Muslim Arab ones – pose more problems than their importation at this rate is worth? Isn’t multiculturalism making these problems worse? … the London bombings, perpetrated by home-grown Muslims, makes our silence on such issues not a sign of civility, but suicide.”

Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun, 20 July 2005

In defence of the religious hatred bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

George Carty emails us to ask: “How can you brand opponents of the [religious hatred] bill in general as Islamophobes, given that Amir Butler (very sympathetic to the Islamist cause) opposed similar laws in Australia?” (For Butler’s views see here.)

I suppose there are several answers to this.

First, there are also Muslims who oppose the religious hatred bill in Britain – Dr Siddiqui of the Muslim Parliament is one, and I believe the Islamic Human Rights Commission takes a similar position.

But these are hardly mass organisations. The Muslim Council of Britain is the umbrella body for the majority of Muslim organisations in the UK, with over 300 affiliates, and it is solidly behind the bill. I suspect that you will find that Amir Butler’s views are those of only a minority of Australian Muslims.

Also, the arguments used by the likes of Amir Butler, Dr Siddiqui and the IHRC are essentially pragmatic – that the legislation will act to the detriment of Muslims – which is rather different from the arguments put forward by non-Muslim opponents of the bill.

Continue reading →

Douglas Wood and Danny Nalliah – the parallels are obvious

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Douglas Wood and Danny Nalliah

“Douglas Wood lost his freedom at gunpoint; Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot lost theirs by court-ordered political correctness. We know who rescued Mr. Wood; who will save the pastors?”

Diana West draws a parallel between the repression suffered by Australian hostage Wood at the hands of terrorists in Iraq and that suffered by two right-wing Christian fundamentalist pastors who have been convicted of vilifying Islam in the state of Victoria.

Washington Times, 24 June 2004

Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer applauds this as an example of “clear thinking”!

Dhimmi Watch, 25 June 2005

Pastor prefers jail over apology

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NalliahA Christian pastor who has been ordered to apologise for vilifying Muslims says he will go to jail rather than say sorry for his comments.

Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) deputy president Michael Higgins ordered two pastors of an evangelical order, Catch the Fire Ministry, to apologise for comments they made in a speech, on a website and in a newsletter. In a landmark ruling, the tribunal found Muslims were vilified by claims that Muslims were training to take over Australia, encouraging domestic violence and that Islam was an inherently violent religion.

Outside the tribunal, Danny Nalliah – one of the pastors taken to VCAT by the Islamic Council – described himself as a martyr and said he would go to jail before apologising.

Herald Sun, 22 June 2005

Throw away the key, I say.