Category Archives: Australia

Currumbin mosque proposal voted down by Gold Coast councillors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Currumbin anti-mosque placards

A controversial proposal for a mosque in Currumbin has been rejected by Gold Coast City Council.

The proposal for an Islamic place of worship, which received 3,500 objections, has sparked protests, threats and insults against some councillors. Ten councillors, including area representative Chris Robbins, voted against the proposal. Five voted for the development application to be approved. The council cited issues involving community concerns, car parking and opening hours.

Councillor Robbins said the planning committee had not properly considered the social impacts of the mosque. “Those residents who live near the site have had some very stringent concerns,” she said. “This was decided by the councillors on town planning grounds.”

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Rise Up Australia campaign launch told Islam is a ‘death cult’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Danny Nalliah at campaign launchMaverick MP Geoff Shaw and UK climate sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton are expected to join forces and attend a campaign meeting for a hard-right Christian party.

Rise Up Australia’s firebrand leader Danny Nalliah said he recently spoke to Mr Shaw and the balance-of-power MP would attend a party meeting in Frankston this weekend.

It comes as the anti-Islam party and the independent MP work to strike a preference deal ahead of November’s state election. “We will be preferencing each other,” Mr Nalliah told The Age. “I have known Geoff for 10 years. He says it as it is. I feel the treatment of him has been unfair.” A spokesman for Mr Shaw said he was unable to make any comment.

On Monday, Mr Nalliah launched the party’s Victorian election campaign, declaring that Islam was a “death cult”.

The flag-waving gathering at St Kilda town hall attracted an ethnically diverse crowd of about 100, with supporters from India, China, Hungary and Malaysia united by their fear of Islam. There was lots of rising up – for prayers, rounds of applause and the singing of the national anthem. Australian flags swayed as the crowd sang the party’s theme song.

Mr Nalliah, who is president of the Catch the Fire Ministries and previously blamed the Black Saturday bushfires on the state’s abortion laws, spoke out against sharia law and said he loved Muslims but not their religion. “Tony Abbott, our prime minister called the ISIS group in Iraq and Syria a death cult. I go one step further. I call Islam the death cult.”

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Queensland mosque targeted in anti-Muslim hate crimes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Patriots Defence League leafletIslamic leaders in south-east Queensland say they are being targeted by an increase in hate crimes, following an increase in the terror threat level and the arrests of two people allegedly linked with fighting in Syria.

Logan mosque spokesman Ali Kabri said that overnight on Saturday, someone left pamphlets outside the mosque filled with abusive language and photographs, saying Australian Muslims were not welcome in the country.

In the past few days officials also discovered a photo of the Mecca and a photo of a pig’s head close by. It followed an incident two months ago when body parts of a pig were found outside the mosque.

“It’s appalling… there’s an emotional fear. There’s emotion of disgust,” Mr Kabri said. “There’s emotion of threat to the Muslim community. Because we’re afraid that for now there are pamphlets but it could lead to violence. We’re afraid for our families and afraid for our children.”

Mr Kabri said the “silly actions” of a few showed Australia to be an intolerant society to the rest of the world. “But I don’t believe we’re an intolerant society, we’re a tolerant society,” he said.

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Rape, death threats over mosque plan at Currumbin

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Chris RobbinsA Gold Coast City councillor says she’s been threatened with gang rape and death over a proposed mosque, and Facebook is protecting the identity of her tormentors.

Chris Robbins says she has spent several weeks trying to get the social media site to reveal the identity of the creators of the “Stop the Mosque at Currumbin” page after it used a photo of her as its profile picture, claiming she was receiving money from unspecified Islamic backers, a claim she denies.

Ms Robbins says she had to engage a lawyer to threaten the website with defamation before the picture was removed. The page remains live along with a host of anti-councillor comments from Facebook users.

Facebook has told AAP it has had no contact with any lawyers representing Ms Robbins and says the Gold Coast councillor has not begun its process for requesting data. “We respond to requests for data to police consistent with our law enforcement guidelines,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

“These guidelines also outline if and how civil litigants can make data requests.” The spokesperson said Facebook was contacting Queensland police to understand what, if any, requests for data relating to the incident had been made.

Ms Robbins says she was targeted by protesters after announcing the council had received an application to build a mosque at an industrial site in Currumbin on the southern end of the Gold Coast. “Horrific vilification, threatening all kinds of nastiness directed at me because I’d basically gone to the meeting and said council’s got an application for a mosque and we will be assessing it as we’re obliged to by law,” she told AAP.

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Councillors who voted in favour of Currumbin mosque receive death threats

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stop the mosque at currumbin 'Traitors'
Far-right anti-mosque campaign whips up hatred against Currumbin councillors

Police are investigating death threats made against Gold Coast councillors who voted to support the controversial Currumbin mosque. Threatening phone messages were left at offices of northern Gold Coast councillors William Owen-Jones and Cameron Caldwell just after noon yesterday.

Police told the Bulletin the threats were of a “non-specific” nature but related to both councillors supporting the approval of the mosque at Wednesday’s planning committee meeting. They were among five councillors who voted to support the project, including Lex Bell, Greg Betts and Donna Gates.

The Bulletin understands both councillors were interviewed by police late yesterday and Cr Owen-Jones has declined to make a complaint. It is understood the person suspected of making the threats is known to councillors but both Cr Owen-Jones and Cr Caldwell declined to comment.

Queensland Police confirmed threats had been made and said the investigation was ongoing. Threatening a public official is a crime in Queensland.

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Fred Nile move to ban burqa ‘anti-Islamic’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CDP ban face-coveringsChristian Democratic Party leader Fred Nile’s latest attempt to ban the burqa across NSW has been branded anti-Islamic and a political stunt.

Mr Nile’s private member’s bill, introduced in state parliament on Thursday, would prohibit the wearing of the burqa and other face coverings in public. It follows similar bans in Belgium and France, and comes after his failed attempt at blacklisting face coverings in 2010.

While Mr Nile stressed that his bill’s text did not include the words “burqa or Muslim”, much of his speech to parliament about the plan focused on the burqa.

He says the measures come at an “opportune” time after Wednesday’s arrest in Queensland of two men allegedly linked to terrorist groups in Syria. “We also face the new Islamic State (IS) terrorist threat, whose black uniforms for both men and women include face coverings to prevent identification,” he told the upper house.

Labor MP Amanda Fazio said the measures were “anti-Islamic” and had more to do with Mr Nile’s bid for re-election in March. “These measures are the opposite of everything we’re trying to achieve in Australia in terms of being inclusive and having a harmonious society where we respect difference,” she told AAP.

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Another hysterical anti-mosque campaign in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Currumbin anti-mosque protest

Gold Coast leaders say a radical anti-Islamic “redneck movement” is damaging the city’s reputation and putting its $4.2 billion tourism industry at risk.

State Tourism Minister Jann Stuckey last night black-listed the public outpouring against the background of an application to build a mosque in Currumbin. “I am deeply disappointed by this because this [protest] does not represent the people of the Gold Coast or the people of my electorate and are is not helping anyone’s cause,” she said.

More than 100 people yesterday attended the heated protest at Evandale yesterday, where the city’s planning committee recommended approving the application to build the mosque. Placards from the protest decrying Sharia law and invoking images of the beheading of US journalists in Iraq by members of Islamic State were beamed worldwide. The banners included: “Super mosque today, Sharia Law and ISIS tomorrow, beheadings the next”; “Team Australia Vs Team Terror: Aussies rule” and “burqua (sic) or bikinis – you decide”.

Protesters heard former Whitlam era political cartoonist and Gold Coast resident Larry Pickering argue that the dispute was not about town planning issues. “It is not about carparks or proximity to houses. It is about what we don’t want to be a part of Australian culture and until those bastards in there are honest about it then we will not take a step forward,” Mr Pickering said. “Sharia is the most evil of all laws. This is Australia for Christ sake. Why are we allowing this?”

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Muslim academic draws hate fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anne AlyAs a proud and outspoken Muslim, Anne Aly has also become a target for anti-Islamic hate groups.

The Curtin University lecturer – who chooses not to wear a hijab and denounces Muslim extremists – has been bombarded with hate mail after a recent interview in which she defended Islam as a religion of peace. Her quotes were republished on a right-wing website called Jihad Watch, along with her work email address.

“I was just really speaking out against some of the false assumptions about my religion,” Dr Aly said. “But what they (the hate groups) really want is for me to denounce my religion. By saying that Islam is not about terrorism and Islam is not about beheadings or female genital mutilation, they can’t cope with that because it shatters the basis for their arguments.”

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Abbott defends new anti-terrorism laws as Islamic groups warn of ‘witchhunt’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tony Abbott announces anti-terrorism measuresTony Abbott has defended the need to force people returning from declared conflict zones to prove they were there for legitimate purposes, saying Australian-born fighters were “exultantly holding up the severed heads of surrendering members of the Iraqi security forces”.

The prime minister intensified his rhetoric over planned national security reforms on Wednesday, as some members of the Islamic community warned of the potential for a “witchhunt” against Muslims and of the practical difficulties flowing from the effective reversal of the onus of proof.

Labor remains in a holding pattern, reluctant to express a clear position before a government briefing expected to occur within the next few days, although the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said the new criminal offence of travelling to a designated area without a legitimate purpose rang “alarm bells”.

The Greens argued the government was “trashing long-established legal norms”.

There remains uncertainty over elements of the government’s planned reforms, including the range of customer information that internet service providers would be be forced to store under a mandatory data retention scheme. The human rights commissioner, Tim Wilson, handpicked by the federal government to defend freedom, said the proposed data retention scheme was “a very serious threat to privacy”.

Abbott announced on Tuesday his plans to broaden the listing criteria for terrorist organisations, lower the threshold for arrest without warrant for terrorism offences, extend police and intelligence agencies’ powers to stop, question and detain suspects, and make it easier for the Australian federal police (AFP) to seek control orders on returning foreign fighters.

The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, would be able to designate an area where terrorist organisations were conducting hostile activities, such as parts of Iraq and Syria, and it would become an offence to travel to those areas “unless there is a legitimate purpose”.

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Tories ‘can afford to ignore Muslim vote’, Lynton Crosby advises

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Cameron and Lynton CrosbyLynton Crosby, the Tories’ election guru, believes that David Cameron has little to gain from adopting a tougher stance against Israel, according to a senior figure.

Tory MPs fighting to hold marginal seats with significant Muslim populations have been among those urging Mr Cameron to issue an outright condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Andrew Stephenson told The Times last week that he had received more than 500 emails from residents in his Pendle constituency, almost all raising concerns about the proportionality of Israel’s response.

The resignation of Baroness Warsi caused despair among some Conservative members of the government. “Cameron has just blown us the election,” one said. “This will lose us nearly all our ethnic support in the north and in seats like Luton.”

Mr Crosby, however, is said to believe the electoral impact of Gaza is overblown. “Lynton says there are hardly any of our marginal seats where the Muslim vote will be a decisive factor,” a senior Tory said yesterday.

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