sheik, stirring

There has been some sniggering in the papers about the Mufti's threat to take on Premier Iemma in seats like Lakemba, but maybe Iemma shouldn't be too blase about it? What if Australia's Muslims are feeling increasingly disenfranchised from "mainstream Australia" and are propelled to cling the more determinedly to their imported culture? Muslims may well jump at the chance to embrace Muslim candidates in government, outrageous Mufti or no outrageous Mufti. Even Muslim moderates frequently appear to humour Sheik al-Hilaly. And why wouldn't they? Being outrageous is nothing but a great way to get attention. And the more extreme the Sheik appears, the more moderate the moderates will appear. It'll be interesting to see what unfolds on this front.

shunning stunt

Interesting. Tim Blair today quite freely admits to "shunning" Muslims:

Shun Australia’s 281,575 Muslims and you’re intolerant. Shun four million Howard voters and you’re progressive.

At least he's out of the closet, I guess.

we kid you not

Muslims do have too many children, insists rightwing columnist Angela Shanahan, who incidentally has nine children herself (happily, none of whom are Muslim.....yet).

"DANNA Vale's comments this week were a classic case of someone saying something everyone is thinking, but no one will say….Vale stated the obvious: that people who have children will be more numerous in the future than those who don't."

Well, no. What Vale actually stated was that Muslims—specifically--are out-breeding us.
Here, Shanahan begins by making the no-brainer case that Muslims have more children because (wait for it) they begin matching and hatching at a younger age, which is a consequence of their religious faith. It’s funny, actually, because Islamic women are doing exactly what Angela Shanahan has often prescribed for Australian women as the solution to declining fertility: be devout, marry young, have lots of kids, and forget about a career (those are for the menfolk). You’d think she’d be congratulating Islamic women on their lack of emancipation.
But Shanahan is deeply concerned about those fanatically-breeding Muslims. She warns, "Islamic fertility is an issue with economic and security ramifications." That’s right, security ramifications. Think of all those little terrorist babies being created. She spends the rest of her column elaborating about Muslim welfare dependency and entrenched unemployment, crime and potential terrorism.

"One of the biggest problems associated with high Islamic fertility [is] the explosive combination of highly concentrated numbers of young people and almost endemic unemployment."

Note that choice of adjective, "explosive". Somewhat loaded, with its connotations of terrorism, wouldn’t you say?

"If Australian Muslims were a prosperous community this wouldn't matter so much. However, unemployment is now affecting a the third generation. And continuing high fertility means that large numbers of children are growing up in households where no one has work."

She repeatedly states that problems of disadvantage amongst Australian Muslims are caused by high unemployment, yet she does not advocate trying to find ways of improving employment prospects for Muslims. All she offers is the vague conclusion that we need to "remove our PC blinkers and look at this growing, disaffected population of young people." I’m unsure what she would like us to do besides 'look at' (read: watch) these people. Chemically sterilise them, perhaps?

the rat on lambs, skunk and chimps

Just when I was thinking of Howard in terms of his slippery rat-like cunning, he reverts to nerd. Allow me to give you The Shorter Sunday Telegraph Exclusive with our Prime Minister (no link avail it seems):

"I am tense and uncomfortable about three things: nativity scenes disappearing from shopping malls, cannabis and politician's low salaries."

It's the bit about religious iconography that I find especially hard to swallow.

"John Howard wants to see more nativity scenes in shopping centres to put religion back into Christmas. He says he has contempt for arguments Christianity should be downplayed at Christmas in case it offends those of other faiths or non-religious people. "You don’t demonstrate tolerance towards minorities by apologising for your own heritage. [Nativity scenes] seem to have disappeared in recent years and you have this, sort of, "Oh, we don’t want to offend anybody (attitude) [sic]. Actually, you’re offending a lot of people who think it’s a great pity they’ve disappeared. Even if they’re not especially religious themselves, they like the association. It’s part of the culture and the history and the nature of this country."

What does this mean? That it’s okay to wish to try to avoid offending people so long as they’re the majority? I mean, here Howard is himself exhibiting his despised 'oh, we don’t want to offend anybody attitude'. It’s just that the people he doesn’t want to offend are white Christian Australians, who he claims are the majority.
Why does Howard care if God isn’t found in shopping malls at Christmas-time, anyway? People wanting nativity scenes need only go as far as their local Church to view one. Why does Howard want to link commercialism to the religious aspect of his religion?
Not quite sure who Howard is mad at here, either. It’s not Muslims or Jews, as they "respect the fact that it’s a Christian day". So he must be blaming shopkeepers and/or secular society for this wanton removal of religious icons. It must be frustrating for Howard to witness the market forces of a secular society causing the diluting of the amount of Christian religious iconography being displayed in public places.
You know, we value-less atheists who do celebrate Christmas don’t do so out of hypocrisy, greed or some other immoral purpose. We celebrate it because we’ve never really had any choice not to, so we’ve made it our own. After all, what’s not to like about time off work, eating and drinking and being merry with loved ones, and shopping for gifts to celebrate each other? We just leave off the bits that don’t make sense to us, basically the religious mythology that is the traditional background to the festival.

see also more discussion on this at Road to Surfdom.

surf 'n' turf

Well, it is a sad day when our State Premier has to warn families to stay away from their local beaches lest they ‘interfere with a police operation’. Crikey. All because of a couple of hundred thugs.
Is it a sign of underlying racism and failure of multiculturalism? Probably not; as others have noted, every country has racists; we do too. They're hardly a representative group.
Is it related to John Howard's policies? Possibly. Howard’s position on race-related issues is discussed in the correspondence to the Brett essay that I talked about below. One correspondent, David Corlett, was writing before the South Sydney riots but his words make sense in their context. They also articulate my vague suspicions that the Howard years have created a climate where people are more righteously territorial and more suspicious of Others. And so the extreme element of that is expressed by ignorant yobbos of all colors. Corlett wrote,

“The Howard Government legitimised, at the centre of political power in this country, a sort of racism that is not based on biology but on culture.”

Judith Brett does not agree that racism has ‘entered the heart of the state’, but rather that Australians are particularly concerned with territory; with policing their fences, with turf, with borders, with being a castle with a moat. In a reply, Don Aitken writes that ‘Our politicians, from both sides, cater to [the] large group [mainstream voters who chiefly care about family and security] by lowering the bar, reducing appeals to idealism and reaassuring, placating, and soothing…” To which I’d add, the Liberals have become adept at instilling fear and paranoia in citizens. When people point out we are more likely to be killed by a bee than a terrorist, they are shouted down as unpatriotic.
All the drama and controversy of the new terror laws--a controversy that was surely designed to take the heat off IR debate--helps to nurture fears of the Enemy Within, the Other In Our Midst, now On Our Beaches, and soon, probably, Under Our Beds...

atheists do it better on their own

What to think about Bronwyn Bishop's attempt to ban the hijab in state schools? (Anyone know what the consequences have been in France so far after they implemented the no-hijab policy?) To me, it just raises more questions. Is there such a radical increase in hijab-wearing amongst students in state schools that it's such a huge cause for concern? When Bishop says,

"This has really been forced on us because what we're really seeing in our country is a clash of cultures and indeed, the headscarf is being used as a sort of iconic item of defiance,"

does she really think that making a martyr of and/or criminalising the hijab will somehow reduce the sense of defiance itself? Surely, if anything, it will only increase it. And isn't Bronwyn Bishop making a connection between terrorism and ordinary, common-or-garden moderate Islam (kids in hijabs) by suggesting that hijab-wearing at school is dangerous, essentially by virtue of being an open declaration of the embracing of their religion? Hell, I'd like to see less religion in public schools too (or, at least, more formal emphasis on comparative religion than any one in particular). But at the same time I'd still like to be able to see Harley off to school one day in his "I'm an atheist!" teeshirt. If they ban the hijab, wouldn't they have to ban that too? (that's your cue, Geoffrey Robertson...)