COMMENT: Angela Shanahan and Lebanese fertility ...

Angela Shanahan, a columnist for The Australian, has every reason to be concerned about the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, who are regularly the subject of discrimination by the Mubarak regime, not to mention threats from a minority of Muslim wackos.

Though in defending the Copts, she might consider her targets as well as the old adage about people in glass houses.

In a recent column, she makes these remarks:

As for the international reaction to the New Year's massacre, it was condemned by many heads of state and foreign ministers, although in the past few have bothered with the fate of the Copts, including our own Kevin Rudd, who was singled out by the Australian Coptic movement representing our own 80,000 Australian Coptic Christians of Egyptian origin.


Referring to Rudd's December visit to Cairo, the movement observed that although he was in Egypt for three days, and met Mubarak, "he failed to convey . . . concern over the ongoing persecution of Egypt's indigenous population".


According to Day, ignoring the Copts on this occasion was partly driven by timorousness from Rudd in the face of Australia's own large and possibly strategically significant Muslim population. In an interview with the Cairo daily Al-Ahram he estimated that population at "a million", about 4.4 per cent of the population -- a startling figure compared with the 2006 census figure of about 340,000 or 1.7 per cent.


However, the Islamisation in many urban areas of Australia, such as Sydney's southwest, is slowly proceeding.


Lebanese Muslims in particular have a fertility rate four times the average.

What the ...? What do Lebanese Muslims in Lakemba or Bankstown or Arncliffe have to do with Kevin Rudd's failure to mention Coptic persecution during a recent visit to Cairo?

And what does Lebanese fertility have to do with the price of bread or eggs that poor Angela fed to her own nine children?

How many English and/or Australian women give birth to nine children? And do Catholics having lots of kids have any impact on our foreign policy? Why bring this up in the first place?

Surely Angela should know what kind of nonsensical prejudice was used in England and Australia about Catholics over-breeding and having lots of kiddies to take over the nation. Monty Python had enormous fun with such prejudices in this skit ...



... and this one ...



Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf



Bookmark this on Delicious