OPINION: Hit with the culture club ...

(This article was first published in ABC Unleashed on on 22 February 2008.)

Without meaning to sound like Forrest Gump (the character from a famous American movie of the same name who always popped up at important events), I managed to secure a place at the Coalition's campaign launch in early 1996. The event was held in the main auditorium of the Ryde Civic Centre located in a suburb locals call "Top Ryde".

Mr Howard's slogan for that campaign was "For All Of Us". As they walked into the auditorium to a standing ovation, John and Janette Howard were handed a bouquet of flowers by a South Asian woman in a sari.

Eleven years on, a fair few South Asian women attended polling booths across the Bennelong electorate to cast their vote for ALP candidate Maxine McKew. Here's part of what I wrote about this in Crikey soon after the November 2007 poll:

...the treatment of Dr Mohamed Haneef by the Immigration Minister also went down like a lead balloon among shoppers at any one of Bennelong's many Indian spice shops. Middle class Indians aren't exactly huge ALP fans. But they certainly aren't fond of alleged conservatives who play the politics of race.

The misuse (if not abuse) of executive powers by Howard government ministers to play dog whistle politics was now blowing up in the PM's face and in his own backyard.

Howard's campaign slogan "For All Of Us" should also be the policy behind national security and counter-terrorism efforts.

The fact is that the bombs of terrorists do not discriminate on the grounds of race, colour or religion. No one has yet invented a bomb which only kills alleged infidels. One of the victims of the July 2005 London bombings was a young bank clerk whose surname was Islam.

But when the agencies in charge of national security become politicised, the security of all of us is compromised. Politicians who turn national security into an ideological, cultural and/or political football are potentially harming all of us.

Writing in NewMatilda.com, former ASIS officer Warren Reed mentions the humiliation of AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty after his ...

... reasonable statement ... soon after the Madrid train bombings, that having troops in Iraq made Australia a greater terrorist target.

On that occasion, Howard forced Keelty to effectively retract his statement and support the Iraq war. Meanwhile, Downer suggested Keelty was providing propaganda services for al-Qaeda.

Reed also cites reports that by the end of December 2007, the investigation of Dr Mohammed Haneef cost taxpayers at least $7.5 million. This estimate was provided by Keelty to a hearing of the Senate estimates hearing in Canberra on 18 February 2008.

This is only the figure for investigations. It does not include the time involved for staff of the Department of Immigration & Citizenship (DIAC) in dealing with the various appeals to former Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews' decision to revoke Dr Haneef's visa after a Brisbane Magistrate granted him bail. It also doesn't include court time and legal fees of the Department, all of which we taxpayers pay. In fact, on media monitoring of the case alone, Andrews spent a cool $130,000 of our money.

The Full Federal Court eventually ruled that the then Immigration Minister had exceeded his powers in canceling Dr Haneef's visa. Andrews was found to have cancelled Haneef's visa on the basis of an incorrect application of a legislative test allowing him to cancel someone's visa because of their association with someone who has allegedly engaged in criminal activity.

Returning to the AFP investigation. Notwithstanding the time (including $1.3 million in overtime) spent by AFP officers on the investigation, one can only wonder how much time and money would have been saved had AFP officers and investigators been provided with some basic cross-cultural training. No, I'm not talking about politically correct cultural sensitivity training. I'm talking about something much more basic than that.

Sushi Das, a columnist for The Age, wrote last July about how much investigation time was wasted because ...

... the police did not recognise the cultural and social signposts that would normally be apparent to people from the same culture talking to one another ... Haneef's police interview illustrates the strains imposed when East meets West and both try to understand each other but barriers of accent, language, cultural norms and value systems stand in the way.

After canceling Haneef's visa, Andrews released a selection of some of the evidence he took into account. It included a conversation between Haneef and his brother in the UK that allegedly showed he had advance knowledge of the UK bombings that allegedly involved other relatives.

Those conversations took place in Urdu, a language in which I can claim some fluency. At the very least, I know such a language exists. Compare that to the police interviews, where this prominent North Indian dialect (and an official language of Pakistan) is rendered as "Udo" in the first police interview and "Burdu" in the second interview.

The entire Haneef affair will be the subject of a judicial inquiry which will investigate why Dr Haneef was wrongly charged with terrorism offences. We should all hope that the inquiry also focuses on the highly politicised statements and decisions made by the relevant Ministers of the Howard government, many of which left us too alarmed to be alert and which certainly didn't make us any more secure.

CRIKEY: How a Sufi spiritual pledge becomes an act of terrorism ...

In 1998, I decided to take the spiritual plunge. I’d been reading books and articles about Sufism, watching videos about whirling dervishes and immersing myself in the poetry of Rumi a 13th century Afghan-Tajik poet who settled in Konya (in modern Turkey) after his family fled my rather bloodthirsty Mongol ancestors including this lovely chap. Yep, rightwing politics was in my genes!

Anyway, I decided it wasn’t enough to imagine life as a Sufi so I became one. I joined a Turkish Sufi order in Auburn. That involved my pledging to my Sufi teacher that I would obey God and observe the sunna (example and teachings) of the Prophet Muhammad. I further pledged that any disobedience to God and the Prophet would represent disobedience to my teacher and therefore a breach of my pledge.

OK, I’ll admit it. I was a pretty hopeless Sufi. Imagine an overweight rightwing Young Liberal singing (or should that be miming?) like these Bollywood actors ...



or whirling like these real-life dervish dudes!



Then again, I wasn’t exactly in salubrious company. One of my fellow Sufis was a Hell’s Angel, who stood next to me at the funeral prayers for my late teacher back in 2003.

But now, according to a report in today’s Australian, my simple act of formally pledging allegiance to a Sufi order (known in Arabic as a bay’ah) has just been declared a "Muslim terrorist vow". The report sites unnamed "Australian counter-terrorism agencies" capturing a secret tape recording of the pledge made by some young me to convicted terrorist Abdel Nacer Benbrika in September 2005.

The Oz claims this discovery of the bay'ah is a "world first". I'm not sure which world they are living in. Perhaps it is a world where you describe 1.2 billion people as having genetic defects because they marry their cousins. Who knows?

The bay’ah is an ancient Arab practice dating back thousands of years. In pre-Islamic Arabia, it was given by members of a tribe to their leader as a kind of substitute to voting. In those days, when Arabia was racked by tribal and internecine wars lasting generations, such pledges were necessary to keep people on side.

Arabs regarded keeping one’s word as a mark of honour. The Prophet Muhammad adapted the practice in that he transformed it into a pledge to battle one’s inner ego by pledging to obey God. Each new convert made the pledge.

These days, few converts make bay’ah to anyone except themselves. To convert to Islam, all you need to do is recite (preferably in public) an Arabic phrase which is a summary of the more detailed bay’ah formula. In other words, The Oz report effectively suggests that our counter-terrorism agencies now regard the mere act of religious conversion to terrorism.

I guess ASIO and the Feds had better start planting secret listening devices in Turkish Sufi houses across Auburn and Broadmeadows. I just hope these devices aren’t knocked out of place by the skirts of overweight whirling dervishes.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Thursday 18 September 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Downer laughs at water-boarding and other "pretty fascinating" stuff ...

Well, it's great to see Alexander Downer having a good laugh in his retirement:

*Laughing at the use of waterboarding and other torture methods by our American allies in the "War on Terror";

*Laughing at the almost certain torture and mistreatment of two Australian citizens at Guantanamo Bay ("We did precisely the right thing. I think it was important we were tough");

*Laughing at Mamdouh Habib's further torture as part of the US policy of outsourcing torture (known as exclusive rendition);

*Laughing at how woefully the war in Iraq is going.

It's all part of a period Downer describes to John Lyons in The Australian today as ...

... that pretty fascinating period of my life.

On a slightly less-than-laughing matter, Downer alleges that the Hawke government had allowed our external spy agency ASIS to be run down to the extent that we weren't able to detect emerging threats such as the transformation of Jemaah Islamiyah into a full-blown terror outfit. He might have a point.

Yet he also acknowledges that ASIS didn't have any substantial intelligence on Iraq's WMD prior to the 2003 invasion. His excuse?

Yeah, but I mean we are obviously not main intelligence gatherers in Iraq, if I can be so indiscreet as to say that.

So Mr Downer sent other people's sons and daughters (but not his own) to fight a war based on the dubious intelligence of others agencies. At least Hawke waited for a clear UN mandate before committing Aussie troops in the 1990 invasion.

Downer barely acknowledges what ASIO's head recently told a Senate Hearing, ie that Australia knew full well of Mamdouh Habib being sent to Egypt for torture. Instead, Downer's response to suggestions America tortures terror suspects in secret locations was "a spirited laugh".

Indeed, Downer's FoxNews-type record on foreign affairs would be worth laughing at if it didn't have such potentially serious consequences for our international reputation and national security.

Downer's successor in the federal Seat of Mayo clearly couldn't find much to laugh about over the weekend, having received almost as big an electoral fright as Downer himself received in the 1998 Federal Election at the hands of a certain well-known folk singer.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Tuesday 9 September 2008.

OPINION: No regrets? Downer did it his way, sadly ...

Some years ago, I went to a ''Big Ideas'' forum hosted by the Centre for Independent Studies. The session was moderated by ABC board member Janet Albrechtsen who related a conversation she had had with our then foreign minister Alexander Downer, who described his after- hours schedule to her. Let's play some of the tape:

... after he had a particularly bad day on the political hustings, he slinks home and he sits on the sofa with a glass of whisky turn[ing] on the television to watch FoxNews just to remind himself that there is some sanity left in the world.

Sanity? In FoxNews?

In recent times, Albrechtsen has again found reason to relate to her fans her conversations with Downer, who as you all know is thankfully no longer our foreign minister. In fact, he soon will no longer be the Federal Member for Mayo.

In The Australian on Tuesday, Downer tells Albrechtsen that he has no regrets about his 25 years or so in Parliament. No regrets? Sounds a bit like Opposition Leader Dr Brendan Nelson claiming he has no regrets about that time in 1993 when as AMA president he screamed over a megaphone, "I have never voted Liberal in my life."

Let's survey Downer's history and see if he has reason to have no regrets. Some years after Nelson said those immortal words, the parliamentary Liberal Party decided to give Dr John Hewson the flick and disappoint many media pundits who predicted Bronwyn Bishop (yes, her!) would lead the charge against the Labor Party. Aren't we all glad political journalists don't get to vote in internal Liberal ballots.

Instead, the party opted for an allegedly new generation of leaders with Downer as leader and Peter Costello as his deputy. Downer was 43 at the time. It was a tough time for the Opposition. The Coalition had just lost the seemingly unlosable election in 1993 after trying to sell a GST (a key feature of then opposition leader John Hewson's Fightback! package) to the electorate.

Downer issued a rather strange set of motherhood statements posing as policies called The Things That Matter. Downer's quaint summary of his policy platform makes, er, interesting reading: '

When we release our domestic violence policy, the things that batter. Our marginal seat strategy, the swings that matter. And our family policy, look this is a reflection of our own home I suppose, the flings that matter.

In one verbal swoop, he managed to get a certain 51 per cent minority in the electorate rather offended. Downer later explained it away as a joke. His party colleagues weren't laughing, and made sure he didn't last in the job beyond a few days over eight months, making his the shortest period of Opposition leadership in Liberal Party history. You'd think he'd at least have regrets about that.

Strangely enough, Downer now criticises Nelson for not being able to provide a ''broader narrative'' to compete with Labor. I mean, give the guy a break. For a start, he now actually does vote Liberal.

Downer agreed to hand John Howard leadership in January 1996 in a deal that saw Downer become foreign minister (Australia's 38th) in the Howard government.

No doubt Albrechtsen will dispute my claim that Downer should find lots to regret about his term as foreign minister. He involved us in a disastrous war in Iraq which has cost God-knows how many Iraqi lives (not to mention troops and contractors). The only people who seem to have benefited from this war, as ABC-TV's Four Corners exposed the other night, were companies such as Halliburton.

Downer should also regret the role he made our country play in the so-called war on terror, often at the expense of Australian citizens. In this respect, Albrechtsen might wish to read reports in her newspaper about ASIO's prior knowledge that Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib would be sent to Egypt as part of the American practice of extraordinary rendition. Given that ASIO knew about this (and probably about what would likely happen to Habib), I find it difficult to believe that Downer knew nothing.

And if Albrechtsen doesn't believe this story, she might like to read her colleague Caroline Overington's book Kickback: Inside the Australian Wheat Board Scandal and ask why Overington isn't alone in wondering why Howard didn't sack Downer once the full extent of AWB corruption became known. When questioned in the subsequent Cole inquiry in April 2006, Downer took a cue from Ronald Reagan and confidently declared, "I don't recall" some four times.

But perhaps Downer's greatest moment was when, in response to then Opposition leader Kevin Rudd's speech in Mandarin at the APEC meeting in Sydney, Downer declared he could speak fluent French.

Still, it would be unfair to characterise "Lord" Downer's political tenure in such negative terms. I mean, what about declaring victory in Iraq? Whoops, we haven't won. What about the Free Trade Agreements? Er, that was the minister for trade. Seriously, surely Downer must have had some successes.

Um, er, I don't recall.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer. A version of this article was first published in The Canberra Times on Saturday 5 July 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

CRIKEY: ABC's Jihad Sheilas have only themselves to blame ...

The ABC documentary Jihadi Sheilas broadcast on the evening of 5 February 2007 profiled two very confused women from troubled backgrounds sucked into the whirlpool combining emotional trauma with jihadist politics.

These women were among many Muslim converts in the 1980s swept away in the hysteria of the US-backed Afghan war against the Soviets. That war was fought by a loose coalition of Afghan tribal militias and a more organised band of Arab fighters led by, amongst others, a man who should really be known as Usama bin Reagan.

Many Western converts left that conflict spiritually scarred and disillusioned with the so-called jihad which, following Soviet withdrawal, descended into brutal tribal civil war. But a small minority, including those with whom Rabiah Hutchinson and Raisa bint Alan Douglas associated, now turned their weapons toward their American ex-backers.

The documentary showed just how easy it is for the wrong set of dominoes to tumble in the lives of desperate converts with few support mechanisms outside the tiny paranoid radical fringe. I remember the period in which these women adopted Islam as one where mainstream Muslim religious institutions were most unwelcoming to converts. It was also a time when two competing forces of political Islam – the US-backed jihadi form of wahhabism and the Iranian revolutionary form of Shi’ism – competed with each other for the hearts and minds of zealous youth and converts.

Many converts I know went through the phase these two women are still afflicted by. However, the spread of mainstream Islam (and with even the Saudi government seeking an alternative to discredited jihadi-wahhabist neo-Conservative theology) has meant most converts have moved on.

Even after making allowances for unfriendly editing, the most damning statements were made not by the assortment of "experts" but by the women themselves. One claimed that Muslim women are attracted to men who carry the sword and espouse jihad. Yeah, right. Speak for yourself, honey. The same woman also claimed Usama bin Reagan took on a pure form of Islam. A bit like suggesting Opus Dei represent pure Catholicism.

The other woman claimed Afghan people want Islam (by which she meant Taliban rule). I encourage her to tell that to Afghan Hazara refugees whose family members were tortured and murdered by the Taliban and whose villages were destroyed because they were Shia. Presumably, like most followers of the jihadist version of wahhabism, she regards Shia Muslims as infidels who can be legitimately put to the sword.

With so much material emerging from the horses’ mouths, one wonders why the documentary makers would compromise the credibility of their work by citing discredited neo-Conservative cultural warriors like Steven Emerson.

One chap named Sheuer, allegedly a CIA operative, claimed Yemen was "a place where radical Islam is taught". It is also a place where Western students go to learn Arabic and classical Islamic sciences such as Sufism which are shunned by jihadi-wahhabis. You won’t see mainstream Yemeni Islamic scholars like these guys spouting terror.

What many Muslims will find grossly insulting was the constant replay of the Islamic call to ritual worship (known as the adhaan) and the images of the Koran’s Arabic text. Repeatedly these two universal symbols of Islam accompanied images of the burning Twin Towers and other acts of terror. Were the producers trying to send a message that the adhaan is a call to arms? That the Koran was a terrorist training manual?

After watching the women rant on about the boob-jobs of female ASIO agents and claim their fringe version of Islam is truer than all others, I concluded that the Prophet Muhammad was right when he said (more or less):

The best of people inside Islam were once the best of people outside Islam.

Which implies that dysfunctional people outside Islam rarely change after adopting the faith.

These women weren’t made dysfunctional by Islamic theology. Sadly, many viewers will now see all Muslim converts through the prism of the Jihad Sheilas.

(A version of this piece was first published in the Crikey daily alert for Wednesday 6 February 2008.)

UPDATE 1: A colleague of mine sent me the following response to this piece ...

Fantastic response. Hit the nail on the spot. The documentary made me feel physically ill. The two women pissed me off so much and i'm afraid it wasn't a case of 'misquoted'. Crass, vulgar, stupid, brainwashed and misinformed don't change, no matter how long the hijab or how many 'ya Allahs' sprinkled into the conversation. The one who had married 5 men- been a 2nd wife to 2, annoyed me the most. Kids to different dads, with 4 divorces. Felt strangely like a run-of-the-mill trailer-trash story except lo and behold she's converted to Islam and simply whacked on the abaya.

UPDATE 2: Another colleague sent this message ...

Thanks for writing this piece. I couldn’t bring myself to watch this garbage last night – I need to watch my blood pressure. Several of my colleagues were concerned about what they had seen on the ABC last night but thankfully, talked about their concerns... with me and another Muslim in the team. I’ll be forwarding your article to them also.

© Irfan Yusuf 2008

NB: To switch off the funky music, go to the playlist at the bottom of this homepage.


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COMMENT: Yet another terrorism intelligence bungle ...

Izhar al-Haque is an exception to the rule. He willingly handed his jihadi training documents to the authorities. He did this years before any prosecution or ASIO interrogation were on the horizon.

Most terror suspects find themselves in the dock thanks to information provided to the authorities from external sources. Well, not quite external sources. Generally the information comes from people within their congregations. People who attend their mosques. Muslim people.

Ordinary citizens who just happen to observe the requirements of their faith to some extent. And who regard it as their religious duty to ensure their families and neighbours and nation are secure from "fitna" and "fasad" (words used in Arabic, Turkish, Urdu and other languages commonly spoken by huge chunks of the Islamic world to describe chaos and terror).

I wonder whether they’ll be so willing after reading for months about the Haneef investigation that revealed AFP investigators having little or no understanding of basic aspects of South Asian cultures. AFP investigators who didn’t realise that Urdu (not "Udo" as they put it) was the name of a language. And now they find the prosecution of the future-Dr Haque has been thrown out after ASIO agents were accused of engaging in kidnapping and the evidence they gathered largely inadmissible.

Add to this revelations that AFP agents were directed to charge as many people as possible with a view to testing the new beefed-up anti-terrorism laws. Sally Neighbour writes in The Australian on 13 November 2007:

A SENIOR counter-terrorism officer with the Australian Federal Police has testified that police were directed to charge "as many suspects as possible" with terrorism offences in order to test the new anti-terrorism laws introduced in 2003.
The admission was made by federal agent Kemuel Lam Paktsun, the senior case officer on the Operation Newport investigation that led to the arrest of Sydney medical student Izhar Ul-Haque, whose trial was sensationally dismissed in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday.
Mr Lam Paktsun's startling testimony came during a pre-trial hearing on October 24 that has not previously been reported, when he was questioned about the circumstances of Mr Ul-Haque's arrest in April 2004.
"At the time, we were directed, we were informed, to lay as many charges under the new terrorist legislation against as many suspects as possible because we wanted to use the new legislation," he testified.
"So regardless of the assistance that Mr Ul-Haque could give, he was going to be prosecuted, charged, because we wanted to test the legislation and lay new charges, in our eagerness to use the legislation."
The frank admission was made under cross-examination during a hearing to test the admissibility of two AFP interviews conducted with Mr Ul-Haque, who was charged with receiving training from the terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba in January and February 2003.

I’ll bet many ordinary Aussies who tick the "Muslim" box on their census forms are feeling very alarmed. So will many of their neighbours and friends who tick other boxes or no box in particular.

Millions have been spent to "beef up" security. And what has been achieved? Failed prosecution after failed prosecution. And a bunch of ABC comics getting through APEC security barricades worth millions.

But heck, why should the Federal Government care? After all, it’s not their money that’s being spent. It’s our money.

And it’s our security being compromised as our intelligence services don’t behave in an intelligent fashion. The only thing standing in the way of botched-up intelligence is an independent judiciary. We can thank God/G-d/Allah/ Khudah/etc for that. But when it comes to our counter-terrorism services, we should be very alarmed.

I hope that, in the event of a real terrorist plot, they are far more alert.

First published on the Crikey daily alert for 13 November 2007.

COMMENT: Sunni & Shia - Can you tell the difference?

ASIO’s latest Annual Report to Parliament suggests sectarian violence in Iraq could spill over between Middle Eastern Sunni and Shia communities in Australia. It claims tensions are high in Auburn, a suburb having the highest Muslim concentration in Sydney.

I lived in Auburn for a number of years, and also practised law in the suburb and its surrounds. In 2001, I was a candidate for federal election in the area. I don’t have access to ASIO intelligence, but I wonder whether the subtle nuances affecting relations within and between Muslim sects can be reflected in a summarised Report.

The Sunni-Shia divide goes beyond people of the Middle Eastern appearance. Auburn also has substantial Shia communities of South Asian and Afghan origins. Sunni-Shia violence has been endemic in Pakistan for much longer than in Iraq. A few days after the Mumbai train bombings, Pakistan’s most senior Shia religious scholar Allamah Hassan Turabi was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Karachi.

Afghan Shias of the Hazara tribe faced persecution from the staunchly anti-Shia Taliban. Many still face persecution for tribal reasons from the Northern Alliance government, a loose coalition of former Mujahideen fighters dominated by members of the Tajik (ironically mainly Shia) and Uzbek tribes.

Muslims in Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and other countries with substantial Shia communities frequently marry across sects. One of my campaign workers was an Afghan Hazara Shia who was a refugee in Pakistan for a decade before coming to Australia. He was married to a Pakistani Muslim from a Sunni family. He used to perform his prayers regularly at an Auburn mosque jointly managed by Sunni and Shia Afghans.

Perhaps more troublesome than tensions between Sunnis and Shias are tensions within the two congregations. Politics in Iraq is not just based on sect, but is also affected by nationality, tribe and ethnicity.

For instance, within Iraqi Sunni communities we find tensions between different ethnic groups – Turkmens, Arabs and Kurds. Iraq’s Shia Muslims are also not a political monolith, with numerous parties competing for support from Iraq’s largest religious congregation.

That some local security agencies lack sophisticated understanding of the nuances of Sunni-Shia relations shouldn’t surprise anyone. National Security Editor of Congressional Quarterly Jeff Stein recently wrote in the New York Times that he frequently gets blank stares when asking security officials if they can identify Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf


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TERRORISM/COMMENT: Keelty exonerated …

In March 2004, Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty came under fire from Government ministers for daring to claim Australia’s role in Iraq would increase the terrorist threat to Australia.

At the time, Keelty was muzzled in no uncertain terms by the PM’s Office. His comments were effectively disowned by the Foreign Minister, the Attorney General and the Chief of Australia’s Defence Forces.

Soon the Director-General of ASIO, Dennis Richardson felt the political pressure and announced that Spain’s support for the Iraq war wasn’t related to bombings in Madrid. The soon-to-be-elected Spanish government did not agree, and almost immediately withdrew all its troops from Iraq.

Now a newly released US national intelligence estimates report confirms Mr Keelty’s assessment. American intelligence officials have effectively confirmed Keelty’s warnings, and our politicians continue to expose us to increased risks of terrorist attack.

The government’s response has been to rabbit on about values and non-integrated Muslims allegedly posing a security threat. Yet now, with AWB documents showing executives and managers joking about Saddam’s genocide against Kurds (and ministers who knew or should have known this to be the case), Australia will definitely be within the radar of Kurdish and other groups.

Keelty was right all along. But don’t expect Howard and Downer to admit it.

Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: I Write Whilst Others Lie and Spy

“Why does Irfan always have to attack Muslim organisations publicly in the media? What does he gain?”

I may as well lay my cards on the line. I received a total of $0 from the Australian Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald. From the Canberra Times, I receive $165 per article. The same amount I receive from the Daily Telegraph, though this has only been after my submitting 3 articles for free.

From ABC and Channel 9, I received a few cab-charge dockets and 2 rides in a limousine.

These payments are hardly going to blow the budgets of the various media organisations. However, if one were to believe reports in The Weekend Australian Financial Review, it appears that Muslim community figures are receiving so much for their information to ASIO that the domestic intelligence agency have had to call in experts to curb this budgetary excess.

What makes things even worse is that much of the information is useless to ASIO. As a result, former ASIS chief Allan Taylor has been called in ...

... to crack down on the amount of money wasted by ASIO on agents receiving payment for concocted information.

This followed an internal review which revealed that ...

... many part-time agents in Australia’s Islamic community were being paid for information that had not been properly evaluated.

Some would like us to believe that Australians can be convinced that Muslims are all united and one big happy family of over 300,000 people. Well guess what. It just isn’t true. And Brian Toohey from AFR knows it. He writes what we all know and what most Australians know ...

... that Australia’s Islamic community is riven by religious, political and personal rivalries, which often prompt informers to take advantage of ASIO’s cash to make up damaging accusations against their opponents.

Call me cynical, but I reckon my few hundred dollars and a few cab charge vouchers are nothing compared to the perhaps tens of thousands many Muslims take from ASIO to dob me and others in. And what makes things worse is that inevitably I pay for it all through my taxes.

What I write or say is public. My allegations can be seen, read and heard by everyone who cares to access the information. But what some lying Muslim leaders and others tell ASIO in return for a share of my hard-earned tax dollars cannot be seen.

It makes me think that somewhere in Bankstown or Lakemba or Zetland, some bludger is making truckloads of cash at my expense. Myself and other Muslims are being investigated and our reputations tarnished just because we happen to find ourselves on the wrong side of an informant.

These lying cheats take ASIO cash and waste ASIO resources by providing false leads. As a result, ASIO are diverted from more fruitful work which might actually stop a terrorist attack.

In short, some Muslim informants are being paid to threaten national security. And the money comes out of my pocket. That makes me angry. It should make all Australians angry. Our security is being compromised by charlatans growing fat and rich at the expense of our tax dollars and.our security.

If even ASIO can be deceived by charlatan Muslim leaders, how much more careful should the Prime Minister be about which people in the Muslim communities he consults on the eve of a national summit on terrorism. Surely those who take money to tell lies to ASIO will have little hesitation in telling a few porkies in return for a photo opp with the PM.

TERRORISM/COMMENT: Profiling the unprofilable ...

Former ASIO Assistant Director Michael Roach suggests that police should adopt the unorthodox practice of racial profiling. He told the ABC television program Lateline on 2 August 2005 that Muslims should expect to be approached ...

... because of their beliefs, their dress and their colour.

So there you have it. An intelligence expert providing an idea of what kind of approaches police should use to gather intelligence. And with al due respect to Mr Roach, the suggested approaches are not all that intelligent.

Firstly, as Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Waleed Aly rightly notes, any terrorist planner will no longer use persons of Middle Eastern appearance to carry out their attacks.

But more importantly, when persons are targeted because they “look” Muslim, the social collateral damage could be enormous. A few examples will illustrate this.

In 1991, while still at university, I commenced teaching scripture classes to Muslim children at Hampden Park Public School in Lakemba. The school principal took me around to all classes and asked Muslim children to identify themselves. I remember seeing in one class a young girl with blonde hair stand up when the principal made her request. The Principal remared:

Jasmina, why are you standing up? You don’t look Muslim.

Poor Jasmina started to cry. She later told me that her mum was Muslim and her late father was Serbian Orthodox Christian.

I have a friend whose father is Irish Catholic and mother is Indian Hindu. She walks half an hour each day from Potts Point to Town Hall, from where she catches a train to her university. Typically, she carries a backpack.

My friend rang me on the evening of 2 August at almost midnight. She had just finished watching Lateline. She was absolutely terrified.

I think they are going to arrest me one day. I’d better stop carrying a backpack.

My friend’s problem is that she fits the racial profiling criteria set by Mr Roach. She has olive skin, dark brown hair and is of Middle Eastern appearance. Yet she was born in Canberra Hospital and attended an Anglican college throughout high school. Her father was about to join the priesthood until he met her mother.

Another friend of mine never met her Muslim father. She works behind a bar, and enjoys drinking a mixture of champagne and orange juice. Apart from her name, there is little to suggest her Muslim background. Yet her appearance and her name make her a suspect.

One young Imam in Lakemba looks about as much a terrorist as any other Australian with red hair and green eyes. Although he is Palestinian, his ancestry is most probably Greek.

After September 11, Strathfield Council organised an inter-faith memorial service. One young imam said a small prayer in Arabic and English. He was wearing a suit and tie. After he finished, one Muslim asked him:

Imam, why are you wearing European dress?

The imam’s response?

Because I am European.

This imam was from Sarajevo.

The Melbourne Age recently reported that young Bosnians form the backbone of some extremist groups linked to the notorious Mohammed Omran in Melbourne. Should any of these young men take part in a terrorist attack, and should racial profiling be the order of the day, they will probably go unnoticed.

Racial profiling will result in innocent Australians being profiled and presumed terrorists (or at best terror suspects). Further, the fact is that many Muslims simply do not fit the profile. And to suggest that mainstream Muslim beliefs support suicide bombing and other terrorist acts is ludicrous.

Australians should be concerned about fighting terror. And the Muslim community is perhaps Australia’s best weapon in this war. Muslim Australians have in the past provided useful evidence which has averted numerous attacks on Australian targets. Racial profiling will do little to carry forward this good work. Instead, it will further marginalise anyone fitting the ethnic profile, this creating social tensions and divisions. The only benefactor will be terrorists themselves.

Words © 2005 Irfan Yusuf