CULTURE WARS: Is small-minded bigotry how we honour the Diggers? Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s tsunami in a teacup

This concocted mass debate, like those before it and those to come, shows that we, as a nation, have no bloody idea about our values.

Late on the night of Anzac Day 2015, Malcolm Turnbull (then communications minister) contacted the head of SBS to complain about five tweets sent by a sports reporter that allegedly showed grave disrespect to those commemorating the sacrifices and memory of the Diggers.

The tweets referred to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mention was also made of Diggers engaging in rape, torture, summary killings and theft in such far-flung places as the Middle East and east Asia. No Diggers were consulted when Scott McIntyre, the journalist in question, was sacked the following day. Nor were any academic historians, such as Professor Phillip Dwyer of the University of Newcastle.

McIntyre brought an unfair dismissal claim against SBS, which was eventually settled following a hearing in the Federal Court. McIntyre used his SBS Twitter account to send the allegedly offensive tweets. That isn’t the case with the latest “controversy” surrounding Yassmin Abdel-Magied.

If you were to rely merely on the headlines and the remarks of a Tasmanian Liberal senator related to a Nazi war criminal, you would think Abdel-Magied had issued a series of tweets from an ABC account describing the Diggers as rapists and murderers. Well, not quite. Here are her words:

LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)

The “unfortunate and disrespectful … cheap political point scoring” can be found between the brackets. The words first appeared on Abdel-Magied’s Facebook page and were subsequently removed and an apology issued.

Storm in a teacup? More like a tsunami in a teacup, if you ask me. All the major newspapers and media outlets jumped on the story, including Fairfax and The Australian, whose report began predictably with “Muslim activist …”. The Daily Telegraph described her as someone

... who labels herself ‘first and foremost … Muslim’.

Gosh, what else was Yassmin hiding among those three dots?

According to The Oz, Abdel-Magied issued the apology

... as people began to complain she had hijacked the Anzac memory for political and religious reasons.

Apparently, personal and racist abuse and calling upon someone to leave the country is a form of legitimate complaint. Which makes sense, really, as the 1130-plus moderated comments to The Oz story included this gem of complaint:

If she continues her Islamic ABC style left – wing rubbish then suggest she go back to an Islamic middle East blood bath ! Sharia law has NO place within Australian democratic society !

And this:

It seems to me that this woman doesn’t like the culture that was in Australia when she arrived from another whose culture she also didn’t like, hence, she’s here. Personally, I think she should go back to from whence she came. Maybe her whingeing would be of more effect in her old country.

And this:

For someone who arrived her as a two year old, people have a classic example of Islam at its best. Indoctrination is the order of the day Australians should be afraid, very afraid.

Other comments spoke of Abdel-Magied’s status as a member of a minority

YOU ARE A MINORITY, AND NEVER FORGET IT. IF YOU SERIOUSLY THINK YOU AND YOUR MUSLIM BROTHER/SISTERHOOD WILL TAKE OVER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE …

and why her kind should go back to wherever. The pollies will deny it, but we all know they see such sentiments as those of a key demographic.

It would be nice to dwell on the offensive, bracketed words except that there are just too few words to analyse. I will note in passing that Palestine isn’t exactly an Islamic issue. Israel’s nasty wall passes through numerous Christian settlements, among them the birthplace of Jesus. As for Syria, there are Syrian Muslims who support the Assad regime and Syrian Christians who oppose it. And vice versa. 

This concocted mass debate, like those before it and those to come (Newspoll-permitting), shows that we, as a nation, have no bloody idea about our values. Indeed, those who beat their chests the most tend to know the least. The irony of the most nationalistic papers is that they are almost exclusively owned by a man who gave up his Australian citizenship to become an American. Did he, by doing so, increase the average IQ of both our respective nations? Who knows?

I’ve heard stories about Diggers at Gallipoli who refused to shoot at Turkish troops engaged in nemaz (ritual prayer). Perhaps relatives of these Turks are now settled in Australia. Would it be an insult to the memory of our Diggers to suggest we can learn from them something of how to respect other people’s religious cultures? Or must small-mindedness, bigotry and stupidity be the only way to honour our war dead?

First published in Crikey on 26 April 2017

CRIKEY: The media pigeonholing Muslims is not helping any cause

Scribes used to talk about “the Muslim community” and ascribe to this monolithic blob the views of several religious talking heads from fellafel land. Rarely would they bother with the vast majority of people who felt inclined to tick the “Muslim” box on their census forms. In fact, the average punter for whom Islamic religion was just one layer of their identity was left out of the discussion.

Then one day an unelected and unpopular mufti made some comments about catmeat and suddenly every media outlet in town was alleging that his word was gospel for everyone from a Malay factory worker in Port Headland to an overweight South Asian solicitor in northern Sydney. It was about this time that a whole bunch of us decided that we were sick of being typecast by religious wackos. And journalists began recognising very familiar diversity where they once only saw an alien blob.

But reading the reports in Fairfax and Murdoch press in recent days, again I’m getting the feeling that we’re going back to the future. Sally Neighbour focuses on people from one of two Arabic-speaking ethnic groups, citing one or two new faces and the usual talking heads of self-appointed ethnic leaders.

Neighbour managed to find a Lebanese medical student. Gee. I’m impressed. She might come along to a gathering of Aussies of Pakistani or Bangladeshi or Egyptian or Palestinian origin (or indeed a different group of Lebanese) and find dozens of students studying medicine, law, dentistry, engineering, mass communications, etc. Many of them are females, with and without head covering.

She might have gone to ANU and had a chat to the Foundation Professor of Medicine Dr Mohamad Khadra, who happens to be of Lebanese heritage and a former president of a campus Muslim students association.

Then The Oz editorial pompously lectures again about what “Muslim leaders” and “the Muslim community” needs to do. It says that ...

... we cannot simply ignore reports of behavioural problems among young, unemployed and disaffected Muslim men in the outer suburbs of Sydney … The difficulties among largely Lebanese Muslims are mirrored in some Pacific Islander groups in the same areas …

Yes, them Samoan imams need to get their butts kicked.

How wonderful it would be if the next generation of Lebanese-Australian kids held as their models the successful chief executives and footballers from their communities, rather than drug barons and nightclub owners.

Yes, and how wonderful it would be if you stopped giving space for ridiculous sheiks and their interpreters and started interviewing and allowing on your pages the voices of the huge array of academics, business people, CEOs, professionals who happened to be Muslim. And if you started realising that:

• Writing editorials that sound like something authored by Glenn Beck doesn’t do much to improve your poor circulation.
• Being Muslim is not the same as being Lebanese and vice versa.
• Most nightclubs are not owned by Muslims or vice versa.
• Most drug barons are not Muslims or vice versa.
• You choose to create this perception of Muslims by focusing on their religious identity rather than anything else.

Yes, there’s a lot that all ethnic and religious communities in Auburn and Lakemba community need to do, but to assume that gangland is defined purely by one religion is just ridiculous. Last time I checked, the Morans weren’t praying five times a day.

If journalists and editors and pundits and politicians self-appointed Muslim talking heads would just allow Muslims to get on with their working lives, and stop trying to define them as some kind of monolith, common sense might prevail and the haters might stop hating.

CRIKEY: News Ltd outrage patronises ordinary Australian Catholics ...

Australian believers of all faiths, and of no faith in particular, read newspapers. However, when newspaper editorialists (and some columnists) try to read believers and their sentiments, they often miss the mark.

Certain columnists and editorialists at The Australian and other metropolitan News Ltd papers have heavily criticised the ABC and Fairfax reporting of sexual abuse allegations against Catholic priests. You can read some of these criticisms at the ABC Media Watch website here. That criticism was repeated again in today’s editorial in The Oz.

The gist has been that widespread reporting of the issue is an affront to World Youth Day pilgrims and ordinary Catholics. The goal seems to be defending the sentiments of ordinary Catholics. The effect is that the editorialists and columnists are patronising Catholic believers. It’s as if Catholics must necessarily be offended by reporting of the misdeeds of Catholic clergy.

On Saturday night, I attended a gathering of Jesuits in Melbourne. These devout Catholics had no hesitation in using the strongest language against the comments of Cardinal Pell and Bishop Fisher about sexual abuse victims. It reminded me of the colourful language many Muslims (including myself) used when Sheik Hilaly was caught out using Ramadan sermons to develop new advertising copy for the cat-food industry.

These Catholics had no hesitation in criticising their religious leaders in the presence of a non-Catholic. They said it was an issue of human rights that affected everyone regardless of faith. Indeed, the Pope himself showed far more leadership and openness on this issue than some News Ltd editorialists.

The concern shown by some News Limited editorialists and columnists for Catholic sentiments wasn’t present when these editorialists commented on another religious leader caught out making disparaging remarks about rape victims. In one edition, The Oz devoted an entire 7 pages of broadsheet copy to Hilaly’s cat-meat comments. Further, editorialists and columnists had no hesitation in casting aspersions on Australian Muslims and indeed Muslims across the world.

Indeed, when yours truly argued in Crikey that The Oz’s Hilaly overkill was only making Hilaly’s position stronger, The Oz ran a highly offensive editorial accusing me of "covering up Islamic outrages", and even suggested I was letting ...

... intolerant attitudes fester in the shadows before exploding and catching Australia unawares, as has happened in countries such as England, Denmark, Spain and The Netherlands.

As if I spent most of my time defending Hilaly.

So on the one hand, editorialists at The Oz and its sister papers think it’s ok to use the insensitive words of a Muslim "cleric" to pillory some 360,000 Australians who tick the "Muslim" box on their census forms. On the other hand, these same writers and editors think Catholics are so over-sensitive that they won’t be able to cope with reporting of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

Both are extreme positions, patronising and offensive to believers. The presence of both extremes in the same newspapers takes media hypocrisy to new levels.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for 24 July 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

UPDATE: Stuff published elsewhere ...

I was busy leading upto and on ANZAC Day, having stuff published in the NZ Herald, The Press of Christchurch, ABC Unleashed and the Canberra Times.

I reviewed a wonderful and very short book by American-Algerian writer Dr Zighen Aym here. And NewMatilda.com readers were provided with a conversation with the wacky guys from the Fear Of A Brown Planet comedy duo.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Pauline Hanson and the new $2 Jews

Malcolm Fraser claimed late last year that the next federal election would be about Muslims. And if Pauline Hanson has her way, the Queensland Senate ballot will certainly place Muslims in the box seat. Not bad for a group who make up around 0.175% of the Sunshine State’s population.

At 7:10am on 17 August 2007, Karl Stefanovic from Channel 9’s Today Show apologised to viewers for the manner in which he conducted an interview yesterday with Pauline Hanson.

His interview also sparked plenty of adverse comment on NineMSN’s website. Stefanovic’s co-host also suggested he had also copped flack from Channel 9 management over the interview.

So what did Hanson say that raised such emotion?

She said she felt "very discriminated against in my own country". She also spoke about how we can no longer sing Christmas carols in schools or play them in shopping centres. She called for a "moratorium" on Muslim immigration, and suggested that people who want to carry out female genital mutilation should "go back to Muslim countries."

(Like Ethiopia?)

Given that FGM is banned in many Muslim countries, I’m not sure where she expects people to go. Further, the practice is also common amongst sub-Saharan Africans of other faiths, including Christians and Jews. 1 in 4 Muslims are from the Indian sub-Continent, where the practise is unheard of. But who gives a cr-p about the facts?

I could go on and taking issue with Hanson’s claims. But is there any point? 21st century Australia seems to be programmed to dislike anyone with even the slightest relationship to Islam. Hanson’s new adviser, John Pasquarelli, put it more bluntly:

I think it's better than what it was before, with 9/11, Cronulla, Hilaly. Mainstream Australians are terrified that we're going down the European track, with problems with Muslims.

Hanson isn’t the first person to use such language. Fred Nile used similar language in the NSW State Election. His party will play host to Tony Abbott at its annual convention in Sydney tomorrow. So is she part of some sort of public movement, or is this candidacy just another attempt by Hanson to make money out of the electoral system?

The Herald Sun notes Hanson will make $2.05 per vote should she make the Senate quota of 4% of the Queensland vote. Whatever the real story, the fact remains that these days you can say anything you like about any group deemed Muslim and get away with it.

And if any Muslim dares ask even the slightest question, you can rabbit on about how they are trying to silence you and discriminate against you in your own country (which presumably isn’t theirs). Anti-Semitism has turned into anti-Muslimism. Same sh-t, different smell.

Jonathan Freedland wrote in The Guardian last year:

I've been trying to imagine what it must be like to be a Muslim in Britain. I guess there's a sense of dread about switching on the radio or television, even about walking into a newsagents. What will they be saying about us today? Will we be under assault for the way we dress? Or the schools we go to, or the mosques we build? Who will be on the front page: a terror suspect, a woman in a veil or, the best of both worlds, a veiled terror suspect ...

... Except other things are not equal. Each one of these perfectly rational subjects, taken together, has created a perfectly irrational mood: a kind of drumbeat of hysteria in which both politicians and media have turned again and again on a single, small minority, first prodding them, then pounding them as if they represented the single biggest problem in national life.

The result is turning ugly and has, predictably, spilled on to the streets. Muslim organisations report a surge in physical and verbal attacks on Muslims; women have had their head coverings removed by force.

I try to imagine how I would feel if this rainstorm of headlines substituted the word 'Jew' for 'Muslim': Jews creating apartheid, Jews whose strange customs and costume should be banned. I wouldn't just feel frightened. I would be looking for my passport.

It seems making a tiny group feel very marginalised isn’t too high a price to pay for $2.05 a vote.
(First published on the Crikey daily alert for Friday 17 August 2007.)

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: One law for the mufti, another for the pastor

While The Australian manages to find excuses to keep Sheik Hilaly on its pages (even if only by citing Lebanese community leaders, as if the other 59 nationalities of Aussie Muslims are irrelevant), one of the major wedges used by its conservative columnists and the politicians they serve seems to have fallen between the cracks.

What made Hilaly’s statements so outrageous were that they compromised an essential Aussie value – gender equality. They also potentially justified violence against women, something hundreds of prominent Australian men campaign to eliminate each year.

So what happens when a Christian pastor takes a soft line on domestic violence? Fairfax newspapers have reported on a debate within the Assemblies of God churches to extend the acceptable grounds of divorce ...

... to include cases of serious physical abuse.

And who is opposing it? Who thinks women who get bashed by their husbands shouldn’t be allowed a divorce blessed by the Church? According to Danny Nalliah ...

Divorce must be kept in line with scripture and remarriage should only be on the grounds of sexual infidelity, as upheld by Christian leaders for the past 20 centuries.

Will John Howard remind us all of a small minority of Pentecostal Christians needing to learn Australian values like equality for women? Will Kevin Andrews tell Mr Nalliah to consider leaving Australia? Will Kevin Rudd suggest removing Nalliah’s citizenship?

It’s OK for Danny Nalliah to behave like a Christian version of Hilaly, effectively telling women in his congregation to shut up and take it when their husbands bash them up. He’ll probably still receive a reference from Treasurer Peter Costello for his next court case. No doubt the PM will still send a special Australia Day message to Nalliah’s Catch The Fire Ministries.

So as we get ready to pay tribute to the diggers who gave their lives to defend our values, we can feel secure in the knowledge that certain clerics (and their Liberal Party supporters) can continue to preach, rally and protest against these values. Clearly what’s good for Mufti Goose isn’t good for Pastor Gander.

First published on the Crikey! daily alert on 24 April 2007.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

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OPINION: Get your own house in order before you go tearing others' houses down ...

Around 900 years ago, back in the days when most of Europe was lost in the Dark Ages, the then-deranged Muslim ruler of Jerusalem decided to tear down the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He was quickly deposed, and the Church hastily rebuilt at Muslim expense. The Muslims apologised.

It was too late. Within a few months, reports of similar attacks on Christian pilgrims and symbols in Palestine had spread across Europe. Pope Urban II seemed powerless to respond. He was more concerned with corruption within the Vatican (much of it his own doing), and with the presence of other allegedly false competing claimants to the Pontiff’s throne.

The Pope's “solution” to the internal crisis was to seek a diversion. He declared the first Crusade. Historians agree that in leading this battle, the then-Pontiff was less interested in defending the honour of Christ or Jerusalem than in shoring up his own power and diverting attention away from crises within the Church.

Hardly 900 years later, the tables have turned. This time it is mainly Muslim leaders who are embroiled in corruption and scandal. The generals, emirs, kings and presidents-for-life that rule most Muslim-majority states (usually with the help of their Western patrons) have failed to effectively deal with the poverty, illiteracy and other economic and social ills too numerous to list here.

Today these rulers are also seeking a diversion. One obscure neo-Conservative Danish newspaper appears to have provided it. What they have also proven is that perhaps Muslims are in the midst of their own Dark Age.

In the past few weeks, two bastions of Middle Eastern liberty and democracy - Libya and Saudi Arabia - have withdrawn ambassadors from Denmark. In many Muslim countries, Danish goods are being boycotted.

In my birthplace of Karachi, frenzied Pakistanis hit the streets with protests that did more damage to the Pakistani economy than to anyone in Denmark. Don’t these people have work to do and mouths to feed? Then again, some of these men (Pakistani women have more important matters to attend to) will protest each time they think a Pakistani batsman is given out lbw unfairly.

And across the Arab world, supermarkets have removed Danish goods from their shelves. Recently, a Syrian Muslim rabble decided that the best way to defend the honour of their Prophet was to attack and burn embassies of at least three European countries. In Gaza, with Israel ready to cut the fiscal umbilical cord, Palestinian gunmen seem content to bite one of the few hands that feeds them by occupying and threatening workers at the headquarters of the European Union.

Had someone unaware of the cartoons viewed the response, they might think Denmark has invaded Bosnia or Iran and was unjustly occupying its territory. They might think Danish settlements replaced Israeli ones popping up in various places across the West Bank. Or perhaps the Danish government had passed laws banning girls from wearing headscarves in schools.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Instead, an obscure privately-owned newspaper in Denmark published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. One cartoon apparently showed the Prophet standing at the pearly gates of heaven in much the same way as St Peter in the Catholic tradition. Another portrayed the Prophet’s turban as a bomb.

The cartoons were first published in the Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten. Most people living in Muslim countries would probably be unable to pronounce the paper’s name, let alone having heard of it.

And so today, I and many other Muslims feel compelled to stand up and be counted. To defend the honour of a man I grew up to regard as a Prophet.

No, not from a dozen cartoons published by a neo-Conservative Danish newspaper. Nor from their reproduction in newspapers across Europe and even New Zealand.

We feel compelled to defend the honour of the Prophet of Islam from the shameful actions of some people claiming to be his followers.

No, we are not ashamed of Islam. We are not ashamed of the Prophet Muhammad. We are not ashamed of the values many of us grew up with, values that are so similar to those of my Anglican school or my many Jewish colleagues and friends.

What upsets and shames us is the depths to which some Muslims have sunk.

I wonder at how low Muslims have stooped that some of them are prepared to resort to mob violence to display their religiosity. In doing so, they appear ignorant of (or worse still, reckless to) the fact that they are mainly targeting the innocent.

The Arabic phrase used by the Qur’an to describe the Prophet Muhammad is “rahmat al-lil a’alameen” (literally “mercy to the worlds”). Like the other Prophets recognised by Islam (including the Messiah Jesus), Muhammad always preferred forgiveness over revenge.

Instead of following his example, many 21st century Muslims are behaving in similar vein to the then uncivilised medieval Europeans did during the Crusades.

Today, some Muslim mobs are attacking anything deemed Danish. They are being egged on by selfish, undemocratic and dictatorial kings, generals, emirs and presidents-for-life.

Muslim countries are suffering problems taller than the tsunami waves that brought so much misery to hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Indonesia.

Muslim women in various countries are being murdered by members of their own families for the sake of defending some false notion of “honour”.

Millions of Muslims are living in poverty and disease in Pakistan following the devastating earthquake. Millions more are starving in refugee camps in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

Muslim-majority nations are riddled with corruption. Their leaders are squandering resources and wealth whilst their citizens live below the poverty line.

Yet today some governments of Muslim-majority countries are encouraging their citizens to attack European embassies. For many dictatorial and undemocratic Muslim regimes, the cartoon controversy represents a wonderful diversion away from the real problems facing their communities.

Instead of protecting the honour of their Prophet, some Muslims seem intent on destroying their own honour by behaving in a manner their Prophet had condemned 14 centuries ago.

What appears to have (quite understandably) upset Muslims most is one cartoon depicting the Prophet wearing a bomb as a turban, suggesting that he preached terrorism. Yet surely the worst way to protest against this is to commit acts of terror such as tearing down and burning embassies.

Boycotting Danish goods may be a more peaceful and preferable manner of protest. Yet even such a boycott effectively punishes the innocent and attributes the disrespectful manner of one newspaper to an entire nation. To blame all Danes for the actions of one newspaper editor claiming to defend freedom of speech is as absurd as blaming all Muslims for the acts of terror of a few lunatics claiming to defend of Islam.

Those Muslims who really care about the honour of their Prophet should focus their attention on improving their own situation. They might start by considering what sort of deal non-Muslim minorities get in Muslim countries, and how non-Muslim religious symbols are abused in Muslim publications. Perhaps they would then understand why some Muslim minorities leaving peacefully in Western countries (including Denmark, New Zealand and Australia) may cop plenty of flack due to their antics.

The Muslim mobs might also consider how the Prophet responded to attacks on himself. I am not aware of any biographical record of the Prophet taking any revenge for attacks on his person. I remember one recorded incident of a Jewish neighbour who was in the habit of pouring faeces over the Prophet. One day, the faeces stopped. The Prophet’s response was to inquire about the neighbour’s health.

How far some of today’s Muslims are from the golden example of the man in whose name they are causing so much destruction. Don’t they have enough problems of their own to be concerned with? In the grander scheme of things, in the context of poverty and natural disasters and culturally-related oppression of women.and so much else, are some Muslims so narrow-minded and infantile as to ascribe so much importance to 12 cartoons?

My message to Muslim mobs is simply this - before you consider tearing down the houses (and embassies) of others, think about cleaning up your own.

(The author is a Sydney-based industrial and commercial lawyer and a freelance columnist whose articles have been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, Daily Telegraph, Courier-Mail, Canberra Times and New Zealand Herald. He is a columnist for Online Opinion and altmuslim.com and regularly controbutes to the Web Diary. This article has also been published at Online Opinion on 6 February 2006 and in the Dominion Post (published in Wellington, NZ) on 8 February 2006.)

Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf


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OPINION: Questions For Pervaiz Chacha

In some parts of Pakistan, it is customary to refer to all men of one’s father’s age as Chacha or Chachaji (literally meaning “my dad’s brother” in Urdu). In all parts of Pakistan, one must also show utmost respect to elders.

Now that President Musharraf of Pakistan is visiting Australia, I would like to ask some respectful questions to Pervaiz Chacha. I will try to be as respectful as possible.

Chacha Pervaiz, you will be aware of the negative press that Pakistan has received as a result of its implementation of a criminal code partially extracted from the ‘hudood’ laws of Islamic Sharia.

Under the code, female victims of rape are often faced with a death sentence, while male perpetrators are free to plunder the honour of more victims.

Also, under the code, religious minorities are persecuted and accused of blasphemy. Christian Pakistanis, some as young as 11, are placed on trial and face the death penalty for breaches of anti-blasphemy laws.

Over 50 years ago, the founder of Pakistan, “Qaid-i-Azam” (translated as “the Great Leader”) Muhammad Ali Jinnah, declared that all citizens of Pakistan were to be treated equally regardless of faith. Christian Pakistanis have made enormous contributions to the Pakistani nation, including in its second religion (cricket). I have lost count of how many times Yusuf Youhana has bailed out Pakistani teams from certain defeat.

You will be aware, Chacha Ji, that recently a prominent Swiss Islamic scholar by the name of Professor Tariq Ramadan has called upon all Islamic nations to implement a moratorium on all hudood-based criminal punishments. Professor Ramadan believes that God’s law is fast becoming the devil’s handiwork and an instrument for oppression. His call has been supported by Islamic scholars around the world including Australia and Pakistan.

When will your government implement the views of Professor Ramadan? When will you stop God’s law from being used as an instrument for the oppression of women, Christian minorities and other downtrodden Pakistanis?

Chachaji, Muslims across the Islamic world are crying out for liberty and democracy enjoyed by their relatives living in Western countries. When will you return Pakistan to full-fledged democracy?

Chachaji, I was born in Karachi. I arrived in Australia when I was hardly 6 months old. I have only ever held an Australian passport. I therefore am concerned with how Australians are treated overseas.

Pervaiz Chacha, when will your government come clean on why it detained and tortured an Australian citizen? Why did your government pass this Australian citizen onto American officials who then flew him to Egypt for more torture? How could you allow an Australian to be subjected to torture within your jurisdiction?

Chacha Ji, the Prophet Muhammad did not allow prisoners of war to even have their teeth pulled out. I am concerned that in this “war against terror”, prisoners from various parts of the world are being taken to countries such as Egypt, Syria and your own. They are tortured on behalf of the US government as part of a contracting-out arrangement known as “rendition”.

Tell me, Chacha, to what extent does Pakistan participate in rendition? Are there any further Australian citizens being made subject to this policy?

Apart from the torture of terror suspects, we see at village level innocent Muslim women subjected to the violence of honour killings. Women merely suspected of talking to a male stranger or committing some other cultural crime are tried by an all-male village council of elders and sentenced to death or to be gang-raped.

Numerous cases of these abuses have been documented. Custom-based violence was apparently stamped out from Muslim societies by the Prophet Muhammad 14 centuries ago. Why has it returned to Pakistan? And what steps will your government take to ensure it is eliminated completely?

Chacha Ji, I was taught that Islam guarantees human rights and the dignity of the individual in much the same way as liberal democracy. I understand that you are here on an official state visit on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Yet the abuses of human rights and individual dignity (of which a sample have been cited above) continue to be perpetrated by police, security apparatchiks and government officials of a nation founded as an Islamic republic, a nation carved out for Islamic values. How can such a nation allow such crimes to be committed in its borders, against its own people and against people of my country Australia?

Uncle Pervaiz, my government also has its share of excesses. My government only selectively advocated for Australians caught up in trouble overseas. My government throws foreigners into prison camps in the middle of the desert. My government commits numerous crimes in the name of fighting terror.

My final question is to both Perzaiz Chacha and Uncle John Winston. Terror is an enemy of liberty, freedom and dignity. How can the pair of you possibly be claiming to be fighting terror when you are helping the cause of terrorists by compromising individual liberties and abusing human rights?

An edited version of this article was published in the Australian Financial Review as an Op-Ed piece on 16 June 2005. The author is a Sydney employment and industrial lawyer whose ancestors were from Daryaganj district in Delhi where President Musharraf was born.

Words © 2005 Irfan Yusuf


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