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

OPINION: Muddled thinking in Anzac tweet

I spent part of the Anzac Day weekend in true Australian style at the Rooty Hill RSL Club. This huge complex in Sydney's far west includes a hotel, a tenpin bowling facility and more pokies than you can poke a truckload of cash at.

I joined a bunch of ordinary punters and some blokes sporting military medals in a small hall before a big screen and watched a game of rugby league.

As I sat, I wondered what Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace would make of my presence at the club. That very day he had hit the news with a tweet about the meaning of Anzac Day. He didn't remind us about what the diggers fought for, but what they didn't fight for. Wallace told the twitterati that the reason we went to war "wasn't gay marriage and Islamic!" Later, clarifying his remarks, he said that "the nature of our society that our soldiers fought for was based on Judeo-Christian heritage".

I doubt I was the only person of Muslim heritage sitting in an RSL club that day. Ironically, Rooty Hill is in the federal seat of Chifley, whose member is none other than Ed Husic, an Australian of Bosnian Muslim heritage. For some reason, Husic's and my heritage are seen by the head of a powerful lobby claiming to represent Christians in the political sphere as being a threat to the Anzac legend and the Judeo-Christian heritage (whatever that means).

I would have thought that the tens of thousands of poker machines in RSL clubs across the country should be seen by a former SAS officer and devout Christian as a bigger threat to our heritage. The amount of social misery caused by these blasted things is extraordinary. A machine that attracts people to part with their hard-earned cash must surely be a bigger threat to Judaism and Christianity than another Abrahamic faith and a change to marriage laws in line with existing laws dealing with de facto relationships.

Wallace might also consider the interests of current Australian servicemen and women of all faiths (and no faith in particular). He might look up Commander Mona Shindy, an engineer, who, aged 21, was one of the first women on a guided-missile frigate. Shindy has also become a face of recruitment, appearing in Australian Defence Force promotional material and on its recruitment website. Whatever Wallace might think, the bosses at the ADF don't regard Islam as an impediment to service in the armed forces.

Shindy isn't the only person of Muslim heritage to serve. Squadron Leader Rais Khan moved to Australia from Pakistan with his wife in 1995. He now works as a civil engineer in the RAAF. And who knows how many non-heterosexual people serve in the armed forces. Or indeed how many heterosexual people support gay marriage.

Wallace's ridiculous comments have highlighted the extent to which Anzac Day has been highlighted by people with weird agendas. In much the same way that our continued involvement in armed conflicts elicits absurd sentiments.

If any conflict must disgust our troops, it is the "war on terror". No doubt many would support individual conflicts in places such as Afghanistan. But the idea of political leaders showing complete disdain towards the torture and mistreatment of prisoners must send shivers down the spine of troops for whom the relevant Geneva Conventions are the only instruments stopping them from being mistreated if they fall into the hands of the enemy.

Worse still is the treatment of innocent civilians who have been detained and tortured, and released without charge. One can only wonder how many of our troops would feel at former foreign minister Alexander Downer's remarks that Mamdouh Habib was a horrible person undeserving of sympathy. Habib was subject to torture in Egypt. He was then transported to Guantanamo Bay before being finally released without charge. WikiLeaks documents confirmed Habib was tortured.

Our men and women in uniform fight to defend all Australian citizens. Even Wallace agreed that the Anzacs fought for all Australians. Downer and his colleagues in the Howard government, on the other hand, believe that some citizens are more deserving of legal protection than others.

And so the muddled thinking over war, Anzacs and diggers continues. Perhaps watching the football at the local RSL club makes more sense than all this militant rhetoric.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals. This article first appeared in the Canberra Times on 29 April 2011.

OPINION: Aussies still fighting other people's wars

In the early hours of April 25, 1915, Australia and New Zealand entered World War 1.

Neither country was being directly invaded or even threatened.

The Anzac troops were offloaded on the beaches of Gelibolu (or Gallipoli as we know it) at the Cannakale peninsula of western Turkey. The landing was part of a disastrous war strategy developed by their British war commanders.

The young men were part of an imperial army, fighting for King more than their own country. As if to underscore just how much this battle was the war for foreign powers, one of the most characteristically Australian symbols of the campaign was the image of Simpson and his donkey trudging through the hills above Anzac Cove rescuing the war wounded.

The reality, of course, is that John Simpson Kirkpatrick was an English illegal immigrant who joined the war effort in Australia by accident when he boarded a ship carrying Anzac troops to the frontline. Kirkpatrick was not seeking to fight but rather just a free ride back home to Mother England.

Yet for many non-Irish diggers, being British did not make you any less Australian. In fact, even using Australian symbols to the exclusion of British ones was regarded as extremely provocative. In a recent book review published in The Canberra Times, Frank O'Shea writes about Irish returned soldiers causing major controversy when they marched in 1920 under the Australian flag, not the Union Jack. In doing so, they effectively declared that they had fought for Australia rather than for Britain The Irish in Australia were Australians as well as Irish, whereas the loyalists were British first and Australian second.

Try telling the drunken racist rioters at Cronulla that they should also be holding up the Union Jack!

Few Australians know that New Zealand lost a much higher proportion of troops than Australia. Over 85 per cent of Kiwi troops were killed or wounded, compared to 50% of the Aussies.

The comparatively lesser Australian war losses may explain why Australians are still much keener to participate in other people's wars than their cousins across the Tasman. The largest New Zealand force in the Vietnam War was hardly 540 men, although over 3000 Kiwis did volunteer to join the war effort.

Since then, New Zealand has been far more circumspect about its military and even broader security relations with the United States. In a 2003 paper published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, Dr Andrew Scobell notes that New Zealand had made its involvement in the war conditional on it receiving the imprimatur of the United Nations. Even then, New Zealand's involvement would be limited to providing logistical and humanitarian assistance and specialised military forces such as medical, engineering and mine clearance units.

Compare this to the government of then Prime Minister John Howard. Scobell notes that Howard, apart from former British PM Blair, was the staunchest supporter of a US-led military action against Iraq. Moreover, Australia is one of the few countries ready and willing to provide combat forces for a conflict with Iraq. In doing so, of course, Australia has also placed itself in the firing line of a variety of international terrorist groups.

Iraq is not the only foreign military adventure in which Australians are involved and which is going rather pear-shaped. How many Australians expected the Taliban to successfully regroup and fight so hard after their crushing defeat in 2001? Australia's new Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, has been calling on Nato commanders to reconsider military strategies in Afghanistan that are clearly failing and have already cost Australian lives. Not to mention that terrorists now have two reasons to eye Australia.

Perhaps the most shameful aspect of Australia's military history is its mistreatment of indigenous servicemen and women. Thousands of indigenous Australians fought overseas, with many hundreds giving the ultimate sacrifice to defend their nation. Yet the dead were buried in unmarked graves whilst the survivors were ineligible for returned servicemen land grants or even membership of Returned Services League (RSL) clubs.

Until recently, Aboriginal ex-servicemen were forced to march at the back of Anzac Day parades organised by the RSL. As the National Indigenous Times newspaper editorialised on Anzac Day in 2005:

So blackfellas were good enough to fight alongside white Australia, but that's where the new-found equality ended. How could this happen in a nation that defines itself by the noble digger? The technical answer is because Aboriginal people weren't considered Australian citizens until the referendum of 1967, so they didn't qualify for all the benefits that comes with being an Aussie.

So until 40 years ago, indigenous Australians were certainly fighting the wars of a country that did not recognise them as its own. What difference exists between this and fighting for a foreign power?

And thanks to the compulsory quarantining of pensions as part of the Northern Territory Intervention in Aboriginal communities, many indigenous ex-servicemen are having their pensions compulsorily quarantined.

With bigger battles against profound indigenous disadvantage to fight at home, why does my government continue to fight others' wars overseas.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer. This article was first published in The Press of Christchurch on ANZAC Day, Friday 25 April 2008.



Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


Bookmark this on Delicious

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


Bookmark this on Delicious

ANZAC Day reflections ...

Earlier this year, I joined a friend on a ceremonial visit to a Brisbane cemetery. Part of my friend's Sufi practice involves reminding himself of his mortality by visiting a cemetery every Friday.

As we walked through the Muslim section, we noticed some well-preserved graves of young men, most of whom did not make it to their 25th year. The gravestones were decorated with the calligraphy of verses from the Koran.

Among the deceased was one 24-year-old named Allah Ditta (a name which literally means Gift from God), a member of the 14th Punjab Regiment.

Ditta was one of any number of Indian soldiers who fought the Japanese at Malaya and Singapore during World War II. Following the fall of Singapore, many of these Indian troops were taken to the notorious POW camp in Changi. These soldiers were fighting as part of an army defending possessions, then current and former, of a colonial power.

Indians and Australians fought the Japanese side by side, trying desperately to keep the Japanese away from the Australian mainland. Indians of all creeds paid a heavy price in property and lives to prop up the Raj, the British Crown's most prized possession.

Indians didn't just fight the British in their epic independence struggle. As a means of obtaining independence, many Indians followed Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi's instructions and fought with the British. Often forgotten are the sacrifices these Indian troops made to defend British colonial possessions in South-East Asia against Japanese invaders in World War II.

This was not a war to defend India as such. Many Indians would have initially warmed to the idea of their colonial masters being humiliated by an Asian power.

Melbourne author Neelam Maharaj's 2007 historical novel Surviving Heroes tells the stories of Indian soldiers and their families who fought the Japanese in Malaya and Singapore. This historical novel is woven around the life of Ramesh Kapur, an Indian officer in the British army.

Ramesh and his fellow Indian soldiers were encouraged by Mahatma Gandhi to join the British war effort. Yet Indian troops were subjected to racial discrimination and humiliation by their British commanders. The Japanese knew this, and they sponsored the highly respected Indian National Congress dissident Subhash Chandra Bose to raise the Indian National Army from among Indian POWs.

Of course, patriotism combined with war can make scoundrels of even the most loyal. Gandhi strictly forbade Indians from using violence to fight the British. Hence, Indian POWs joining the INA to fight the British with Japanese help knew they would be regarded as traitors to Gandhi's non-violent struggle.

At the same time, the POWs witnessed firsthand Japanese brutality against British, Chinese and Malay soldiers, and civilians slaughtered in cold blood. For Ramesh and his colleagues, joining the victors against the enemy at home must have been tempting. At the very least, it would have been seen as the fastest route to joining their loved ones back home.

Some of Ramesh's closest friends joined the INA's march through Burma. But when the tide turned, the army was abandoned by fleeing Japanese forces and charged with treason by the British. Its leader, Bose, died mysteriously in a plane crash during the dying days of the war.

Of course, the Indians weren't the only soldiers subjected to racial discrimination and humiliation. Thousands of indigenous Australians, some as young as 16, fought for their country in every overseas military operation.

Among them was Reginald Walter Saunders, the first Aboriginal to be promoted to a commissioned rank. Reg Saunders’ father and uncle had both served in World War I. When World War II came along, Reg and his brother Harry also joined in
the war effort.

Reg served in such far away places as Libya, Crete, Palestine and New Guinea. Reg's brother lost his life while fighting on the infamous Kokoda Track.

Indigenous servicemen and women have often been ignored in Anzac Day celebrations, often relegated to the back of the Anzac Day marches organised by the RSL. As the National Indigenous Times editorialised on Anzac Day 2005:

“The truth about our black Anzacs is that thousands fought in overseas wars, hundreds died, but very few were ever formally recognised, or rewarded. When black soldiers returned home, they were not permitted to access returned servicemen land grants. They were denied war pensions and they were refused membership of (and entry to) RSL clubs all over the nation. Most who died after their return were buried in unmarked graves.

So blackfellas were good enough to fight alongside white Australia, but that’s where the newfound equality ended. How could this happen in a nation that defines itself by the noble digger?”

No doubt those who espouse the white armband view of history will be offended at my bringing up these issues on an occasion such as this. After all, we have all benefited from the sacrifices of our past generations who gave their lives so that we might be free.

But what sort of free nation believes that the only way to improve the lot of its oldest inhabitants is to breach racial discrimination laws?

So today, at the going down of the sun, make sure you remember Geoff Shaw. He served six years in the army, seeing active combat in Borneo and Vietnam. If he can make it to a march in a major metropolitan city, chances are the RSL won't now relegate him to the back of the procession as happened in past years with other indigenous diggers.

But then, he probably can't afford the airfare given that half his veteran's special pension will be quarantined.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer. First published in the Canberra Times on ANZAC Day, Friday 25 April 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf