POLITICS/COMMENT: Religious Freedom in the Land of the Free ...

This column was first published in NewMatilda on 17 January 2008.

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Barack Obama could convert to Judaism, have a sex-change operation and marry Daniel Pipes. He’d still be eligible for the top job, writes Irfan Yusuf

Here’s a memo to all you God-fearing American voters out there: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. He never has been, even if his biological father was a Kenyan Muslim and his step-father was an Indonesian Muslim. And even if he went to school in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority State.

So what exactly is Obama’s religious affiliation? Who knows? Indeed, who cares?

No Mormons please, we’re evangelical

Believe it or not, many Americans do. Just ask all those evangelical Christian Republican voters in Iowa who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the smart and talented Mitt Romney, and that minority of Michigan Republicans who refused to vote for him.

Romney might be a self-made man. He might bring much needed political skills to the White House. Unlike a certain Texan who once appointed John Howard as his Deputy Sheriff, Romney might actually be able to string a sentence together without inadvertently injecting too much wit and wisdom.

But forget all that important stuff. What really matters to a huge number of Americans is that Romney is — perish the thought — a Mormon. You wouldn’t think he was, would you? Romney doesn’t wear a black name badge on the front of his coat or even sing his amended version of that old Christopher Cross song (which goes something like “When you get caught between the moon and Salt Lake City ).

But I guess for evangelical warriors, Romney’s faith is a deliberate deception of all those poor God-fearing real Christians.

In my high school year, I had two close mates, one Jewish and another Mormon. Ours was a low-church evangelical Anglican school, and our school chaplain one day decided to show us all a video called The God Makers. The video claimed to expose Mormon teachings, which Mormons allegedly hide from the rest of us.

After the movie, some evangelical kids poked fun at my Mormon friend, saying: “What kind of stupid religion teaches that men can become God?"

My Jewish mate retorted: “I know. It’s almost as dumb as claiming God became a man!"

You’d think American Republicans would show more maturity than a couple of 16-year-olds.



No (former) Muslims please, we’re Neo-con

Romney may not be prepared to disown his ancestral faith, but Democratic candidate Barack Obama can’t get enough of disowning his. Obama has used every opportunity to reassure Americans that he has absolutely no trace of Islam in him.

Obama sees Christianity as a faith mobilising people to pursue social justice. In this respect, his vision is similar to that of our own Kevin Rudd. Further, Obama’s statement on faith clearly states that religion shouldn’t be used to divide the nation.

Given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers.

But all this doesn’t help Obama. As American Muslim stand-up comedian Azhar Usman told one audience:

Check this guy out. He’s first name rhymes with Iraq. His middle name is Hussein, and his last name is almost Osama!

If you believe what lunar-Right commentators like Daniel Pipes say, you’d think Muslims were lining up to kill Mr almost-Osama. On Christmas Eve, FrontPageMagazine.com published a sectarian rant written by Pipes titled ‘Was Barack Obama a Muslim?’

Pipes concluded Obama was an ex-Muslim who converted to Christianity in his college years. Because of this, Pipes claims

Mainstream American Muslims … would … be angry at what they consider would be his apostasy.

I can’t find any evidence of mainstream American Muslims getting angry over Obama’s religious choices. Perhaps Pipes could show me the anger in this column by one of America’s most widely read Muslim writers?

Pipes doesn’t stop there. Eight days later, he provides evidence that ...

Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque.

On that basis, Pipes titles his article ‘Confirmed: Barack Obama Practised Islam’.

On that basis, I can confirm that former Liberal Member for Parramatta, Ross Cameron, also practised Islam. On the day before his election to Federal Parliament in 1996, I took Cameron to a Friday prayer service. Cameron addressed worshippers, then joined them in prayers, copying all the postures of Islamic congregational worship. To this day, I’m not aware of a single Muslim from Parramatta or elsewhere who has threatened to kill Cameron for abandoning the faith.

Why God won’t get to vote in the US Elections

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson successfully moved Virginia’s Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom. In his autobiography, Jefferson praised the inclusiveness of the Statute which allowed for ...

... the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and the Infidel to play an equal role in public life.

Other Founding Fathers made clear the new federal republic would allow followers of all religions and none to hold high office. This has been enshrined in the US Constitution, which states...

... no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

That means Hillary can become a Mormon, divorce Bill and become Mitt’s second wife. Obama can convert to Judaism, have a sex-change operation and marry Daniel Pipes. They’ll still be eligible for the top job.

American Neo-cons can only make an issue of a candidate’s faith by ignoring the clear intent of the Constitution. And to think they call themselves conservatives.

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf



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INDONESIA: Tabloid expert declares terrorists poised to take over ...

Daily Telegraph resident blogger Tim Blair is worried about Indonesia being on the verge of taken over by the likes of Noordin Top. Apparently there are Noordin Tops in schools across Indonesia.

Understanding the cultures of non-Western countries and non-white peoples isn't one of Blair's strengths. So it's not surprising that Blair can't notice it's highly unlikely that Indonesian boarding schools are filled with Malaysians.

And what of these boarding schools? Well, Blair describes Indonesia's pesantren as ...

... these terror-breeding fundo-pods ...

... and after noting that there are 45,000 of these, states ...

The scale of the problem becomes clear. It’s broad-based rather than Top-down, you could say.

Yes, that was quite amusing. What's even more amusing is Blair's refusal to do some basic elementary research on indigenous Indonesian boarding schools and their role in Indonesian society, instead of writing them all off as terror factories.

And we all know about these nasty Indonesian schools. Blair's ideological compatriots in the US were busy during the last US Presidential Election trying to prove that US President Obama attended an Indonesian pesantran.

If Indonesian boarding schools were such terror factories, surely the biggest terrorist on the planet is this bloke. Still, Blair isn't the only "expert" to pontificate on pesantren.

RACISM: Middle Eastern religious leader labels Obama "slave" ...

Here's something you won't find mentioned at Andrew Bolt's blog. The leader of Israel's Shas party recently described US President Barack Obama as a slave.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is regarded as the spiritual leader of Shas, a Jewish fundamentalist party which supports the building of illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land. Yosef was speaking in opposition to pressure from the Obama administration to cease building new settlements in the West Bank.

Here's how one news outlet reports it:

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, has slammed U.S. President Barack Obama, describing him as "a slave" who seeks to rule the world and control Tel Aviv's affairs when it comes to construction of settlements in occupied Jerusalem, reports say.

"American insidiousness tells us to build here and not to build there, as though we were slaves working for them," he said in his weekly sermon Saturday, adding: "We live in a time when slaves are governing us and are trying to control us."

Turning down the Obama administration's request to stop illegal construction of settlements on Palestinian occupied territories, he said: "We are not employees of the Americans.. and Israel does not work for the United States."

Yosef then takes a leaf out of the book of Andrew Bolt and his blog fan club, making a racist attack on Arabs and wishing for their destruction.

The senior Rabbi then addressed the issue of Haram al Sharif (Dome of the Rock) saying: "...and where is our temple? The situation there is cause for grief. There is nothing there but evil Arabs who are occupying our lands…and I hope that the messiah will appear soon to destroy them."

The comments about Arabs were also reported by JTA which for some reason toned them down a little to read ...

Where is our temple? There are Arabs there!

Yosef isn't, of course, representative of mainstream Jewish opinion. Unlike Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair, I won't attempt to sheet home responsibility for his racist statements to Australians who happen to tick the "Judaism" box on their census forms. Nor will I demand that "moderate Jews" everywhere speak out and condemn these remarks, failing which they risk being labelled "Judeo-fascists". I know that Yosef is known for making obscene and imbecilic remarks that have even directly offended Jews.

Born in Iraq in 1920, Yosef is a former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel and a controversial figure who has in the past referred to Arabs and Palestinians as "snakes" and "vipers" who were "swarming like ants" ...

In 2000 he sparked outrage when he said that the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust did "not die for nothing," but were the "reincarnation of Jews who had sinned" in previous generations.

Members of Yosef's party are being linked to a massive money laundering and illegal organ trading investigation by the FBI. Among those whose organs were removed were impoverished Israelis. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports ...

Politicians expect the amount of funds contributed to institutions affiliated with or close to Shas, and its spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, will feel the pinch almost immediately ... One of the major figures arrested in the suspected money laundering case is Rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim, who is considered very close to Rabbi David Yosef, one of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's sons ... Another person arrested in the affair is Rabbi Edmund Nahum, who is considered very close to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef himself. Nahum was also involved in raising funds for the Yosef family institutions.

The Israel Police and the Justice Ministry's Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority will soon start investigating the Shas and other Sephardic institutions' yeshivas implicated in the scandal. The investigation may also include the banks suspected of transferring the allegedly tainted funds.

I guess it's hard to be a racist and a financial cleanskin at the same time no matter what your religious affiliation is.

CRIKEY: Obama self-flagellating in Africa?

Some Africans weren’t happy that US President Barack Obama overlooked their country and selected Ghana for his first tour of sub-Saharan Africa. You can imagine how the Kenyans must have felt by Obama’s excuse:

In my father's own country of Kenya, I'm concerned about how the political parties do not seem to be moving into a permanent reconciliation that would allow the country to move forward. And Kenya is not alone in some of the problems that we've seen of late, post-election or pre-election.

Though Obama did have some nice things to say about Kenyan civil society.

Obama told the AllAfrica.com website he deliberately chose Ghana because of its stable democratic institutions:

Ghana has now undergone a couple of successful elections in which power was transferred peacefully, even a very close election ... by travelling to Ghana, we hope to highlight the effective governance that they have in place.

There was also an emotional visit by the Obama family to the Cape Coast Castle -- a former holding area for slaves to the Americas. The castle is lined with cannons, and slaves were kept in squalid dungeons before being shipped off to captivity or death.

Obama later remarked:

I'll never forget the image of my two young daughters, the descendants of Africans and African-Americans, walking through those doors of no return but then walking back (through) those doors.

He then compared slavery to the Holocaust, a comparison that has already upset some if the comments here and here are anything to go by.

But the most hysterical response to Obama’s speech to the Ghanaian Parliament came from the neo-Conservative Hudson Institute’s Anne Bayefsky, whose anger was unleashed at Forbes and The Australian.

Bayefsky compared Obama’s Ghana speech to his recent address in Cairo. Her conclusion? That Obama loves to ...

... [s]trok[e] Muslim and Arab nations" and that this "has become the hallmark of Obama's foreign policy.

Meanwhile ...

... Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation ... The disparity between the scolding he gave in Ghana and the love-in he held in Cairo illuminates an incoherent and dangerous agenda.

The problem with this thesis, like so many things emerging from neo-Conservative thinktanks, is that it doesn’t involve too much thought.

Sub-Saharan Africa includes Muslim-majority states such as Djibouti (94%), Senegal (95%), Guinea (92%), Gambia (90%), Sierra Leone (65%) and Burkina Faso (65%).

Among African member states of the Organisation of Islamic Conference are: Uganda, Chad, Togo, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and Mozambique.

So African Muslims were well-represented in both the Cairo love-in and the Ghana self-flagellation. Either that, or Bayefsky might learn some high school geography.

First published in Crikey on Tuesday 14 July 2009.

OPINION: Values blur in good and evil ...

Uncle Sam stands at the top of a flight of stairs, looking more than slightly perplexed. Below him is a windowless chamber its sparse furnishings consist of a lamp, a wooden bench and a closet shaped roughly to the contours of a human body, spikes emerging from its rear wall. A man hangs from the roof, his ankles bound. Below him stand a Caucasian man dressed in a Nazi uniform, a hooded Spanish inquisitor brandishing a sword and a third man in military fatigues and an Arab head-dress.

All three are watching Uncle Sam, inviting him to join them, the third man stating:

C'mon down. Once you take the first step, it's easy.

What I've just described in words is a cartoon by Philadelphia Inquirer cartoonist Tony Auth. It's only now, with debate over the use of torture in the "war on terror", that we're discovering just how deep the Leader of the Free World had descended.

The frequent mantra recited by Western political masters was that we were in a war against terrorists who hated us because of who we are, because of our values. Terrorists despised us for being civilised. They wanted to replace notions such as democracy and the rule of law, which we stood for, with terror and lawlessness. This was a war for civilisation, a fight to defend freedom.

Yet within a mere six months of the 9/11 attacks, top officials of the CIA were happy to flout the rule of law and to breach the very values they claimed to protect. To use the words of North Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, the Bush administration saw the law as a nicety we could not afford.


This new lawlessness incorporated the use of harsh interrogation techniques (read torture) such as waterboarding. In this torture, a prisoner is bound to an inclined board, his feet raised and his head slightly below the feet; then cloth is wrapped over his face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the prisoners gag reflex is activated and he feels convinced he is drowning.

One CIA prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libbi, is said to have been subjected to waterboarding that proved so effective that he provided false evidence of a link between al-Qaeda and the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein which led to the 2003 invasion. Al-Libbi made these fabricated claims as he was terrified of further harsh treatment.

Even if we accepted claims by United States lawmakers that torture was used to protect Americans, al-Libbi's torture was clearly used for political purposes to justify a war the Bush administration was determined to fight even before the first jets hit the World Trade Center. Once evil means are adopted even for seemingly noble ends, the lines between good and evil soon become blurred.

Al-Libbi's treatment is just the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of people have been detained in various US detention facilities, both known and secret, including in Indonesia, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay. Among them were two Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib.

Yet while US media seem almost fixated with the role that Republican and Democrat lawmakers and US government officials played in ordering and executing torture of detainees, few Australian journalists have considered what role (if any) the Australian government may have played or at least what knowledge it may have had of the torture of Australian citizens at Guantanamo Bay.

And yet now the US is reluctant to settle Guantanamo detainees on its own territory. Meanwhile US President Barack Obama is reluctant to release further documents and photos of torture conducted by the CIA for fear it will further inflame tensions. It is this very secrecy which provides a perfect cover for even more abuse.

Regardless of how painful the process may be, the US must take responsibility for the consequences of its inquisition. Yet all we seem to be hearing from Obama is empty rhetoric about how the US does not torture the same rhetoric used by his predecessor. Obama chose Cairo as the location to give his speech to the nominally Muslim world.

Cairo was also the place where Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was sent by the US to have terrorism confessions extracted from him using the most brutal forms of torture. In his memoir My Story: the tale of a terrorist who wasn't, Habib outlined not just his own torture but also the suffering of other inmates also beaten and drugged.

During his Cairo address to an audience of political leaders and diplomats from Muslim-majority states, Obama admitted the US had acted contrary to its ideals by instituting torture. Yet among governments represented were those which will continue to implement the US policy of extraordinary rendition or the secret abduction and transfer of prisoners to countries that will carry out torture on behalf of the US.

The Washington Post reported on February 1, 2009, that Obama issued executive orders allowing the CIA to carry on with renditions. He further allowed the CIA to detain suspects in facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis. America will effectively now outsource Guantanamo-type operations to the generals, sheikhs, colonels, dictators and presidents-for-life who will no doubt torture not just those deemed terror suspects by the US but also domestic political opponents.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recently urged all those involved in the torture process including doctors, nurses, psychologists and lawyers to be pursued and not let off the hook. Australia and New Zealand can play a role in this process, given that both are the only two nations in the Pacific region to have ratified the Convention Against Torture. Yet given the lacklustre performance on the part of John Howard and Kevin Rudd on the treatment of former Australian citizen detainees at Guantanamo, one cannot expect too much from Australia.

Terrorists may hate us for our values, but clearly we don't seem to like our values too much either.

Irfan Yusuf's first book Once Were Radicals about young Muslims flirting with radical Islam was published by Allen & Unwin in May 2009. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Tuesday 7 July 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: The Oz gives space to nonsensical analysis ...

Some years ago, I had an interesting exchange in Crikey with a former opinion editor of The Australian concerning what I saw as his refusal to allow space on his page for those who looked beyond his narrow binary view of a world divided into:

... two allegedly monolithic entities of ‘conservative Islam’ and ‘Western modernity’.

Could this judgment also be made about Mr Switzer’s successor? Certainly her choice of author to comment on President Obama’s recent address in Cairo about relations between the United States and Muslim-majority states seems curious to say the least.

Former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Magaan has visited Australia on a number of occasions. I myself had the opportunity to interview her when she was the guest of honour at the Sydney Writers’ Festival some years back. Hirsi Magaan is a strident critic of Islam, her ancestral faith. She herself is an ardent evangelical atheist of the Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens mould.

Being an atheist and an ex-Muslim shouldn’t disqualify Hirsi Ali from commenting on the speech of a politician. But one wonders how seriously we should take someone quite happy to make remarks like this:

Nowhere in the world is bigotry so rampant as in Muslim countries.

How do we define and measure bigotry? How does Hirsi Magaan measure it? Does it include making crude generalisations about hundreds of millions of people? And what evidence does she have of widespread chronic bigotry across over 50 Muslim-majority states? The examples Hirsi Magaan provides are: Saudi Arabia , al-Qaida, Al-Azhar University and Iran ’s leadership. A monarchy, a terrorist organisation, a university and a country whose political establishment is at war with itself. Imagine if people judged the West and/or the "Christian world" by pointing to the KKK, Fox News and Moore Theological College.

And what about Indonesia ? How is it that Hirsi Magaan, a former Dutch MP, doesn’t regard a former Dutch colony as significant enough to mention in her column? Is Ms Hirsi Magaan prepared to convince Indonesia’s religious authorities, not to mention science teachers in pesantrens (traditional religious boarding schools), that there are “edicts of sharia law that reject scientific inquiry”? Or will she tell this to Malaysia ’s imam-cum-astronaut with a straight face? Or will she ignore developments in Iran relating to embryonic stem cell research as shown in the video below?



The Oz's opinion editor, back in February 2007, gave a most generous and uncritical profile of Hirsi Magaan, suggesting that her hysterical views – including that “Islam … discourages the work ethic that is the motor for economically successful societies” – were views that “have added weight because they are not those of an outsider or a dilettante”.

One wonders what kind of editor would give credence to a suggestion that 14 centuries of religious and cultural heritage have discouraged a work ethic and deterred economic development. One wonders how Hirsi Magaan and Weisser would respond to the paper of Chris Berg and Andrew Kemp published in the IPA Review in 2007 entitled Islam and the Free Market.

And as for the notion that former "insiders" always make good sources, should I take for granted the words of a jaundiced ex-Jew about Judaism just because she too isn’t an outsider?

People’s beliefs, cultures, communities, leaders and/or countries can and should and must be subjected to scrutiny and criticism. But there is a difference between criticism and ill-informed bigotry. By providing space for even such extreme and jaundiced opinions, certain segments of our national broadsheet are doing disservice to their readers.

VIDEO: Some interesting responses from Jerusalemites to Obama's recent Middle East tour ...

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OPINION: Repressive rule losing lustre in Iran?

It's not often the leader of the free world publicly acknowledges his country sabotaged the democracy of another country.

Yet this is exactly what United States President Barack Obama did during his speech in Cairo, billed as an address to the Arab and wider Muslim world.

And which country deserved this honourable mention? Why none other than Iran, referred to by Obama's predecessor George W. Bush as one of three nations making up the "Axis of Evil".

For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against US troops and civilians.

It's little wonder the self-styled Islamic Republic of Iran has defined itself by opposition to the United States.

As Obama states, the US played a key role in the royalist coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953.

US and British agents installed Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The West resumed its near unfettered access to Iran's oil.

The Shah was at first an enlightened monarch who focused on education and economic development. However, he succumbed to more dictatorial instincts, his ruthless secret police unleashing a brutal crackdown on any opposition, whether from leftist parties or from religious scholars led by the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

Not even the full backing of the United States could keep the Shah in power and he fled Iran in January 1979. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Iran and the US have fought each other using proxies.

America's main agent was former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who began a decade-long war against Iran in September 1980.

I was a teenager in Sydney at the time. The internet was not widely available, and our access to news was limited to whatever we were fed by local media.

We were told it was Iran that had invaded Iraq, and Saddam Hussein was a moderate democrat fighting the good fight against Iranian theocratic extremism.

There were other myths. Iran was just one Islamic hotspot in the world. The other was Afghanistan, where theocratic-minded tribal warlords were battling the military might of the Soviet Union.

America and the West were opposing Islamic theocracy in Iran and yet were supporting it in Afghanistan.

In mosques and Islamic centres across the Western world, including New Zealand and Australia, young Muslims were taught that the Iranian-style Islam was evil and anti-Western.

Meanwhile the Islam of Saudi Arabia and the Afghan mujahideen was presented as good and pro-Western. Iran's main proxies have been various Islamist political movements and militias that have struck US interests both directly and indirectly in various parts of the Middle East.

These include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and more recently the dominant faction in the democratically elected Government of Iraq.

The great irony of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime was the power vacuum was soon filled by America's sworn enemy.

American troops maintain security in a country effectively administered by Iranian proxies.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution. Iran has become a regional superpower, one of the few Middle Eastern nations with some kind of functioning democracy.

Yet the battle for Iran's future wasn't won by the religious elite in 1979. This week, reformists will battle the eccentric conservative President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

The reformists want to see a return to the liberal days of former President Mohammad Khatami.

Most Iranians are under 30. They are an educated generation that knows only a repressive revolution whose Basij or morality police regulate their lives.

Iranian Muslim youth aren't the only ones disillusioned with theocratic politics. Many young Muslims in the West like myself, once attracted to political Islam, have now become disillusioned in it.

At the same time, we feel disenchanted with Western attempts to manipulate it, then demonise it when it suits. When politicians attempt to co-opt religion, both religion and politics lose in the end.

* Irfan Yusuf's book, Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-Fascist, was published last month by Allen & Unwin. This article was first published in the New Zealand Herald on 11 June 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf

VIDEO: Just how serious is Obama about ending torture?

The Obama Administration has repeated the mantra of the Bush Administration - that America does not torture. But just how serious is Obama about torture? The following video might provide some clues. Here is the text accompanying the video:

As Barack Obama prepares marks his first 100 days in power, pressure is mounting to hold the administration of George Bush, the former US president, to account for its role in authorising torture.

While it's still unclear whether anyone will be charged, Al Jazeera's Avi Lewis sat down with a panel of experts to find out where the debate over torture now stands.

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COMMENT: The tortured reality that clouds Obama's message ...

President Barack Obama has many messages to deliver to that nebulous blob called “the Muslim world”. He wanted to move relations between America and 1.2 billion Muslims beyond the kind of stereotypes that dogged his own campaign.

Obama’s recent address to Turkey’s National Assembly was really an address to the governments of Muslim-majority states. He acknowledged “there have been difficulties these last few years … that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced”. He also reminded them that “America's relationship with the Muslim community, the Muslim world, cannot, and will not, just be based upon opposition to terrorism”.

This all sounds lovely. There’s just one problem. America’s unpopular war on terror involved kidnapping and torturing Muslim terror suspects, with few charges laid against anyone. Much of this torture was outsourced to the very governments Obama was addressing in his remarks. Police and intelligence services of countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco and Syria tortured prisoners and sold their “evidence” to the United States. Governments of these countries allowed the CIA to conduct secret “black site” prisons.

A host of kings, emirs, generals and presidents-for-life of Muslim-majority states used America’s “war on terror” as a convenient excuse to stifle dissent and to suppress their own political opponents. These same governments use religious sentiment to stir up trouble over trivial issues (e.g. the Danish cartoons) to divert attention away from government excess and incompetence. In countries where substantial Muslim minorities existed (such as China, India and the Philippines), fighting “terrorism” was used as a cover to suppress minorities. And not only Muslims suffered. Fighting terrorism has been used as an excuse by the Sri Lankan army to commit atrocities against Tamil civilians.

And now CIA Director Leon Panetta is insisting that ...

... no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished.

Then again, a full investigation might just expose the dirty role played by the despots that rule the majority of Muslim countries. It might also expose the role of US allies such as Australia.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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VIDEO: US conservatives still talking Turkey over the "Judeo-Christian" nation ...

Some alleged conservatives in the United States are getting their nickers in a knot (or should that be knickers in a not?) over President Obama's remarks at a joint press conference with his counterpart in Turkey. It seems some are still peddling this myth that there is such a thing as a Judeo-Christian tradition.

In Australia, conservatives have also been peddling this myth of our country being founded on "Judeo-Christian values". Peter Costello has made such claims from time to time. Including during a speech he made to a crowd of Pentecostal Christians at Scots Church in Melbourne in 2004.

If the Arab traders that brought Islam to Australia, had … settled or spread their faith among the Indigenous population, our country today would be vastly different. Our laws, our institutions, our economy would be vastly different.

But that did not happen. Our society was founded by British colonists. And the single most decisive feature that determined the way it developed was the Judeo-Christian-Western tradition. As a society, we are who we are because of that tradition … one founded on that faith and one that draws on the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Indeed he's right. Arab traders didn't bring Islam to Australia. Indonesian fisherman did. But they didn't come here to preach and conquer but rather to trade with local indigenous people in the Northern Territory. And these Indonesian fishermen kept trading up until the early part of the twentieth century when their centuries-old trade was stopped by legislators in Adelaide behaving in an allegedly Judeo-Christian manner.

But what of this whole idea of Judeo-Christian values? When did they come about? And what role, if any, did the "Judeo" bit play in the 18th century? At this point it might be appropriate to plagiarise myself:

Costello’s 2004 speech suggests only the traditions of British colonists mattered. Australia’s first few fleets consisted of a handful of English free settlers accompanying shiploads of convicts of various faiths - Jews, Catholics, Muslims and a smattering of perhaps reluctant followers of the Church of England.

Costello’s much touted Judeo-Christian culture wasn’t exactly alive and well in England. Both colonists and convicts would have been aware of the passing of the Jew Bill through the English Parliament in 1753, allowing Jews to be naturalised by application to Parliament. Mr Costello’s ideological ancestors, the Tories, opposed the Bill, claiming it involved an “abandonment of Christianity”. Conservative protesters burnt effigies of Jews and carried placards reading “No Jews, no wooden shoes”.

Jews were forbidden from attending university and practising law in England until the mid 19th century. One can only imagine the prejudice the 750-odd First Fleet Jewish convicts faced from English jailors brought up in such an anti-Semitic environment.

These considerations would apply even more in the United States, where the Founding Fathers deliberately avoided any mention of a religious qualification for public office.

Anyway, watch a Republican chap try and resurrect the Judeo-Christian myth in the context of Obama's recent comments in Turkey.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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VIDEO/POLITICS: President Obama addresses Turkish university students ...

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VIDEO/US: How the Bush administration fudged the budget ...

The US has a budget deficit of over $1 trillion. The exact composition of this deficit - as in how much was pent on which areas of expenditure - has only now become clear. The former Bush administration, it seemed, was hiding the true extent of spending on defense. The new Obama administration wants to scrutinise defense spending much more carefully, but will he be able to keep a lid on this when defense contractors have so much influence over the political process?

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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COMMENT: Andrew Bolt's village idiots ...

Andrew Bolt is back from holidays and making up for lost time. Like many on the lunar-Right, Bolt seems to have little time for anyone with a name like Hussein, even if that anyone happens to be the President of the United States. In a recent blog post, Bolt objects to President Obama's assertion that there ever was a time when the United States and the

... Muslim world" had "respect and partnership ... as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.

So friendship with those nasty evil Mozzlems isn't a terribly nice proposition in Bolt's books. And why should it when, at least in Bolt's mind, those nasty people are best represented by such democratically chosen leaders Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Colonel Gaddafi, a bunch of Lebanese bombers and Usama bin Ladin.

Of course, we all read in the Herald Sun about bin Ladin winning a landslide victory in the last Saudi elections. And anyway, who cares about the 85% of Muslims who don't live in an Arab League state or the one third of the world's Muslim population that live as minorities? Why allow the facts to get in the way of some decent prejudice?

Nuance has always been Bolt's strong point. Little wonder he moderates such sensible and nuanced comments from such balanced individuals as these:

Frank replied to mh
Thu 29 Jan 09 (07:12am)

It’s a bit hard to be friends with an invisible enemey.

The religion/ideology that is Islam has been at odds with the civilised world for more than a thousand years.

It continues today either in the form of wars being faught in Africa and the Middle East or your local town, suburb or capital city where a more subtle form of ideological control is taking place.

Gradually they will either kill us or out number us via massive birth rates. It is happening and people are letting it happen.

Joel Butcher has an interesting take on things.

Joel Butcher replied to Johnny
Thu 29 Jan 09 (10:13am)

Johnny, the biggest threat to Australia, Australians and their way of life is Islam.

The same as Islam is a threat to non Islamic people everywhere ... Given any chance, Muslims will oppress peoples the world over if they resist conversion to Islam.

Some will harass me for speaking the truth, and some others will say that the biggest threat to the Australian way of life is Global Warming and not Islam - yea right ...

Denying this is like denying the Holocaust, but I guess you think that was propaganda too?

You must listen to Taliban radio for your information?

I guess, Joel, it's about as bad as reading one of Mr Murdoch's tacky Taliban tabloids. One wonders whether a comment like this about another religion would be allowed on the Herald Sun blog. Who knows?

And then there's this beauty ...

We have to consider these things from Obama’s perspective, which is very different from ours.

He is the first Arab President, the US has had.
Parlirama of Dural (Reply)
Thu 29 Jan 09 (07:55am)

Does Bolt actually read this stuff before allowing it to be posted? Where's McCain when you need him? "This here is no family man. This boy here is a good family man!"





If this is the kind of nonsense that even the resources of News Limited cannot stop from being moderated and published on its websites, it says alot for the quality of editing at the Herald Sun. Seriously, the last thing they'd want is to look as stupid as FoxNews. At least I hope so.

Still, there was something resembling intelligence injected into the conversation:

One thing that struck me about Obamas’ spin is the repeated use of the false term, “Muslim World”.
A “Muslim World” is the expressed desire of Osama Bin Ladin and every radical muslim terrorist. Obamas’ repeated proclamation of this falsity is a total compromise to those terrorists and can only embolden them. What is Obama saying, he wants to have dialogue with a unified muslim world with a figure head/leader so they can discuss how the world will be organised in the future.
The reality is that there are many secular countries with a muslim majority, there are some countries with a muslim majority that are run democratically but see themselves as “Muslim Countries”, and there are some countries that are run by Islamic scolars under Sharia law.
There is no “Islamic World”, just like there is no Christian, Buddhist or Hindu World.
However radical Islamists want a Muslim world, they are looking for someone to unite all people of islamic faith and many await the ‘13th Imam’ who they say will do just that.
As far as I can see, by his dialogue Obama is giving credence to the terrorists dream and speaking a “muslim world” into being.
mic of sydney (Reply)
Thu 29 Jan 09 (10:14am)

13th Imam? Something resembling intelligence? Perhaps I was being a little ambitious in my expectations.

More soon.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: Daniel and Gabby weep. Let's celebrate!

After predicting Barack Obama would go down a similar electoral path as former US Presidential candidate George McGovern, a dispondent Daniel Pipes writes this postscript on November 5:

Well, this prediction was badly wrong. To explain it away, I could point to the fall's financial problems, the media's bias, or to the McCain campaign's many errors, but there's a deeper issue here. I had confidence that the American people would reject Obama when they learned about his extremist political views, dubious associations, and biographical mysteries. I am astonished that these problems hardly registered, I feel bewildered by my own country, and apprehensive by what comes next.

A comment was left by "Gabby from australia" who compares Obama to Hitler and Stalin:

Hi I am Gabby from Australia here. I have been coming daily to this website for many years and i think that your usual ability to accurately predict outcomes and trends is still very accurate. I believe in you, absolutely ...

Pffffft. She continues:

Remember ww2? Hitler was the same type, a cult of personality and slick propaganda of goebbels, Stalin, Lenin, they all lied didn't they and gullible people still followedd them, the ends justifies the means. Anyone remember how they rise to power ended up? I do.

God help America under Obama.

God help Gabby! Continuing:

Obama-he admits his brothers and sisters all are muslims, yet he admits his dad and step dad was muslim. Yet, still he persisted and continued to persist with the lie he was not amuslim nor ever was which is orwellian in the extreme of denialibility. "plausible or believable deniability". Majority of his borhters and sisters are still in poverty in Kenya.

If you tell a lie often enough it will be told as fact. You just need to read read about the koran to know its all lies. "War is deceit muhammad said". Well America is at war, and teh greatest liar has been elected. Indeed , War is deceit.

His cousin ODINGA in Kenya he gave a million dollars to and helped advise and electioneer for "cuz"odinga is a rabid jihadst whom has forced shariah law on the population of 90 per cent non muslims in that land. The rest of his kenyan family celebrated his victory as "obama is a son of kenya" son indeed, he was born in Kenya in front of his black african kenyan muslim grandmother who admitted it during a telephone call to a certain Bishop. His family still are por in kenya, I wonder with bro obama as president how many free citzenships will he hand out- ODinga? his brothers and sisters aunties uncles, why stop there. Let the whole fricken tribe in. Bet he will.

I'm sorry. My sides are splitting and I have other stuff to write. You can read the rest of Gabby's rant here. You can even add your own comment. But just remember this golden rule:

Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited, before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate.

If you want to see Daniel Pipes in person, watch out for his next Australian tour, perhaps again sponsored by AIJAC and/or the Centre for Independent Studies.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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VIDEO: All American conservatives display their good sense ...

"Hussein Muhammad Obama!"

Priceless!




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VIDEO: Obama = Muslim Socialist ...

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OPINION: Calling the prejudice around Barack Obama by its true name ...

WATCHING the US election from a distance, it's hard not to be convinced that many American voters may have lost the plot.

Over 40 million Americans have no health insurance. A March 2008 report from the non-partisan, non-profit organisation National Priorities Project estimates that the total cost of the Iraq War by the end of the 2009 fiscal year will be $US745.7 billion, with the US Government surplus for the same period reaching up to $US1 trillion. Americans are having their homes repossessed at an alarming rate, and around a million are homeless. And yet millions of American voters could be swayed by the middle name and religious heritage of one of the presidential candidates.

The United States is arguably the most secular nation on earth. The pledge of allegiance recited by school students across America may refer to "one nation under God", but the US Constitution states an atheist can be elected to even the highest office in the land. As can a person of Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Shinto, Zoroastrian and any other background.

Yet the voting choices of millions of Americans (including those hardest hit by hard economic times) could be swayed by sectarian prejudice. Barack Obama may be 10% ahead in the polls, but some are wondering whether many voters are telling pollsters the truth.

In Obama's case, this isn't just a case of the Bradley Effect, the phenomenon London's Times recently described as polls overestimating support for an African-American candidate because "when race is involved, voters misrepresent their intentions".

It isn't just racial prejudice at work here. Many voters are less concerned about Obama's late mother spending her last days fighting health insurance companies over the costs of her cancer treatment than they are about why she married a Kenyan man who gave her son a middle name as common as John in some parts of the world but which Americans associate with a nasty non-Christian religion. As one Ohio voter told The Times:

I ain't gonna lie to you. A lot of people around here don't want Obama because of his colour. And it's his name that bothers me. It's Muslim.

At numerous Republican rallies, reference is made to "Barack Hussein Obama". When one nervous Republican told McCain she didn't trust Obama because "he is an Arab", McCain's response was to take the microphone off her and say "no, he's a decent family man" — as if Obama couldn't be both an Arab and a decent family man.

John McCain told David Letterman that Sarah Palin's claims Obama was "pallin' around with terrorists" referred to William Ayers. Letterman reminded McCain that Palin referred not just to one terrorist. McCain explained this away with the words: "Millions of words are said during an election campaign."

Indeed. And some 28 million DVDs have been distributed in major newspapers in swing states by a pro-Republican group reminding American voters that "radical Islam" is at war with the US.

Prejudice is such an effective political tool. It doesn't need facts and logic to sustain it. Prejudice can manufacture its own "facts" which, when mixed with innuendo, take on a life of their own.

Prejudice is an advanced level of hatred. Generally hatred is fuelled by ignorance and cured by hard facts, but all the facts in the world cannot combat prejudice.

Some pundits have turned manufacturing facts into an art form, one claiming that Obama's wearing of a sarong in Jakarta and occasionally attending the mosque with his stepfather's relatives was a clear sign that he "practised Islam". The same pundit also suggested that the name "Hussein" is known to be associated only with Islam.

What we don't hear is the story that children across the Muslim world learn — the story of the rabbi who 14 centuries ago joined the religious movement of Muhammad. That rabbi was asked by Muhammad to change his name to Abdullah, literally meaning "God's servant". And the rabbi's original name? Hussein.

Recently FoxNews featured an "expert" who claimed Obama's work as a "community organiser" was "training for the overthrow of the government". The New York Times later exposed this "expert" as a serial litigant who once described a judge as a "crooked slimy Jew".

Australians have experienced this kind of imbecilic politics. In the 2004 election, an ALP candidate in the western Sydney seat of Greenway faced the same treatment. A fortnight out from the election, one Sydney columnist wanted to know why the candidate didn't explain what the names of his parents signified. On the eve of the election, a mysterious pamphlet circulated claiming the candidate would work for Islam. A seat that was once safe Labor became Liberal.

The Liberal Party denied responsibility for the pamphlet. When the same trick was tried in Lindsay in the 2007 election, one honest Young Liberal tipped off the ALP campaign team. The rest, as they say, is history.

Obama isn't just facing the Bradley Effect. What we are seeing in this presidential election might be described as the Lindsay pamphlet effect. One can only hope that, on this occasion, decent Republicans will expose the fraud.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and a former federal Liberal candidate. First published in The Age on 20 October 2008.



Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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