COMMENT: Daniel Pipes caught out misrepresenting HREOC Commissioner

Photo of Commissioner Innes appearing in the body of an article distributed by Daniel Pipes ...


Neo-Conservative American columnist and chronic Muslim-hater Daniel Pipes is using the controversy over the recent speech of the Archbishop of Canterbury to peddle lies about sharia, the Islamic sacred legal tradition.

Pipes has started distributing an article to various newspapers which seeks to explain why the West should unite ...

... to stop the progress of this medieval legal system so deeply at odds with modern life, one that oppresses women and turns non-Muslims into second-class citizens.

Given that the Archbishop spoke about sharia tribunals in his speech in the same breath as Beth Din tribunals, it would be interesting if Pipes was prepared to make the same assertion about the sacred law of his own faith.

More intersting is the fact that the body of the article includes a photograph of Graeme Innes, a Commissioner of the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission. The photo is accompanied by this caption:

Australian Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes and his guide dog. Innes is often denied service by taxi drivers.

It is unclear how Pipes reached this conclusion about Commissioner Innes. However, I would suggest that Commissioner Innes would not agree with Pipes' comments, and certainly would not agree with how his name has been mentioned in what is essentially an exercise in manufacturing hysteria against a particular faith tradition and those associated with it.

When this alleged story first appeared in the tabloid Daily Telegraph, I thought I'd give Commissioner Innes a call to confirm the report. Commissioner Innes and I are both UNIFEM White Ribbon Day ambassadors. After speaking to the Commissioner, I wrote a column for Crikey which can be read here.

Here is what Commissioner Innes told me:

"If religion was used as an excuse by a cab driver, it was maybe mentioned once out of twenty times. The cab driver never mentioned any particular religion and just said it was for religious reasons. I never mentioned any specific religion and never intended to cast aspersions on any religion. I have spoken to the Telegraph editor yesterday and expressed my concerns about how the editorial focussed on a particular sector of society while I expressed frustration with taxi drivers across the board."

I'm not sure if the Daily Telegraph apologised to Innes. I am also not sure if Pipes will be apologising to Innes. On his weblog (referred to in his op-ed submission), Pipes writes these words:

Human Rights and Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes, himself blind and reliant on a guide dog, said he is refused service on average once a month, including twice in two days recently. "He has been told on a number of occasions that it would be against a driver's religion to allow a dog in the cab," writes Heath Aston in Australia's Daily Telegraph. "He has also been refused by drivers claiming to be allergic to dogs and even scared of dogs. He has also been left clutching at air on busy Market St by one belligerent driver who told him he had to take the non-existent cab in front."

Pipes is now trying to drag Commissioner Innes into his personal web of sectarian bigotry. One wonders if Mr Pipes was aware of Commissioner Innes' comments on the incident reported in the Tele.

Some 11 months ago Commissioner Innes issued this press release concerning taxi drivers and guide dogs. Nowhere in the press release is the ethno-religious background of the offending drivers mentioned.

Pipes is using Commissioner Innes' experiences with a small group of taxi drivers to incite hatred toward persons of nominally Muslim background, faith and/or heritage. Pipes owes Commissioner Innes an apology.

UPDATE I: A version of this article (without reference to Commissioner Innes) has been published here.



Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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UPDATE/COMMENT: Recent stuff related to Rowan Williams and Sharia ...

There has been some interesting commentary on the issue of the Archbishop's speech on sacred and secular law. I've printed out the Archbishop's speech from his website, and it comes to 6 A4 pages in small type. It's a very difficult and esoteric read, and I'm only upto page 4.

What I notice is that in each place the Archbishop talks about the possible application of sharia, he also mentions Orthodox Jewish sacred law. Those who claim that Islamic law and the English common law are mutually exclusive should consider that their objections equally apply to the sacred law and jurisprudence of Orthodox Judaism.

It's particularly amusing when commentators of Jewish background (such as Melanie Phillips) condemn the Archbishop without bothering to read his speech. The caustic remarks Ms Phillips makes about sharia are equally applicable to Jewish sacred law. Islamic jurisprudence doesn't have a monopoly on capital punishment for sexual crimes or on apparently sexist family and estate laws.

A Muslim view on the issue can be found here. The author notes that Muslim response to the Archbishop's proposals has generally been negative.

My own views on this latest cultural mass debate are expressed here and here.

An Australian Christian cleric has defended the Archbishop at ABC Unleashed here. According to this report in the Financial Times ...

Church of England representatives on Monday rallied round the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, after he publicly repented for the “distress and misunderstanding” caused by his stance on Islamic law ...

The assembled delegates – over 450 bishops, clergy, and lay men and women – rose almost to a person to applaud Dr Williams as he addressed them and gave him a similarly warm ovation after the speech.

Dissenters were muted and those who called for his resignation were reduced to a minority of two.

“Dr Williams has shown outstanding leadership and signalled that the Church must move on from this controversy,” said Nicholas Reade, the bishop of Blackburn.

No doubt the comments and criticisms will continue. The irony is that sharia and English law had been interacting in England's colonial possessions for centuries. Funny how some people conveniently overlook that.

Personally, I must say i do have some serious reservations about any proposal to recognise sharia or other sacred law that does not provide the parties with an appeal mechanism. Naturally, I am very opposed to even the partial implementation of sharia-based (or indeed any) capital punishment.

I also think that Muslims who believe sharia-based tribunals can and should operate in a common law jurisdiction should study the Beth Din model and see how it operates. The Beth Din model has been particularly useful in resolving disputes involving religious institutions as well as civil disputes. Given how busy our courts are and the waiting lists involved, I'm sure secular courts would appreciate any assistance they could receive from any method of alternative dispute resolution!

© Irfan Yusuf 2008

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COMMENT: Brendan Nelson declares war on the Beth Din

Recently the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered a speech in which he argued that certain religious communities should be allowed to refer their disputes to religious tribunals located outside the court system. He gave the example of orthodox Jews who refer many of their civil law disputes to the Beth Din.

Often secular courts are asked to rule on Beth Din decisions. Generally, these decisions are confirmed on the basis that the parties agreed to submit to the Beth Din’s religious authority. Hence, the Beth Din decision effectively represents an agreement by the parties in dispute.

Dr Nelson isn’t happy with this approach to the law. He argues that those who come to Australia should accept the law as it is. In his view, that means submitting to the existing court system. Here's what he told ABC recently ...

The idea that in some way you would change your basic values, culture and law to accommodate some people who feel that they don't want to see themselves as Australians first, above all else - under no circumstances would I support that.

I guess that means bye-bye Beth Din. I wonder how Nelson’s Jewish voters will respond to that.

Still some will argue that the Beth Din should be allowed because Jews are part of the allegedly dominant ‘Judeo-Christian’ mainstream in Australia. I wonder how Australia's former Chief Rabbi responds to such a suggestion. Here's what he said in a speech in July last year ...

Consider the so-called “Judeo-Christian Tradition” or its other name, “The Judeo-Christian Ethic”, neither of which actually matches the reality.

If there were really a Judeo-Christian tradition, we would basically be the same – almost clones of each other – with only cultural baggage to differentiate us. But that is not how it works.

Judaism and Christianity have a common origin in the Hebrew Scriptures, but they read the texts quite differently. They believe in God, but they view Him and His nature through different lenses.

They have a story, but it is two stories: a concept of man, but it is two concepts. They are ethical religions, but their ethics, as Ahad HaAm pointed out, are widely apart in emphasis.

Their ideas about man’s nature, salvation and destiny are far apart. For Christianity, Jesus is crucial (in every sense of the word): in Judaism, though a Jew, he does not figure. Christianity, as Leo Baeck argues, prefers “the finished statement” of dogma: Judaism, “the unending process of thought”.

Judaism and Christianity both lay claim to the truth, but there are rival versions of the truth. And we haven’t even started looking beyond Judaism and Christianity ...

Arthur A. Cohen argues in “The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition” that there is not only no tradition of religious brotherhood but a tradition of theological enmity.

The so-called Judeo-Christian tradition is, he contends, a myth produced by Christian guilt and Jewish neurasthenia to obscure the basic fact that Christians and Jews, to the extent that they are seriously Christians and seriously Jews, are theological enemies.

So much for a Judeo-Christian culture.

One can only conclude from all this that Dr Nelson insists that all of us submit our disputes to secular courts. Further, secular courts should not rule on matters referred by religious courts. Anyone who isn't happy with that clearly doesn't regard themselves as Australian first.

Australian first. Or should that read Australia First? Perhaps Dr Nelson is in the wrong party.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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