RELIGION: How Turnbull can avoid Howard's mistakes in alienating Muslims

A few imams do not represent Australian Muslims. Here are the people Turnbull should really be talking to.

A 15-year-old boy has murdered an adult in the geographical heart of Sydney. Police believe other teenagers are also involved, as are underworld figures. A 12-year-old is under surveillance. A 22-year-old has been charged with supplying the gun, and an 18-year-old has also been charged in relation to the crime. The appropriate response? Conventional wisdom is that we need to legislate. And we need to talk. In that order.

The conversation we need to have must involve “the Muslim community”. Some say we should talk with them. Others prefer to talk at them. Is it because in our imagination terrorism is necessarily Islamic, and Muslims are usually held collectively responsible? The point is that “we” and “they” need to talk.

Normally we don’t bother talking to them. They are sitting over there in mosques we rarely enter. We assume their women are at home or standing a few metres behind their men when in public. We read about them and their strange culture in our newspapers.

But now there is a greater urgency. Our security is threatened by their teenagers, possibly by their houses of worship and by their negligent parents. And of course by their terrorists. We therefore need to engage with their leaders. No, not academics or professionals or business people. Generally not their women (unless they are the type standing a few metres behind the men). We have to engage with their religious leaders. And we will choose who we speak to.

It’s a patronising narrative, but the fact is governments find it easier to talk to stakeholders and lobbyists. But the structured consultation model doesn’t quite work when you’re talking to 470,000 people coming from over 70 different countries and speaking languages at home that include Bangla, Urdu, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Tamil, Vietnamese, Russian and Croatian. Their understanding of religiosity varies. In a recently published book Coming of Age: Growing Up Muslim in Australia, the contributors included writers from at least three out of four Sunni schools of law, a Lebanese Alawi, a Turkish Alevi, a woman of Indian Gujarati Bohra background and an Iranian atheist of Shia heritage. And there was me.

So who represents the Islamic “them”? Malcolm Turnbull will be meeting with a group of people described as “Muslim leaders”. Almost certainly they will be limited to mosque management bodies or councils/federations of mosque management bodies. The Mufti and his interpreter will likely be there. There could be one or two women.

Few will have substantial experience in advocating for their communities to government in a meaningful way (apart from funding applications, and having their photos taken with the immigration minister). The organisations they represent will often have archaic rules. The Lebanese Muslim Association in Lakemba allows full membership only to men of Lebanese heritage. I cannot join, and neither can my mum. Keysar Trad’s Islamic Friendship Association meets each evening around his dinner table. Dr Jamal Rifi has a large medical practice, but then so does every third south Asian.

The main topic of consultation is deradicalisation of young Muslims. And perhaps a discussion on the latest round of anti-terror laws. There won’t be much discussion about the latter as the Prime Minister and Attorney-General have already made up their minds. The leaders (and their interpreters) aren’t capable of engaging with politicians on legal matters.

Former PM John Howard understood this well. After the July 7, 2005, London bombings he set up a round-table discussion with Muslim leaders. Virtually all were male. A fair few spoke little English and had little or no experience in lobbying, public affairs or political engagement. They were largely men of John Howard’s generation, whom he could easily manipulate.

This eventually morphed into a Muslim Community Reference Group (MCRG), which consisted almost exclusively of middle-aged male religious leaders and was chaired by Dr Ameer Ali, then-president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC). In October 2005, Ali claimed the MCRG unanimously supported proposed new counter-terrorism laws before a single clause had been drafted. Howard would have been delighted with such compliant leadership. In fact, no one had any idea of the provisions of the proposed bill until ACT chief minister Jon Stanhope released the draft, much to the consternation of the PM.

Howard’s approach of focusing on religious leaders probably helped the cause of radicalisation. It made imams and religious leaders the public face of Australian Muslims. Mainstream Australians who identified as Muslim and who derived their income and status from mainstream engagement were left out of the picture. 

On March 26, 2008, the RN Religion Report reported that then-parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs Laurie Ferguson said the Rudd government was considering reinstating the MCRG, though with

fewer imams, more women and young people, and it will also reflect the sizeable non-religious component of Australian Muslim community.

The focus on youth is natural. We’ve just witnessed a 15-year-old murder someone in broad daylight. We also know groups like Daesh (also known as Islamic State or ISIS) are using social media to actively recruit and influence young people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Yet the last time the self-appointed peak body of Australia’s Muslims made any public comment on an issue was to defend its conduct in relation to the lucrative halal meat certification market on Four Corners. 

Demographically, Aussie Muslims have a very young profile. The last three census figures show they are over-represented in younger age brackets (up to age 40) and under-represented in older ones. No prizes for guessing which age bracket religious leaders emerge from. They were largely from one denomination (Sunni). Apart from a few that ran independent schools, most had little knowledge of youth affairs.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull can take the cynical route and do a Claytons consultation. Or he can take a leaf out of Laurie Ferguson’s book and search for people of merit by perhaps even inviting applications.

In 2007 Gerard Henderson wrote a monograph for UK conservative think tank Policy Exchange entitled Islam in Australia: Democratic bipartisanship in action. His qualifications to write such are monograph are dubious to say the least, and the document has mysteriously disappeared from the Policy Exchange website. But one valuable point Henderson made in his report was that Australian Muslims are, by and large, as secular and irreligious as most Australian Christians, correctly noting: “Many Australians who regard themselves as followers of Islam do not attend a mosque.” 

Consultations shouldn’t just be with religious Muslim men and imams, most of whom have little influence over kids at risk. Younger people (and not just the relatives of religious leaders who are all too often employed to run government-funded projects for their family fiefdom organisations) should be consulted. Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, journalists, youth workers, sportsmen and women, teachers, entrepreneurs, student leaders, etc. With a focus on people under 40 and people born here and who engage outside the religious square.

When mainstream Australians of Muslim heritage are involved in the process, it will show that with all this talent there are no shortage of role models. It will also show that the hateful mantras of those insisting Muslims “refuse to integrate” are just a load of tabloid refuse.

First published in Crikey on 16 October 2015.

POLITICS: How Turnbull can avoid Howard's mistakes in alienating Muslims

A few imams do not represent Australian Muslims. Here are the people Turnbull should really be talking to.

A 15-year-old boy has murdered an adult in the geographical heart of Sydney. Police believe other teenagers are also involved, as are underworld figures. A 12-year-old is under surveillance. A 22-year-old has been charged with supplying the gun, and an 18-year-old has also been charged in relation to the crime. The appropriate response? Conventional wisdom is that we need to legislate. And we need to talk. In that order.

The conversation we need to have must involve “the Muslim community”. Some say we should talk with them. Others prefer to talk at them. Is it because in our imagination terrorism is necessarily Islamic, and Muslims are usually held collectively responsible? The point is that “we” and “they” need to talk.

Normally we don’t bother talking to them. They are sitting over there in mosques we rarely enter. We assume their women are at home or standing a few metres behind their men when in public. We read about them and their strange culture in our newspapers.

But now there is a greater urgency. Our security is threatened by their teenagers, possibly by their houses of worship and by their negligent parents. And of course by their terrorists. We therefore need to engage with their leaders. No, not academics or professionals or business people. Generally not their women (unless they are the type standing a few metres behind the men). We have to engage with their religious leaders. And we will choose who we speak to.

It’s a patronising narrative, but the fact is governments find it easier to talk to stakeholders and lobbyists. But the structured consultation model doesn’t quite work when you’re talking to 470,000 people coming from over 70 different countries and speaking languages at home that include Bangla, Urdu, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Tamil, Vietnamese, Russian and Croatian. Their understanding of religiosity varies. In a recently published book Coming of Age: Growing Up Muslim in Australia, the contributors included writers from at least three out of four Sunni schools of law, a Lebanese Alawi, a Turkish Alevi, a woman of Indian Gujarati Bohra background and an Iranian atheist of Shia heritage. And there was me.

So who represents the Islamic “them”? Malcolm Turnbull will be meeting with a group of people described as “Muslim leaders”. Almost certainly they will be limited to mosque management bodies or councils/federations of mosque management bodies. The Mufti and his interpreter will likely be there. There could be one or two women.

Few will have substantial experience in advocating for their communities to government in a meaningful way (apart from funding applications, and having their photos taken with the immigration minister). The organisations they represent will often have archaic rules. The Lebanese Muslim Association in Lakemba allows full membership only to men of Lebanese heritage. I cannot join, and neither can my mum. Keysar Trad’s Islamic Friendship Association meets each evening around his dinner table. Dr Jamal Rifi has a large medical practice, but then so does every third south Asian.

The main topic of consultation is deradicalisation of young Muslims. And perhaps a discussion on the latest round of anti-terror laws. There won’t be much discussion about the latter as the Prime Minister and Attorney-General have already made up their minds. The leaders (and their interpreters) aren’t capable of engaging with politicians on legal matters.

Former PM John Howard understood this well. After the July 7, 2005, London bombings he set up a round-table discussion with Muslim leaders. Virtually all were male. A fair few spoke little English and had little or no experience in lobbying, public affairs or political engagement. They were largely men of John Howard’s generation, whom he could easily manipulate.

This eventually morphed into a Muslim Community Reference Group (MCRG), which consisted almost exclusively of middle-aged male religious leaders and was chaired by Dr Ameer Ali, then-president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC). In October 2005, Ali claimed the MCRG unanimously supported proposed new counter-terrorism laws before a single clause had been drafted. Howard would have been delighted with such compliant leadership. In fact, no one had any idea of the provisions of the proposed bill until ACT chief minister Jon Stanhope released the draft, much to the consternation of the PM.

Howard’s approach of focusing on religious leaders probably helped the cause of radicalisation. It made imams and religious leaders the public face of Australian Muslims. Mainstream Australians who identified as Muslim and who derived their income and status from mainstream engagement were left out of the picture. 

On March 26, 2008, the RN Religion Report reported that then-parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs Laurie Ferguson said the Rudd government was considering reinstating the MCRG, though with

fewer imams, more women and young people, and it will also reflect the sizeable non-religious component of Australian Muslim community.

The focus on youth is natural. We’ve just witnessed a 15-year-old murder someone in broad daylight. We also know groups like Daesh (also known as Islamic State or ISIS) are using social media to actively recruit and influence young people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Yet the last time the self-appointed peak body of Australia’s Muslims made any public comment on an issue was to defend its conduct in relation to the lucrative halal meat certification market on Four Corners. 

Demographically, Aussie Muslims have a very young profile. The last three census figures show they are over-represented in younger age brackets (up to age 40) and under-represented in older ones. No prizes for guessing which age bracket religious leaders emerge from. They were largely from one denomination (Sunni). Apart from a few that ran independent schools, most had little knowledge of youth affairs.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull can take the cynical route and do a Claytons consultation. Or he can take a leaf out of Laurie Ferguson’s book and search for people of merit by perhaps even inviting applications.

In 2007 Gerard Henderson wrote a monograph for UK conservative think tank Policy Exchange entitled Islam in Australia: Democratic bipartisanship in action. His qualifications to write such are monograph are dubious to say the least, and the document has mysteriously disappeared from the Policy Exchange website. But one valuable point Henderson made in his report was that Australian Muslims are, by and large, as secular and irreligious as most Australian Christians, correctly noting: “Many Australians who regard themselves as followers of Islam do not attend a mosque.” 

Consultations shouldn’t just be with religious Muslim men and imams, most of whom have little influence over kids at risk. Younger people (and not just the relatives of religious leaders who are all too often employed to run government-funded projects for their family fiefdom organisations) should be consulted. Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, journalists, youth workers, sportsmen and women, teachers, entrepreneurs, student leaders, etc. With a focus on people under 40 and people born here and who engage outside the religious square.

When mainstream Australians of Muslim heritage are involved in the process, it will show that with all this talent there are no shortage of role models. It will also show that the hateful mantras of those insisting Muslims “refuse to integrate” are just a load of tabloid refuse.

First published in Crikey on 16 October 2015.

POLITICS: He's the Liberal the Liberals Love to Hate ...

This article was first published in NewMatilda.com on 17 September 2008, soon after Malcolm Turnbull was elected Leader of the Opposition. Since then, we've had the leadership change and the ETS debacle, with Turnbull crossing the floor to support the Rudd government.





He may be a former merchant banker. He may be Australia's wealthiest politician. But the new leader of the Opposition is no conservative, writes Irfan Yusuf ...

In case you're reading this after having just returned from a visit to Osama's cave in Pakistan's wild North-West, Malcolm Turnbull has been elected leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. It was by a narrow margin, hardly a handful of votes. Turnbull's allegedly more conservative opponent, Dr Brendan Nelson, has returned to the backbench where he can shed any remaining tears in private.

But how many tears will Nelson need to shed? How long will Turnbull last? The conventional wisdom seems to be that Turnbull and Nelson will play each other off in the same manner as John Howard and Andrew Peacock did during the 1980s. Yet that ongoing leadership challenge was as much about ideology as personality. During one of his terms as opposition leader, Howard boasted of being Australia's most conservative political leader. Peacock, on the other hand, was seen as being about as conservative as your average Hollywood actor.

Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull aren't as ideologically separate as many assume. And to conservatives in their home state of NSW, Turnbull's values haven't always been seen as Party values.

In many key state divisions, the Liberal Party has become such a conservative ideological beast that it no longer really is a liberal party anymore. Ideology is important to Party pre-selectors and powerbrokers, if not to the Party members who hand out on election day.

During my last Liberal Party days in 2001-02, Malcolm Turnbull was regarded by the NSW Right Wing as Satan-incarnate, the man who hated our Queen and therefore probably our God and country also. He was the man who went on national television and declared that our leader and our conservative hero, John Winston Howard, had broken the nation's heart. What hubris he had, assuming he and not the PM could see where the nation's heart really was.

By the time Turnbull was running for pre-selection for the supposedly blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Wentworth, he had already served as Treasurer of a Federal Liberal Party that was desperate for the cash his business contacts might generate. By this time, the NSW Right Wing was on the ascendancy. Turnbull needed to transform himself from republican devil to someone at least less evil than his opponent. John Hyde Page writes in his 2006 book The Education Of A Young Liberal that the Right, which by then had taken over the entire NSW Party, was backing Turnbull against sitting member (and Hyde Page's employer) Peter King.

To me, as a former factional warrior, this came as a shock. What had happened to the Right? Were they doing deals with the devil? Had they given up on the monarchy? Had they decided to support the closest thing the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney had produced to Paul Keating? Or was this just a temporary measure to remove King, regarded as an old warhorse for the wets even if he was a monarchist?

Turnbull's comment in his victory speech that real freedom doesn't exist without fairness sends a clear message to the NSW Right. He may be a former merchant banker. He may be Australia's wealthiest politician. But this Eastern Suburbs mansion-owner is no conservative. And the conservatives know this. Which explains why so few of them would have voted for him.

Then again, Nelson didn't have superb conservative credentials either. When he ran for pre-selection in the actually blue-ribbon seat of Bradfield on Sydney's North Shore in 1995, rightwing preselectors (including myself) were all under strict instructions not to support him. After all, Nelson was running against David Connelly, a sitting member and shadow minister who was (or so he claimed) a Howard-loyalist.

In those days, Nelson was seen as an ear-stud wearing Brendan-come-lately who was backed by the small-‘l' liberal faction we called "the Group". Pre-selectors received a VHS video cassette in a blank envelope with a five second clip showing Nelson holding a loud hailer and declaring: "I have never voted Liberal in my life!" Nelson won that ballot by a handful of votes. Mine wasn't one of them.

And yet conservatives came to terms with Nelson, who showed he could out-Howard Howard in certain areas. Nelson wasn't afraid to throw a few hand grenades in the general direction of allegedly unintegrated minorities. He was happy to remind Muslim independent schools to teach Australian values they were already teaching. Nelson was also happy to use taxpayer funds to support allegedly more integrated minorities, handing millions to schools run by the Exclusive Brethren so that they could deprive their children of such non-Judeo-Christian and satanic subjects as information technology.

Somehow I doubt Turnbull would feel comfortable with the cultural wedge politics of the Howard era. He certainly wasn't afraid to speak about real fairness, as opposed to Howard's empty "fair go". Turnbull is the kind of leader who could take the Liberal Party back to the centre. He might even attract less conservative and more liberal Liberals (including ex-Hard-Right types like me) back to the fold.

The real question is whether the Hard Right of the Party (and their Parliamentary patrons) will let him.

CRIKEY: Trouble is that Turnbull's dead wood is right ...

Malcolm Turnbull didn’t become a multimillionaire by being a stranger to big business. This former merchant banker, lawyer, internet entrepreneur and corporate wheeler-and-dealer knows his Party’s relationship with sections of the business community is the closest financial and institutional equivalent it has to the ALP’s more formalised relationship with the trade union movement.

So when business donors threaten to turn the financial tap off if Turnbull doesn’t ...

... personally driv[e] a large scale renewal of MPs in the parliamentary party ...

... as reported in The Australian today, Turnbull will listen carefully.

There’s just one problem. The 14 MP’s listed as dead wood by these business donors include powerful forces in the NSW Right. While business donors may hold the purse strings of the NSW Party, the Right Wing holds the Party’s t-sticles.

Among those on the corporate hit list is NSW Senator Bill Heffernan. "Farmer Bill" (as the former President of Junee Shire Council is known in urban Party circles) was elected to the Senate some months after the Howard government was swept to power in March 1996. Heffernan employed a rightwing Young Liberal powerbroker named Nicholas Campbell. The NSW Right were at that time weak in both the Young Libs and the Big Libs, but their star was rising.

Today Mr Campbell is President of a NSW Liberal Party firmly controlled by the Right. Campbell is likely to use his considerable Machiavellian skills to protect his old employer’s position ... unless Campbell himself is Heffernan’s likely replacement.

The Right will also do anything to protect Bronwyn Bishop, whose electorate of Mackellar takes in the NSW State electorate of Pittwater currently held by 34 year old Rob Stokes.

A former environmental lawyer, Stokes served as electorate officer (read branch stacker) to former NSW Opposition Leader (and Liberal Left powerbroker) John Brogden. Together, they actively stacked local branches with lots of small-‘l’ liberals, to the extent that the Left almost had the numbers to challenge Mrs Bishop in a preselection.

Bishop was paranoid of Brogden and she wouldn’t exactly be stoked by the young Stokes. Her departure will almost certainly see a small "l" liberal be the next MP for the blue ribbon Liberal seat of Mackellar. A Left MP will employ Left staff with time and resources for factional work such as stacking the nearby branches of Tong Abbott in the adjoining seat.

So Turnbull is in a Catch-22. On the one hand, his Party may find its biggest donors withdrawing their financial support unless he brings in new talent. On the other hand, this could involve going to war against powerful rightwing warhorses in his home state. Watch this space.

Then again, my entire analysis might just be dismissed on the basis that the report in The Oz is just a case of Glenn Milne reproducing what he’s learned from Mr Costello’s office. In which case, nless Costello is again setting the scene for a possible challenge that is unlikely to eventuate, ignore this space.

First published in Crikey on Monday 4 May 2009.

CRIKEY: Mafia scandal should make O'Farrell and Turnbull very nervous ...

Well it’s been a bad few weeks for the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party.

Brendan Nelson decided to POQ, his parting message to many of his more senior colleagues to join him. Julie Bishop was effectively demoted. Former leader John Hewson wrote op-eds in Fairfax papers telling Costello to also POQ. Joe Hockey reckons Costello’s refusal to POQ makes him resemble Prince Charles waiting for Queen Lizzy to kick the bucket or abdicate. Both Phillip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop are facing pressure from their branches to POQ. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, it now seems the Federal Police have been investigating links between the Liberal Party organisation and a local franchise of the Calabrian mafia.

The Party has seen better days. Who could forget that famous scene when John Howard told a packed hall of Liberal Party faithful on the eve of the 2001 federal election: "We will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come". If allegations raised in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald today are anything to go by, it seems the Howard government had decided who (persons with links to organised crime) would entered and remained in Australia and the circumstances (political donations) in which they would come.

It shamelessly lied in accusing asylum seekers of throwing their children overboard. John Howard and Phillip Ruddock, in the name of "border protection", happily took a cue from Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld by locking up in detention centres ordinary Iraqis and Afghans (including children) fleeing persecution, all the while boasting of a "war on terror" designed to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet the Liberal Party Division in both John Howard’s and Malcolm Turnbull’s home state was happy to accept donations from people allegedly close to the Calabrian mafia. Liberal MP’s happily lobbied to keep a man accused of having mafia links in Australia and happily received donations of up to $150,000 from his buddies.

Vanstone denies donations affected her decision to intervene, which she claimed was made on humanitarian grounds. Vanstone had evidence of the person’s links to organised crime. She overruled her Department’s recommendation and exercised her discretion to allow the individual to remain in Australia, overturning the decision of her predecessor. Fairfax also reports that the man was subsequently arrested in relation to his alleged involvement in the world’s largest importation of the illegal drug ecstasy.

This was supposed to be the government which prided itself on its national security credentials. This is the party which wants to form the next State Government in New South Wales. Barry O’Farrell should be more than a little nervous And Malcolm Turnbull must be on the verge of a cardiac arrest.

First published in Crikey on Monday 23 February 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


Bookmark this on Delicious

CRIKEY: Professor Google and those left wing academics ...

In 1990, I enrolled in a commercial law course as part of my LLB program at Macquarie University. My lecturer was Mark Cooray, a conservative academic lawyer of Sri Lankan origin. In those days, Macquarie Law School was dominated by a group of “progressive” lawyers pushing the “Critical Legal Studies” barrel.

Cooray was scathing of the “Crits”, arguing their approach to learning and teaching law put the cart before the horse. “How can undergraduate students be expected to criticise the law before gaining a proper understanding of it?”

In their approach to exposing alleged biases of supposedly left-leaning academics, the Young Libs are behaving like a bunch of leftwing “Crits”. Which probably explains why the main (if not the only) instrument used by National Young Liberal President Noel McCoy to generate his list of academic leftists was that great scholarly authority Professor Google.

To borrow Cooray’s sensible conservative logic, how can undergraduates with little exposure to a discipline or subject be expected to criticise their lecturer or tutor before gaining an understanding of the discipline or subject itself?

Just how seriously should we take the words of academic novices when determining the degree of bias (or lack thereof) of an expert in a field?

It’s true that there is a lack of diversity in university education. Most universities don’t hire undergraduate novices to teach.

So where did this Young Liberal idea come from? It seems the Young Libs are taking a leaf out of the far-Right CampusWatch project which seeks to expose Middle East Studies academics who don’t subscribe to the types of hawkish positions on the Middle East that even many Israelis find disturbing.

One can only wonder what newly elected Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull would make of such pseudo-conservative nonsense from the Young Liberals. Then again, these were the people whose votes proved so crucial to his preselection victory.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Friday 10 October 2008.


Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

Bookmark this on Delicious