MEDIA: The Australian's Opinion Page editor explains ...

Some years back, I made a pitch to the THEN Opinion Page editor of The Australian. I was proposing to write an article criticising the prosecution of Mark Steyn in Canada. I received this response:

Irfan,


Are you sure you want to be published in “an American-owned newspaper known as The Australian” by the “interim” opinion editor who published “the kind of rhetoric that hardly six-and-a-half decades ago justified some of her distant relatives to be sent to the gas chambers”?


Rebecca Weisser
Opinion Page Editor
The Australian
Tel: +61 2 9288 ####
Fax: +61 2 9288 ****
Mob: +61 (0) 4## ### ###
Email: weisserr@theaustralian.com.au
Editorial Department
2 Holt Street
Surry Hills NSW 2010
Australian [sic.]

Wow. Such objectivity. Such professionalism.

I've made a few pitches to her since then. Just for a lark.

COMMENT: Damnit! Janet spoils her sound analysis ...

OK, this isn’t going to be easy, so bear with me as I explain why I agree with the substance of what cultural jihadist Janet Albrechtsen has written today.

Her column in today's The Australian, written from somewhere north of the US, waxes lyrical about how left-wing multiculturalism is threatening human rights in Canada.

I never knew you had to be left wing to support cultural pluralism. I do know you should support the status quo to be conservative. Multiculturalism is the status quo in both Canada and Australia. Janet doesn’t support multiculturalism. Clearly Janet is more monocultural revolutionary than conservative.

But it’s true. Multiculturalism has in some cases been morphed into some silly notion that nothing resembling offence to minorities can be said without legal sanction. The result is the freedom of speech is thrown out the window.

Janet mentions some chap from Canada’s “Islamic Supreme Council” proceeding (now settled) against a conservative blog in Alberta’s Human Rights Commission for publishing the Danish cartoons. You’d think that after all the violent stupidity of the last cartoon protests, Western Muslims will want to steer clear of looking like cartoon characters.

The complainant is one of a number of fringe sects trying to project themselves as most legitimately representing Islamic orthodoxy and/or Muslim sentiment (as if both must necessarily be the same). The only way they feel they can achieve this is to make the rest of us look just as stupid.

Janet also mentions the case of her neo-Con jihadist colleague Mark Steyn. A hysterically conspiratorial excerpt from his book was published in some Canadian magazine that sounds like a brand of toothpaste. What Albrechtson doesn’t mention is that the applicants are merely seeking orders that the toothpa ... woops ... magazine allow them room to respond. They aren’t suing Steyn, nor are they seeking compensation of any kind. But surely they’d have been better off to allow readers to have forgotten the Steyn piece and/or submit their own stuff.

Unfortunately Janet goes overboard, attacking a 2000 Administrative Decisions Tribunal decision made pursuant to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act. Janet surely must understand that racism hurts not just minorities. It is inherently irrational to incite hatred against people for something beyond their control – their colour, where they or their parents were born etc. Anti-racism legislation is backed up by at least 3 decades of bipartisan political consensus. In defending racism, Janet undermines the credibility of an otherwise sound argument.

Yes, free speech is a crucial element o democracy. So is the Rule of Law. You’d think a conservative would understand that.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: Jill Singer exposes Steyn's lies

Well, it seems you don’t have to be a left wing Jew or a right wing Muslim to find the “hate speech” (his words, not mine) of Canadian-born racist Mark Steyn disturbing.

Writing in the Herald-Sun, Wakely-award-winning journalist Jill Singer expressed her dismay (if not disgust) with Steyn’s attempts to demonise anyone deemed Muslim. And that was even after Steyn’s diatribe was “modified for ABC audiences”.

Steyn used the podium of Australian right-wing think tanks to spread a simple message. Singer sumarised that message as follows:

… that Islam has nothing to offer the world but destruction … In Steyn's world, Muslims are the legitimate target of jokes and calls for obliteration.

Alleged conservatives are lapping up this message of extreme intolerance. The CIS continues to triumphantly boast of the “sell-out” session at the Conservatorium earlier this month.

Of course, no one from the CIS or the IPA has publicly distanced themselves from Steyn’s anti-Muslim diatribe. Steyn’s offensive descriptions of the cultures and religions of Muslim Aussies doesn’t seem to have perturbed these alleged conservatives.

Yet why should the now-geriatric members of Australia’s old “New Right” regard Muslim-bashing as unacceptable? As Singer notes:

Predictably enough, Steyn was given a warm welcome by the Right on his highly publicised tour of Australia, including the likes of our PM, Treasurer and Foreign Minister.

One can only assume its because they like what he has to say, but are not game to say it themselves.

Perhaps most interesting was Singer’s exposure of blatant lies told by Steyn in his quest to generate maximum hatred toward anyone deemed Muslim.

… the reefer-jacketed school drop-out is not impeded by small matters, such as factual accuracy, when labouring to slag off at Muslims whenever possible.

An example: during our interview, he repeated something he had written about the Swedish city of Malmo, to the effect it was on the path to ruination because 40 per cent of its population was now Muslim. A listener texted in to say this figure was exaggerated. With eyes flashing, Steyn stuck to his guns.

Curious about his twitchy reaction, I later contacted Sweden's official statistics department to check his alleged source, which was a furphy.

Steyn's writings on Malmo's social problems (which need no exaggeration) also state that ambulance drivers refuse to go into many areas of the city because of the danger posed by Muslims.

His source for this appears to be a two-year-old report on Fox News, except where Fox reported Malmo's Muslim population at being 25 per cent, Steyn inflated it to 40 per
cent.

And where Fox reported that ambulance drivers would not go into some areas of Malmo without a police escort, Steyn changed it to many areas.

Imagine CIS staff explaining this to the Australian CEO of the National Australia Bank. Or perhaps them using this in their next funding or sponsorship from Crazy Johns.

And to think this sort of nonsense was being promoted at a “Big Ideas Forum”.

COMMENT: On Western culture and Steyn

In today’s Crikey alert, Christian Kerr wrote:

Give me western culture any day. Even if it is just Mark Steyn’s Song of the
Week.

I agree with him. Give me Western culture any day. I’d rather live north of the Sydney Harbour Bridge than in suburban Karachi. And I’m the first to criticise leaders of nominally Muslim states, local Muslim leaders, terrorist goons, imbecilic Muslim protestors, quiescent Muslims slow to condemn terrorism from among their ranks, Muslim societies that oppress women and local thick-Sheiks.

I also have no problems with respecting and even participating in non-Muslim religious events.

But it makes me sick in the stomach when I see allegedly conservative politicians and media suggest that preserving Western values and further the goals of national security means generating hatred toward and derision of anything even remotely related to my ethno-religious heritage.

And it makes me even sicker when Steyn speaks and writes that the best way to stop people converting to Islam is to convince them that it’s better and cooler to be Australian or Canadian or English or French than to be Muslim. As if you cannot be Muslim and Aussie or English at the same time.

Western culture is my culture, and doesn’t conflict with my religious heritage. If Steyn and his fellow travellers cannot accept the pluralism of Western culture, they should find another culture.

I respect and support what the CIS does, and I don’t expect them to always invite imams and Muslim apologists. But having Steyn on stage is as offensive to Muslims as having David Irving on stage would be to Jews. But to be fair, one of the CIS’s own senior scholars (Owen Harries) deftly demolished Steyn’s entire argument.

If the CIS are genuine about open and honest debate, they should at least enable an unedited transcript of the entire function to be made available to the public. Unedited. Leave all the ugly bits in. Including the altercation between Steyn and myself. Including the bits where Steyn gives advice on how to stop people converting to Islam. Including where Steyn describes Islam as an “apocalyptic” faith engulfing Europe, and that Islam cannot exist in a pluralistic society.

(And also leave unedited the brilliant surgical analysis of Owen Harries as well.)

Steyn aked me to look into my heart and ask who is committing the terrorist acts and why. I know who they are. And if Steyn could look into their hearts, he'd see that his rhetoric fills the bin-Ladins and Zawahiris with joy.

Steyn’s attempts to marginalise and demonise Muslims will only serve the interests of al-Qaida in the long run. Terrorist recruiters want ordinary Muslim citizens of Western countries to feel alienated, saying: “They hate you. They’ll never accept you. Come and join us”.

If I believed everything I read and hear from Mark Steyn reflects official government policy, I’d probably believe them. Steyn is doing al-Qaida’s work, whether he accepts it or not.