COMMENT: Race and religion ...

A number of people have responded to my piece published in The Age today by claiming that I have confused race and religion. The confusion seems to largely arise out of the beginning paragraphs:

In the early '90s, I was in the final stages of my university studies and had too much time on my hands. I started teaching Muslim scripture to year 1 and 2 kids at a south-west Sydney school. On my first day, the principal took me around to various classes to pick out the Muslim children for my class. We entered a year 1 classroom. The principal asked: ''Hands up, kids, if you are Muslim.''

A small, blonde girl put her hand up. The principal looked at her and said, ''But Jasmina, you don't look Muslim!'' The poor little girl started to cry.

It turned out the little girl's parents were from Sarajevo. Given the high rate of inter-marriage in her homeland, it is quite possible only one parent was Muslim in a Bosnian sense.

But what does it mean to be Muslim in a Bosnian sense?

Indeed. What does it mean to be Muslim in Bosnia? Is it the same as being Muslim in Malaysia? Or Indonesia? Or Lebanon? And which of the Bosnian women below aren't Muslim?



Some responses to my article included this ...

Islam is a religion not a race. Being Muslim is a choice.

... and this ...

You do realise, Irfan Yusuf, that Muslim is not a race. Neither is Christian. Do your bloody homework.

... and this ...

"What does it mean to be Muslim in a Bosnian sense?"
I guess it means that you come from Bosnia and practice Islam.
Not such a profound question, really.

Actually it is a very profound question. In Bosnia, there are basically three "nationalities". You are Serb, or you are Croat or you are Muslim. If you are not Serb or Croat, you are generally classed as a Muslim. It has little or nothing to do with what religion, if any, you practise.

To make matters more complicated, Bosnia is a country with a high rate of inter-marriage. So if a Muslim woman marries a Serb man, what are the kids considered to be?

This proved to be a huge issue during the Bosnian war of the mid-90's.

Then there is Malaysia, where the constitution seems to mix up being Malay with being Muslim. Except that Indian Muslims often don't get the same privileges as Malay Muslims.

Ethnicity and religion is often mixed up. Religion often is treated as more of a racial characteristic. One doesn't always have a choice.

One does, however, have a choice to have a good laugh at Daily Telegraph opinion editor Tim Blair and the Tea Partying wingnut brigade who congregated around his Daily Telegraph bog (no, that was not a typo). Here is Tim's latest attempt at analysis. Interestingly there is no reference to my physique as is so often the case. Perhaps Tim is finally entering adulthood.

UPDATE I: Why does Rupert Murdoch keep the likes of Bolt & Blair on the payroll? Serial fruitloop Glenn Beck might have the answer ...



"How does Rupert Murdoch keep me on the air ..."

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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CRIKEY: On the perils of vilification - the warped logic of banning al-Manar ...

There are many good arguments for and against allowing the Lebanese Hezbollah-run TV station al-Manar to be broadcast in Australia. One good reason not to allow al-Manar to be broadcast is the possibility that programs inciting racial hatred or racist violence could be broadcast.

Hence Colin Rubenstein, Executive Director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), pointed out in The Age last week that

[t]he station broadcast a 30-part series in 2003 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan based explicitly on the famous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The broadcast of myths about ethno-religious groups is hardly a good idea.

Yet sadly, just as Jews are vilified in Arab media, similarly persons of Arab and/or Middle Eastern heritage are vilified in Hollywood and in television. As Dr Jack Shaheen illustrated in his book and documentary Reel Bad Arabs, for over a century American movie goers have been subjected to a barrage of images portraying Arabs as violent, ruthless, savage, evil. He says:

Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. They are portrayed basically as sub-humans.

Such stereotypes are repeated in print. Last week Andrew Bolt wrote on his blog:

The rise of yet another Islamist terror group suggests there is something in Muslim or Arabic culture peculiarly susceptible to the call to violence … While false, there is yet a grain of truth in the maxim that while not every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist is a Muslim.

And today that same ignorant stereotype is repeated by Bren Carlill, an analyst at Colin Rubenstein’s organisation. Writing in The Australian, Carlill claims:

…while a majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists, the majority of terrorists are Muslim, an uncomfortable fact that shouldn’t be ignored for the sake of political correctness. It is rare to find a Muslim terrorist who acts only for a secular, nationalist cause.

Yes it is if you’re selective about whom you label terrorists.

Like all stereotypes, Carlill’s analysis doesn’t quite make sense. Most Muslims aren’t terrorists. Most terrorists are Muslim. Most Muslim terrorists are terrorists because they are Muslim. The logic is too warped to be even considered circular. And so we have one AIJAC person telling us that we should ban al-Manar for promoting ethno-religious stereotypes while another AIJAC person tells us we should ban al-Manar on the basis of an ethno-religious stereotype. Go figure.

First published in Crikey on Tuesday 11 August 2009.

OPINION: The fuss over the burqa is out of kilter ...

Sarkozy's focus on a tiny minority who cover up risks alienating most Muslims, writes Irfan Yusuf.

IN ABOUT six months, a cross-party French parliamentary committee of 32 MPs will prepare a report examining whether the wearing of the burqa (an outfit, usually black, that covers a woman's full body, including her face) in public represents a threat to French secularism. They'll also determine whether to ban it being worn in France.

The committee was formed after French President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed the French Parliament on June 22 and described the burqa as "a problem of liberty and women's dignity" and "not welcome in France".

Sarkozy further claimed that the burqa was not a religious symbol at all, but rather "a sign of subservience and debasement", which created "women prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity".

Of course, even if Sarkozy regarded the burqa as a religious symbol, he might still ban it. In the past, he hasn't been averse to banning the open display of religious symbols in French state schools.

Sarkozy was originally behind the push to proscribe the hijab (headscarf) from state schools, only to subsequently oppose specific legislation, introduced in 2004, which saw the wearing of all religious symbols in state schools prohibited.

Many French, and indeed many Australians, find the various shades of religious head covering adopted by Muslim women somewhat troublesome. Women draped in black represent one of the most potent stereotypes of Islam in the West, one reinforced by media images. When one Sydney Muslim man called for polygamy to be legalised, the Herald Sun website carried a photo of two burqa-clad women crossing the street. The website of its Sydney equivalent regularly carries photos of burqa-clad women in any story even mildly related to Muslims. On August 8, 2007, in a story on an investigation into a refugee housing project run by a main Muslim body, The Daily Telegraph showed the image of the top half of a fully veiled woman's face.

It's unclear exactly what proportion of Muslim women wear any sort of head covering when in public, though anecdotal evidence suggests only a minority do. Among those who cover, the vast majority seem to follow the religious consensus and restrict themselves to merely covering all or part of their hair. This can take the form of a more fixed hijab (as commonly worn in the Arab world and South-East Asia) or a loose shawl draped over the head (common in Iran and South Asia).

The vast majority of Muslims in France are from North Africa where the face veil is rarely worn. This naturally raises the question: with such a tiny minority wearing such a veil, why is Sarkozy using his precious time talking about this issue?

Sarkozy's remarks are reminiscent of former prime minister John Howard's frequent references to alleged non-integration of Muslim Australians. Yet in one radio interview Howard declared 99.9 per cent of Muslims were perfectly integrated. I wondered at the time whether his repeated emphasis on the 0.01 per cent non-integrated was little more than an attempt to create an environment where the 99.9 per cent were made to feel uncomfortable.

No women in my family cover their hair. However, my maternal grandfather, who lectured at the relatively liberal Aligarh Muslim University in India, insisted the women of his household practise a form of traditional aristocratic seclusion known as purdah. Though associated with Indian Islamic culture, purdah was also practised in many upper-class north Indian Hindu and Sikh households.

It was common in those days for wealthy women to go out shopping while seated in a special palanquin (called a dholi). This was basically a large, comfortable, box-like structure with plenty of cushions for aristocratic women to laze on while their male servants (or even male relatives) would carry them. The curtains around the box had a screen through which the women could peek and decide which shop they would visit.

Women's quarters in 1950s Aligarh homes were places where women enjoyed themselves, freed of any domestic duties, their husbands or fathers employing servants to perform all cooking and other chores. Men were expected to lavish gifts on their female relatives (and in-laws) using the household income, which women were usually responsible for managing (I'm sure to their own advantage). Men were also expected to do all the shopping for food and other household needs. Women only shopped to buy clothes, jewellery and other luxury items for themselves.

Of course, the situation for the aristocratic Indian woman in purdah was a far cry from impoverished women living in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Purdah did not stop my mother from completing high school and a bachelor's degree. The idea of banning women from education or work would be anathema to most Muslims, including the one in four of South Asian heritage.

France has the largest Muslim population of any country in Western Europe.

By focusing on a tiny minority of Muslim women, Sarkozy risks alienating the majority of French Muslims, including those who agree with his basic proposition that the burqa is offensive and degrading to women.

Irfan Yusuf is author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist, published by Allen & Unwin. This article was first published in The Age on Monday 6 July 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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PAKISTAN: Some comments on the recent Lahore blasts ...

Before I start, here are a few admissions.

I haven't been to Pakistan since 1994/95. During that trip, I travelled only to Karachi and Lahore. I speak Urdu (the national language of Pakistan) but I don't read it fluently and hence don't have access to Urdu-language Pakistani newspapers. I have access to three Pakistani satellite news channels, including the public=owned PTV and the private channels of Aaj and Geo TV. I have been following reports and updates on all three channels. Suffice it to say that all three have devoted their broadcasts to this latest example of what Urdu speakers call dehshat-gardi (spreading of terror i.e. terrorism).

Pakistan may describe itself as an Islamic republic, but the real religion which unites all Pakistanis is cricket. This is a cricket-mad country. I remember being in Pakistan when an overseas team was touring, and seeing crowded city streets become almost deserted and shops open but with shop keepers having their eyes glued to the TV sets.

During the early 1990's, one Pakistani mufti became a laughing stock after delivering a fatwa that cricket was haraam (forbidden under religious law). His reasons? He claimed people who watched cricket rarely took time out to perform their nemaaz (the worship Muslims are required to perform at five set times a day). And that Pakistani women would get excited by watching Pakistani bowlers like Imran Khan rub the ball in a certain place as he walked back to start his run-up.

Perhaps the shock of the Marriot Hotel blasts in Islamabad shocked people in the middle and upper classes. However, cricket is something Pakistanis of all classes enjoy. Cricket is played in both slums and on the turf pitches of posh Pakistani private schools. Cricketers, be they Pakistani or foreign, are like the revered saints of this secular religion. Umpires (except when they are deemed to have made the wrong decision) are like the high priests.

Here is an excerpt from a report in The Age:

At least eight people were killed and seven Sri Lankan cricketers were wounded when a masked gang armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and grenades attacked the team bus and its security escort in Lahore. Six of those who died in the attack were police officers ...

The attack happened about 9am local time as the team was heading to Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium for the third day's play in the second Test ...

Witnesses said Lahore's Liberty Square district, home to designer boutiques and offices, became a battlefield as gunmen hiding behind trees opened fire. Television footage showed the assailants running through the streets carrying machine-guns and with rucksacks on their backs. Some had reportedly arrived on auto-rickshaws.

Sri Lankan captain Mahela Jayawardene said the gunmen first shot at the tyres, then at the bus itself.

"We all dived to the floor to take cover," he said.

Most of the injuries to team members were minor, but Lahore police chief Haji Habibur Rehman said it could have been much worse — the attackers fired a rocket that missed the bus, then threw grenades underneath which failed to explode.

"The plan was apparently to kill the Sri Lankan team but the police came in the way," he said.

Australian freelance cameraman Tony Bennett said explosions and gunfire could be heard from the stadium.

"Next thing we knew, the Sri Lankan team bus rolls up being sprayed by bullets," he said.

Pakistani air force helicopters later evacuated the team, including two on stretchers, from the middle of the stadium. The players were to leave for Sri Lanka later on a specially chartered plane.

Last night, the gunmen remained at large, and no group had claimed responsibility.

India showed its sympathy for Pakistan as it faced yet another terrorist attack.

India denounced as "hopelessly inadequate" Pakistani security after the attack and cited Islamabad's failure to crush militant groups on its soil.

India, of course, has absolutely no problem with curbing extremism on its side of the border. It's not as if religious fanatics in India are threateneing minorities. And to suggest that architects of theocratic terror could be elected to the highest posts in the land is clearly wrong. Only partisan extremists like this person could make such claims.

(Then again, quite a few Pakistani pundits on the TV channels I saw were also saying that the Pakistani police and intelligence services had failed dismally in failing to protect the touring Sri Lankan cricket team. And indeed many Indian pundits severely criticised Indian police and intelligence for the Bombay attacks.)

Who is responsible? Muslim extremists? Tamil Tigers? The Governor of Punjab has already decided who is to blame. The Australian reports on Wednesday 4 March 2009:

Punjabi Governor Salman Tahseer said the 12 masked and heavily armed gunmen who attacked the cricket convoy as it approached the Gaddafi stadium were not ordinary terrorists, but highly trained.

While last night no group had claimed responsibility for the attack, Mr Tahseer said the terrorists appeared to follow the same modus operandi as the Mumbai gunmen, who have been linked to the Pakistani Islamic terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba.

"I want to say it's the same pattern, the same terrorists who attacked Mumbai," Mr Tahseer said.

Certainly Tahseer's claims point to the most likely explanation.

More to come.

UPDATE I: Already Sri Lankan Tamils are getting nervous at the possibility of Tamil Tigers' involvement in the Lahore attacks. Here is what Hamish McDonald, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, has picked up from discussions on Sri Lankan media websites:

Take this exchange on the popular website www.lankanewspapers.com within a few hours of the team being attacked in Lahore.

A posting by "Pacha" noted that Tamil star bowler Muttiah Muralitharan was not among the reported victims: "Murali not injured suld have known this attack before."

"Lankaputha" chimed in with a reference to alternate captain Tillakaratne Dilshan, a recent convert to the majority Buddhism from the island's Muslim minority: "Interesting … And not even Dilshan, a Muslim."

A bitter voice of dissent came from "Derorak": "Yea, go ahead, blame that lone Tamil. Man! The Sinhalese must blame everything on Tamil. That is the extent of anti Tamil hatred of Sinhala racism. Poor guy, Sinhalayass gonna kill him."

Given Sri Lanka's bitter history of ethnic-based warfare, it's little wonder minorities are becoming worried. McDonald continues:

After 25 years of civil war and 70,000 deaths, ethnic sensitivities are inflamed among Sri Lanka's 21 million people.

Should any evidence emerge that the Tigers carried out the Lahore attack, the potential for attacks by the Sinhalese majority against Sri Lanka's Tamils is very high. It was a virtual pogrom against them in 1983 that launched the civil war to create a separate Tamil homeland or Eelam in the island's north and north-east ...

... the attack also has the hallmarks and desperation of the Tigers' leader, Velupillai Pirapaharan, now pressed into a tiny pocket of the island's north-east jungles by a force of 50,000 government troops.

The attack would strike a final blow at hopes of President Mahinda Rajapaksa that a military victory will end the conflict. It would also punish Pakistan for providing the Colombo government with much of its army's powerful new weaponry.

Many Pakistanis are already saying the attack was the work of Muslim extremists. I'm sure many Tamils in Sri Lanka will be hoping and praying this is the case. I can hardly blame them. It's not easy being part of a minority community in a South Asian country.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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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


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COMMENT: Between free speech and hate speech ...

Some readers will recall the enormous fuss surrounding Michael Backman’s column in The Age column, which contained two questionable remarks:

*That, through its excesses against the Palestinians, Israel was responsible for inciting Muslims across the world to hate her;

*That the West suffered because of this through terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists; and

*That Israeli trekkers were all badly behaved in Nepal.

The first two claims, while dubious, were more political judgments than racist remarks. There was a fair bit of emotion-charged debate at the Crikey website, with media writer Margaret Simons insisting The Age had some explaining to do while other Crikey contributors denied Backman was anti-Semitic at all given Israeli newspapers print complaints about Israeli tourists.

The Australian ran hard on the story, its editorial asking whether editors at The Age shared Backman’s ...

... [u]ndergraduate, ill-informed nonsense.

It continued:

There is no evidence that Backman hates Jews, but people who do will endorse his arguments and continue to cloak their anti-Semitism in a faux concern for the Palestinians.

In the same vein, I cannot claim that Janet Albrechtsen’s recent claims on her blog that ...

... a significant distinguishing feature between Muslim countries and the West has been our belief in freedom of expression ...

... show that she hates Muslims per se, even if she refuses to distinguish between different Muslim-majority states.

(I myself have gone on record about the lack of freedoms citizens in most Arab states enjoy. However, I distinguished between Arab League states (who make up around 15% of the world’s Muslim population) and other states. I also don’t cast aspersions on all 1.2 billion, knowing that around one third live as minorities.)

But will Albrechtsen’s arguments, ostensibly defending a far-Right Dutch politician’s freedom to compare Muslim scriptures with Hitler’s autobiography, be endorsed by people who do hate Muslims and allow them to cloak their hatred in a faux concern for freedom of speech? Read the 7 pages of moderated comments and judge for yourself.

Or to use language Albrechtsen will no doubt appreciate, being the free speech crusader she is, should the rights of a far-Right Dutch MP to offend racial and religious minorities be deemed more important than that of a British columnist? Indeed, the big question in my mind is this: why didn’t Janet Albrechtsen raise her voice in defense of Michael Backman? I won’t bother holding my breath for an honest answer.

Writing in the New York Times on January 29, Dutch journalist Ian Buruma addresses the prosecution of far-Right MP Geert Wilders. He begins with this observation:

IF it were not for his hatred of Islam, Geert Wilders would have remained a provincial Dutch parliamentarian of little note.

(I can't help but wonder the same about Janet Albrechtsen, whose rise to fame was on the back of her rather creative use of the work of European academics.)

Buruma provides the context of the Wilders prosecution, something Albrechtsen finds impossible to do with an equal degree of clarity.

[Wilders] is now world-famous, mainly for wanting the Koran to be banned in his country, “like Mein Kampf is banned,” and for making a crude short film that depicted Islam as a terrorist faith — or, as he puts it, “that sick ideology of Allah and Muhammad.”

Last year the Dutch government decided that such views, though coarse, were an acceptable contribution to political debate. Yet last week an Amsterdam court decided that Mr. Wilders should be prosecuted for “insulting” and “spreading hatred” against Muslims. Dutch criminal law can be invoked against anyone who “deliberately insults people on the grounds of their race, religion, beliefs or sexual orientation.”

Buruma acknowledges that Wilders' supporters are not all far-Right fruitloops.

Whether Mr. Wilders has deliberately insulted Muslim people is for the judges to decide ... When the British Parliament refused to screen Mr. Wilders’s film at Westminster this week, he cited this as “yet more proof that Europe is losing its freedom.” His defenders, by no means all right-wingers, also claim to be standing up for freedom. A Dutch law professor said he found it “strange” that a man should be prosecuted for “criticizing a book.”

Buruma then identifies the method used by Wilders, and in doing so provides an effective and nuanced antidote to Albrechtsen's simplistic linear free-speech rant.

In a bewildering world of global economics, multinational institutions and mass migration, many people are anxious about losing their sense of place; they feel abandoned by their own elites. Right-wing populists like Geert Wilders are tapping into these fears.

Since raw nativism is out of fashion in the Netherlands, Mr. Wilders does not speak of race, but of freedom. His method is to expose the intolerance of Muslims by provoking them. If they react to his insults, he can claim that they are a threat to our native liberties. And if anyone should point out that deliberately giving offense to Muslims is neither the best way to lower social tensions nor to protect our freedoms, Mr. Wilders will denounce him as a typical cultural elitist collaborating with “Islamo-fascism.”

It is tempting to conclude (as Albrechtsen suggests) that Wilders is merely seekng to criticise a religious belief. Followers of that belief need not be afraid of that criticism. But is Wilders really just criticising a religious belief?

Comparing a book that billions hold sacred to Hitler’s murderous tract is more than an exercise in literary criticism; it suggests that those who believe in the Koran are like Nazis, and an all-out war against them would be justified. This kind of thinking, presumably, is what the Dutch law court is seeking to check.

One of the misconceptions that muddle the West’s debate over Islam and free speech is the idea that people should be totally free to insult. Free speech is never that absolute. Even — or perhaps especially — in America, where citizens are protected by the First Amendment, there are certain words and opinions that no civilized person would utter, and others that open the speaker to civil charges.

This does not mean that religious beliefs should be above criticism. And sometimes criticism will be taken as an insult where none is intended. In that case the critic should get the benefit of the doubt. Likening the Koran to “Mein Kampf” would not seem to fall into that category.

If Mr. Wilders were to confine his remarks to those Muslims who do harm freedom of speech by using violence against critics and apostates, he would have a valid point. This is indeed a serious problem, not just in the West, but especially in countries where Muslims are in the majority. Mr. Wilders, however, refuses to make such fine distinctions. He believes that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. His aim is to stop “the Islamic invasion of Holland.”

There are others who share this fear and speak of “Islamicization,” as though not just Holland but all Europe were in danger of being engulfed by fascism once again. Since Muslims still constitute a relatively small minority, and most are not extremists, this seems an exaggerated fear, even though the danger of Islamist violence must be taken seriously.

However, a closer look at the rhetoric of Mr. Wilders and his defenders shows that Muslims are not the only enemies in their sights. Equally dangerous are the people whom Mr. Wilders and others refer to obsessively as “the cultural elite.”

Yep, those blasted leftwing university-educated elites who can only be exposed by their exact opposite - rightwing edlites with doctorates in law who get appointed to the boards of national broadcasters.

So what do I think of the movie? Well, I'm still wondering what all the fuss is about. It's rather ordinary, dare I say "undergraduate" and somewhat "ill-informed". The responses of another bunch of Muslim "elites" can be viewed here, and you can also

My Dutch co-religionists didn't exactly feel threatened by the movie.

The lawsuit against Mr. Wilders has been hailed in the Netherlands as a good thing for democracy. I am not so sure. It makes him look more important than he should be. In fact, the response of Dutch Muslims to his film last year was exemplary: most said nothing at all. And when a small Dutch Muslim TV station offered to broadcast the film, after all other stations had refused, the grand champion of free speech resolutely turned the offer down.

I guess that's what happens when you aren't one of the elites.

Speaking of which, feel free to watch the movie here and judge for yourself. I doubt Janet Albrechtsen would have the guts to broadcast this freely-available YouTube clip on her elite blog.



Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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OPINION: Hit with the culture club ...

(This article was first published in ABC Unleashed on on 22 February 2008.)

Without meaning to sound like Forrest Gump (the character from a famous American movie of the same name who always popped up at important events), I managed to secure a place at the Coalition's campaign launch in early 1996. The event was held in the main auditorium of the Ryde Civic Centre located in a suburb locals call "Top Ryde".

Mr Howard's slogan for that campaign was "For All Of Us". As they walked into the auditorium to a standing ovation, John and Janette Howard were handed a bouquet of flowers by a South Asian woman in a sari.

Eleven years on, a fair few South Asian women attended polling booths across the Bennelong electorate to cast their vote for ALP candidate Maxine McKew. Here's part of what I wrote about this in Crikey soon after the November 2007 poll:

...the treatment of Dr Mohamed Haneef by the Immigration Minister also went down like a lead balloon among shoppers at any one of Bennelong's many Indian spice shops. Middle class Indians aren't exactly huge ALP fans. But they certainly aren't fond of alleged conservatives who play the politics of race.

The misuse (if not abuse) of executive powers by Howard government ministers to play dog whistle politics was now blowing up in the PM's face and in his own backyard.

Howard's campaign slogan "For All Of Us" should also be the policy behind national security and counter-terrorism efforts.

The fact is that the bombs of terrorists do not discriminate on the grounds of race, colour or religion. No one has yet invented a bomb which only kills alleged infidels. One of the victims of the July 2005 London bombings was a young bank clerk whose surname was Islam.

But when the agencies in charge of national security become politicised, the security of all of us is compromised. Politicians who turn national security into an ideological, cultural and/or political football are potentially harming all of us.

Writing in NewMatilda.com, former ASIS officer Warren Reed mentions the humiliation of AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty after his ...

... reasonable statement ... soon after the Madrid train bombings, that having troops in Iraq made Australia a greater terrorist target.

On that occasion, Howard forced Keelty to effectively retract his statement and support the Iraq war. Meanwhile, Downer suggested Keelty was providing propaganda services for al-Qaeda.

Reed also cites reports that by the end of December 2007, the investigation of Dr Mohammed Haneef cost taxpayers at least $7.5 million. This estimate was provided by Keelty to a hearing of the Senate estimates hearing in Canberra on 18 February 2008.

This is only the figure for investigations. It does not include the time involved for staff of the Department of Immigration & Citizenship (DIAC) in dealing with the various appeals to former Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews' decision to revoke Dr Haneef's visa after a Brisbane Magistrate granted him bail. It also doesn't include court time and legal fees of the Department, all of which we taxpayers pay. In fact, on media monitoring of the case alone, Andrews spent a cool $130,000 of our money.

The Full Federal Court eventually ruled that the then Immigration Minister had exceeded his powers in canceling Dr Haneef's visa. Andrews was found to have cancelled Haneef's visa on the basis of an incorrect application of a legislative test allowing him to cancel someone's visa because of their association with someone who has allegedly engaged in criminal activity.

Returning to the AFP investigation. Notwithstanding the time (including $1.3 million in overtime) spent by AFP officers on the investigation, one can only wonder how much time and money would have been saved had AFP officers and investigators been provided with some basic cross-cultural training. No, I'm not talking about politically correct cultural sensitivity training. I'm talking about something much more basic than that.

Sushi Das, a columnist for The Age, wrote last July about how much investigation time was wasted because ...

... the police did not recognise the cultural and social signposts that would normally be apparent to people from the same culture talking to one another ... Haneef's police interview illustrates the strains imposed when East meets West and both try to understand each other but barriers of accent, language, cultural norms and value systems stand in the way.

After canceling Haneef's visa, Andrews released a selection of some of the evidence he took into account. It included a conversation between Haneef and his brother in the UK that allegedly showed he had advance knowledge of the UK bombings that allegedly involved other relatives.

Those conversations took place in Urdu, a language in which I can claim some fluency. At the very least, I know such a language exists. Compare that to the police interviews, where this prominent North Indian dialect (and an official language of Pakistan) is rendered as "Udo" in the first police interview and "Burdu" in the second interview.

The entire Haneef affair will be the subject of a judicial inquiry which will investigate why Dr Haneef was wrongly charged with terrorism offences. We should all hope that the inquiry also focuses on the highly politicised statements and decisions made by the relevant Ministers of the Howard government, many of which left us too alarmed to be alert and which certainly didn't make us any more secure.

OPINION: The great faction fiction ...

The "war of the civilisations" is nothing more than a troublesome myth.

INFLUENTIAL Harvard University politics professor Samuel Huntington, who died on Christmas Eve, is best known for his theory that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War meant future international conflict would no longer be between competing superpowers or economic ideologies but between groups of nations belonging to one of eight civilisations based loosely on culture and religion.

The principle clash would involve three civilisations — Western (the US and Europe), Confucian (based around China) and Islamic.

Huntington's thesis appeared in a journal in 1993. Since the terrorism attacks of September 11, 2001, the theory has been co-opted by extremists seeking to impose their violent sectarian prejudices on the rest of us. The intricacies and nuances of his theory have been replaced by incoherent rants.

Tabloid columnists from New York to Sydney cite Huntington in support of the ridiculous notion that Europe will necessarily become "Eurabia". Their equivalents in Karachi and Jakarta impose Osama bin Laden's logic on Huntington when writing about the existence of a "grand crusader and Jewish conspiracy against Islam".

Huntington's original voice has become the distorted echo of cultural jihad. The reality is much more complex. It is impossible to divide people into neat categories of "Muslim" or "Western" or "Sinic" (Chinese). When visiting a mosque, I'm happy to join my brothers — and, in some Australian cases, sisters — praying towards Mecca. But I would rather learn my theology from American imams at the Zaytuna Institute in California than from the Saudi religious establishment. I also understand that not everyone who listens to the same music I have on my iPod necessarily supports Western hegemony.

Those of us sitting on the civilisational fence are often in a better position to view the terrain on both sides. Perhaps the most eloquent rebuttal of Huntington's thesis (or at least its remaining echo) was written in 2004 by the man soon to be inaugurated as the next US president.

In the preface to the most recent edition of his memoir Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama writes about how ...

... the world fractured ...

... on September 11, 2001. The conventional wisdom in 2004 surely must have seen September 11 as part of a grand war between the allegedly monolithic Islam and the allegedly monolithic West.

But Obama didn't see the hijackers as representing any religious culture, let alone the Kenyan and Indonesian Islamic cultures he had been exposed to. Instead he wrote of

... the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still.

Terror is ultimately nihilist, not religious or cultural.

So where is the real clash? Obama says it is between

... those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty towards those not like us.

Extremists on both sides find pluralism almost impossible to deal with.

Then again, we all have the capacity to generalise. As I read Obama's introduction, I found it almost impossible to believe that a man who so boldly challenged the political orthodoxy of his day could within three years have won such a huge electoral victory. Perhaps I was wrong to assume America to be full of narrow-minded bigots, a people reluctant to vote for a man with Hussein as his middle name.

Much of the crude analysis emerging from Western observers of the November terrorist attacks on Mumbai reflected a similar tendency to generalise. The attacks were seen as another manifestation of some kind of monolithic "Islamic terrorism" against Hindus. Did our local "experts" bother reading Indian newspapers? Were they not aware that Hemant Karkare, the anti-terrorist squad chief in Maharashtra state gunned down with two colleagues by the terrorists, had earlier received death threats from followers of the Hindutva extremism that inspired Mahatma Gandhi's assassins.

Karkare, himself a Hindu, had earlier launched an investigation into a Hindutva cell, uncovering evidence that implicated key supporters of pro-Hindutva opposition parties and even senior figures of India's military. The Times of India on November 27 quoted one anti-terrorist squad official saying this cell "wanted to make India like what it was when it was ruled by the Aryans".

Suketu Mehta writes in Maximum City: Bombay Lost And Found, that religion in the city was treated as ...

... merely a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle.

India, like America, has what Obama calls "teeming colliding irksome pluralism".

India is also the world's largest democracy and its second most populous nation. Its recent history has shown that the most dangerous clash isn't between mythical civilisation monoliths. Rather, it is within nation states, between those who embrace pluralism, recognising it can only work with some basic shared values, and those who want to impose their narrow values on their countrymen and women.

Neither the West nor Islam can be seen as a cultural monolith. Those of us sitting on the fence should never have to choose between one or the other.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer whose book proposal Once Were Radicals won the 2007 Allen & Unwin Iremonger Award for public issues writing. This piece was first published in The Age on Monday 5 January 2008.

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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CRIKEY: Shame - the secret behind Amrozi's smile ...

I never realised just how much ordinary Indonesians hated the Bali bombers until I actually went there. It was January 2006, and I was on an exchange program organised by the Australia-Indonesia Institute. Before going, the AII gave is a briefing about Indonesia, its history, politics and its unique approach to religiosity. Indonesians are gentle, polite and quiet-spoken people.

Our delegation was further briefed in Jakarta by an awesome professional at the Embassy. We were advised to tome down our Aussie-style polemic. Apart from the odd dingo cartoon, Indonesians rarely engage in blunt or deliberately controversial discourse, let alone the sort of crass moronic ad hominem nonsense we've become accustomed to in this country.

During our trip, we were exposed to every kind of Indonesian Islam you could imagine -- from firebrand charismatic Salafis to ecumenical interfaith activists of Interfidei to youth reps of Muhammadiyah and Nahdhatul Ulama (Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisations) to students at a traditional pesantren (the kind of religious boarding school Barack Obama never attended outside Jakarta.

At the Gadjah Mada University in Jogjakarta, I met a Balinese postgrad doing his thesis on the impact of the Bali bombings on the economy of not just Bali but also nearby islands and even eastern and central Java, the island that forms Indonesia’s economic and cultural powerhouse. A year later in Sydney, I met another Balinese chap in Australia visiting on an AII exchange program. Both told me about how their families and communities had suffered thanks to the terrorist attacks in Bali, not to mention how so many locals as well as foreigners were killed and wounded.

(This fellow requested me to take him to Cronulla Beach. I assumed it was to see the scene of the 2005 race riots. It was only when I saw him reciting traditional Muslim prayers reserved for one’s deceased relatives at the memorial for Bali victims that I realised why he really wanted to be there.)

Mentioning Amrozi and other Bali bombers exhibits the kind of uncharacteristically brutal response I was told Indonesians only rarely exhibit. If more Australians understood just how unpopular the Bali bombers are in their own country and just how many ordinary Indonesians’ livelihoods have been destroyed, we would understand exactly why Amrozi smiles so much.

When Indonesians smile or chuckle, it’s often because they are embarrassed or ashamed about something they’ve said or done. Amrozi’s smile, referred to in today’s Age, is more likely one of shame or embarrassment. Notwithstanding his defiant words, Amrozi knows millions of Indonesians are looking forward to his execution. The bombs of Amrozi and Imam Samudra don’t discriminate on the basis of religion, even if their sick demented political theology does.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for 2 October 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

UPDATE: More of my tendentious writing ...

A certain tabloid columnist recently described my writing as tendentious. According to the AskOxford website, the word "tendentious" means: "calculated to promote a particular cause or point of view" The bulk of what I write is opinion and review. So obviously I do promote a point of view. As for whether I promote a cause, I wonder what possible objection the tabloid columnist in question would have to the causes promoted here, here, here and here.

Anyway, here is some of the stuff I've written recently ...


The events in Islamabad shook all of us. The disgusting and cowardly attacks against civilians brought home yet again the fact that terrorism affects all people regardless of background, ethnicity and faith. My take on these dastardly acts appeared in The Age here, as well as on the Brisbane Times website here.
The New Zealand Herald published this piece I wrote about Western silence on the continued attacks by (pseudo-)Hindu militants against Indian Christians.


A recent piece I wrote for Crikey on the documentary Embedded With Sheikh Hilaly broadcast on SBS on 23 September 2008 appears here.

UPDATE I: In relation to The Age article, I received correspondence from Professor William Shepard, who taught religious studies at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Professor Shepard is fluent in written and spoken Arabic (both classical and modern) and is regarded as a world authority on the work of Syed Qutb. Here is what Professor Shepard said ...

Good article, but let me point out that Ramadan is not one of the "sacred months" when there is to be no fighting. I believe they are Dhu-Qa‘da, Dhul-Hijja, Muharram and Rajab. I might add that it is not only the "post-modern left" have hijacked terrorism studies but also the neo-conservative right.

Thanks to Professor Shepard for his correction and comment.

UPDATE II: A Kiwi chap named Bill wrote this response to my NZ Herald article ...

I have just read the article by Irfan Yusuf your associate editor in the NZ Herald 22/8/08. May I congratulate him for his courage and honesty. I have never seen an article in a New Zealand paper criticizing Hindu and Muslim extremist and government actions against Christian minorities in Asia (especially those who have changed or wish to change their religion). It blew me away! Our politicians and Western media are too secular, anti-Christian and self-interested as well as being scared of the political and trade consequences. Coming from Mr Yusuf they carry great weight and are overdue.

I have often thought of contacting our government or some authorities in Asia over this long standing tragedy but have been warned off as it might put local Christians in danger from Islamic and Hindu government security police who constantly harass them or from violent religious extremists. If your protest is taken to heart it will go a long way to right a wrong and convince us that Islam's claim to be a peace loving and tolerant religion isn't just words. However I'm afraid I won't be holding my breath waiting as it has been allowed to become so ingrained and widespread.

Well done! I respect you for your stand for what is right.

Yes, tendentious writing indeed!

UPDATE III: In relation to the Crikey piece, one chap named Tony had this response on the Crikey website ...

The Hilaly 'documentary' was an exercise in opportunism which didn't work for either the sheikh or the interviewer because both were so clearly inept in the art of ingenuous communication. What positive outcome this show could possibly have delivered remains a mystery, as does the steady decline of the SBS ethos to report intelligently on our multicultural society. I can hear dopes prattle incomprehensibly any day of the week. Both these clowns should retire.

I guess all this controversy about the program will do wonders for the ratings. Once again, SBS will be laughing all the way to the bank! Given their positive nett contribution to television in Australia, good luck to them.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: On ACMA, al-Manar TV and the search for consistent treatment of all forms of racism ...

I know this won’t make me very popular in some circles. But when it comes to combating racism and sectarian prejudice in broadcasting, could we have some consistency please?

The Age has reported here and here about attempts by ACMA to stop the broadcast of the al-Manar TV channel apparently linked to the Lebanese political party Hezbollah, whose military arm has been designated a terrorist organisation.

Some are unhappy because ...

... Al-Manar's political talk shows feature guests from terrorist organisations.

Well, so do many mainstream Western TV stations. Is it wrong for us to understand the rhetoric of those we are fighting?

It’s also a problem that al-Manar is ...

... fiercely anti-Israel and anti-US... and often broadcasts the final messages of suicide bombers.

Well there are plenty of Israeli media outlets that could be deemed anti-Israel. And how often do we see Western media outlets also broadcasting excerpts from the televised wills of suicide bombers?

Australia-Israel Review editor Tzvi Fleischer complains that al-Manar ...

... is very anti-Semitic, with some very nasty stuff.

That may well be true. But some of the speakers the Review publishes host also engage in quite extreme diatribe against other semitic groups and faiths. Speakers like Daniel "don’t-vote-for-Obama-because-he’s-Muslim" Pipes and the rather nutty Melanie Phillips.

Then there are the good folk from the Anti-Defamation Commission whose chair quite legitimately complains of al-Manar ...

... inciting violence and hatred.

Unfortunately, their former CEO has been inciting some unfortunate attitudes here, as well as attempting to defend a rather nasty Israeli professor.

And some of Roland Jabbour’s soundbites on behalf of the Australian Arabic Council aren’t too helpful. The Age reports Jabbour as arguing that:

... he would not call Jews the offspring of apes and pigs, but that in the context of "the crimes of the state of Israel" it was reasonable for al-Manar to do so and to portray Israeli rabbis as killing Christian children to use their blood in Passover meals.

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter what Israel does to Palestinians or Lebanese of various faiths. Repeating this kind of racist trash is never acceptable discourse because it offends even Jews that have about as much support for Israel as Robert Fisk. It is also deeply offensive to many Muslims, including ones that certain people at The Australian love painting as extremist.

Finally, I hope ACMA isn’t bullied and threatened by Hezbollah supporters in the same manner as it was by certain bigoted broadcasters and their often equally bigoted parliamentary patrons.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Friday 22 August 2008.