CULTURE WARS: Is small-minded bigotry how we honour the Diggers? Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s tsunami in a teacup

This concocted mass debate, like those before it and those to come, shows that we, as a nation, have no bloody idea about our values.

Late on the night of Anzac Day 2015, Malcolm Turnbull (then communications minister) contacted the head of SBS to complain about five tweets sent by a sports reporter that allegedly showed grave disrespect to those commemorating the sacrifices and memory of the Diggers.

The tweets referred to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mention was also made of Diggers engaging in rape, torture, summary killings and theft in such far-flung places as the Middle East and east Asia. No Diggers were consulted when Scott McIntyre, the journalist in question, was sacked the following day. Nor were any academic historians, such as Professor Phillip Dwyer of the University of Newcastle.

McIntyre brought an unfair dismissal claim against SBS, which was eventually settled following a hearing in the Federal Court. McIntyre used his SBS Twitter account to send the allegedly offensive tweets. That isn’t the case with the latest “controversy” surrounding Yassmin Abdel-Magied.

If you were to rely merely on the headlines and the remarks of a Tasmanian Liberal senator related to a Nazi war criminal, you would think Abdel-Magied had issued a series of tweets from an ABC account describing the Diggers as rapists and murderers. Well, not quite. Here are her words:

LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)

The “unfortunate and disrespectful … cheap political point scoring” can be found between the brackets. The words first appeared on Abdel-Magied’s Facebook page and were subsequently removed and an apology issued.

Storm in a teacup? More like a tsunami in a teacup, if you ask me. All the major newspapers and media outlets jumped on the story, including Fairfax and The Australian, whose report began predictably with “Muslim activist …”. The Daily Telegraph described her as someone

... who labels herself ‘first and foremost … Muslim’.

Gosh, what else was Yassmin hiding among those three dots?

According to The Oz, Abdel-Magied issued the apology

... as people began to complain she had hijacked the Anzac memory for political and religious reasons.

Apparently, personal and racist abuse and calling upon someone to leave the country is a form of legitimate complaint. Which makes sense, really, as the 1130-plus moderated comments to The Oz story included this gem of complaint:

If she continues her Islamic ABC style left – wing rubbish then suggest she go back to an Islamic middle East blood bath ! Sharia law has NO place within Australian democratic society !

And this:

It seems to me that this woman doesn’t like the culture that was in Australia when she arrived from another whose culture she also didn’t like, hence, she’s here. Personally, I think she should go back to from whence she came. Maybe her whingeing would be of more effect in her old country.

And this:

For someone who arrived her as a two year old, people have a classic example of Islam at its best. Indoctrination is the order of the day Australians should be afraid, very afraid.

Other comments spoke of Abdel-Magied’s status as a member of a minority

YOU ARE A MINORITY, AND NEVER FORGET IT. IF YOU SERIOUSLY THINK YOU AND YOUR MUSLIM BROTHER/SISTERHOOD WILL TAKE OVER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE …

and why her kind should go back to wherever. The pollies will deny it, but we all know they see such sentiments as those of a key demographic.

It would be nice to dwell on the offensive, bracketed words except that there are just too few words to analyse. I will note in passing that Palestine isn’t exactly an Islamic issue. Israel’s nasty wall passes through numerous Christian settlements, among them the birthplace of Jesus. As for Syria, there are Syrian Muslims who support the Assad regime and Syrian Christians who oppose it. And vice versa. 

This concocted mass debate, like those before it and those to come (Newspoll-permitting), shows that we, as a nation, have no bloody idea about our values. Indeed, those who beat their chests the most tend to know the least. The irony of the most nationalistic papers is that they are almost exclusively owned by a man who gave up his Australian citizenship to become an American. Did he, by doing so, increase the average IQ of both our respective nations? Who knows?

I’ve heard stories about Diggers at Gallipoli who refused to shoot at Turkish troops engaged in nemaz (ritual prayer). Perhaps relatives of these Turks are now settled in Australia. Would it be an insult to the memory of our Diggers to suggest we can learn from them something of how to respect other people’s religious cultures? Or must small-mindedness, bigotry and stupidity be the only way to honour our war dead?

First published in Crikey on 26 April 2017

CULTURE WARS: Has political correctness failed?

Chris Kenny thinks that political correctness has failed "the mainstream"-- but what on earth does this actually mean?

Last night was cheapskate Tuesday. I could have seen a politically correct Hollywood movie for half-price — particularly one starring some pathetic left-wing, anti-Trump, pro-Muslim heart-throb. Instead, I headed to Sydney Town Hall for a mass debate on the topic of whether political correctness (PC) had failed itself.

The debate was hosted by the Ethics Centre. As is often the case with mass debates, few debaters stuck strictly to the topic — but, Chris Kenny did. Kenny was introduced by the chair as the associate editor of “a conservative newspaper” — a strange description for a paper whose editorial writers and columnists often spout ideas on cultural matters more appropriate to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

As the first speaker in the affirmative, Kenny said PC had failed itself. Other speakers focused on how PC had (or hadn’t) failed their community or interests or whatever. But now I’m starting to sound like a high school debating adjudicator, so I’ll stop with this line of interrogation.

Kenny argued PC had become self-defeating, largely because it was no longer based on facts, and therefore led to actions and conclusions that were all out of proportion. The Oz‘s associate editor said that, during the Martin Place siege, the New South Wales police (thanks to PC considerations) gave more priority to shielding Muslims from discrimination, than attacking Man Monis’ “terrorist attack”. Kenny described Man Monis as a “jihadist cleric”.

As I’ve written before, Man Monis was more of a fake sheik than a real one. And while it is true that one expert (presumably a psychiatrist) gave evidence at the inquest on Man Monis’ mental state, describing him as a terrorist — there was hardly consensus on the issue. Under Australian law, it isn’t enough for someone’s actions to terrorise their victims to designate them “terrorist acts”. There has to be political, ideological or religious motive. Were this not the case, thousands of perpetrators of domestic violence would be prosecuted under counter-terror laws. (Kenny also speaks of PC attitudes toward border protection and mentions the existence of a “queue” for refugees. What queue? There is none).

Kenny’s most potent argument — that PC is an invention of the political class, which has divorced them from the “mainstream” — again makes little sense. As first negative speaker, Mikey Robins, noted, Kenny and so many of those going on and on about PC are themselves part of the political class. Indeed, if PC has failed, why do conservatives feel the need to constantly protect us from it? Kenny noted the irony that PC started out not as a conservative insult of the left, but rather, as a self-mocking phrase between different sections of the left. Kenny and his allies may allege PC to be McCarthyist, but Joe McCarthy wasn’t exactly a card-carrying communist.

Without meaning to sound PC in a sexist sort of way, the ladies were the stand-out debaters of the night — starting with second affirmative Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Warlpiri/Celtic Alice Springs councillor, as well as singer and advocate against domestic violence. She resents the fact that PC practitioners keep telling her and her people what they should call themselves. In her neck of the woods, the lack of PC is an indication that people (both black and white) don’t take themselves too seriously. And this is because they have more serious fish to fry.

Price says that PC is like racism — both are based on untruths and stereotypes. PC means that indigenous people, especially women, find it hard to speak about violence from black family members and community folk. In this case, PC can be deadly. As for white racism, Price says she would rather know who the racists are so she can face them head on.

The final speaker was second negative, Tasneem Chopra. (Disclaimer: I’ve known Tasneem since 1985. Also, I’ve always called her Tasneem and that won’t stop here. Of course, that doesn’t mean I agree with Tasneem on everything).

Tasneem says that for many urban women from “ethnic” backgrounds, PC is all they have to protect them from discrimination. PC exposes privilege and bias.

It allows us to call out bigotry, to stand up to dominant voices.

Tasneem called upon Kenny (or Chris, to be fair) to share his experiences of racism.

If you feel the need to be violent or racist, to threaten rape or other assault, your politics is incorrect.

With this youngish and largely female crowd, the negative side were always going to win the debate. OK, that wasn’t very PC.

First published in Crikey on 29 May 2017.

CULTURE WARS: The Australian declares war on Yassmin Abdel-Magied, misses the point again

For some reason, Caroline Overington, in her attacks on Yassmin Abdel-Magied in The Australian, cannot seem to understand this whole idea of soft diplomacy.

 

In 2008, I went to an event at Gleebooks, an independent bookshop in Sydney’s inner west. The British Council and High Commission was putting on a do for a visiting author of conservative bent. The book was, in parts, entertaining but also included some rather sexist material. (Toward the end of the book, the author wrote about a female friend of his and made specific mention of the size of her posterior growing larger since the last time he saw her.) Still, that didn’t stop the British taxpayer from forking out some dosh, just as they would do for any author or performer or artist whose work suits their soft diplomacy interests. In the case of the present author, perhaps the book suited some “deradicalisation of young Muslims” purpose.

DFAT and Australian embassies do the same. As with all activities of DFAT, it all comes out of our pocket. Soft diplomacy, soft power, person-to-person contact, whatever you wish to call it. Australian artists and writers visit various places to collaborate with overseas artists via a host of programs run by universities as well as DFAT sections such as the Australia Indonesia Institute. Now I am no sycophant of Indonesia, especially when it comes to the treatment of Christian politicians like Ahok. But I learned a hell of a lot about the religious cultures and civil society organisations of our closest Muslim-majority neighbour when I visited Indonesia on a DFAT-funded junket in January 2006. As did the five other Australians who joined me.

So why am I saying all this? Because, for some reason, Caroline Overington of The Australian cannot seem to understand this whole idea of soft diplomacy. After a robust shouting match on Q&A over sharia between engineer Yassmin Abdel-Magied and independent Senator Jacqui Lambie on Monday evening, Overington decided on Thursday to run a front-page “scoop” headlined “Taxpayers billed for Q&A activist’s grand tour of Islamic regimes“.

A terrific culture-war story for The Australian‘s diminishing readership. It has all the ingredients: the wretched Q&A, the nasty ABC, the satanic Tony Jones and the nasty religion whose adherents make up a frightening 25% of humanity. But seriously, reading the story made me wonder what all the fuss was about. It was hardly a scoop. Overington herself notes that the not-so-grant tour was promoted “last November”. That’s three months ago.

Overington is especially upset about the fact that Abdel-Magied visited these nasty brutal regimes while claiming on Q&A that she saw Islam as “the most feminist religion”. Now, I’m no women’s activist, but I felt a bit perturbed about Abdel-Magied’s claim. True, in an ideal Islamic world, things might work out well for the Muslim ladies. But in reality, most Middle Eastern women aren’t enjoying the freedoms that Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Jacqui Lambie and Caroline Overington do here.

But it was almost as if Overington were arguing that someone with Abdel-Magied’s beliefs should not be sent by DFAT. What kind of woman should they send, then? Kirralie whatserface from the Q Society? Janet Albrechtsen? Andrew Bolt?

Overington discusses at length the awful treatment of women in the countries Abdel-Magied visited. This is all public knowledge, and Overington may ask herself why Abdel-Magied, her family, my mum, my siblings, me, my nephew and my nephew’s dog refuse to live in any of these places.

Still, the fact remains that we have to have relations with these nations. Overington’s employer was once partly owned by a Saudi prince. A fair few Australians do business with these places. Our food exports help shore up food security in the region, despite our insistence on fighting unpopular wars there, and pursuing a foreign policy that is despised across the region.

These nations also need to feel secure that not all Australian kids are ready to join Islamic State. Yes, the entire Middle East despises IS. Does sending a smart young lady in her mid-20s who works as an engineer on an oil rig to talk up Australia’s treatment of its Arabs/Sudanese/Egyptians/Muslims make sense? Clearly DFAT thought so. As DFAT told Overington:

Yassmin Abdel-Magied­ visited a number of countries in the Middle East to promote Australia as an open, innovative, democratic and diverse nation. She met youth representatives, scientists, entrepreneurs, women’s groups and others.

Soft diplomacy is money well spent. Perhaps Overington could learn some herself.

First published in Crikey on 17 February 2017.

DIVERSITY: News Corp gumshoe Sharri Markson does serious jernalisms on toddlers’ hair

News Corp senior writer Sharri Markson has whipped up a brand new scare campaign against Muslims based on the practice of toddlers wearing hijabs.

Ramadan is the month of spiritual miracles. This year, it was especially miraculous in Australia as the imams managed to get their act together and declare that the lunar month would end on the same day. Normally, the month begins and ends on separate days, depending on your mosque. For example, the mosque serving your ethnicity (assuming you have a single ethnicity, which has its own mosque) could determine Ramadan by resorting to a calendar, or it could do it by sighting the moon with the naked eye.

Still, it’s not every day that you see 50,000 Muslims performing their Eid prayers on Haldon Street, Lakemba. Mostly these are the people who don’t turn up to the mosque at any other time of year. This year, The Australian sent its senior writer Sharri Markson to cover the event. In one report, she advised that

... toddlers have begun wearing the hijab as Australian Muslims follow a global trend of younger children covering their hair. 

Did you read that, punters? A global trend. That’s a bold claim to make. To establish such a trend, you’d need to do a huge quantitative and qualitative study across not just the 180-plus ethnicities that make up Australian Muslims but also Muslims across the planet, including the 20%-plus of Muslims living as minorities in everywhere from India to Taiwan to our cousins across the dutch.

Did Markson ask some women about this? There were 50,000 people there, and my guess is at least one-quarter would have been women. On unfairly conservative estimates, perhaps half would have spoken English as their first language. So Markson could have asked any one of 6250 women and girls.

She might well have, but not one is quoted in her story. She might have gone to any number of mosques in Sydney catering for other ethnic groups, including groups where women only cover their hair during the actual prayer time and/or when listening to the scripture being recited, not just for an hour or so after emerging from the mosque. She might have joined my parents at the Urdu-speaking mosque in Rooty Hill and sat with my mum and all the other south Asian women with their hair loose draped with translucent “dupatta“, which would quickly be removed as soon as the prayer was over. 

But why would you do that when you can speak to Keysar Trad, a controversial imam and the former president of a peak body with a bombastic name? Interestingly, none of her sources confirmed Markson’s claim that Muslim toddlers and girls across the world are increasingly covering their hair. 

In her other article, Markson was most disappointed that NSW Premier Mike Baird

... failed to condemn the community leader’s inflammatory remarks. 

And what were the inflammatory remarks of the President of the Lebanese Muslim Association? Muslims felt under siege from Muslim-phobic politicians, felt vulnerable to bigotry and hatred and were subject to

... divisive and toxic policy decisions. 

Gosh, how inflammatory can you get!

And worse still,

... [n]one addressed the issue of radicalisation, focusing instead on Islamophobia and racism. 

Terrible. You’d think a Muslim leader would use the occasion of Eid to read out Andrew Bolt columns.

Being the awesome investigative reporter that she is, Markson wasn’t content:

“Mr Baird refused to condemn Mr Dandan’s remarks when contacted after the ceremony. ‘There were a number of other speakers but the Premier won’t be doing any commentary on their contributions,’ his spokesman said. 

Asked why he spoke about ­racial vilification towards the Muslim community but did not use the opportunity in front of 40,000 people to discuss radicalisation or terrorism, Mr Baird’s spokesman said ‘there were many subjects the Premier did not mention in his remarks, which occupied less than three minutes’.”

Seriously, one of the toddlers in a hijab or dupatta could have told Markson that.

First published in Crikey on 8 July 2016.

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.

CULTURE WARS: The real reason so many conservatives are suddenly standing up for the queer community

They fought it for years. Until they realised it could be leveraged to malign an even greater foe.

Last week the Prime Minister hosted a dinner for a bunch of Muslims at Kirribilli House. I didn’t get an invite. But I do know a fair few people who did go, as they plastered their Facebook walls with photos of them sitting and standing with the PM.

Now I’m glad I didn’t get an invite. Since the dinner, News Corp papers have been picking off the names of a host of invitees, linking them to something that might be linked to something that might be linked to some event overseas.

Overnight, columnists for The Australian, Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph etc have suddenly discovered the evils of homophobia. Why? Because somehow they feel the urge to link the PM hosting a Ramadan Iftar dinner to Omar Mateen, the security guard who shot dead 50 people in an Orlando gay night club.

But reading through the reports and op-eds leads me to wonder whether the ideological crime of homophobic Muslims is that they are treading on the territory that should be reserved for Australian conservatives.

Imams are being accused of spreading teachings on the evils of homosexuality that you can regularly hear if you attend a service of Fred Nile, Rise Up Australia’s Danny Nalliah or some other clergyman with whom the Coalition regularly shares preferences and who is defended by Peter Costello or Andrew Bolt. Or if you attend the kinds of conferences that Tony Abbott attends or Kevin Andrews almost attended.

Then the Oz lambastes a Sydney psychologist who signed a recent press release supporting LGBTI communities. The Oz effectively denounces her as a hypocrite for backing LGBTI people now. Hanan Dover is a controversial figure in Muslim circles — at best. It is true that she did once promote “gay conversion” therapies, something very dangerous for a practitioner to do. The unfortunate thing is that the Oz cites her words from 2002. That’s 14 years ago. And what the paper does not say is that the types of therapies she promoted were not from Iran or Turkey or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. They were from the United States,

They were developed by conservative Christian groups. Has Dover changed her mind? I’m not sure. She did sign the anti-homophobia press release. But then so did regular Crikey writer Shakira Hussein (who has written and tweeted against Dover’s homophobia). But when was the last time we saw Gerard Henderson or Janet Albrechtsen or Piers Akerman (who has been known to refer to David Marr as a “homosexual activist” and who repeated “rumours” on national TV about Julia Gillard’s partner) or Andrew Bolt sign a document supporting the rights of LGBTI communities in Australia?

I’m not aware of prominent imams opposing same-sex marriage. I’m not aware of Muslim leaders opposing the Safe Schools program in the manner former Iranian refugee Rita Panahi has. The allegedly conservative commentariat have been defending the homophobia that exists among them and also in the churches and the Australian Christian Lobby in the name of “freedom of speech” and “freedom of religion”.

“But aah, Mr Yusuf, we don’t see conservatives or Christian clergy or ACL saying that homosexuals should be put to death,” you might say as you point to this article published in the Oz about imams and homosexuality. And as you point to reports of a British Shia Muslim scholar who left Australia of his own accord.

Indeed. But let me put these points to you:

* Imams Shady Soliman and Yusuf Peer play leading roles in the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC);

* This bombastically named body consists only of a minority of Sunni Muslim imams;

* This council does not include imams of the Cypriot and Turkish communities, which make up one of the largest and oldest ethno-religious bloc;

* There are no women in ANIC despite there being female religious scholars in Australia;

* The idea of what makes a person an “imam” and what his/her role should be is contested across different cultures;

* Unlike the church, there is no agreed hierarchy of imams; and

* To get some idea of how influential ANIC is, its announcements on the beginning and end of sacred months such as Ramadan are largely ignored.

Your average Muslim knows what silly and ridiculous attitudes many imams have. It reminds me of the story of a sheikh in India who was asked a businessman who regularly donated to his mosque: “Sheikh, why do our religious scholars talk such crap?” The sheikh responded with a question: “Imagine you have two sons. One is very intelligent, the other is a buffoon. Which would you send to London to study to become a barrister and which would you send to my madressa to study to become an imam?”

Finally, regardless of how ridiculous the views of some imams (or some clergy or some rabbis or some other religious figures) are, to suggest they in any way reflect the opinions of any sector of mainstream Australia is ridiculous.

Unless, of course, you don’t regard Australians who identify as Muslim as being part of mainstream Australia.

First published in Crikey on 20 June 2016.

SECURITY: The rhetoric of madness over terrorism vacillates with little logic

In January 2009, a Melbourne "cleric" known as Abu Hamza had his face splashed across the front page of the Herald Sun. The headline above his image read:

Muslim cleric blasts Aussies on gambling, booze

and in huge letters

YOU'RE ALL DRUNKS.

The trigger was some YouTube recordings that had been made six years earlier. It must have been a slow news day.

Not reported was that this allegedly radical cleric (whose real name was Samir Mohtadi) had been the prosecution witness in the Benbrika case in 2006. As the then editor of Crikey, Jonathan Green, wrote:

He became a key Crown witness in the Benbrika case and gave evidence about a meeting he had with Benbrika in 2004 in which he said to Benbrika that he had heard Benbrika was planning a terrorist attack in Australia. Benbrika denied it. Mohtadi said he would go to the government if he got wind of any plan.

Green continued:

Richard Maidment, SC, the lead prosecutor for the Crown, said in his closing that 'you saw Mr Mohtadi and he was a credible witness, in our respectful submission'. 

The fact is that major terror plots have been thwarted and prosecution cases succeeded thanks to information from ordinary Muslims. ASIO, the AFP and the Commonwealth DPP know this all too well. So do state law-enforcement authorities.

Muslim "dobbers" know their loved ones and friends have just as much chance as anyone of being killed or maimed in a terrorist attack. Australian woman Dr Gill Hicks lost both her legs in the 2005 London bombings. Twenty-year-old Shahara Islam, an English bank clerk of Bangladeshi heritage, lost her life.

Our security agencies have been begging our politicians to calm the rhetoric down. They know better than anyone that words matter and that what political leaders say can make the work of police and prosecutors that much harder.

Sadly, certain sections of our media are making the job even harder by reinforcing the narrative of groups like Islamic State and convincing Muslims that they just don't belong. Condescending cultural warriors are happy to marginalise 500,000 Australians who tick the "Muslim" box on their census forms. In an editorial dated October 6, The Australian said:

when attacks such as this happen the broad Islamic community has a choice. It can do its utmost to help police prevent extremism or it can retreat into a defensive insularity.

Tell that to Samir Mohtadi.

The same editorial described the killing as a

jihadist murder

and

the latest chapter in the struggle for the soul of Islam

despite acknowledging that

the investigation is in its early days but it's understood his parents were not in Sydney on the day of the attack; the family context is unclear. It is thought that Jabar may have come under the influence of fringe elements at the Parramatta mosque.

So what does Islam's soul and the highly contested concept of jihad got to do with it?

The irony is that the same newspaper editorialised on July 24, 2008 that heavy reporting of child sex abuse allegations against Catholic priests by the ABC and Fairfax during the Pope's tour would be an affront to World Youth Day pilgrims and ordinary Catholics.

So it's OK to patronise one faith community over terrorism but it's not OK to report abuses taking place within a preferred religious hierarchy. Of course, out in the real world, Muslims and Catholics and Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs and others of faith and no faith are horrified by any form of violence or abuse in their communities.

Some reporting descended to surprising levels of idiocy. On October 5, the Daily Telegraph quoted one Sydney GP of Lebanese heritage as saying the teenage killer wore black because he was from Iran and that Shia Muslim men in Iran always wear black. It then compared an image of the killer to that of Islamic State killer Jihad John. So the young man wanted to dress both like IS and a country at war with IS. Further, one wonders if Foreign Minister Julie Bishop came across any Iranian men not wearing black during her recent visit.

The same paper spoke of the young man having access to online Islamic videos which were "extreme". How so? Apparently the videos describe ...

... the end of days ...

and called US President Barack Obama

... treacherous.

The paper also condemned the ABC for allegedly stating that the Parramatta attack was not necessarily a terrorist attack on the basis that

... police [were] not yet commenting on what motivated the sickening attack.

Let's throw caution to the wind, shall we? One columnist wrote that

the instant response of our leftist friends

to

acts of Islamic terrorism

is a

desperate attempt to play down or outright conceal any Islamic component to these acts of terrorism.

The same columnist failed to mention the far-right political motivations of a gunman in Oregon in the United States who, around the same time as the Parramatta tragedy, identified 10 students as Christian before brutally murdering them. Right wingers can't engage in violent extremism.

After the tragic events at Parramatta, our political leaders are working hard to mend bridges with various communities. Our allegedly conservative media outlets now have a choice. Do they report the facts? Or do they allow their sectarian prejudices to marginalise these communities even more that? Do they wish to work in Australia's interests or the interests of Islamic State?

Irfan Yusuf is a PhD Candidate at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on 7 October 2015.

CRIKEY: News Corp encouraged Zaky Mallah’s extremism: judge

News Corp is in no place to take the moral high ground on giving Zaky Mallah a media platform, write lawyer and author Irfan Yusuf and senior lecturer at UNSW Helen Pringle. 

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph front page screamed: “TERROR VISION”. The question was posed:

How dare the taxpayer funded ABC allow this man to spout his bile on national TV?.

A picture showed a smiling Zaky Mallah holding a gun.

On page 4, under the infantile headline “SYRIAL AGITATOR”, a heavily edited chronology of Mallah’s life is provided: employment history, overseas trips and alleged involvement with Syrian resistance groups fighting both Assad and Daesh (otherwise known as Islamic State or ISIS). There’s a brief mention of the New South Wales Supreme Court acquitting Mallah “of terrorism-related charges”. Not much more on that topic. We wondered why.

We went back to the April 21, 2005, judgment of Justice James Wood. We now know why News Corp and some other Australian media outlets would not be keen on publicising its contents.

In 2002, Mallah’s passport application had been refused. He appeared on A Current Affair as well as on Alan Jones’ radio program. Paragraph 13 of the 2005 judgment speaks of Mallah as

... beginning to enjoy, if not to crave, the media attention, which was providing him with an interest or cause in an otherwise unfulfilling or empty life.

Media outlets happily entertained his craving,

... particularly with The Australian, and The Daily Telegraph but also with several television stations.

Paragraph 14 describes how in late 2003 Mallah

... showed, or sold, to the journalists copies of some of the documents which police had earlier seized, as well as some photographs of himself in dramatic poses, holding a knife, and wearing the kind of garb that, it seems, he considered appropriate for a would-be terrorist or suicide bomber.

Gosh. News Corp and commercial TV journos appear to have bought photos of Mallah in dangerous poses. Perhaps looking like a suicide bomber. Or like a younger Man Monis. Surely responsible scribes wouldn’t just sit on this. Surely they’d think going to the cops might be an idea. Let’s wait and see. Wood says in paragraph 15:

In the weekend edition of The Australian of November 22-23 [2003], he featured in an article on the front page entitled ‘Tortured World of an Angry Young Man’. It contained some of the photographs that he had supplied, and extracted portions of his manifesto or final message. Reference was made to his grievances and prior arrest [on firearms charges], and the article concluded with some observations as to his potential dangerousness and vulnerability to manipulation, noting that ‘without urgent help, Zak Mallah, Islam and his problems make a deadly cocktail’ ...

The transactions then went further. Paragraph 20:

At the same time as these discussions [with an anti-terror command agent posing as a journalist, between 28 October and November 3, 2003] were taking place, the Prisoner was also in contact with journalists from The Australian, and The Daily Telegraph and possibly also Channel 9, with a view to obtaining further coverage and the sale of photographs or the video.

Did News Corp and/or Channel Nine pay Mallah any money? Mallah certainly needed it. Paragraph 25:

[T]he Prisoner was in straightened financial circumstances, and living in a Housing Commission flat, without any substantial means of income.

Mallah, in fact, claimed that he had discussions with the government agent in order to be paid a sum of money. Wood was scathing about the behaviour of journalists and editors in contact with Mallah at this time. Paragraph 34:

Had real fears been entertained as to his potential dangerousness, then the preferable course surely would have been to pass any relevant information concerning him, to the appropriate policing and security agencies. Had he been dismissed as an attention seeker, of no moment, then there surely would have been no occasion to give him the extensive public exposure which he obviously enjoyed and indeed craved.

Dob him in as a dangerous threat or ignore him as an attention-seeker. Unless you just wanted to manufacture false hysteria about terrorism and minorities. Paragraph 37:

[P]lacing a person such as the Prisoner into the public spotlight is not only likely to encourage him to embark on even more outrageous and extravagant behaviour but, perhaps more importantly, it risks unnecessarily heightening the existing public concerns about terrorist activity as well as encouraging or fanning divisive and discriminatory views among some members of the community.

There’s more to this than simply irresponsible journalism. Our security could have been at stake. And breaches of the law might have taken place. Paragraph 35:

[H]ad the Prisoner’s plan in this case been genuine, the journalists dealing with him, and indeed any police officer doing so without a controlled operations certificate, risked committing offences themselves, under the widely crafted terrorism laws, for example, under s 101.4 or 101.5 of the Criminal Code if they obtained possession of, or collected, documents connected with the preparation for a terrorist act by him; or under s 103.1 if they paid monies to him and were reckless as to whether they might be used by him to facilitate or engage in such an act.

Had Mallah actually committed a real attack with real people dying, then The Australian, the tabloids, Channel Nine and other media outlets might have found themselves on trial for terrorism offences for their actions in facilitating such an attack. No amount of hysterical front-page headlines would save the scribes from the anger of readers and advertisers.

When you point the finger at your competitors, chances are three fingers will be pointing straight back at you. The actions of News Corp in 2002 and 2003 not only gave Zaky Mallah a media platform but perhaps also payments worth more than a ride on a shuttle bus. After Mallah was sentenced in 2005, Vanda Carson in The Australian of April 22, 2005, drew attention to Wood’s warnings on media involvement and coverage of Mallah’s actions. She inaccurately, if ingeniously, wrote:

A senior judge has admitted intelligence agencies would never have picked up Sydney terror suspect Zaky Mallah without the interest of the media.

Wood’s implication, however, was that without the media’s actions, Mallah might have been committed for nuisance at most. Not for terror — for which he was, at any rate, acquitted — and not on a “technicality”, but because, Wood noted, “the Crown failed” to make its case.

One need not agree with everything Wood has to say. But for some media outlets to suggest the ABC was helping out Islamic State by giving an Australian citizen (for now, at least) a voice is downright hypocrisy.

First published in Crikey on 25 June 2015.

CRIKEY: How the Western media supports terrorism ...

Daesh supporters post gruesome photographs on social media to spread propaganda. And the Western media have been very willing to help out with that.

I’m looking at a story from Friday’s Australian on my laptop. The author is Victorian editor John Ferguson. A headshot shows him smiling, below which is a larger photo of two younger men in military fatigues, also beaming smiles. One of the smiling men, believed to be a former RMIT student, is holding a severed head, thankfully with its face blurred. Part of the rest of the body is also shown.

The photo described above was apparently taken from social media and posted by supporters of Daesh (also called Islamic State or ISIS). Thought bubbles have been superimposed on the photo. The Melbourne student, pointing to both the severed head and the body, thinks “STINKY DOG”. The other giggles the letters “LOL”.

Apart from being fighters in a guerrilla war, these men also fit into the category of “terrorist” under relevant Australian law. The media organisations that constantly display gruesome images of these and other young men holding severed heads or boasting about their sex slaves or standing guard while a victim in an orange jumpsuit is beheaded or burned alive, are aware that the images show not just gruesome but also illegal conduct.

This raises a simple question: why are Australian media organisations effectively providing free propaganda services to terrorists? If there are troubled or sick individuals tempted by such activities or by nasty images in general, why are mainstream news organisations feeding their fetish? Why are their advertisers not kicking up a fuss? And why haven’t the Prime Minister, the Attorney-General and other erstwhile parliamentarians even said a word?

We are, after all, involved in a war with Daesh. We are trying to stop the (albeit small) flow of young Sunni Muslim men and women to the war zone in Syria and Iraq. Their actions have led to serious but unnecessary changes in anti-terror laws, which are in addition to current laws that have barely been used.

It remains to be seen whether the laws will be applied consistently to other foreign fighters, including former NT Labor Party president Matthew Gardiner,who is believed to be fighting with a Kurdish outfit in Syria called the “Peoples Protection Units”. Certainly the Attorney-General’s office has made it clear that ”if you fight illegally in overseas conflicts, you face up to life in prison upon your return to Australia”, regardless of which side you are on.

When Daesh first came to the Western media’s attention for beheading aid workers and journalists, there were requests from the victims’ families that images of the final moments of the victims not be shown. By and large, Australian newspapers ignored these requests. In my opinion, this was grossly insensitive. Perhaps on the occasions above, where Daesh fighters are shown holding severed heads or even laying in a “martyred” state, media outlets might suggest that there are no living victims involved.

That’s assuming you don’t regard the families of these young men and women as victims. The student referred to above comes from a highly educated family of south Asian extraction. His friends have told me that the family were extremely distressed when they heard their son had left for Syria. Imagine how much this distress is compounded by knowing that images of their son holding an AK-47, holding a severed head and finally dead on the ground are on major news websites and newspapers.

Yes, it’s true. These photos are taken from Daesh supporters and used for propaganda purposes. So why do terrorists’ propaganda for them?

First published in Crikey on 26 March 2015.

CRIKEY: Pakistan school massacre and the nature of terrorism

At funerals for the dead students kill Pakistan, mourners will recite the same words uttered by the terrorists. And yet some would have us believe Islam has something to answer for.

In his column yesterday, Chris Kenny lectured us on how “sections of the media and political class” are pressuring him and his colleagues to “play down the Islamist element” in various terror attacks affecting Australians. These forces would have us ignore the “horror of Islamic extremist terrorism”.

Kenny wrote of 9/11, when “10 of our nationals were killed”, then of the Bali bombings, when “88 of our citizens” were among the victims, then of the attack on our embassy in Jakarta. We are facing this. We are the victims. And all the left-wing elites care about is “a backlash” and of “repercussions against Muslims” that will never arrive. Kenny’s simplistic binary seems to be “we” Aussie versus them … um … er … Islamic Islamist types.

There wasn’t much evidence of playing down anything from Chris Uhlmann during his conversation with the PM this morning. Uhlmann asked some tough questions that needed answering, then made the extraordinary claim about a certain set of religious and legal denominations and traditions whose adherents make up one-quarter of humanity: “[T]his is a religion that is resistant to scrutiny or criticism, that is utterly incapable of laughing at itself, and when it is criticised the reaction often tends to be violent.”

Blaming this attack on Islam won’t help survivors of the hostage drama any more than an attack on Christianity would help victims of child sexual assault who gave evidence at the royal commission.

Right now people are in mourning. The Lindt Cafe is a popular destination, situated between the financial and legal districts of Sydney CBD. I’ve been shouted coffee there myself by barristers grateful for the work. It could have been me among those hostages. It could have been the mufti wearing a suit. It was almost Chris Kenny.

Of course, real terrorists who are part of real terrorist groups tend not to care much about having the right flag or talking to the prime minister or other delusional wishes. Real terrorists like the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) don’t allow the age or gender or religion of their victims to stop them from walking into a school and starting to shoot.

Imagine being a year 10 student and witnessing 40 of your fellow students being murdered during an exam. Imagine being shot in both legs and then shoving a tie down your throat so that you don’t scream in agony and you can successfully play dead. Imagine being a parent and not knowing whether your children will still be in their school uniforms or draped in a burial shroud.

The idea that many terrorists are inspired by theocratic “Islamist” ideas is a given. Pakistani newspapers and Urdu cable TV channels are vociferous in their condemnation of dehshat gardi (terrorism). The current government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif may have won the argument about peace talks with the Taliban, but Pakistan looks like it is fast losing the war.

Now here’s a thought. At the funerals of the young students, people will be reciting the Arabic sentence hung up in the window of the Lindt coffee shop in Martin Place. They will recite Allahu Akbar (God is Greater) as was shouted by Taliban assailants as the bullets entered the victims. With whom do the mourners of Peshawar have more in common? The self-styled Sheikh Haron? The Taliban murderers? Or the Sydney folk of all colours and ethnicities and faiths laying flowers and praying at Martin Place?

First published in Crikey on 17 December 2014.

MEDIA: American-owned newspaper plays the Manne

It was bound to happen. That American-owned newspaper that likes to call itself The Australian has shown itself to be the 'Heart of the Nation' with a vicious and vitriolic attack on La Trobe University academic Robert Manne.

And why? Because Professor Manne wrote 25,000 critical words about the paper.

And in its response, The Oz left not a single angle uncovered, with even an exceptionally tasteful cartoon showing Manne ... wait for it ... sitting naked on the toilet and farting.

It really was intelligent stuff from The Oz. I'm just wondering whether they had to tap Manne's phone to put all this together.

Then again, to be fair, Manne probably doesn't keep his mobile in the dunny.

Perhaps the most hilarious feature of the critique was that they couldn't get regular indigenous writer Noel Pearson (or indeed any indigenous writer) to respond to Manne's criticism of The Oz's coverage of indigenous issues. Instead, Uncle Chris Mitchell from the WelovetheNTIntervention Tribe was given (or rather, gave himself) the task of responding.

Seriously, is it any wonder The Oz is fast losing as much credibility as it is readers and revenue? Perhaps they should stick to printing shonky op-eds.

I feel sorry for all the genuinely good journos and writers and photographers and other media professionals who have to share page and website space with this kind of near-psychotic babble. I mean, all that vitriol for one single politics academic?

UPDATE I: A regular writer for The Oz (who once wrote for Crikey) goes completely ballistic on his Facebook wall, describing Manne's

... grotesque and evil approach to the Malaysian solution ...

Ouch!

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

MEDIA: Numbered paragraphs on scandalous tapping ...

Far be it from me to revel in someone else's sorry. But seriously, the Murdoch press has caused sorrow to so many people that it's time to have a good laugh. So here goes.

[01] Here is an excellent summary and analysis of the line taken by that American newspaper that calls itself The Australian. .

[02] Here are some legalistic thoughts ...

It’s midnight. I’m sitting in front of the TV with two work colleagues. One is an experienced crown prosecutor who has run major jury trials in two common law countries and has over 3 decades advocacy experience. The second is a criminal defence lawyer who has practised in three Australian states. And then there is me, a humble civil and employment litigator.

We’d just finished washing our sides off the sofa after they were split by viewing The Naked Gun. We switched onto BBC. We’re watching history being made. And we can’t help but watch with our lawyer’s glasses on. Here are some of my colleagues’ responses.

“This poor old man is passing the buck,” says the former prosecutor. “He’s trying to dodge the question. It’s not working. It’s so obvious.”

“This bloke’s the client from hell. Fancy admitting you take tax issues seriously but not hacking phones,” says the defence lawyer.

“These are simple questions. Why is he taking so long to answer them? Is Rupert’s dementia natural or deliberate?” says the prosecutor again.

To say the least, the Murdochs were clearly unprepared. The MP’s on the Committee asked simple, direct and at best only mildly probing questions that would have sent Rumpole to sleep. One female MP asked a super-gentle question. James Murdoch thanked her and praised her question. My criminal defence colleague said: “The reason he’s thanking her is because she gave him a question he’s actually prepared for”.

Unlike the Murdochs, the MP’s were on top of the brief. They seemed to know more about News Corporation than the two men claiming to run the show. One interesting thing Mr ex-Prosecutor noted is that a number of the MP’s kept referring to Rupert as “Mr Murdoch” and James simply as “James”.

And I lost count of the number of times one MP called out words to this effect: “James, I will come to you later. My question is for Mr Murdoch.”

“Why is that young fella always butting in?” It wasn’t so much a question from the former prosecutor as an observation. James Murdoch seemed to play a Saif al-Islam type of role in selling and then defending his father’s regime to the world. But my learned colleagues were left with the impression that James was just a young upstart kid trying to protect his dad from the assassin’s bullets using a water pistol.

Here’s one you don’t have to have a practising certificate to understand. The CEO/Chairman and directors of a company like News Corp would have no knowledge of serious wrongdoing, if not serious criminal activity, is quite frankly unbelievable. Murdoch explained it away by telling us that News of the World represented a mere 1% of the entire organisation. So how big must a proportion of the empire be before criminal conduct is worthy of becoming a serious issue of corporate governance?

What shocked me as an employment lawyer was the complete absence of any internal investigative and disciplinary procedures to deal with unethical (if not unlawful and downright criminal) conduct. At least that was my impression after watching Mr Murdoch (as opposed to James) giving his testimony. It was a case of “well, I didn’t know it was going on and in any event the police are now handling it.”

What kind of company sees police investigation as a substitute for serious internal disciplinary investigation?

Based on their performance before the UK Parliamentary Committee, I can’t help thinking that perhaps Lieutenant Frank Drebin of Police Squad was better at policing LA than the Murdochs are at policing their own empire.

LOONWATCH: For the week ending 2 June 2011

I don't get much time to blog these days. Or to write. Lots of work. Lots of travel. But there's still so much to write about, so much lunacy to laugh at.

So here's an experiment. I'll cover the best bits of lunacy from Thursday to Thursday. The lunacy can take various forms - imbecilic politics, hypocritical comment, whatever. Let's start.

[01] A small cabal of twits at that American-owned newspaper that likes to call itself The Australian have become obsessed with the twittering activities of a single Sydney academic. I mean, seriously obsessed. I don't know what Larissa Behrendt has done, but it seems hardly a day goes by without some mention of her allegedly scandalous tweet about something appearing on Q&A. Today they're still going on about how Behrendt is being paid $641 a day by Ms Gillard's government to review indigenous higher education.

The headline describes Behrendt as "[d]ivisive" (which makes you wonder why she hasn't been given a regular column at The Oz) and says he was

... embroiled in a Twitter slur scandal ...

Um, what scandal? The only publications making a big deal about it are the even more divisive Quadrant and The Amer ... woops ... Australian. And it all happened back in April. And she said sorry. What more can she do?

Senator Evans yesterday again rejected criticism that she was not suitable for the role; he revealed he had met her once since the incident. "(I said) that I regarded the comments as inappropriate and offensive," he told the hearing. "She told me she had apologised and she was highly regretful of the incident."

But that isn't good enough. All kinds of dirt is being whipped up about this poor woman. What on earth do Chris Mitchell's minions expect her to do? Apologise to Andrew Bolt? Tweet some undying love for Irish Republican terrorism? Join Alan Jones' Galileo Movement? Still a photo of John Santamaria on her office wall? Support the extension of the Federal indigenous intervention to New Zealand and the Solomon Islands?

Behrendt may well have opposition. She may well be divisive. But so what? Why hassle someone because of one tweet? Especially when you are a newspaper that has spent so much of its space printing divisive tripe about a host of minorities.

[02] My old factional partner Peter Phelps has come along way since he used to edit his far-Right newsletter The Atlas. In those days he called for Medicare to be dismantled. Now as a member of the NSW Upper House, Phelps is comparing climate scientists to Nazis. What the f#ck??

Phelps, of course, is an expert on climate science. He has a PhD from the University of Sydney. In history.


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COMMENT: Jeremy Sammut tries to be a smartie on M&M's

Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. He has a PhD in Australian social and political history from Monash University. He has written about child protection laws and health policy.

And now he is writing about what he describes as the 'M&M' debate. M&M equals "multiculturalism and Muslims". His article appearing on the CIS website has been reprinted on the opinion page of The Australian.

Sammut writes about the “multicultural industry” which seeks to stifle “a legitimate debate about the success or otherwise of Muslim integration”.

Sammut's evidence is one part of Sydney he describes as "Lakemba and its surrounds" which he argues

... remain ghettofied.


The usual pattern of dispersal by first-generation children of immigrants has not occurred to the same extent and the area is plagued with poor educational achievement, high unemployment and crime.


The community concerns that exist in western Sydney about Muslims and multiculturalism are based on these jarring realities on the disintegration of some parts of Sydney from the mainstream, and the failure to repeat the successful patterns of integration of other ethnic groups.

All this raises a few issues. Well, actually more than a few. I'll list some:

[01] Was Jeremy Sammut around when many used to refer to Cabramatta as 'Vietnamatta'? Was he aware of the large number of media reports and conservative commentators talking about 'Asian crime gangs' and the difficulties 'Asians' faced integrating?

[02] Is Sammut talking about Muslims as a race?

[03] Is Sammut asking us to believe that a certain ethnic group of Muslims in Lakemba is reflective of all Muslims across the country?

[04] Sammut argues that ...

It is because most Australians believe in the immigration and integration of all comers that what is going on in southwest Sydney is of concern.


Perceptive politicians have picked up on this.

Could he name some of these perceptive politicians? Does he agree with their perceptions and statements?

I might ask him these questions direct.

CRIKEY: The media pigeonholing Muslims is not helping any cause

Scribes used to talk about “the Muslim community” and ascribe to this monolithic blob the views of several religious talking heads from fellafel land. Rarely would they bother with the vast majority of people who felt inclined to tick the “Muslim” box on their census forms. In fact, the average punter for whom Islamic religion was just one layer of their identity was left out of the discussion.

Then one day an unelected and unpopular mufti made some comments about catmeat and suddenly every media outlet in town was alleging that his word was gospel for everyone from a Malay factory worker in Port Headland to an overweight South Asian solicitor in northern Sydney. It was about this time that a whole bunch of us decided that we were sick of being typecast by religious wackos. And journalists began recognising very familiar diversity where they once only saw an alien blob.

But reading the reports in Fairfax and Murdoch press in recent days, again I’m getting the feeling that we’re going back to the future. Sally Neighbour focuses on people from one of two Arabic-speaking ethnic groups, citing one or two new faces and the usual talking heads of self-appointed ethnic leaders.

Neighbour managed to find a Lebanese medical student. Gee. I’m impressed. She might come along to a gathering of Aussies of Pakistani or Bangladeshi or Egyptian or Palestinian origin (or indeed a different group of Lebanese) and find dozens of students studying medicine, law, dentistry, engineering, mass communications, etc. Many of them are females, with and without head covering.

She might have gone to ANU and had a chat to the Foundation Professor of Medicine Dr Mohamad Khadra, who happens to be of Lebanese heritage and a former president of a campus Muslim students association.

Then The Oz editorial pompously lectures again about what “Muslim leaders” and “the Muslim community” needs to do. It says that ...

... we cannot simply ignore reports of behavioural problems among young, unemployed and disaffected Muslim men in the outer suburbs of Sydney … The difficulties among largely Lebanese Muslims are mirrored in some Pacific Islander groups in the same areas …

Yes, them Samoan imams need to get their butts kicked.

How wonderful it would be if the next generation of Lebanese-Australian kids held as their models the successful chief executives and footballers from their communities, rather than drug barons and nightclub owners.

Yes, and how wonderful it would be if you stopped giving space for ridiculous sheiks and their interpreters and started interviewing and allowing on your pages the voices of the huge array of academics, business people, CEOs, professionals who happened to be Muslim. And if you started realising that:

• Writing editorials that sound like something authored by Glenn Beck doesn’t do much to improve your poor circulation.
• Being Muslim is not the same as being Lebanese and vice versa.
• Most nightclubs are not owned by Muslims or vice versa.
• Most drug barons are not Muslims or vice versa.
• You choose to create this perception of Muslims by focusing on their religious identity rather than anything else.

Yes, there’s a lot that all ethnic and religious communities in Auburn and Lakemba community need to do, but to assume that gangland is defined purely by one religion is just ridiculous. Last time I checked, the Morans weren’t praying five times a day.

If journalists and editors and pundits and politicians self-appointed Muslim talking heads would just allow Muslims to get on with their working lives, and stop trying to define them as some kind of monolith, common sense might prevail and the haters might stop hating.

COMMENT: Angela Shanahan and Lebanese fertility ...

Angela Shanahan, a columnist for The Australian, has every reason to be concerned about the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, who are regularly the subject of discrimination by the Mubarak regime, not to mention threats from a minority of Muslim wackos.

Though in defending the Copts, she might consider her targets as well as the old adage about people in glass houses.

In a recent column, she makes these remarks:

As for the international reaction to the New Year's massacre, it was condemned by many heads of state and foreign ministers, although in the past few have bothered with the fate of the Copts, including our own Kevin Rudd, who was singled out by the Australian Coptic movement representing our own 80,000 Australian Coptic Christians of Egyptian origin.


Referring to Rudd's December visit to Cairo, the movement observed that although he was in Egypt for three days, and met Mubarak, "he failed to convey . . . concern over the ongoing persecution of Egypt's indigenous population".


According to Day, ignoring the Copts on this occasion was partly driven by timorousness from Rudd in the face of Australia's own large and possibly strategically significant Muslim population. In an interview with the Cairo daily Al-Ahram he estimated that population at "a million", about 4.4 per cent of the population -- a startling figure compared with the 2006 census figure of about 340,000 or 1.7 per cent.


However, the Islamisation in many urban areas of Australia, such as Sydney's southwest, is slowly proceeding.


Lebanese Muslims in particular have a fertility rate four times the average.

What the ...? What do Lebanese Muslims in Lakemba or Bankstown or Arncliffe have to do with Kevin Rudd's failure to mention Coptic persecution during a recent visit to Cairo?

And what does Lebanese fertility have to do with the price of bread or eggs that poor Angela fed to her own nine children?

How many English and/or Australian women give birth to nine children? And do Catholics having lots of kids have any impact on our foreign policy? Why bring this up in the first place?

Surely Angela should know what kind of nonsensical prejudice was used in England and Australia about Catholics over-breeding and having lots of kiddies to take over the nation. Monty Python had enormous fun with such prejudices in this skit ...



... and this one ...



Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf



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