POLITICS: Manipulating division a fizzer in London's mayoral election

Sadiq Khan studied law and worked as a human rights solicitor. He was made a partner of the law firm within a mere three years. He ran controversial cases pursuing the human rights of some very unpopular figures. Khan left practice and in 2005 was elected to Parliament in his local seat of Tooting. Yet being lawyer to the damned didn't stop him from securing 1.3 million votes in last week's London mayoral election, in what George Eaton in the New Statesman described as

the biggest personal mandate of any politician in UK history.

What could have stopped Khan was his Conservative opposition's constant insinuation that Khan's ancestral religious culture (his parents are Indo-Pakistani Sunni Muslims) somehow made him less desirable as mayor.

Ironically, the sister of the Conservative candidate not only married another politician surnamed Khan but also adopted his faith. Jemima Goldsmith is no longer married to Pakistan's former cricketing legend and political leader Imran Khan. She expressed disappointment and disgust in the way her brother's campaign spent so much time trying to link Sadiq Khan to Muslim "extremists"

Zac Goldsmith's campaign was overseen by the firm of Australian election strategist Lynton Crosby. The campaign included sending leaflets to voters with Hindu and Sikh-sounding names saying that Sadiq Khan would place heirlooms at risk by placing a wealth tax on family jewellery. Pamphlets also made an issue of Khan not attending a welcome ceremony for Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi at Wembley Stadium in 2015.

Similar leaflets were sent out in the 2015 UK general election calling on Gujarati Hindu voters to support the Tories, claiming Labour supported laws banning caste discrimination!

Such strategies are sadly nothing new. In his 2007 book The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception, Nicky Hager includes an entire chapter detailing the methods used by Crosby's firm C|T Group in Britain and New Zealand. The book is the product of a series of leaked internal NZ National Party correspondence and emails obtained from disgruntled political staffers, party supporters in business, conservative think tanks, pollsters and fringe fundamentalist churches during the period of the leadership of Dr Don Brash.

The book provides detailed material on the methods and messages C|T shared with the NZ National Party. These included techniques to identify the prejudices of "soft" voters, which included using immigration as a wedge, especially if it meant stealing votes from more extreme anti-immigrant parties.

It all sounds terribly familiar. It's a shallow form of conservatism based not upon values but prejudices. It seeks to replace the sound aspects of the status quo and gradual reform with a political order built upon the manipulation of underlying divisions.

But in the London mayoral election, such strategies repeatedly backfired. For instance, in an interview with the Evening Standard, Zac Goldsmith made an issue of Sadiq Khan sharing the stage with an alleged Muslim extremist Imam Suliman Gani.

To share a platform nine times with Suliman Gani, one of the most repellent figures in this country, you don't do it by accident.

To his credit, Khan did not respond. He didn't need to. Gani soon tweeted a photo of himself standing with a smiling Zac Goldsmith. Gani had also openly endorsed and supported another Tory candidate in the 2015 general election.

It was a formidable barrage of innuendo and Muslim-phobic prejudice thrown at Sadiq Khan by devout Muslim Imran Khan's former brother-in-law. Khan's Muslim heritage wasn't referred to. It didn't need to be. The subliminal message was clear – a person of Pakistani Muslim heritage with alleged links to terrorists (heck, don't they all?) should not be entrusted to the mayoralty of a major Western (and hence white Christian) city.

What the Tories and their pollsters failed to realise is that London's Indians don't all support Indian PM Narendra Modi. Even if they did, Modi is not seeking election as London mayor. Tamil voters are not just fixated with jewellery. Simon Hattenstone reports in The Guardian about a letter received by Barbara Patel, a retired biochemist whom some smart cookie at Conservative HQ had imagined to be a Gujarati Hindu. In fact she was white and Jewish, her husband's family being Muslim! 

Conservatives need to come to terms with the fact that all us non-whites are not an angry divided rabble who make voting decisions based upon some Anglo stereotype. We care about the same issues anyone else does. Poor Londoners, whether Hindu or Sikh or Jewish or Muslim or Catholic or Callithumpian really don't care about whether the mayor delivering them affordable housing meets the stereotype of a toff or a terrorist.

If Cypriot Turkish Muslims in the inner south of Melbourne can vote for a Jewish MP for Melbourne Ports and Filipino Catholics in Mount Druitt for a Muslim MP for Chifley, why can't Londoners of all persuasions vote for the son of a Muslim bus driver? As for me, I'm just happy another solicitor has taken power.

Irfan Yusuf is an award-winning author and lawyer who in his past life was a federal Liberal candidate for the western Sydney seat of Reid in the 2001 federal election. First published in the Canberra Times on 12 May 2016.

MUSIC/VIDEO: Pure class ...

DC Lee, formerly of the Style Council. From the mid-'80's.



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COMMENT:So what on earth do we do with Afghanistan?

A British Army doctor named Henry Walter Bellew wrote these words after spending a fair bit of time in Kandahar and Kabul:

Now that our armies are in possession of Kandahar and Kabul ... the question arises, what are we to do with the country heretofore governed from these seats of authority, and latterly in the possession of the Ruler seated at Kabul.

We run the show. What do we do? How do we run it?

The question is one which must before very long be answered by the logic of accomplished facts, consequent on the stern demands of necessity more than of mere policy.

We have to figure this out. It isn't enough to just conquer and hope for the best. We need to have some kind of strategy, some direction that we can develop with (if not impose upon) the people of the country.

For having, as we have now done, completely destroyed the authority and government of the tyrannous and treacherous ... Rulers, whose power it has been our policy to maintain and strengthen during the past quarter of a century, it is now incredible that we shall deliberately abandon the vantage ground gained, ignore the great danger we have now thereby staved off, and leave the country a prey to internal anarchy ...

We put these kinds of people in power in the first place. They were our tyrants. We protected their power. And now?

In case you're wondering, the good doctor was writing from Lahore. In 1880. Yep, some things just don't change.

It's all in a fascinating book entitled The Races Of Afghanistan Being A Brief Account Of The Principal Nations Inhabiting That Country.

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf




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VIDEO: Jihadi jokers ...

This movie looks friggin hilarious. Innit. But will our local tea party commentariate get the jokes?

OPINION: Refugee Hysteria Suggests Aussies Have Forgotten Their Own Ancestors

YOU can always tell when Australia has entered election mode. Suddenly the really big issues come to the fore - issues that affect the economy, national security, indeed Australia's very survival. Issues like the occasional arrival of a handful of desperate boat people from Afghanistan, Iraq or Sri Lanka via Indonesia.

On Sunday, March 28, Rupert Murdoch's tabloids across Australia ran the front-page story of a mass invasion of asylum seekers. In Brisbane, the headline was THEY'RE HERE.

And who were they? The paper reported that 2000 asylum seekers had made it to Christmas Island, while 425 people were being housed on the mainland. But the real nightmare was seven adults and three children going shopping in Brisbane. They spent an hour and a quarter in a shopping centre, the paper howled.

The group returned with two shopping trolleys loaded with grocery bags. Their purchases included Home Brand Hawaiian pizza, Smith's potato chips and cartons of Coca-Cola.

How selfish of seven adults to share pizza, chips and soft drink. And to think these people claim to be desperate refugees!

Anyway, back to the world of sanity. Readers with even a basic knowledge of Australian history will find the current immigration hysteria ironic. For some reason, non-European illegal immigrants seem to bring out the worst indignation in white Australia. It's as if Aussies have forgotten their own ancestors came here from mother England on boats. And many were here as a result of being sentenced for the kinds of offences for which our migration laws today would bar them from leaving Sydney airport.

Australians are all too quick to forget the key historical role people from Afghanistan played during the mid-19th century. For 60 years, these men and their camels were the only transportation available through the centre of Australia, servicing distant mines and sheep stations as well as being involved in Australia's first overland telegraph line.

With troops fighting in Afghanistan, Australia has an obligation under international law to restore order. Australia and its coalition and Nato partners have singularly failed to do this. Hence, when it comes to accepting Afghan refugees, Australia has a major responsibility. Sadly it is the conservatives, self-declared protectors of Australia's Christian heritage, who show the least Christian attitude towards refugees.

The prejudice in Australia's popular media toward anyone deemed a Middle Eastern migrant is so endemic that one can only hope God in his good sense doesn't send the Son of Man to Australia for the Second Coming.

IN AUGUST last year, on an ABC television chat show, Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop reminded viewers of the perils posed to Australia by an increase in the number of people arriving by boat.

She shared the panel with conservative American humorist P J O'Rourke. He found all this hysteria about boat people in Australia and some parts of the EU rather amusing.

You know, we in the States have much, much more experience with being all wrong about immigration than you do. I mean, 36,000 you said in Italy? We laugh. That's a day in the United States. And we are so wrong about it. I mean, build a fence on the border with Mexico, give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry, you know ...

Ms Bishop tried to rescue her conservative credentials after being showed up by O'Rourke. She recited the usual Liberal Party mantra about people smugglers.

O'Rourke's response?

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. You know, if you open your borders, you don't have people smugglers ...

These people are assets. One or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later. Oh, I think conservatives are getting this wrong all over the world, I really do.

The Rudd Labor Government is not much better. Australia's immigration minister recently announced that the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan would be suspended. The government says circumstances have changed in both countries such that it is now safe enough for asylum applicants to return.

That being the case, one can expect Australian troops in Afghanistan to prepare for their imminent return. Yet the reality is that the US is getting ready to send 17,000 more troops into the country and has requested its allies (including Australia) to increase their troop presence. Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay has told Nato and other allies that the military alliance cannot take its foot off the gas in Afghanistan, simply because the US is about to send 17,000 more troops.

And so we have all this fuss over 4500 boat people. Meanwhile, there is little fuss over 50,000 illegal immigrants from Britain and the US.

In the Australian psyche, illegal immigrants must necessarily be non-European and non-white. Either that or some illegal immigrants are more illegal than others.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer. This article was first published in the Dominion-Post in Wellington, New Zealand.

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OPINION: Rising trend of fearmongering on refugees and passports ...

Coalition rhetoric now appears to slipping back to the worst practices of the Howard era, IRFAN YUSUF writes ...

Tony Abbott wasn’t exactly born into the Liberal establishment. His political mentor was none other than Bob Santamaria, the ultraconservative Catholic activist who founded the National Civic Council and who was more concerned with ridding trade unions of communism than supporting what he described as Menzies’ "party of capital".

In his book Battlelines, published shortly before his accession to the Liberal leadership, Abbott affectionately refers to his mentor as "Santa". He admits that Santamaria (who died in 1998) had some concerns about the young Abbott joining the Liberals. Santamaria apparently had a

... prejudice that serious Catholics couldn’t advance in the Liberal Party.

In recent times, followers of other non-Protestant faiths must be wondering whether the same applies to them. Recent comments about asylum seekers, burqas and passport forgeries must surely make us wonder whether the Australian electorate would be ready for "Captain Catholic" to rule over a country where Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are the fastest growing faiths.

Many wondered during the mid-1990s whether John Howard, the man who suggested that Asian migrants may not make a neat cultural fit, could one day become prime minister of a country located closer to Kuala Lumpur than London.

Coalition rhetoric on these issues today seems a mere continuation of the worst of the Howard era. Former Liberal prime minister (and now former party member) Malcolm Fraser described the party as being more about"fear and reaction".

The recent "real action" advertisement shows the origin of illegal immigrants to Australia. Five red arrows are shown emerging from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia respectively. The words "Stop illegals now" are shown in the top left corner of the screen.



No red arrow was shown emerging from Britain, even though it provides one of the largest proportions of illegal immigrants in Australia, certainly larger than any of the five Asian and Middle Eastern nations shown in the Liberal advertisement.

Presumably the Coalition strategists regard white-skinned English-speaking Brits as less scary than dark-skinned English-speaking Tamils or olive-complexioned Iraqi Christians.

The Coalition has also announced a return to some form of Pacific solution. This will involve the offshore processing of any asylum seekers arriving “illegally”. We will also see a return to Temporary Protection Visas under a future Coalition government. Yet, as Bernard Keane notes in Crikey, there was "a 50 per cent surge in asylum seekers coming by boat after TPVs were introduced in 1999" by the Howard government.

Furthermore, most TPV holders were eventually granted refugee status. The TPV regime is hardly incentive for “illegals” to avoid boats altogether. Hence the Liberals could once again become the people smugglers’ best friends.

Yet the irony is that so much of the fear-mongering runs directly contrary to Australia’s best interests, let alone liberal and/or conservative fundamentals and common sense. At times, the Howard government showed a complete disdain for Australian citizenship, all the while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising campaigns encouraging permanent residents to take up citizenship.

The complete disdain Howard and his ministers showed to Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, unlawfully detained by the United States, was just one example of how fear-mongering was used to evade the government’s responsibilities to its own citizens.

Recent comments by Julie Bishop show an even greater disdain for the rights of Australian citizens whose passports have been fraudulently used to carry out a terrorist act. Some may baulk at the suggestion that the murder of a Hamas leader could be deemed a terrorist act given that the deceased was himself responsible for acts of terror. Hamas, they will say, was a murderous organisation with a history of bloody retaliation.

And now Hamas will have a large number of Australian passport holders on their retaliation list.

To make matters worse, Bishop indicated (and hastily retracted) that Australian governments had forged other countries’ passports for use by our intelligence services.

One wonders whether Bishop was part of such a government and privy to such a decision, or, if such forgeries existed, whether they were used in assassinations or other forms of terrorism.

Indeed, can Abbott promise that a future Coalition government will not forge overseas passports, including those of permanent residents and citizens? Will he be prepared to put this in writing?

The Coalition has again been caught out placing the interests of foreign countries (albeit allies) above the safety and security of Australian citizens. In government they allowed two Australian citizens to languish in an illegal US prison camp in Cuba at the insistence of the US. Now, in Opposition, the Coalition is showing effective disdain to the security of Australian citizens to protect the sentiments of a nuclear-powered Middle Eastern government that used Australian passports to carry out an assassination.

And to think Bishop was accusing her opponents of appeasing an overseas lobby.

■ Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer, a former federal Liberal candidate and author of Once Were Radicals. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Friday 28 May 2010.

UPDATE I: Neil James of the self-styled Australian Defence Association wrote this delightful letter to the newspaper.

In what again seems to skate closely to an apologia for Islamist terrorism, and among other polemical claims too numerous to refute, Irfan Yusuf ("Rising trend of fear-mongering on refugees and passports," May 28, p13) incorrectly claims that David Hicks was "unlawfully detained by the United States'' in an "illegal prison camp".

Under the Geneva Convention, as a Taliban combatant captured by the opposite side in a war he chose to fight in, David Hicks was not detained illegally for a single minute at least, perhaps, until his later separate criminal trial and prison sentence by US Military Commission. He was only detained by the US for so long because the war continued, and our then inadequate treachery laws meant he could not be released on prison of war-type parole for criminal trial in Australia (as the US was willing to do).

Fortunately this long-standing and disgraceful legal loophole has been closed so a future Wilfred Burchett or David Hicks can have his day in court. Rightly, since the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002, an Australian citizen anywhere in the world now commits treason if he or she (among other things):

*intentionally assists, by any means whatsoever, an enemy, at war with the Commonwealth;

*intentionally assists, by ''any means whatsoever'', another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force; or

*forms an intention to do any of the above acts and manifests that intention by an overt act.

In a liberal democracy ruled by law we owe no less to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force. Irfan Yusuf should be prepared to acknowledge this.

Neil James, executive director, Australia Defence Association

What can I say? Unlike you, Mr James, I don't consider myself an expert in public international law. But I find your suggestion that our men and women overseas are fighting and dying so that our liberties can be curtailed by draconian laws you and the small minority of similar mind boast of to be utterly ridiculous and an insult to our armed forces.

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POLITICS/UK: BNP wants to set up a penal colony ...

Well, it looks like Nick Griffin, the Grand Ayatollah of the British Nazi Party (BNP) wants to be a serious contender in the upcoming UK elections. And his policies? Well one involves establishing a penal colony.

A future Queen's Speech written by ... Griffin ... would include legislation to make beer cheaper in British pubs, introduce formal bank holidays for all national saints' days and reintroduce capital punishment for drug dealers and child murderers. Householders would be allowed to defend their property by "whatever means necessary" and a penal station for extremely dangerous criminals (including rapists) would be built on the British island of South Georgia. Out would go wind turbines and foreign aid and in would come a new high-speed 200mph magnetic levitation inter-city rail network. Traffic congestion would be brought under control by curbing the "immigration invasion".

Why send British illegals to South Georgia? Why not send them to Sydney? Heck, we already have tens of thousands of illegals working here anyway. Let them do some hard labour in the market research phone rooms of Chippendale and Manly. Let them suffer in the heat of Wilderness Society bear suits as they ply for donations on the city streets. And let them weep and gnash their teeth oceans away from home as they watch us colonials cheer and laugh as England is defeated by New Zealand in the World Cup in South Africa.

Read more about Griffin's nutty agenda here.

REVIEW: Ambitious cultural journey loses its way ...

A Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands
By Aatish Taseer
Text Publishing, 323pp, $34.95

WE all inhabit the same planet, yet so often we hear phrases such as "the Muslim world" and "the Western world". Do such discrete entities indeed exist? Perhaps those best equipped to answer this question are those with one foot on either side of the divide.

Aatish Taseer, a 29-year-old freelance journalist and the son of an Indian Sikh mother and a Pakistani Muslim father, should have been such a person. That he isn't so is not entirely hisfault.

The two sides of Taseer's family share the culture and language of Punjab, a region in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent shared by India and Pakistan. Islam and Sikhism have inhabited Punjab's geographical and cultural space for centuries. Sikhism is indigenous to Punjab, while Punjabi Islam has adopted the cultural symbols of the land.

My background is a mixture of Indian and Pakistani. Having been reared in a small South Asian community in Sydney, I found it almost impossible to tell Muslims and Sikhs apart. To this day it is easy for me to confuse a mosque and gurudwara (Sikh temple) until the saffron flags of the latter become apparent.

But there is a huge difference between my upbringing and that of Taseer, whose parents' relationship was kept largely secret.

Taseer's father, Salmaan Taseer, became a senior figure in the Pakistan People's Party, at present the governing party of Pakistan. He is a businessman, media magnate and governor of Pakistan's Punjab province.

Aatish's parents met in India in 1980, where Salmaan Taseer was promoting a biography he'd written of his political mentor and former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Aatish's mother, respected Indian journalist Tavleen Singh, was then a young reporter.

At the time of his parents' brief affair, which lasted hardly a week, Salmaan Taseer was already married with three children.

After his parents' separation, Aatish was reared in his mother's Sikh household in Delhi, under the wing of his loving maternal grandfather. The grandfather had grown up in what is now Pakistan and still corresponded with his best friend from across the border.

Like other Sikhs, the Singhs had to flee their ancestral lands in what became Pakistan during the 1947 Partition, which still leaves some members of the family bitter and resentful towards Pakistan and Muslims in general. To his credit, the maternal grandfather wasn't affected by these sentiments.

'A human being,' my grandfather always asserted, when people asked whether I was being brought up as a Sikh or a Muslim. 'He's being brought up to be a human being.'

It wasn't until 1980, when he was 21, that the author met his father again. Taseer's interest in travelling through Muslim-majority states was sparked after he wrote a story on the July 7, 2005, London bombings for British magazine Prospect. Taseer's father wrote an angry letter ...

... accus[ing] me of prejudice, of lacking even 'superficial knowledge' of the Pakistani ethos. 'Do you really think you're doing the Taseer name a service by spreading this kind of invidious anti-Muslim propaganda?

Taseer was upset by his father's letter, an irreligious Pakistani politician who hardly embodied religious values.

Yet Taseer's language when describing his father is always restrained, consistent with the elegant and often hauntingly beautiful prose of the book, sadly spoiled by serious factual errors exhibiting not prejudice, which would have been understandable, but some elementary research.

In setting the stage for his travels, Taseer writes that the whole Islamic world ...

... stretched between my father [Lahore] and the place where I read his letter [London].

How does Taseer expect his reader to take his understanding of the Muslim world seriously when he excludes from it the world's largest Muslim majority state, Indonesia?

He claims his father's Pakistani Islam emphasises rejection of Hinduism. But this is hardly pan-Islam, as I discovered during a visit to the Javanese cultural capital of Yogyakarta in 2006.

There I saw Muslim artists perform the Hindu Ramayana ballet before Muslim audiences in one of Southeast Asia's oldest Hindu temples. Not all Muslims share the religious chauvinism of some Pakistanis.

Taseer's book covers his travels in Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia (including a visit to the pilgrimage centre of Mecca), Iran and Pakistan. In each country he provides us with tremendously detailed portraits of scenery, but when it comes to people our encounters are limited to the devout yet chauvinistic on the one hand or the irreligious and resentful on the other.

Are we to believe that only an insignificant unrepresentative minority exists between these two poles?

Most unfortunate for Taseer is that his paradigm for understanding pan-Islamic sentiment emerges largely from Hassan Butt, a young British man who for years claimed to have recruited British Muslims for al-Qa'ida.

Taseer brought Butt to prominence in the article that prompted his father's wrathful letter. Yet in December last year Butt admitted to a British court that he was a professional liar who had told journalists (including, presumably, Taseer) stories the media wanted to hear.

It's a shame such an elegant piece of writing is spoiled in a way that may make some dismiss it altogether.

Sadly for Taseer, this book, the product of months of travel and a lifetime of anguish, may vindicate at least some of his absent father's criticisms. It is not a vindication well-deserved.

Irfan Yusuf is author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist (Allen & Unwin). This review was first published in The Australian on 27 June 2009


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UK/POLITICS: My, what charming people the BNP are ...

MP's from major British parties might be using taxpayers' money to pay for mowing their lawns or draining their moats. But when it comes to emulating neo-Nazis, they don't get much better than the far-Right British National Party (BNP).

The UK-based anti-fascist group Searchlight has exposed the ugly views of many BNP activists. Here is how the Observer reported Searchlight's findings:

... a Salford-based BNP candidate in the European elections had set his Facebook status to read "Wogs go home". Eddy O'Sullivan, 49, wrote: "They are nice people - oh yeah - but can they not be nice people in the fucking Congo or... bongo land or whatever?" O'Sullivan, who also joined an internet group called "F*ck Islam", denied that the comments were racist and insisted they were made in private conversations between individuals. "I also may have had a drink at the time," he added ...

... the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has spent months infiltrating the far right's network of websites and chatrooms and found that many BNP activists share O'Sullivan's views.

They include:

• Jeffrey Marshall, senior organiser for the BNP's London European election campaign. Following the death of David Cameron's disabled son Ivan, Marshall claimed in an internet forum discussion: "We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it."

Later, in response to comments made by others on the site, Marshall is alleged to have written: "There is not a great deal of point in keeping these people alive after all." He said the comments were private and some had been paraphrased and taken out of context. He admitted making the former comment, but said he could not recall making the latter one in an email to the forum, a copy of which is in the Observer's possession.

• Garry Aronsson, Griffin's running mate for the European parliament in the North West, posts an avatar on his personal web page featuring a Nazi SS death's head alongside the statement, "Speak English Or Die!" Aronsson proclaims on the site: "Every time you change your way of life to make immigrants more comfortable you betray OUR future!" He lists his hobbies as "devising slow and terrible ways of paying back the Guardian-reading c*nts who have betrayed the British people into poverty and slavery. I AM NOT JOKING."

• Barry Bennett, MEP candidate for the South West, posted several years ago under a pseudonym in a white supremacist forum the bizarre statement that "David Beckham is not white, he's a black man." Bennett, who is half-Jewish according to the BNP's deputy leader, Simon Darby, continued: "Beckham is an insult to Britishness, and I'm glad he's not here." He added: "I know perfectly respectable half-Jews in the BNP... even Hitler had honorary Aryans who were of Jewish descent... so whatever's good enough for Hitler's good enough for me. God rest his soul."

• Russ Green, MEP candidate for the West Midlands, posted recently on Darby's web page: "If we allowed Indians, Africans, etc to join [the BNP], we would become the 'British multi-National party' ... and I really do hope that never happens!" Darby said he echoed Green's sentiments.

• Dave Strickson, a BNP organiser who helps run its eastern region European election campaign, carried on his personal "Thurrock Patriots" blog a recent report of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in east London beneath the words "Another teen stabbed in Coon Town". The site also carried a mock-up racist version of the US dollar entitled "Obama Wog Dollar". Darby said the BNP did not endorse these comments and described them as "beyond the pale".

When confronted in the past about the extreme views of some of its members, the BNP senior hierarchy has often tried to dismiss them as unrepresentative of the party's core membership. But it appears that they run right to the top of the party.

Lee Barnes, the BNP's senior legal officer and one of Griffin's closest allies, has posted a video on his personal blog of a black suspect being beaten by police officers in the US and describes it as "brilliant". Barnes adds: "The beating of Rodney King still makes me laugh."

Barnes told the Observer his comments were "nothing to do with colour" but were merely a reflection of his belief that the police should have more powers to punish perpetrators of crime by "giving them a good thrashing".

Charming stuff. Time will tell if the Conservative Party goes down this path. As for the NSW Liberals ...


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VIDEO/AFGHANISTAN: Secret talks between Karzai government and Taliban ...

While Australian and NATO troops are engaged in fierce fighting against the Taliban, the US-backed Islamist government of Hamid Karzai is secretly negotiating to strike a deal with Taliban leaders. The secret talks have taken place in Saudi Arabia, London and Dubai. The US denies any direct involvement in the secret negotiations.

It seems the deal involves allowing leader of the Hizb-i-Islami jihadi faction, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to be allowed to eventually return to Afghanistan with full immunity from prosecution. Hekmatyar led one of the larger jihad factions that fought against the Soviet Union during the 1980's, most of his support coming from the US and Saudi Arabia. Following Soviet withdrawal, Hekmatyar served as Prime Minister but was unable to resolve differences with his main jihadi rival, the late Ahmad Shah Masud of the Jamiat-i-Islami faction. The current Karzai government is dominated by Masud loyalists.

But after 9/11, Hekmatyar decuded to support the Taliban. Following the Taliban's defeat, Hekmatyar has been in hiding.

Will the talks succeed? Who knows ...

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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CRIKEY: Become the evil you wish to see defeated ...

Mahatma Gandhi once said: "Be the change you want to see". But in George W Bush's so-called "war on terror", the extreme opposite applied. At Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram Airbase and in secret CIA torture facilities across the world, it was (and quite possibly remains) a case of: "Be the evil you want to see defeated".

Each and every account I have read from former Guantanamo detainees describes some of the most gruesome (or, as recently released Briton Binyam Mohamed describes it, "medieval") forms of torture. In Mohamed's case, the torture took place in Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan and Guantanamo over a period of seven years. Being some six feet tall, Mohamed lost one quarter of his body weight. He now weighs a mere 57 kilograms.

Here's a sample of Mohamed's treatment before he even set foot on Guantanamo soil:

*In Morocco, he spent 18 months being deprived of sleep, severely beaten and had his genitals cut with a scalpel.

*In Afghanistan, he was kept in a small black hole in prison, beaten, strung up and subjected to extremely loud music.

Combined with his treatment at Guantanamo, it all reads like something out of an al-Qaeda or Taleban guidebook (minus the beheadings).

Mohamed's lawyer reports Mohamed confessed "to anything those inflicting that treatment on him wanted him to say". Who knows how many things Mohamed confessed to? Former Australian Guantanamo detainee Mamdouh Habib also tells in his memoir about signing confessions after repeated torture and beatings.

Despite their confessions, both were released without any charges being laid. As if to underscore his complete innocence, Mohamed was released as soon as he arrived in London.

What makes all this even more scandalous is that Britain's own security agencies may have collaborated with the Americans in Mohamed's torture. At the very least, MI5 were likely to have been aware of his treatment.

Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the world that those held at the Guantanamo Bay facility were "the worst of the worst". Yet as Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc and An Oral History of al-Qaeda's Leader, co-writes:

... only five percent of all detainees at Guantanamo were ever apprehended by US forces to begin with ... Almost all of the detainees were turned over to American forces by foreigners, either with an axe to grind, or more often for a hefty bounty or reward. After U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, a reward of $5,000 or more was given to Pakistanis and Afghans for each detainee turned over.

Trial by ordeal should have been left in the Middle Ages. Our failure to do so means we have handed medieval forces of terror a moral victory they simply don't deserve.

First published in Crikey on 25 February 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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OPINION: Terror realities ...

It's more than just a cliché - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Or patriot. Or nationalist.

The Times of London recently reported on a rather curious document from the Middle East. The document contains a clear warning for British troops from terrorists of dire consequences. British soldiers are described in the document as forming part of an alien and hostile occupying force that is "illegal and immoral".

"It is unavoidable that many... British soldiers should fall. And it is only fair that these people know at least why they may be killed," the document reads. "You have learned what the word 'terrorist' means, some of you may even have come into direct contact with them (and heartily desire not to repeat the experience). But what do you know about them? Why does a young man go underground?"

Why indeed? The document describes the ongoing British occupation as "parallel to the mass assassination of a whole people". Apparently, terrorists used similar language in another pamphlet which was pinned to the bodies of two booby-trapped British soldiers.

Naturally, this kind of language would draw fire from allegedly conservative columnists, shock jocks, pundits and politicians. This is hardly the sort of language you'd expect to hear from someone committed to peace in the region.

But why did I describe this document as curious? Isn't just the sort of language Middle Eastern terrorists use all the time?

Of course it is. And it's precisely the language that was used by Irgun, a terrorist group led by a man named Menachem Begin, a terrorist who went on to sign a peace accord with Egypt and win the Nobel Peace Prize.

This pamphlet represents the kind of priceless message that those fighting the so-called war on terrorism need to remember. We need to understand that today's enemies can become tomorrow's allies. We also need to understand that today's terrorists often repeat the strategies used by today's allies when they were terrorists.

There's another lesson in this document. Britain lost the war against Jewish Zionists in Palestine because it refused to understand and appreciate why these young men and women were prepared to lay down their lives for a cause. Britain did not understand that behind the murder and mayhem of these terrorists was a cause based on universal moral imperatives with precedents in British history.

Australia and its allies in United States, Britain and other countries will not win the war against today's Islamic Zionists - people prepared to establish allegedly Islamic states in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere - unless we understand the moral logic that terrorists use. If we use the brutality of terrorists' methods as excuse to ignore genuine grievances that many of us once experienced in years gone by, we will lose both the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the wider war on terrorism.

Back in September 2004, Aldo Borgu of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute provided 20 basic facts about the nature of terrorism and our response to same. He reminds us that "modern terrorism is a phenomenon that policy makers have been dealing with for at least 40 years". He further contends that the conventional political language used (e.g. describing terrorists as "cowards") might help mobilising the nation to fight, but it doesn't always help us to understand exactly what we are fighting.

Cultural warriors will no doubt object to Borgu's realistic assessment that

... [u]ltimately, how you define who's a terrorist and what constitutes a terrorist act all comes down to the politics of the day.

It isn't terribly fashionable to refer to Tibetan monks as terrorists, but it has become most unfashionable not to refer to Islamist (or even nominally Muslim) insurgents anywhere as terrorists.

Our definition of terrorism is also affected by our alliances. The old adage "my enemy's enemy is my friend" also applies to who we label as terrorists. As Borgu notes:

The only reason the US has defined the various Chechen groups fighting the Russians and Muslim separatists in Western China as terrorists, is the US needs the support of the Russian and Chinese governments. If we were still in the middle of the Cold War we'd be embracing the Chechens as allies and probably funding their activities.

That probably explained why we backed the Afghan mujahideen during the 1980s. What was that? The West sponsoring Islamic jihadists? Never (not)!

We often hear the mantra from our politicians that terrorists hate us for who we are as opposed to what our policies are or who we unconditionally befriend. Borgu describes this as a cop-out, "a convenient argument for any government to make because it lets them off the hook for taking responsibility for their actions. But it's also dangerous thinking. If you really believe that, then it makes you more liable to make foreign policy decisions without consideration of the consequences".

Yes, our foreign policy does have implications for our security. If it didn't, our former PM Mr Howard would never have argued that invading Iraq would make Australians safer and reduce the likelihood of a terrorist attack.

So as we approach the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, we should ask ourselves about whether blindly fighting terrorism without addressing the grievances used by terrorists to garner support will really make us safer. Some 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks. More than the same number of Afghan civilians died in the first 3 months of the Allied invasion.

We cannot allow the rhetoric of politicians to blind us to terror realities. After all, how many Australian politicians send their sons and daughters off to fight in the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq?

First published in ABC Unleashed on 10 September 2008.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf


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MEDIA: More Kerbaj inaccuracies exposed ...

Well, it looks like my old buddy Sheik Dicky Kerbaj is keeping up with The Times and making waves about those blasted cousin-marriers in the United Kingdom.

This time, Kerbaj has co-authored an article claiming there could be tensions between Muslims and the UK police during the 2012 Olympics. Kerbaj et al have cited terrorism "experts" warning Scotland Yard that hungry and thirsty Muslims might get a little impatient with all the crowds.

The two experts cited are Michael Mumisa (an Islamic scholar) and Edward Kessler (of the Wolff Institute for Abrahamic Faiths).

Here is what Kerbaj said about both these gentlemen:

Michael Mumisa, an Islamic scholar, and one of four experts hired by Scotland Yard who began training the police this week on inter-faith issues, said that the commemoration of the 11 Israeli athletes, killed by Palestinian militants from the Black September Organisation at the 1972 Munich Games, could become a national security threat if it was not managed properly and was perceived by Muslims to be “hijacking” the Games.

Edward Kessler, executive director of the Woolfe Institute, which deals with inter-faith dialogue, teaching and research, said that police needed to have a “minimum level of faith literacy” to help them deal with religious issues during the London Games. Dr Kessler said: “During Ramadan you’re going to have a lot of tired, hungry, less evenly tempered people because they haven’t eaten for 18 hours.”

However, both the Jewish Chronicle and the UK Police have discredited the report. Writing for the Chronicle, Leon Symons cites Dr Kessler as saying ...

Sheikh Mumisa's words have been twisted in a way that is not accurate. I know what was said because I was there throughout the course. We were very unhappy with what appeared because it did not reflect the course that the officers took.

We are not experts in terrorism, we are experts in faith and interfaith and that's what they were here to learn. It was a very positive programme which dealt with subjects including antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The possibility of a ceremony to commemorate the Munich Olympics massacre was mentioned as being key to the Jewish community. But it was discussed in terms of one type of commemoration being wholly appropriate and another being wholly inappropriate. The police would have to deal with the situation on the ground and the point was that they should be aware of the sensitivities of each faith community. It was certainly not talked of as a ‘national security threat' or the Games being ‘hijacked'.

And here is how Sunrise Radio reported the story on 29 October:

The Met Police have rejected a national newspaper’s claims that Ramadan coinciding with the 2012 Olympics has increased the security threat.

An Islamic scholar allegedly warned the paper that the timing of the games could create a security threat, but he claims the paper misrepresented his words.

Sheikh Michael Mumisa, of the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faith, told Sunrise News he said nothing of the sort, and that journalists must act responsibly.

Chief Inspector Andy Goldstone from the Met Police Olympic Security Directorate agrees there should not be a problem.

You can read more about this episode in dangerous media silliness here. You can also read more of Kerbaj's works on the blog of one of Daniel "Saddam financed Obama's house" Pipes here.

And Australian readers can again have a good laugh by reading Kerbaj getting even the most basic Arabic naming practices muddled.

CRIKEY: British buses abandon God ...

How’s this for religious freedom? A group of evangelicals have decided to advertise on British buses. Serious. And which divine being are they plugging? Well, it turns out the evangelical atheists at the British Humanist Society are plugging no God in particular. In fact, they’re advertising no god at all.

Britain’s bendy-buses will soon carry BHA-funded advertisements proclaiming “THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. Already the BHA has raised around 4 times what they expected for this ungodly advertising blitz.

Now don’t ask me what the f*** a bendy-bus is. All I know is that London Mayor Boris campaigned against them before he was elected, calling for the reintroduction of those gorgeous double-decker buses fitted with conductors, preferably ones looking something like piccaninnies with watermelon smiles. Or better still, Russell Peters. And if the conductors don’t like such racial profiling, Boris can always tell them to “go if they don’t like it here”.

Now apparently former Mayor Livingstone introduced this more malleable variety of public transport. Livingstone, of course, was a nasty pinko-lefty. These buses must be part of his grand socialist plot to make us all think the same. And now these biased leftwing buses are carrying blasphemous messages!

Richard Dawkins, an Oxford Professor, is supporting the campaign. Why? He told the Pom version of the Daily Telegraph (via The Age):

Religion is accustomed to getting a free ride — automatic tax breaks, unearned 'respect' and the right not to be 'offended', the right to brainwash children. Even on the buses, nobody thinks twice when they see a religious slogan plastered across the side. This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think — and thinking is anathema to religion.

British Christians are enjoying all this attention being given to God. I’m sure God Him/Herself won’t mind either. However, our Young Liberals will surely see Dawkins’ intervention as yet another leftwing campus plot. I urge them to immediately fly to the UK and save Londoners from what is clearly a direct challenge to the Christian heritage we inherited from Mother England. Take Fred Nile with you. And for the sake of Barry O’Farrell’s election chances, please don’t come back.

An edited version of this was published in the Crikey daily alert on Wednesday 22 October 2008.

CRIKEY: Nick Griffin: to visa or not to visa ...

It’s hard to know how best to approach hate-mongers seeking to grace our shores. For years, genuine free speech (as opposed to hate-speech) advocates and anti-anti-Semites agonised over how best to respond to visa applications by Holocaust-denier David Irving. Should they lobby for Irving’s visa to be denied? Or should they allow him in and hope good sense will prevail and people listen to him and realise just how loopy he really is?

No doubt similar concerns will be relevant should the likes of Raphael Israeli plan a further visit to Australia. The Howard government’s attitude to foreign hate-speech was somewhat inconsistent, refusing visas to some thick-Sheiks whilst funding Mark Steyn to lecture us all on how dirty smelly Mozzlems are turning Europe into Eurabia (a decision even Andrew Bolt opposed). Even the illustrious folk at Quadrant have hosted a Eurabia lecture by a man who continues to insist Barack Obama is telling lies about his religious heritage.

And now I’m wondering if it’s a good idea to write about Nick Griffin, leader of the far-Right British National Party (formerly known as the British National Front), accepting an invitation to visit Australia. Am I giving him attention he simply doesn’t deserve? Am I giving his tour some much-needed free advertising?

Far-right fruitcakes like Griffin no longer sound like fruitcakes. Whilst previously extremely racist and anti-Semitic, Griffin’s party has shown a greater degree of political sophistication in its rhetoric. In the lead-up to the last UK Council elections, the BNP almost overnight transformed itself into a pro-Israel party, with one British Jewish leader quoted as saying the BNP’s website is one of the most Zionist of any British political party. Griffin has jumped on the same sophisticated smear casting bandwagon as the dozen pundits recently exposed by a US-based media watchdog.

(Of course, that didn’t stop the BNP website from writing this eulogy of the late Austrian neo-Nazi leader Jorg Haider.)

Racial and sectarian hatred is becoming a booming political industry. Mainstream conservative parties and their pollsters-cum-advisers are happy to engage in minority-bashing. Far-Right parties are taking advantage of this conservative posturing. The articulate likes of Griffin need to be watched. But how do we combat the fires of hatred without adding oxygen or turning them into free-speech martyrs? And how should the Immigration Minister exercise his discretion in relation to Griffin’s visa application?

First published in the Crikey daily alert on Monday 13 October 2008.

UPDATE I: A reader known as "steve martin" writes in response:

Let's face it the World Trade Center, the London bombings and the Bali bombings have allowed the loonies to come out of the closet, indeed even giving their views a veneer of respectability.

When I was at school many years ago one course that was given related to logic. It appears not to be taught these days.

COMMENT/MEDIA: The Times of London recycles Kerbaj?

Richard Kerbaj, formerly of The Australian and author of numerous articles displaying his Lebanese-and-Arabic-speaking skills, has now moved to London to take up a post at The Times. Both The Australian and The Times are owned by Rupert "Muslims-marry-their-cousins" Murdoch.

You can check out Kerbaj's skills at reporting on radical thick-Sheiks by clicking here. Also interesting is correspondence sent by ABC's Media Watch here. You can also read Imam Sheik Ayatollah Hujjat al-Islam Khoury Sayyid Michael Stutchbury's response clarifying Kerbaj's Arabic-language skills here.

[UK readers will be amused by Kerbaj's colleagues at the Melbourne Herald-Sun confusing Abu Hamza with Abu Hamza.]

Kerbaj's latest piece in The Times actually isn't so bad. He discusses plans to purge "Muslim spiritual leaders" who turn a blind eye to violence against women. In theory, it might well be a good idea. Lay persons shouldn't get away with turning a blind eye to violence against women. Why should religious leaders?

[Though given Kerbaj's past performance with labelling, one wonders whether in this particular article, by the term "spiritual leader", he means an imam. Or does he mean a pir? Or a murshid? Or how about a hoca? Or a maulana? Or even a molvi? Or how about a sidi? And why has he stopped using the term "Muslim cleric" as he often did in Australia?]

I'm not sure if Kerbaj will focuss much of his time at The Times focussing on UK Muslim issues. But just how qualified is he for this task? Does Kerbaj have any clue who leads the liturgy and educational needs of Britain's various Muslim sects and cultural groups? Can Kerbaj identify one maslaq from another? Does he understand the differences between various shades of Deobandi, Barelwi and Ahl-i-Hadith? Does Kerbaj speak Urdu or Bangla?

These questions are pertinent. After all, in Australia so much of Kerbaj's information came from various Lebanese groups whose political nuances he had little understanding of, despite his own Lebanese heritage.

Much of Kerbaj's information on Aussie Muslim management issues came from followers of Abdullah Hareri and the al-Ahbash sect. One wonders whether in London, Kerbaj's sources come from the equal and opposite of al-Ahbash i.e. the followers of Nazim al-Qubrussi (attacked on an al-Ahbash website here) and and his student Hisham Kabbani?

One of Kerbaj's main sources in his recent story is Irfan al-Alawi from the UK branch of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism. Al-Alawi claims to be a follower of a Yemeni Sufi master who has close associations with Imam Hamza Yusuf Hanson of the Zaytuna Institute.

[The Executive Director of that Centre's head office in the United States, Mr Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, whose profile you can read on that wonderful blog Jewcy where you'll also find a fascinating post on why he sees Islam as "Judaism for the Whole World". Amir Butler claims here that Schwartz is a follower of Hisham Kabbani, though Schwartz doesn't mention Kabbani at all in this interview with National Review Online. Schwartz claims to be a proponent of traditional Islam and Sufism, though his repeated personal attacks on Imam Hamza Yusuf Hanson (a prominent proponent of traditional Islam) borders on obsessive.]

Australian readers will be familiar with Kerbaj's usual mantra that Wahhabi Islam is virtually a unitary phenomenon espoused by Usama bin Ladin. He repeats this mantra for the consumption of UK readers in his latest piece ...

During its investigation the organisation - the British arm of a longestablished US think-tank - received a number of complaints about imams who had turned a blind eye to cases of domestic violence, many of whom are followers of Wahabbism, a puritanical interpretation of the Koran espoused by Osama bin Laden.

Some readers may wonder why a White Ribbon Day Ambassador like me should object to a report the publication of which is clearly in the public interest. Surely religious leaders of any congregation turning a blind eye to domestic violence must be exposed and shamed. Why should Muslims be any exception?

Muslim spiritual leaders could be denounced publicly by their own community as part of a campaign to expose imams whose silence on domestic abuse is leading to women being burnt, lashed and raped in the name of Islam.

Muslim scholars are to present the Government with the names of imams who are alleged by members of their own communities to have refused to help abused women. Imams are also accused of refusing to speak out against domestic abuse in their sermons because they fear losing their clerical salaries and being sacked for broaching a “taboo” subject.

Some of Britain's most prominent moderate imams and female Muslim leaders have backed the campaign, urging the Home Office to vet more carefully Islamic spiritual leaders coming to Britain to weed out hardliners. A four-month inquiry by the Centre for Islamic Pluralism into domestic abuse has uncovered harrowing tales of women being raped, burnt by cigarettes and lashed with belts by their husbands, who believe it is their religious right to mistreat them.

At least 40 female Muslim victims and many social workers from northern England - including Bradford, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham - were interviewed as part of the inquiry, which is expected to be published next month.

And why should someone like yours truly, who has a history of criticising a young Sydney imam and a former Australian Mufti for their ignorant and dangerous comments on sexual assault victims, have a problem with Kerbaj doing the same?

The problem is that Kerbaj might be accused of using domestic violence as an excuse to play a game of journalistic sectarian wedge-politics. The last thing we should be doing is believing that the only imams who justify or turn a blind eye to domestic violence are Wahhabis and the Tabligh Jamaat, whom Kerbaj claims is ... wait for it ...

... accused of radicalising young British Muslims with its orthodox teachings.

[One wonders how some of Kerbaj's sources, who claim to be more true to Islamic orthodoxy than the TJ, would respond to Kerbaj's claim that orthodox Islam radicalises young British Muslims.]

But my real objection to Kerbaj's article (at least based on my own reading of it) is the same as my objection to any attempt to focus on one group of domestic violence perpetrators whilst ignoring another group. Or my objections to scribes, pundits and politicians behaving like defenders of sexual violence victims when it suits their prejudices.

Here's an excerpt of what I wrote about this topic in the Australian Jesuit publication Eureka Street ...

This isn't just another case of inconsistency inspired by sectarian prejudice, of what's good for the Muslim goose being not good for the non-Muslim gander. The clear message is that misogynistic or insensitive remarks about sexual assault victims are only worthy of universal condemnation if those making the remarks belong to the 'wrong' religious, ethnic and/or cultural background ...

When sexual assault becomes a cultural or sectarian wedge, it demeans and insults the suffering of all victims and their families. It also opens to question our society's commitment to unconditionally ending violence against women.

On the other hand, Kerbaj might argue that he wasn't expressing any opinion. He was merely reporting the facts. However, consider these points ...

a. Is the CIP the first and/or only UK Muslim group to tackle community attitudes toward domestic violence?

b. What standing does CIP have in mainstream British Muslim circles? I'm not just talking about religious circles but also cultural (e.g. South Asian) and language (e.g. Hindi/Urdu, Punjabi and Bangla) circles.

There are other factors to consider. Perhaps Kerbaj would have factored all these points in if he'd been provided with a more generous word length. And as I've already said above, Kerbaj's article isn't as bad as his past work, some of which does little more than perpetuate a Team America take on Muslims. When it comes to identifying Islamic sectarian nuances, at times Kerbaj has tripped over even the most basic kindergarten stuff.

UK readers of this blog should keep a close eye on Kerbaj's work. At the same time, we should all remember that it often isn't easy for journalists to report on such issues.

(Thanks to PK and BC for the tip-off.)

UPDATE I: Another article (in fact a case study of one victim ignored by her local imams) by Richard Kerbaj is well worth reading. This is really disturbing stuff. We can bag reporters like Kerbaj all we like. But who is going to protect women like 'Aliya'?

UPDATE II: I've written about Kerbaj at some length in various Crikey pieces, some of which can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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