SECURITY: Extra! Extra! Bolt condemns white terrorism! (And other headlines you won’t read in the Hun)

A white terror suspect with links to anti-Islam groups was arrested at the weekend. Not that you'd read about it in the right-wing rags.

The weekend was awash with local and international news, sport and culture war. Australian athletes bagged gold medals in Rio like there’s no tomorrow. The Turkish crackdown continued unabated. Some cartoonist for a national newspaper leaked tears on the shoulder of visiting American humourist PJ O’Rourke, who, as this video illustrates, has far more respect for the suffering of the indigenous people of his homeland — not to mention refugees. The Republican Party is about to simultaneously implode and explode in one giant Trumpocpalypse.

And to top it all off, police conducted anti-terror raids in Melbourne’s north-west that led to the arrest of one suspect who was charged with preparing or planning a terrorist act and collecting or making documents likely to facilitate a terrorist attack.

These are extremely serious charges, so serious that the Herald Sun will have splashed the face of suspect Phillip Galea across its front page with a headline, “TERROR” — below which, in smaller letters, the words “IN OUR SUBURBS”. Today’s Herald Sun will no doubt have a six-page wrap-around featuring articles detailing:

• Galea’s criminal history, including time served for possessing weapons; 
• His history of involvement in extremist groups that have, in the past few decades, posed a threat to Australians of Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, etc, heritage; 
• The activities of groups like Reclaim Australia and the True Blue Crew including video on their Facebook page showing them using iron bars to smash heads “one leftie at a time”; 
• Discussions among political leaders and security experts on the groups being declared terrorist organisations; 
• Links between Australian right-wing extremists and similar groups in the United Kingdom, United States, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Greece, etc; and 
• Op-eds from Andrew Bolt and Rita Panahi calling for right-of-centre parties to condemn right-wing extremist groups and their political wings, including Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Liberal National Party branches in the Queensland seat of Dawson. 

I could go on and on about the saturation coverage of the Galea arrest across Australian press and the discussion it should arouse among pundits and pollies. But I won’t bother. Just buy yourself a copy of the Herald Sun, the Daily Tele or whatever paper suits your fancy. You’ll find hardly any coverage. 

Galea is no small fish in the Australian far right. Almost all the videos posted to the True Blue Crew’s facebook page were linked to WordPress blog RA Media. Many posts on that blog are authored by Galea, including one post welcoming the return of Pauline Hanson.

Last November, Galea pleaded guilty to possessing five Tasers and a quantity of mercury just days before an anti-immigration rally.

We don’t really know exactly what Galea was planning to do. The accused hasn’t been tried, and he should be granted the benefit of the presumption of innocence, not to mention quality legal representation and access to legal aid. And I would have much preferred Galea was charged under conventional criminal law instead of the new parallel criminal injustice system reserved for vaguely defined “terrorist acts”.

But what of those who agree with him on key issues relating to social cohesion, a key element of our national security? What about those who, like Galea, are right of centre, who want to end or curtail immigration of certain groups, who are against halal meat and/or new mosques? What about those who insist on a rock-solid link between Muslims — their religious and cultural identities — and terrorism?

Will we see the likes of Pauline Hanson, George Christensen, Cory Bernardi, Fred Nile, etc, loudly condemn Galea and his ilk? What about Andrew Bolt, Piers Akerman, Rita Panahi, Miranda Devine, Janet Albrechtsen, Alan Jones, etc? Will they acknowledge that their political theology has a problem with extremism and extremist violence?

When will moderate conservatives march through the streets protesting and loudly condemning violent extremism in their ranks?

Pfft. As if Australia’s white conservative elites will ever accept the possibility that one of their own could be a terrorist.

First published in Crikey on 08 August 2016.

MEDIA: The Bolt decision

It must have been an awful feeling for one of Australia’s most loved and hated columnist, a rare moment when he did not enjoy the limelight. But dressed in his dark blue suit and a tie that almost matched the colour of his greying hair, columnist, blogger, TV and radio personality Andrew Bolt was genuinely phased by the judgment of a single Federal Court Judge. For a man who otherwise never shies away from talking about race, Bolt wasn’t amused about being found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act.

Bolt described the judgment as

… a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discuss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves. I argued then and I argue now that we should not insist on the differences between us but focus instead on what unites us as human beings.

I personally haven’t read all 470 paragraphs and 143 pages of His Honour Justice Brmberg’s judgment. But the word “multiculturalism” certainly isn’t prominent enough for it to feature in the Catchwords on the first page.

Multiculturalism does appear, however, in the 8-page summary of the judgment. In paragraph 15, His Honour remarked:

Whether conduct is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a group of people calls for an objective assessment of the likely reaction of those people. I have concluded that the assessment is to be made by reference to an ordinary and reasonable member of the group of people concerned and the values and circumstances of those people. General community standards are relevant but only to an extent. Tolerance of the views of others may be expected in a multicultural society, including from those persons who are the subject of racially based conduct.

In paragraph 22, His Honour notes:

In reaching those conclusions, I have observed that in seeking to promote tolerance and protect against intolerance in a multicultural society, the Racial Discrimination Act must be taken to include in its objectives tolerance for and acceptance of racial and ethnic diversity. At the core of multiculturalism is the idea that people may identify with and express their racial or ethnic heritage free from pressure not to do so. People should be free to fully identify with their race without fear of public disdain or loss of esteem for so identifying. Disparagement directed at the legitimacy of the racial identification of a group of people is likely to be destructive of racial tolerance, just as disparagement directed at the real or imagined practices or traits of those people is also destructive of racial tolerance.

Is His Honour really seeking to limit freedom to talk about (let alone criticise) multiculturalism? Read the rest of the summary. Remember, it’s only 8 pages.

As for Bolt suggesting that he has always insisted on the things that unite humanity, do yourself a favour and just read the comments that he allows to appear on his blog whenever he writes about just about any subject.

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: Running riot across Sydney

The American-owned Sydney tabloid Daily Telegraph carried an article today about a report from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics about rioting in Sydney. Here are some excerpts:

THOUSANDS of assaults occur within 20m of a hotel or club across Sydney, a damning report has found, as authorities yesterday called for further restrictions on late-night trading ...


The assaults were clustered around Sydney's nightspots and more likely to happen near licensed premises than anywhere else.


More than 2000 assaults occurred just 20m from a club or pub, accounting for 37 per cent of all attacks in the city, while 56.8 per cent of assaults happened within 50m of a liquor outlet.

Did you notice the first word? THOUSANDS. But as usual, the left-wing ALP lefty nasty elites just refuse to blame the real culprits.

Crime statistic experts and senior police yesterday said extended trading laws and a proliferation of licensed premises across Sydney had to be addressed if the community wanted to reduce violence.

What rubbish. It's clearly the fault of nasty drunken Muslims who refuse to integrate and adopt genuine Australian values such as sobriety.

And if you believe that, you'll believe these dudes are al-Qaeda suicide bombers.

MEDIA: The perils of working for Today Tonight ...

It's Christmas time. Well, not quite. It's Muslim Christmas time. The Arabs call it Eid al-Adha. The Indonesians call it Hari Rayah Haji. The Turks call it Qurban Bayram. In my parents' part of the world, they call it Baqarah Eid.



It's all about God asking Abraham to sacrifice his som. And this afternoon, I received a phone call from Channel 7's Today Tonight to sacrifice my credibility.



I feel sorry for the producer who telephoned my parents' private number at around 1pm today. She sounded nice. I think her name was Naomi. Or was it Natalie? I recall her surname. My Indian mum with limited English skills immediately recognised her surname as Indian and was happy to talk to her.

Anyway, mum put me through to her. It just so happened that I was in Sydney, visiting my parents for Eid. I talk to the producer (let's call her Sita, a nice Indian name which is also the name of Lord Rama's bride). Our conversation went something like this:

SITA: Hi Irfan. My name is Sita from Today Tonight. How are you?

ME: Aw yeah.

SITA: I'm not sure if you read that story in the Daily Telegraph about some lady in a burqa pulled over who claimed to police they were being racist.

ME: I actually don't read the Daily Telegraph. I prefer to read Australian newspapers.

SITA: Look, I know many people don't read it. I have to read it for work.

ME: Poor you.

SITA: We wanted to give a voice to people in the community who have views on this issue. I know you've spoken out in the past. We don't want to have the usual types like Keysar Trad. We want people with credibility.

ME: With all due respect to you, and please don't take this personally, why would people with credibility wish to appear on Today Tonight? It is a show with no journalistic credibility whatsoever.

SITA: Listen, I know that many people have similar views on the show. Can you recommend anyone?

ME: For a joke, yes I do.

I really felt sorry for Sita. If her goal really is to get to the bottom of this and provide a voice for alternative voices, I hope she succeeds. But if she ends up producing the same kind of racist mysoginistic tabloid tribe Today Tonight is famous for, I hope she is kidnapped by the 10-headed monster-king Ravanna and taken to Lanka for 1,000 years.

CRIKEY: Why question defence force loyalty because of religion?

A spokesman for the Defence forces last Friday reiterated this truism:

Eligible people may join the ADF irrespective of their ethnicity, race or religion.

Alan Howe, executive editor of the Herald & Weekly Times, described this remark almost dismissively as

... the strictly politically correct line.

Howe’s column, also published in the Brisbane Courier Mail, began with these words:

There are 2006 Muslims in the Australian Defence Force.

He describes suggestions that none have been investigated after the Fort Hood massacre as

... a bold call.

He claims allied Christian soldiers had no hesitation in killing German (presumably Christian) soldiers and civilians during the Second World War, despite the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers being the battle cry. He ends with this:

If the god in any soldier’s life looms larger than his or her responsibility to Australia, we have a problem.

Meanwhile, one of Howe’s more hysterical colleagues, a certain Andrew Bolt, starts his column by what he sees as the first fact a “real journalist” would tell you to explain why the Fort Hood killer did what he did:

The Fort Hood killer, army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, was a Muslim. He shouted ‘God is great’ in Arabic as he opened fire.

So why question the loyalties of Australian servicemen and women who happen to tick a particular box for religion on their census forms? Is Howe trying to do a Nile?

Perhaps the answer to my question can be found in a fatwa issued by Sheik Rupert bin Murdoch in 2006:

You have to be careful about Muslims, who have a very strong, in many ways a fine, but very strong, religion, which supersedes any sense of nationalism wherever they go.

But how will we tell exactly who is a Muslim? By the colour of their skin? Will a white Bosnian with a Muslim mum and Orthodox dad count as Muslims? Or a white man married to a Muslim woman? Will we know Muslims by what language they speak at home? Most Arabic speakers in Australia are Christian. Again, a fatwa from Ayatollah Murdoch provides guidance: Muslims are the ones with genetic defects from marrying their cousins.

And the best refutation for this bigotry and stupidity comes from Feroze Khan, the father of fallen US soldier Kareem R Khan, who told a journalist:

My son’s Muslim faith did not make him not want to go. It never stopped him … He
looked at it that he’s American and he has a job to do.

Our troops have a job to do. We should allow them to do it and not waste their or our own time with moronic speculations based on isolated incidents.

First published in Crikey on 12 November 2009.



Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Give us a break, the fake sheik’s not worth the effort ...

You’ve heard of tabloid media going after thick sheiks. Now some are even using fake sheiks.

At about 2pm yesterday my office received a message to call someone from Radio 2GB, home to such leading lights of quality journalism as Alan Jones. I called back and spoke to a female who worked with Jason Morrison. She wondered if I knew much about a certain Sheik Haron who had apparently been charged by Federal Police after sending abusive letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan. She wanted to know if I’d be prepared to speak to Morrison on his afternoon Drive Show. I agreed.

Silly me. Morrison seemed less interested in Haron and more interested in why a group of people he described as “Moozlems” didn’t step forward to condemn the man. He wanted to know why he was having so much difficulty getting “Moozlems” to condemn this man on his program (I did remind him that many don’t listen to 2GB). Still he pressed the point about the alleged Muslim conspiracy of silence over Haron.

I said Haron hadn’t been given a huge amount of airplay or coverage (and I wasn’t just talking about the allegedly left-wing trendy “multi-culty”, the Fairfax press and ABC either). Maybe your average Aussie who ticked the Muslim box on his or her census form didn’t see the need to comment on some sheik who, by all accounts (including those of Richard Kerbaj in The Australian in January last year), was little more than a fake.

Here's an excerpt from Kerbaj's report ...

FEDERAL agents have been urged by the nation's senior Shia leader, Kamal Mousselmani, to investigate an Iranian man purporting to be a prominent Islamic
cleric.

Sheik Mousselmani told The Australian yesterday the mystery cleric - who has been identified as Ayatollah Manteghi Boroujerdi on his website after appearing under the name Sheik Haron - was not a genuine Shia spiritual leader.

He said there were no ayatollahs - supreme Shia scholars - in Australia and none of his fellow spiritual leaders knew who Ayatollah Boroujerdi or Sheik Haron was.

"We don't know him and we have got nothing to do with him," Sheik Mousselmani said. "The federal police should investigate who he is. It should be their responsibility."

Sheik Haron, who insulted the family of an Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan in November, was accused by Muslim leaders of being a fake cleric deliberately stirring anti-Islamic sentiment.

Sheik Mousselmani, head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council of Australia, which represents the nation's 30,000 Shi'ites, said Sheik Haron's website - Sheik Haron Web - gave him away as an amateur who knew little about Shia Islam.

"From the way he writes his (fatwas or religious edicts), I don't think he is Shia Muslim," Sheik Mousselmani said. "And there are no ayatollahs in Australia.

"We don't follow, we don't support and we don't stand with anyone we don't know. He's not one of us" ...

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ikebal Patel said yesterday the body's investigation into the cleric last month could not find any information on who Sheik Haron is.

"I know the community very well, and this just doesn't make sense," he said. "We couldn't find anything on the man."

Even Jeremy Jones, of the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), was quoted in one Jewish blog as saying that Haron “works alone and has no support”.

And yet somehow fake-sheik Haron was an issue that one journalist described to Kevin Rudd at a press conference yesterday as “the question that’s dominating talkback radio today”. Rudd ended his response to the journalist’s question with: “You know, when you pick up the front page of the Tele today, I think people, I think their stomachs turn.”

The journalist asked Rudd whether he would consider changing Australia’s citizenship laws to allow “someone like that” (like what? Fake-sheik? Iranian? Crazy dude in a turban? Migrant?) to have their citizenship stripped of them and be deported. Rudd was non-committal.

It’s one thing for media outlets to use the rants of a thick sheik to cook up a divisive broth of dog whistles. But why use the imbecilic correspondence of a fake sheik to cast aspersions on 360,000 people, most of whom (including their religious leaders) have never heard of?

After my interview with Morrison, I telephoned his researcher and asked whether the show had any trouble finding a Muslim to talk on the show. She confirmed that she hadn’t called an Islamic council, an imam, a board of imams or the Community Relations Commission. She did say that Morrison may have tried calling other people about the matter.

He may have. But I somehow doubt it.

An edited version of this article was first published in Crikey on 23 October 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf



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COMMENT: Noooooooooooooooooooooo Fatso's

I’m sure readers will remember that show National Bingo Night. Readers of South Asian heritage will have particularly fond memories of the Bingo Commissioner who kicked so many goals for their ancestral culture in Australia with this classic performance.



How could we ever not forget?

Dr Tanveer Ahmed had more than just failed TV game shows in his comedic repertoire. Indeed, perhaps his best comic performance has been convincing the neo-Conservative Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) that he is also an eminently qualified to be appointed a visiting fellow with research interests in:

… Islamic affairs, South Asia and the health sector.

Ahmed’s expertise in and contributions to psychiatry are well documented. His latest contribution to Islamic affairs (whatever that phrase means) consists of a review of the book by yours truly, published in the Spring 2009 edition of Policy magazine published by the CIS.

Normally I wouldn’t waste $9.95 on this allegedly intellectual magazine. However, it had one of my all-time favourite writers - PJ O’Rourke - on the cover. Yet as I found out after I had parted with my cash, all they had from PJ was an interview he did with some bloke who does a radio show on Radio National. I could have just as easily read the same interview online on the ABC website for free! Indeed, I had already downloaded the podcast back in May!!

Anyway, Ahmed’s review makes interesting reading for his complete objectivity. He sticks to the issues. He avoids making personal attacks. He’s not interested in innuendo. Consider this paragraph:

Yusuf also fits the profile of those vulnerable to radicalisation in other ways, for it is the socially awkward who are most likely to turn to Islamist teachings for a sense of social connectedness, in much the same way that other disaffected adolescents may become punks or Goths. Yusuf writes of being bullied because of the colour of his skin while in primary school. He is also obese. In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, an Iranian blogger captured it beautifully when he describes the religious police as ‘those young men least likely to ever attract the opposite sex but then find the government tells them they are special and gives them guns to prove it.’

Ahmed continues with this prediction:

Yusuf will remain controversial and disliked by many, including some Muslims.

Yes, I am disliked by the likes of Keysar Trad, Andrew Bolt, Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes, Tim Blair and Tanveer Ahmed. The latter two seem to relish making references to my physique. It is true. I am fat. Still, my message to them is ...


And for some ailments there is NOOOOOOOOOOOO cure. Not even if you are a medical practitioner.

UPDATE I: Speaking of Daniel Pipes, Ahmed's review describes Pipes as a "US Middle East expert". Ahmed famously shared the podium with Pipes arguing the proposition that Islam and democracy are incompatible. To argue that Islam and democracy are incompatible implies that Muslims cannot live as productive citizens in a democracy. Given that Pipes seems to believe that Barack Obama was (and possibly still is) a Muslim, one wonders how Pipes can explain a current or former Muslim now becoming President of arguably the world's most successful democracy.

UPDATE II: An interesting discussion on Tanveer's review can be found at the blog of Policy editor Andrew Norton here.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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BLOGS: Andrew Bolt's tabloid excuses ...

Excuses, excuses. Andrew Bolt is full of them. And after reading this entry on his blog, I'm convinced Bolt is full of it.

Bolt has a serious dilemna.

I now face a moral dilemma. My intention has been to allow on this blog a discussion that is as free as possible - freer, in fact, than you will find on virtually any other blog. Even my worst critics, several of whom post here almost every day, will concede that I have enabled just that.

(At least they will until they are banned!)

And the debate has also at times degenerated into nasty slanging matches, particularly when overworked moderators, flooded by as many as 12,000 comments in a week, have let through things we did not properly read or consider.

Why didn't you properly read them? Doesn't your moderation policy say that you will read them? Aren't you legally obliged to read them now that you have made a representation to this effect?

... suggestions are being made that by allowing a platform that includes in the crowd of thousands a few cranks - students? leftists trying to cause michief? nutters?- that perhaps the ABC should think twice before inviting me on. Silly, I know, but I suspect this is not an issue that will go away. And then there’s the real risk that one day we’ll slip up and allow on a comment that will get us sued, with me dragged into it once more as the man who “allowed” this all to happen.

Andrew, you know full well the identity of many of those defamatory, offensive and racist leaving comments on your blog.

But maybe I'm being harsh. Maybe I should consider the moral dimension to all this.

So as you can see, against my duty, as I perhaps arrogantly perceive it, to allow as free a discussion as possible, there is my ego and my self-interest in protecting my reputation. I should also admit that taking off the comments function should free up more than 10 hours of every choked week. What’s more, reading and checking those comments that I can get to can eat at my optimisim as well as my time. You should see the stuff we must delete - or, rather, you shouldn’t.

We don't need to read what you delete, Andrew. What you allow through is worse than bad. Readers can read this long litany of examples and judge for themselves.

Bolt has no more excuses left. There is no real moral dilemma. There is the law. Bolt must obey the law, just like the rest of us. Bolt must follow his own moderation charter. He must not publish material that is racist, sexist, homophobic etc. He must not breach anti-vilification laws, and he must not publish comments that breach such laws.

So what if he must moderate 12,000 comments a week. He works for News Limited. He works for a multi-billion dollar enterprise. And such an enterprise and its employees must obey the law just like the rest of us. There's no moral dilemma involved in the Rule of Law.

If Bolt continues to make excuses and continues to rebuff the law, there could well be consequences, both for him and his employers. It's as simple as that.

REVIEW: Correspondent's ugly truth

Fit to Print: Misrepresenting the Middle East
Joris Luyendijk
Scribe, 243pp, $29.95

The Pope had just delivered his Regensburg address. The entire Islamic world (whatever that means) was up in arms. Churches were ablaze, nuns shot, flags and effigies in flames. Or so we in the West were told.

One such article reached my attention. It was accompanied by a photo taking up a quarter of the tabloid page and showing angry men in Basra burning effigies of the Pope and former President Bush. The caption read: “Muslims in Basra hold massive protest against Pope’s recent lecture”. The headline was “Muslim fury against Pope”.

It wasn’t until the 9th paragraph that the article noted that some 300 people had gathered at the protest. Basra is a city of some 3 million. As Americans would say: “Do the math”. This was no massive protest.

My attempt at critiquing the work of the foreign correspondent reporting this story could be dismissed as the rant of a Crikey-reading (and in my case, writing) amateur. We know what good foreign correspondents do. As Joris Luyendijk notes, the occupants of editorial ivory towers want average punters like me to believe that

... [j]ournalists know what’s going on in the world … the news gives an overview of these events, and it is possible to keep that overview objective.

Journalists are the gatekeepers of truth and perspective on world events.

Luyendijk also shared this common person’s perspective when he was an Arabic-speaking anthropology graduate employed by a major Dutch newspaper and broadcaster to be their Middle Eastern correspondent in 1998. After 5 years, Luyendijk through in the towel just as American troops foolishly threw an American flag over the falling statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad after temporarily winning the war in Iraq. You’d think that would be the worst time for Luyendijk to leave the fray, just as all the uncivilised action was starting in the cradle of civilisation.

Here’s how Luyendijk describes CNN’s version:

We saw the colossal statue of Saddam Hussein being torn down in Firdos (Paradise) Square in Baghdad . Jubiland Iraqis screamed into the camera lens and struck the icon with their shoes. ‘Thank you, Mister Bush!’ The presenter solemnly described it as an ‘historic moment’ – the war was over. They could put the nightmare of Saddam Hussein behind them. Baghdad was celebrating its liberation …

And what about al-Jazeera? Luyendijk writes:

They were showing Firdos Square, too, but their montage offered a different slant. In the same square, we saw American soldiers triumphantly throwing an American flag over the statue of Saddam. Then we were shown feverish discussions and the American soldiers rushing to remove the flag. Al-Jazeera went on to show the jubilant Iraqis from CNN, only they were shot from a longer range: you could see how few there were actually standing in the square, and that most of the people were watching from a safe distance.

Joris Luyendijk provides a highly accessible, irreverent and light-hearted account of the realities of life as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. This is more a book about than of journalism. He describes the secrets, shortcuts and tricks of the trade used by foreign correspondents for both print, radio and television audiences. This includes regurgitating the content of wire service reports in a manner that, if done in an academic context, would almost certainly be considered plagiarism. Luyendijk’s news agenda about events in Baghdad or Ramallah would not be set in Baghdad or Ramallah but rather by a foreign editor in Amsterdam who had probably never been to Baghdad or Ramallah.

Luyendijk soon learns that

... the basic task of being a correspondent is not that difficult. The editor … called when something happened, they faxed or emailed the press releases, and I’d retell them in my own words on the radio, or rework them into an article for the newspapers.

Occasionally the correspondent would make use of the list of “talking heads” – diplomats (always Western ones), academics, UN workers and human rights activists on the payroll of Western countries - for obtaining “on the ground” perspectives. Otherwise, the role of a correspondent was merely to be the person at the end of the news assembly line.

Foreign correspondents and editors who take themselves too seriously may not enjoy reading Luyendijk’s descriptions about the insensitivity they show when checking into five star hotels whilst on assignment in impoverished war zones, or of their responses to the commencement of American bombing in Iraq in 2003:

... a wave of suppressed relief swept over the correspondents … No bombing would have meant no work, after money had already been spent on coming to Amman.

Or how about this hilarious description of Western journalists in the office of the Iraqi Consul trying to secure a visa to Iraq on the eve of the invasion:

We jostled [the Consul] like children clustering around a dubious-looking man with candy … I saw grown men in tears by the embassy gates when they discovered they’d be reduced to peering through the fence.

Luyendijk discovered that as he travelled to different hotspots and spoke to ordinary people, there were so many stories far more interesting and enlightening to tell than just which agreements were reached between what leaders and what accusations they made against each other when the deals inevitably became unstuck.

As a correspondent, I could tell different stories about the same situation. The media could only choose one, and it was often the story that confirmed a commonly held notion …

So the impact of conventional media processes was to confirm pre-existing stereotypes. Luyendikj’s book cleverly dispels not just our (generally negative) stereotypes about Arabs, Israelis and Muslims but also our (both positive and negative) stereotypes about journalists. A highlight of the book is the regular sprinkling of Arab jokes about dictators and secret police and even Israeli jokes about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. People don’t just weep and burn flags in this part of the world.

This book was first published in Dutch as Het zijn net mensen (roughly “People Like Us”). A veteran correspondent who had seen his best friend had died in the Iraq-Iran war gave Luyendijk this piece of advice:

If you want to write a book about the Middle East, you’d better do it in your first week. The longer you hang around here, the less you understand.

After finishing this book, readers will be glad Luyendijk didn’t take this advice. This is an outstanding book on the limitations of reportage in the world’s perennial trouble spot. Or as Luyendijk repeatedly reminds us, in the Middle East

... good journalism is a contradiction in terms.

Irfan Yusuf is the author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist. An edited version of this review was first published in The Australian on 3 October 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf

Apologies for the corny retro music in this video!




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BLOG: Daily Telegraph opinion editor publishes call to virtual Muslim genocide ...

I wonder if Michael Danby will make a speech in Parliament about this.

Tim Blair, far-Right opinion editor of the Sydney tabloid Daily Telegraph, published a comment on his blog that literally calls for Mecca to be destroyed and facilitated all-out war in South Asia and the Middle East involving invasions of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria etc.

Here it is:

The US should have immediately attacked Mecca with a nuclear strike and brought the war to the heart of Islam.

They should have let the Indians off the leash to do what they want with Pakistan and Afghanistan, told the Israelis that they can smash the Jordanians, Syrians and Gypos, then landed half the USMC in Libya and Lebanon and steamrolled east and south until they linked up with the Israelis.

The US Army and the other half of the USMC should have been deployed to the Gulf and launched an invasion of Saudi and Iraq and pushed toward Syria.

Everyone else should have been told to eff off until the job was done and then some.

This is where Bush failed. He was too soft on them. Too soft.

Islam delende est.

murph of Blackheath (Reply)
Sun 13 Sep 09 (12:06am)

Wholesale massacre and genocide. Tim Blair allows it on. He thinks it satisfied his newspaper's moderation policy. His editor Gary Linnell doesn't seem to mind. And the Member for Federal Ports hasn't said a word yet.

But hey, it isn't racist to call for people to be murdered and bombed and turned into compost on the basis of their deemed religion. I mean, religion is a matter of choice, isn't it? And Muslims aren't a race, are they? It ain't genocide, is it?

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Somali politics is just as much about clan as it is religion ...

What drives young second and third generation men living in relatively comfortable surrounds to involve themselves in an overseas conflict whose nuances they have little or no understanding of? Certainly the AFP, NSW and Victorian Police and the NSW Crime Commission have been asking these questions during the seven months of their investigation into a possible attack on an Australian army barracks.

The front page story in The Australian today provides some answers but also too many unanswered questions. According to Victorian Police Commissioner Simon Overland, publication by The Oz posed ...

... an unacceptable risk to the operation and an unacceptable risk to my staff.

It’s a serious allegation to make against a paper whose editorial line so frequently flexes its cultural warrior and national security muscles. On the other hand, it’s unclear what dangers newspaper reporting could pose to 400 heavily-armed investigators who cordoned off entire streets.

Some reporting and analysis showed a laughable ignorance of Somali and/or Muslim cultures. Cameron Stewart writes of the group of Melbourne taxi drivers and construction workers ...

... having little understanding of Somali politics or theology.

Probably the same could be said for all those involved in the final version of Mr Stewart's story that went to print.

The reports place enormous emphasis on terms like "Islam" and "Muslims" and "wahhabi". But Somali politics is just as much (if not more) about clan as it is religion. There’s no evidence al-Shabaab (the group linked to the alleged proposed attack) or any other of the warring factions in Somalia have risen above the clan-based loyalties that have divided this nation for decades. Still, there's no doubt that non-Somali Muslims and Somali kids with little understanding of clan undercurrents could be attracted by the lure of pan-Islamic rhetoric.

What really made me almost fall off my chair was this sentence describing the al-Shebaab group:

Its followers shun alcohol, cigarettes, music and videos, choosing an austere,
violent interpretation of Islam.

Most Muslims I know (including myself) shun alcohol (though I'm just a teetotaller, not a teetotalitarian) and cigarettes. Avoiding music and naughty videos also isn't uncommon among Muslims, though largely for similar reasons as conservative Christians. Thankfully our law enforcement and intelligence services don't use such indicators to identify potential terrorists or else they'd be taking Fred Nile into custody.

(Furthermore, the Sufi Islamists fighting al-Shabaab shown in the alJazeera English video below would be just as opposed to alcohol, cigarettes and certain forms of music and video.)

This kind of pedestrian theological speculation really isn't helpful, especially when it involves the kind of simplistic analysis you'd expect from tabloids. I guess Andrew Bolt and his buddies will have lots of fun speculating on how having the wrong ethnicity and/or religion turns you into a terrorist.

First published in Crikey on Tuesday 4 August 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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COMMENT: Border Insecurity ...

The letters section of the Daily Telegraph of Friday 24 April 2009 has two typical examples of uninformed hysteria concerning the issue of "border security" and asylum seekers. I'm in no way suggesting the Tele shouldn'y be publishing these letters. Everyone's voice should be heard, and it's useful to know just what some people are thinking about such sensitive issues.

The first letter is from one P Cummins. It starts like this ...

The reason we now have a swag of boat people trying to get into Australia is because the Rudd Government last year loosened our border security laws ...

This might possibly be true in the case of Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers, but the fact is that the conflict in Sri Lanka has only recently escalated to the extent that many Tamil civilians are fleeing directly from Sri Lanka as opposed to via Indonesia.

They need to be tightened for the protection of the citizens of this country, an obligation the Government has to its people.

So Australian citizens need to be protected from weak malnourished asylum seekers fleeing persecution. And what will these poor people bring with them? WMD? Nuclear weapons?

One has to ask why all of these asylum seekers come down to Australia? There are dozens of Muslim countries near Iraq and Afghanistan that are wealthy and not at war, where other Muslims and their families would fit right in and be comfortable.

There are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living in Syria, which is struggling to accommodate them. Syria is itself not a terribly wealthy nation. Hazara Afghans fleeing the Taliban would hardly want to stick around in Pakistan where elements of the same Taliban have taken over large areas of the country. And using your reasoning, I'm not sure which Muslim-majority country Tamil Sri Lankans will go to given that they're a mixture of Hindu and Christian. In any event, it isn't just about religion. People's identities are not limited to religion. If our identity was solely determined by religion, we should have seen Kevin Rudd and/or Malcolm Turnbull and not John Safran being nailed to a cross in the Philippines. After all, the Philippines is a Catholic country, and both Rudd and Turnbull are Catholic.

So why come many thousands of miles down to Australia, a basically British culture and a Christian country? These are the questions we should be asking.

In that case, I'm sure quite a few of these people would happily convert to Christianity if it meant they and their families would be safe. After all, quite a few asylum seekers such as Kashmiri Peter Qasim converted to Christianity. However, that didn't stop him from being kept in detention by the Howard government even though it drove him into severe depression. And I guess we shouldn't have any problem accepting Tamil Christian asylum seekers. As for being British, I don't think indogenous Aussies were eating with knives and forks 40,000 years ago. Then again, neither were the Poms for that matter.

But why should we be asking such questions? After all, our immigration system does not discriminate on the basis of religion. And anyway, how can we really tell what religion a person subscribes to? Or is it someone we determine based on their racial background? So we assume that an Iraqi must be Muslim because he is Iraqi and has an Arabic-sounding name, even if he could well be a Chaldean or Yazidi or Assyrian Orthodox?

Then there is a letter from one Lynne Cole whose arguments make a similar degree of (non)sense.

The recent boatload of asylum seekers were all male, presumably some of them are or were married, perhaps with children. So they left family behind to cope with the Taliban on their own.

Your point being? That these men just callously left their families behind and left without so much as a goodbye? That their families had no say in the matter? That their family members don't wish to see even one person flee to safety? Or are you saying that their families are all in Afghanistan or Pakistan and not in Indonesia? That the Taliban have made it to Jakarta?

How will the families of the five dead survive?

Are you suggesting you're really concerned about their welfare and would support their migrating to Australia?

Why aren't these brave men standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our young soldiers who are in Afghanistan trying to improve the lot of the Afghan people?

Maybe for the same reason the vast majority of young Australian men and women aren't there - they're not professional soldiers. And maybe because it isn't nice staying in a place where you could be kicked out of your property and/or be murdered at anytime and where you've already seen family members slaughtered. And from a strategic perspective, the last thing Coalition forces and the Afghan National Army needs is severely traumatised people fighting on their side.

Our young men are killed or injured while these people choose to try for an easy life in Australia.

It's so easy being away from one's family and only hearing their voices on the other end of a phone (presuming you can even contact them). It's a piece of cake surviving in a new country where you aren't allowed to work and cannot access any social security and are forced to rely on charity to make some kind of a living. And on top of that, having to deal with the trauma of having just survived life in a warzone and mourning alone over your dead relatives, presuming that you even know that they are dead.

Those we have already admitted no doubt tell those back home that what a soft touch we are.

Pfft. Are you suggesting, Lynne, that we start behaving like al-Qaeda and Taliban and LTTE and the Sri Lankan Army just so that you feel protected from nasty dark-skinned refugees? I'm glad we are a soft touch. If you want to experience a not-so-soft touch, feel free to go join our brave men and women fighting in Afghanistan.

LETTER: Open letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph ...

Dear Mr Linnell,

One of your columnists, Piers Akerman, decided to publish a comment on his blog which said the following:

Reality check people.

In the pirates we are dealing with illiterate stone-age savages who come from a racial group whose average IQ is in the 60s (retarded). There is a reason why Africans did not invent the wheel, writing, or any system of government above the tribal level.

There is only one way to deal with these pirates that will make an impression on their dull minds: freaking kill them and the horse that they rode in on.

Warships should prowl the area with orders to engage and kill (notice I said kill, not capture) all pirates on sight. Armed drones should prowl the sky with the same intent.

Merchantmen should carry a contingent of marines during their passage through this area, who would have orders to kill all pirates on sight.

If or when any pirates were taken alive, interrogate (aka torture) them until they reveal their home village or town.

Then . . . use either a fuel air weapon or a daisy cutter (depending upon the size of the target) to turn that village or town and all its inhabitants into a smoking hole in the ground. Nothing less is going to get through to these people.

Anything else will be viewed as weakness and they will continue to laugh at the foolish and weak white man . . . and they will be correct to do so.

CarlT of Gold Coast (Reply)
Mon 13 Apr 09 (07:59pm)

An excerpt from a further comment is as follows:

If they or their wives are fat in Somalia they are crooks and pirates. Hang or chop the hands off all the fat ones. Leave the Skinny’s.Sink any Somali vessel with a motor. Sails only ...

john allen of Southport Qld (Reply)
Mon 13 Apr 09 (09:13pm)

I was wondering if you could advise me how your newspaper's publication of this comment does not breach NSW and Commonwealth laws proscribing racial vilification.

If this question is too difficult for you to answer, perhaps you could refer the matter to someone from your legal division.

Regards
I Yusuf

PS: I noticed an advertisement on your website from Tourism NSW. I thought I would send this letter to their person in charge of "News and Trade Media". No doubt Tourism NSW would be most impressed to see their funds going toward the publication of racist and xenophobic commentary on your newspaper's website. I'm sure Sydney would be able to attract lots of overseas visitors would would be pleased to see a major Sydney newspaper that prints violently xenophobic material. Oh, and I also thought ABC Media Watch might be interested.

UPDATE I: Feel free to send your own e-mail of complaint to the following:

Garry Linnell - linnellg@dailytelegraph.com.au
Margaret Rayner - raynerm@dailytelegraph.com.au
Isabella Kennedy - kennedyi@dailytelegraph.com.au
Danial Creech - creechd@dailytelegraph.com.au

UPDATE II: I received the following e-mail from Mr Akerman on 15 April 2009:

Thank you for your note, you will see that I responded several days ago to another respondee. Posting remarks in no way signifies agreement with the sentiment contained.

My response to Mr Akerman of same date was as follows:

Posting such comments does signify that the moderator and the newspaper regard themselves as not being subject to State and Federal laws applying to other businesses. It also signifies that the newspaper does not really follow its own publication guidelines.

The fact that comments calling for genocide are seen as within the bounds of lawful discourse on a blog necessarily reflects on the author of the blogpost and on the newspaper.

UPDATE III: Daily Telegraph blogger and opinion editor Tim Blair frequently cites material from one Sheik Yer'Mami. The Sheik has some interesting observations to make about my correspondence with the Daily Telegraph. You can read them here. Some of Yer'Mami's commenters are as bad as Akerman's. Check this out:

kaw April 15, 2009 at 7:46 am
Having read Irfans blog, with an entry in the comment section that he has put in himself, I would say that every person should write to the editors listed, and to the state government complaining about Irfan. He found a published comment objectionable, so rather than reply to the comment, he tries to sue the newspaper for publishing it!!! ... The sooner this islamist piece of shiite is shut down the better.

And how about this?

kaw April 15, 2009 at 7:54 am
... My IQ, incidentally is rather high. I am also quite literate. I read “War and Peace” by Tolstoy when I was eight years old, and I actually have no problems in taking you on in, well, almost anything really. Now you have a nice day beating your head against the wall!

And what delightful discourse we have here.

Thomas H. April 15, 2009 at 11:32 am
... Obama is a lying, treacherous, puffed up, arrogant, ignorant, dishonest, sleazy hot-air bag, who bows deep to a mohammedan piece of excrement the ruler of both Mecca and Qaqa.

Now is it really so strange that a “man” exhibiting all these typically mohammedan traits is assumed to be a mohammedan? OK, the chance he is something else is, of course, there, but so is the chance of a lottery win. Statistics, dear dumn, statistics.

Besides, dear dumn, his middle name is Hussein and his demented daddy was a 100% muhammedan

Of course, Yer'Mami and his extremely literate friends are free to say whatever they like. The Daily Telegraph bloggers such as Blair and Akerman are also free to source information from whichever source they like. And we are free to reach whatever conclusions we wish about the integrity or otherwise of this newspaper.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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BLOGS: Some more Blair vilification ...

Daily Telegraph logo pre-Tim Blair

Tim Blair continues to poke fun at domestic violence victims, making light of the tragic murder of Aasiya Hassan. And true to form, Blair cannot avoid vilification of entire racial and ethno-religious groups. He can't help but suggest that people of Pakistani and/or Muslim origin be ...

... drag[ed] out of the Stone Age.

It seems that the Daily Telegraph hasn't heard of State and Commonwealth legislation outlawing racial vilification. That's certainly obvious from some of the comments Blair has allowed on his blog ...

Does it ever occur to Muslim Neanderthals that the countries with the highest standards of living, health etc. are those where women have in practice and in law equal rights and opportunities? ...
ann j of Sydney (Reply)
Fri 27 Feb 09 (07:31am)

Back to sensitivity school for you Tim.

Muslims are not of the Stone Age - they are fully paid up representatives of the 7th century.
HRT (Reply)
Fri 27 Feb 09 (07:49am)

Imagine if Blair had written stuff about Chinese leaving the Stone Age? Or of Jewish Neanderthals? He'd be sacked. And rightly so. But in the tabloid world of the Daily Telegraph, some groups aren't protected from vilification.

UPDATE I: Certain comments on Blair's bog are moderated, as this chap discovered ...

Domestic violence is not solely in the domain of one religion or group of people. My father (a virtuous atheist) treated me appallingly.

It would be easy to point at various aspects of his work and cry hypocrite .. he was an Education professor .. but it wasn’t his work that was bad.

I take exception to religious authorities that approve domestic violence, or excuse it. Tragically, there are some that are still in the stone age. [Edited to remove identifying description.]

David Ball of Carramar/Sydney (Reply)

Fri 27 Feb 09 (09:43am)

So you shouldn't identify individuals, but feel free to defame entire groups.

Daily Telegraph logo post-Tim Blair

COMMENT: Yet more evidence that Daniel Pipes has completely lost it ...

In the months leading upto the Presidential election, Daniel Pipes spent much of his time spreading rumours that Barack Obama was somehow hiding his father's ancestral faith and his own childhood links to it. Some of Pipes' more absurd claims included one that wearing a sarong somehow linked someone to Islam.

(At this point, I should warn all you Aussie tourists to Bali to take careful note of Pipes' warning, lest you end up an accidental Islamist fundamentalist extremist jihadist terrorist like the bloke pictured below.)

Since the election of President Obama, Pipes has become all but irrelevant. Apart from a small number of far-Right fruitloops that congregate around his blog, Pipes has become largely irrelevant. It remains to be seen if even the CIS or AIJAC will waste their money inviting Pipes this year.

And as if it cement Pipes' reputation for outlandish generalisations and almost chronic xenophobia, read an excerpt from this opening sentence to his most recent article published on the far-Right FrontPageMag blog ...

As the Muslim world settled into ever-deeper decline over the past decade, mired in political extremism, religious sickness, economic irrelevance, WMD, anarchy, dictatorship, and civil wars ...

Er, what the ...?

In the past decade or so, Indonesian democracy has gone from strength to strength. Malaysia's opposition parties have had major gains. Bosnia Herzegovina has improved relations with both its neighbours, and has returned to being a relatively stable democracy. The new nation of Kosovo has emerged, a close ally of the West.

How can such a broad-brush generalisation be possibly made by a sensible educated person? How can 1.2 billion people be characterised in this manner?

With such moronic nonsense being passed off as serious analysis, it's little wonder any sensible outlet would publish Pipes' fantasies.

Recent Jemaah Islamiyya recruit brandishing jihad weapons. Notice the
two ... er ... heavenly virgins in the background.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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HATEWATCH: Some more non-racial comments left on Bolt's Herald-Sun blog ...

Once again, the good folk at the Herald-Sun website have little trouble in moderating some completely non-racial comments so that they appear on Mr Bolt's blog. Read and enjoy.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf

‘Arab’ bikies?!? I can’t believe we even let Arabs into our country. Look at what they get up to. Our own Aussie bikies are so much nicer.
Matt (Reply)
Mon 16 Feb 09 (11:18am)


Thank God he was a moderate muslim otherwise he would have blown her up.
Aussie Boy of Oz (Reply)
Mon 16 Feb 09 (11:38am)

It has no place here, and any decent Australian government would issue a single warning before acting appropriately - cut it out, or go home cold in a canvas bag.
perturbed of NSW (Reply)
Mon 16 Feb 09 (12:24pm)

Islam allows muslims to kill other muslims that aren’t following the true path. Hence Sunnis can kill Shias and vice versa. All good muslims know that!
And Muzzammi Hassan beheaded his wife because she dishonored him by asking for a divorce!
Of course, honour killings are also allowed in Islam.
Simple really!
The Religion of Peace and Sharia Law; coming soon to a town near you. Enjoy!
geoff from the west (Reply)
Mon 16 Feb 09 (01:30pm)

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