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Presenting The Inaugural 2006 Australian Webmaster's Fatwa for Clerical Stupidity (Muslim section)
To Sheik Hilali at Lakemba Mosque, Sydney
We come now this 10th December with a feeling of special gravitas to perhaps the most important business of this Lost Worlds website, annually ... the difficult international business of choosing amongst the year's Idiots for the Winner's Special Prize. Regrettably, this year, 2006, presented a field of contenders more crowded than usual. This website finds, that logging information on new finds in archaeology and so on is dead easy. Sorting out The Greatest Idiots Of The Year in contemporary life is far more difficult! How much damage these Prize Idiots wreak, we continually dread.
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Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali of Lakemba Mosque, Sydney! |
Another Lost Worlds editorial -(December 2006) Continuing Lost World's global campaign for the updating of Muslim Clerics on the face of Planet Earth: One of this website's valued correspondents reports the following on 17 December 2006 after listening to today's ABC radio Background Briefing program. Here is an extract: "Renovating Muslim Australia", Reporter - Tom Morton. “It's been a tough year for Australian Muslims. The Hilali controversy has exposed deep divisions in the Sydney Muslim community - between different religious factions, generations and classes. But the younger generation of Muslim leaders is saying it's also a time to renovate - and lay some new foundations. They've asked us to come on-site and watch their backyard blitz, Aussie-Muslim style.” Our correspondent adds, the podcast is not yet available. They usually don't appear until a few hours after the first broadcast. However if they stick to their usual naming scheme, the podcast will most likely be available at: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/bbg_20061217.mp3" - and should be available from Sunday afternoon onwards) – Cheers, &c Hear hear for young Muslims in Australia, they are a light to the world!!
The above item reminds us: For some time this website has been unhappy with the terminology used to describe destructive Muslim activity in various parts of the world – suicide-bombing. For many reasons, we have decided in future to label suicide bombers as members of Muslim Fundamentalist Death Cult. Something here has to be said. The use of suicidal military squads is not new to any society – witness the Japanese custom of kamikaze in World War II. The use of suicide military squads is not new in the Muslim world, nor is the use of individuals as suicidal martyrs, if martyrs they have to be called. (Nor in war is the use of particular squads of soldiers especially novel, where they are used as “shock troops” to hit the enemy hard in the early stages of a specific conflict!) Here, we might ask, just why do religions feel moved to define their identity partly by finding martyrs? (Muslims do it now, Sikhs had to do it in India, the early Christians did it in Rome.) But, religions do this; Christians still talk seriously of Christian martyrs dying in the Coliseum in Rome, some of whom have been declared Saints. Re certain kinds of Muslim activity the past 20 years, we find we have no reason to criticise Islam itself, as it in formal terms a religion of peace. But we do notice that a good many Muslim clerics behave as though Islam is not a religion of peace, it is a religion to be promoted aggressively, and we wonder why this is – why the prickly defensiveness, so constantly? Prickly defensiveness is an attribute of people, or animals, not of any particular religion. In general, and globally, the proposition from Muslims, as with the “Danish cartoons controversy”, seems to be that “Islam itself” is never to be criticized, a proposition we entirely reject, since it is pointless to separate a religion from its practitioners; and if the practitioners of a religion behave stupidly or destructively, this does not necessarily mean that the religion itself is criticizable – but it may mean that the deeper and more real meaning of the religion has been invaded or hijacked by misguided people, by cultists, by weirdo sectarians, by the fundamentalist-minded, or by individuals with a death-wish. (If anyone is going to hijack an aeroplane, why would they scruple to not-hijack a religion for their purposes?) This phrase, “death wish”, raises a point. (Freud spoke of it as “eros versus thanatos”.) And anyway, just what is - “Islam”? Almost no-one in the Western World knows what Islam is, or should be, or could be! Nor do most people in the Western World care in the least what Islam is! If this gives any Muslims a problem, all we can say to them is: go read the history of The Catholic Papacy for comparative information. Get a life! Go read the history of Judaism! Of Hinduism, of Buddhism.
This website feels that globally, psychiatrists ought to gather and provide the world with a reading on the situation and motivations of suicide bombers. We note various things. We do not know if aggrieved Muslims might have felt so motivated say 30-40 years ago in any substantial numbers, to become suicide bombers, but we do note that today, aggrieved Muslims can now use modern and easily-available technology to become freely-mobile random bombs.
So the whole suicide-bomber phenomenon is partly just a strange by-product of the application of quite modern technology, both electronic and chemical. And what an astonishing and destructive use of any modern technology (including mobile phones), suicide-bombing is! In contrast, since the suicidal fighter-martyr for Muslim interests is hardly new, we suspect that lurking in the underground of Islamic life, there has always been a tendency promoting, or not inhibiting, the activity of a Death Cult. Perhaps, this tendency crept into Islam in the earliest days of the establishment of the religion?
Whatever is the case historically, we feel that today's suicide bombers need psychiatric attention. If the world's psychiatrist's agreed that potential suicide bombers need locking up, for diagnostic reasons, this would be an interesting situation, as finally, Muslim clerics, and Muslim society, would have to come to terms not with religious or “cultural” matters, but with more medical matters. This would in turn pressurise all doctors and psychiatrists needing to treat patients who are Muslims, to consider just what to do with potential suicide-bombers, which would certainly remove the issues from the oversight of Sharia Law. This in turn might pressure legislators to keep track of what Muslim clerics, and psychiatrists might be thinking and deciding. What we notice also, is that the so called “war-on terror” declared by the USA is destructive as well as expensive, and futile. It will never be successful, and the USA might as well declare an all-out war on pop music, or joke-telling, or on women wearing bikinis. People in the Middle East do feel aggrieved, while nothing it seems will stop Sunnis and Shi'ites killing each other in Iraq, slow learners that they are about life, let alone, “democracy”.
But if world opinion, military action (starting as 'shock and awe', ending in basic chagrin), political protest, great grief, will not stop suicide bombers anywhere in the world, what on earth will? This is why this website thinks that the world's psychiatrists have been sitting on their hands on these issues. During 2006, it has become more common, especially from “leftists” to challenge views on the sanity of western world leaders, than it has to wonder about the sanity of individual suicide bombers! Which if you think about it, is remarkably stupid on the part of the “leftists” as well as remiss of “rightists” who go along with the said western leaders. In fact, mostly in the US, a few psychiatrically-minded researchers have properly surveyed, so they say, the views (and minds?) of actual or potential suicide bombers. The conclusion seems to be – the suicide bomber is mostly, “profoundly alienated”, but not actually insane. This is nonsense; they are clinically insane. Strapping explosives to one's body and walking into a crowd, or a restaurant, and killing oneself and 15 other people is far more disturbed behaviour than the results of mere “alienation”. Anyone who has ever been close to anyone who suicided, or been murdered, we hope, will agree. It is normal ethics, for a sane person to try to stop anyone from suiciding, partly because suicide is simply – anti-life. Does anyone actually need to be reminded, that the writer Albert Camus once said that, ethically, no one has the right to take their own life, for their own reasons, for the simple reason that our life is not merely our own to give or take; our individual life is part of the lives of people around us, and we have no right to deprive them of ourselves. We have even less right to suicide, and to take innocent strangers with us as we do! As anyone finds, to be for a while in the company of someone who is close to suicide is an unsettling experience, either at the time, or in retrospect. (If in any doubt here for a single second, just go consult someone who has had to deal with the fact that one of their parents committed suicide.)
It is for such reasons that this website now declares its opinion – that in 2007, world attention, including from the medical wings of the United Nations, should be focused on Muslim clerics, globally. What Muslim clerics should be asked to do, is begin to systematically root out the Muslim Fundamentalist Death Cult, and to turn the disturbed members of their congregations over to the world medical fraternity. Particularly in Muslim countries. This is not a religious or cultural set of questions, it is not anti-Islam or anti-Muslim, it is a psychiatric set of questions which presumably would be posited on definitions of ordinary human sanity. Muslim clerics must be asked, why they would for one second, countenance the views of a Mosque-visitor who is heading in the direction of, what shall we call it, “suicidal alienation” (?) In any country in the world.? There are some corollaries to this. For anyone, even a Muslim cleric, to suggest that suicidal martyrdom can or should be seen as part of “normal Muslim cultural tradition when feeling provoked”, is to bring Islam itself into disrepute. While the Middle East remains a cauldron of misfortune, as it does, nothing useful can be gained by the institutionalisation, or toleration, of suicide-bombing. All efforts should be made, globally, to regard such behaviour as insanity, and this website rather suspects that matters will not settle down until this happens. And so, world-wide, suicide-bombers should not be regarded as martyrs to the welfare of Islam, they should be regarded as nutters. In Britain, this would relieve the population of the angst of wondering how young Muslims there, who grew up in Britain, became so alienated as to become Tube-bombers. The opinion here would be, they went mad, having fallen into the clutches of the Muslim Fundamentalist Death Cult.
This website recalls also, the word “amok” or “amuk”, which was imported into English long ago from Indonesian (some say from Indonesia, others say it is a word from Malay). A person had “run amuk”, if they went mad for some reasons, grabbed a large knife, and violently ran about cutting other people, wounding or killing them. Obviously, if the word existed, the phenomenon was hardly unknown! In such situations, often village situations, the village elders have little choice but to surround the offender and mercilessly cut them down before they do further damage. Such behaviour has rendered the offender unfit for continued life, on the spot – cut them down.
One wonders why this word, “amuk” is not used more in the media. In the USA, and Canada, national angst apparently arises when a highly-disturbed young man shoots up his high school, the nation misplaces its compassion, engages in soul searching, and wonders why this happens, what about gun control, etc, when the fact is that an individual young man who probably felt worthless, and soon proved it, went mad, ran amuk, and had to be cut down – if the people nearby are lucky, he is preferably cut down on the spot. Then the dead are sadly counted. What is lacking in the US is sufficient awareness of the early psychiatric symptomatology of the individual who may run amuk. And what is distinctly odd is that, in the media, someone running amuk will be used as a metaphor for merely objectionable but non-lethal behaviour (mostly in “bull-in-the-china-shop-situations”), or as a metaphor for a politician making a mistake; but the word is almost never used when someone has actually and disastrously run amuk! Yes, we live in days when words are being badly mis-used, metaphors are misused, world-wide! And so the American Psychiatric Association, and Muslim clerics, worldwide, have been remiss in not publicly addressing these issues. This website is also reminded, that in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) amazed the world by undefining homosexuality as a deviancy. For thousands of years, often supported by religious belief, heterosexuals had been vilifying homosexuality as wrong, deviant, unnatural. Suddenly the APA undefined homosexuality as a problem, so taking the social and moral pressure off homosexuals and unleashing “the gay revolution”. Naturally, homosexuals and libertarians welcomed this new and official form of social respectability, or, reduction of non-respectability. Suddenly, too, psychiatrists lost a few patients here and there, which apparently didn't worry them, as medicos. But today, suicide-bombers aren't defined, psychiatrically, as “deviant”?? There is something very strangely wrong here, and not just with the suicide-bombers! The newly-incoming general-secretary of the United Nations, take note as well! These questions need a top-down approach. The world is now too interdependent, too small, too global-villaged, for cultures that fail to promote life-enhancement to be tolerated. (Just check out Zimbabwe of late!) Globally, it's widely agreed that on 9/11, however surprisingly, the world changed. Not all the changes are yet apparent. Around the world, Muslim clerics, and the the profession of psychiatry, both need updating. - Ed
Santa attacked: In Scotland, Santa has had to take off his usual red hat and don protective headgear after being pelted with mince pies at a Scottish shopping centre in Paisley. The store gave him yellow hard hat equipped with reindeer antlers. In 2005, at the same shopping centre, Santa was set upon by youths calling him “a fraud and a fake”. (Sydney Morning Herald, w/e22-23 December 2006, and we don't need any more evidence, do we, that the world is going quite mad - Ed)
George Bush's heroes, members of the US Marine Corps, are forced after their war to rely on charity handouts for their family survival. And in May 2005, marine military equipment examiners found critical flaws in 19,000 pieces of body armour issued to marines bound for Iraq, as reported in Marine Corps Times. (Story from the homeland of the brave and the free by Gerard Wright in Sydney Morning Herald, w/e 22-23 December 2006, and we wonder how things are going in the state of Denmark of late -Ed)
A photograph of the 13-billion-year-old glow from the first things to form in The Universe might be one of the most extraordinary pictures ever snapped, as reported this week. Taken by NASA's Spitzer space telescope, the bizarre objects must have existed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang. As objects, they may be the first stars. (Sydney Morning Herald, w/e 22-23 December 2006)
That cheerful fellow, the leader of Iraq's Shi'ite death squads, Abu Deraa, to Australian journalist, Paul McGeough: “I'll be the first and last to defend my people and my creed from troublemakers.” (Sydney Morning Herald, 22-23 December 2006)
13 November 2006: News reports in Australia indicate that in the USA, the recent political victories of the Democrats over Republicans in Congress, after recent elections, mean that a decision is pending, and seems likely, to begin to remove US troops from Iraq within six months, or about May 2007.
Accusations about jihad fantasies: Insiders in Melbourne have been saying that Islamic cleric Mohammed Omran is the spiritual leader of an Australian national network of accused terrorists and extremists, and he “should be held accountable” for his actions. Known as a firebrand, Omran is said to have been matey with the late Abdullah Sungkar, founder in Indonesia of Jemaah Islamiah, the group which carried out the Bali bombings. Spilling the beans lately on Omran has been a man who has known Omran for 20 years. (Omran has also been known as Abu Ayman.) Omran for his part denies any involvement in terrorism and says he staunchly opposes terrorism. (Weekend Australian, 11-12 November 2006.)
Sheik Hilali tragi-comedy
goes international: Sheik Hilali of Lakemba Mosque has been
condemned for his “uncovered meat” sermon (see below) from as far
away as Yemen. Yemeni religious authorities at Yemeni Department of
Guidance have condemned parts of his sermon on rape as “criminal”
and “an uninformed attribution to God”. One Australian in touch
with the Yemeni guidance department has been Mohammed Mehio, a
spokesman of Islamic High Council of Australia. As well, an
Australian group, Muslim Women's Welfare of Australia has written
to a variety of Islamic authorities around the world, seeking their
opinion on the offending sermon, and have been told that Hilali's
remarks were unacceptable. One of Hilali's defenders has presented
the usual tired old self-defence of the strange Sheik Hilali in the
face of this international criticism, he has been “misrepresented”.
(Weekend Australian, 11-12 November 2006)
Hilali: no one can sack me: So reads headline of Weekend Australian, 28-29 October 2006. And it has to be said, The Australian has been maintaining a watch-dog role regarding Muslim activity in Australia, of which this website approves. “A defiant Taj Din al-Hilali whipped up anti-US sentiment among his supporters yesterday and declared he could not be sacked as the leader of the nation's (Australia's) Muslim community. A day after begrudgingly apologising for causing offence to women, Sheik Hilali drew cries of support during a fiery speech at Sydney's Lakemba mosque, defending his contentious sermon (on uncovered meat” ) and dismissing the controversy with a joke to two visiting overseas imams. Already, Hilali has been strongly criticised by opponents at Islamic Council of Victoria, as well as seeing divisions appear in his home base at Sydney's Lebanese Muslim Association led by lawyer Tom Zreika. Hilali said, “Only God can sack me”. And, “My name is Taj, my job is a sheik, my tools are my turban, and I am a servant serving the religion of God... I don't belong to any establishment or to any government.” Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, has warned the Muslim community to act against Hilali or risk experiencing a backlash from mainstream Australians. As response to critical remarks, Hilali has however undertaken to take a three-months holiday, and make a pilgrimage to Mecca. (Continuing Lost World's campaign for the world re-education of stroppy, slow-learning Muslims with over-active imaginations. We cheerfully refrain from the deliberate,(and unnecessary) offensiveness of reproducing badly-done Danish cartoons of The Prophet, etc, but see no reason at all to refrain from pointing out the stupidity of small groups of Muslims here and there, much as we sometimes point out the stupidity of various religions groups around the world. Religion is interesting, but it should not encourage stupidity, and nor should Muslim clerics encourage stupidity. What we do want to know, is, when are Muslim clerics going to begin to behave like responsible leaders of religion? - Ed)
Hilali Headlines: Australian Muslim leader blames women for sex attacks. “The nation's most senior Muslim cleric has blamed immodestly-dressed women who don't wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and likened them to “abandoned meat” that attracts voracious animals. In a Ramadan sermon that has outraged Muslim women leaders, Sydney based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali also alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame.” Some Muslim leaders in Australia have been outraged by the Shek's remarks (he is Mufti of Australia) and said he is no longer worthy of the title, Mufti of Australia. Australia's most prominent female Muslim leader, Aziza Abdel-Halim, said the headdress (hijab) did not add or detract from an individual's moral standards and a spokesman for Islamic Council of Victoria, Mr Waleed Ali, said that it was “ignorant and naive” for anyone to believe that wearing a headdress could stop sexual assault taking place.
A
vocal and prominent young Muslim woman in Sydney, Iktimal Hage-Ali
(who does not wear headdress), said she felt the Sheik's remarks
lacked intelligence and common sense. (Miss Hage-Ali works as an
adviser in the office of NSW Attorney-General's Department.)
Hilali's sermon-remarks have arisen partly as he took exception to
prime minister Howard's remarks of September 2006, that a minority
of migrant men mistreated their women. Hilali, as he has often
done, has now said his remarks, made in Arabic, not English, have
been “misinterpreted”. As the reader will see above, Hilali's
remarks, which were recorded and distributed to media by his
enemies, raised a storm of controversy.
Amongst that controversy, this website wishes to ask some questions. (1) Whoever said that Australia has or needs, a “Mufti”. European-Australia has gotten along well enough without a Mufti for about two centuries, so how and why does a Mufti begin to appear, when Australia doesn't want or need a Mufti of Australia? Hilali might well be Mufti of Lakemba Mosque, or even of NSW, since he lives in Sydney. But not of Australia, no! Who took it upon themselves to declare him “Mufti of Australia?” The title ought to be dropped entirely!! (2) Re dress codes for Islamic women: One of Lost World's contacts suggests that the deeper basis for Hilali's remarks is partly, by today's standards, a racist outlook, based partly on old Arabic tribal outlooks that purity of bloodline shall not be interfered with. Therefore, women and their behaviour must be guarded so that no illegitimate children can possibly arise, certainly not due to sexual assault. This website feels that the full dress code for women (burqua) is quite an outlandish viewpoint. We note, that in history, around the world, women mostly have worn as light a set of clothing as possible, except in aristocratic circles, more so if they have to work or have to care for groups of small children, for the simple reason of ease of movement. Historically, any form of dress such as a burqua is comparatively outlandish, culture-specific, and statistically abnormal. It is this statistical abnormality in dress that draws the Islamic dress code to such attention today – it is a highly impractical form of dress for a any woman living in any climate. Therefore, in any society that is not chiefly Islamic, the sight of a woman in a burqua arouses quite unusual and complex feelings in the observer. Any Muslim cleric in the Western World who remains unaware of such comparative information therefore indicates he is blind to his cultural surroundings, and to the conspicuousness of his own cultural recommendations, and therefore, like Hilali, should remain a focus of criticism for the sin of living blindly in his own cultural bubble in defiance and ignorance of the humanity around him, which to say nothing else, is simply bad manners. Further, The Koran was written in Arabic, but if Muslim clerics in the Western World are going to comment about anything, they are better off speaking in the common language of the people of the country they live in. It is not the fault of the Western World if Muslim clerics are too lazy, stupid, or uneducated, to translate The Koran and its teachings into languages other than Arabic. (For the future, then, this website is therefore going to maintain a much closer watch on Muslim clerics. We are not critical of Islam, or The Koran, but we will remain critical of Muslim clerics who seem bent on immaturely denying that they have a global social responsibility to bring Islam into the contemporary world, such as the world currently is, which is hardly perfect. We also feel that anyone, from Sheik Hilali, to the French government, who gives excessive attention to the question of what women wear, or worse, what schoolgirls shall wear, is avoiding discussion of deeper and more important issues. What women cover their bodies with should be left to women, and in the case of schoolgirls, be left to their mothers, and that is that. Ed) (Item from The Australian, 26 October 2006)
Follows an edited transcript of the sermon given by the objectionable Sheik Hilali of Lakemba Mosque, Sydney, that provoked national outrage across Australia, as reproduced in Sydney Morning Herald, somewhat before October 2006, apparently the best-fairest available translation of this objectionable viewpoint, originally delivered in Arabic, which was lifted originally from some "Egyptian scholar", or alleged "scholar", al-Rafihi, whom Hilali evidently admires. Sheik Hilali thinks that some of his Sydney enemies delivered a copy of the sermon to "the media", about three weeks after he gave it, and when the matter was soon publicised, Hilali felt stressed enough to end up in hospital with heart problems. (Really? This is a “sermon”?)
'Those atheists, people of the book, (Christians and Jews), where will they end up? In Surfers Paradise? On the Gold Coast?
Where will they end up? In hell. And not part-time. For eternity. They are the worst in God's creation.
Who commits the crimes of theft? The man or the woman? The man. That's why the man was mentioned before the woman when it comes to theft because his responsibility is providing.
But when it comes to adultery, it's 90 per cent the women's responsibility. Why? Because a woman possesses the weapon of seduction. It is she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets. God protect us, dallying. It's she who shortens, raises and lowers.
Then it's a look, then a smile, then a conversation, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay jail. (Hilali here laughs) Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years. [A veiled reference to suitable sentences meted out to particularly vicious rapists of Lebanese background in Sydney a few years ago, a notorious set of cases indeed!]
But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, scholar al-Rafihi says: "If I came across a rape crime - kidnap and violation of honour - I would discipline the man and order that the woman be arrested and jailed for life." Why would he do this, Rafihi? He says, because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn't have snatched it - If you take the uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, is it the fault of the cat? The uncovered meat is the problem.
If the meat was covered, the cats wouldn't roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won't get it. If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house, and if she's wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don't happen.
Satan sees women as half his soldiers ... Satan tells women, "You're my weapon to bring down any stubborn man" ...
The woman was behind Satan playing a role when she disobeyed God and went out all dolled up and unveiled and made of herself palatable food that rakes and perverts would race for. She was the reason behind this sin taking place".
(Ends the Hilali sermon and Sydney Morning Herald must be congratulated for publishing it!)
(Really, if Hilali was at all curious about what women in a temperate climate might choose to wear if they are involved in action living or action sport, he might ask, what do women tennis players wear? Hilali himself wears a a movement-inhibiting gown, very good for keeping warm in a Middle Eastern desert at night, less so for dealing with sweltering-hot Sydney summer nights, he is obviously not an action man! So, continuing here Lost World's campaign for the world re-education of stroppy, slow-learning Muslims with over-active imaginations. We cheerfully and consciously refrain from the deliberate (and unnecessary) offensiveness of reproducing badly-done Danish cartoons of The Prophet, etc, but see no reason at all to refrain from pointing out the stupidity of small groups of Muslims here and there, much as we sometimes point out the stupidity of various religious groups of all kinds around the world (USA “Christian” rattlesnake handlers, take note now!). Religion is interesting, but it should not encourage stupidity, and nor should Muslim clerics encourage stupidity. What we do want to know, is, when are Muslim clerics going to begin to behave like responsible leaders of a responsible religion? - Ed)
War on Terror, fear, facts and figures: Ever wondered how many Australians have been killed on Australian soil by terrorists? Ever wondered the same about USA. An article by Mike Stekete at The Australian reveals much. US political scientist John Mueller says that the number of people killed by international terrorists so far is only slightly greater than the number of people drowning in US bathtubs. The US state Dept did not begin to count deaths-by-terrorism till the late 1960s. The count re the bath-tub deaths includes apparently the deaths due to the 9/11 attack. The number of deaths due to terrorism is about the same number as are due to lightning strike, car accidents due to deer, or allergic reactions to peanuts. Meanwhile, in Australia, ASIO has queried about 53,147 visas and denied entry to Australia to only 12 people. Only eight Australian passports have been cancelled due to any issues related to “terrorism”. During 2005-2006, one Australian was killed in the London bombings, four in the second Bali bombing and one in Iraq. (So it seems that this summer, 2006-2007, bushfires will kill more Australians than terrorism will.) On average in Australia, as legal academics Andrew Lynch and George Williams have found, during the past five years, the Federal parliament has on average passed one [new or revised] law re terrorism matters every seven weeks. All of which amounts to a decided over-reaction. In general, the fuss is more about the unpredictable and random nature of acts of terrorism, the decidely unpleasant fact that determined suicide bombers can't be deterred, and excessive media treatments. Meanwhile, politicians have to appear tough about the issues, and the reputations of those in authority suffer more if and when real risks are understated rather than overstated. Lynch and Williams in their short new book,. What Price Security, perceive a prime conundrum; that efforts to stem terrorism may render a western state even more vulnerable to terrorists, partly by way of alienating citizens of a variety of persuasions. (The Australian, 26 October 2006. Pity Iraq, where a great many Iraqis have been killed so far by member of Muslim Fundamentalist Death Cults. When on earth are Muslim clerics going to start getting serious about rooting out such death cults? After all, world-wide, it is mostly Muslims who are killing Muslims!! -Ed)
19 October, 2006: Psychological what? US commander of Combined Joint Task 76 in southern and eastern Afghanistan, Jason Kamiya, has halted all “tactical psychological operations” there. On 19 October, Kamiya became aware that US troops had burned the bodies of two dead Taliban soldiers in order to taunt other Islamic militants. Information on such an incident arose after an Australian video journalist had acted, embedded with the US military, and free to film whatever he chose, Stephen Dupont, whose footage ended up screen on the Australian SBS current affairs show, Dateline. (The Australian, 10 November 2006, Media section, The Diary)
CANBERRA: Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.
A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.
Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament. “If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you,” he said on national television.
I’d be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false. If you can’t agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practises it, perhaps, then, that’s a better option,” Costello said.
Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should “clear off”. “Basically, people who don’t want to be Australians, and they don’t want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off,” he said.
Muslim party seeks Islamic law for Australians - By Patricia Karvelas
September 06, 2005 - THE leader of the nation's first Muslim political party says all Australians should be living under Islamic law dictated by the Koran.The Best Party of Allah in Australia applied for registration in the ACT yesterday, claiming to provide a political voice for Muslims.
Founder Kurt Kennedy, a Vietnamese-born Muslim convert and candidate in the ACT assembly elections last year, said the party wanted to "implement the laws as stated in the Koran".
"The positive part of sharia law is (about) treating everybody fairly," he said. "I don't think anybody should have any worries about it.
"If they read through the Koran, there's nothing there that will threaten them or threaten their personal life or property."
The new party had almost 200 members but needed 500 to register federally, which was the goal, he said.
"The thing is to have a profile and to defend those who believe in Allah."
People were "living in the dark" and experiencing an unnecessary level of fear of Islam.
The emergence of the Family First Party had showed him that there was a role for religious-based parties. "It's obvious what they do," he said.
"We don't want to hide behind things. We want to go out and say we are believers of Allah, we believe in his religion, we obey his laws as stated in the Koran -- there's nothing to worry about."
Australians who were not Muslims were welcome to join the party, Mr Kennedy said.
"Whether they become Muslims or not become Muslims, because they will see a sensible view not corrupted by lobby groups, a view not corrupted by hypocrisy -- like sending food-aid to Iraq but, at the same time, sending our soldiers there and bombing and killing their children as well."
Mr Kennedy could not guarantee extremists would not join his party but said he thought it unlikely that people with extremist views would want to participate in the peaceful, democratic political system.
"We have a constitution and a process where people fill in an application form and the secretary can decide whether to enlist them or reject them, like any other political party," he said.
The party would promote "moderate politics" and would be neither right-wing nor left-wing.
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At least 300 members short so far for establishment of a political party - and thank God for that! Muslim party seeks Islamic law for Australians -
By Patricia Karvelas The Best Party of Allah in Australia applied for registration in the ACT yesterday, claiming to provide a political voice for Muslims. Founder Kurt Kennedy, a Vietnamese-born Muslim convert and candidate in the ACT assembly elections last year, said the party wanted to "implement the laws as stated in the Koran". "The positive part of sharia law is (about) treating everybody fairly," he said. "I don't think anybody should have any worries about it. "If they read through the Koran, there's nothing there that will threaten them or threaten their personal life or property." The new party had almost 200 members but needed 500 to register federally, which was the goal, he said. "The thing is to have a profile and to defend those who believe in Allah." People were "living in the dark" and experiencing an unnecessary level of fear of Islam. The emergence of the Family First Party had showed him that there was a role for religious-based parties. "It's obvious what they do," he said. "We don't want to hide behind things. We want to go out and say we are believers of Allah, we believe in his religion, we obey his laws as stated in the Koran -- there's nothing to worry about." Australians who were not Muslims were welcome to join the party, Mr Kennedy said. "Whether they become Muslims or not become Muslims, because they will see a sensible view not corrupted by lobby groups, a view not corrupted by hypocrisy -- like sending food-aid to Iraq but, at the same time, sending our soldiers there and bombing and killing their children as well." Mr Kennedy could not guarantee extremists would not join his party but said he thought it unlikely that people with extremist views would want to participate in the peaceful, democratic political system. "We have a constitution and a process where people fill in an application form and the secretary can decide whether to enlist them or reject them, like any other political party," he said. The party would promote "moderate politics" and would be neither right-wing nor left-wing. |
The Australian: Muslim party seeks Islamic law for Australians [September 06, 2005] from The Australian, Australia's national daily newspaper, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
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Dhimmi Watch: Muslim leaders want a separate Islamic court in Australia to deal with Islamic divorces - HOST = 'www.jihadwatch.org'. |
By 26 April 2006: Appearance in the US, and greeted with some angst, the first movie, United 93, based on events of 9/11 in America. Produced by British film producer Paul Greengrass with full co-operation from members of families of victims. The film opens in Australian in August 2006.
Aussies (two) hurt in triple bomb attack on Red Sea resort town. At least 60 tourists were seriously wounded in a triple bomb attack in an evening strike on the Red Sea Egyptian resort town, Dahab. Some 24 people were killed, mostly Egyptians. Al-Qa'ida is presumed to have been behind the attack. (Reported, The Australian, 26 April 2006)
World politics meddler and self-appointed guardian of the purity of Islam, Osama bin-Laden, has called for a jihad against a proposed UN peace-keeping force in Sudan. His remarks now mean that the Australian government has to consider/reconsider whether Australian troops will be asked to help “quell the world's ugliest civil war.” More than 200,000 people have been killed and two million displaced due to ethnic violence in Sudan's western Darfur region since 2003. Bin-Laden took a dislike to the “infidel” UN peace-keeping force in his latest audiotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera media network this week. (Sigh, Osama bin-Laden and his ilk seem to be extremely slow learners about the fact that most people in the world are not followers of Islam, and that we also don't regard ourselves as infidels.- Ed) (Reported, The Australian, 26 April 2006)
(Writer so far unknown, by first receipt of this by mid-March 2006. Living in days that are so far beyond satire, as we are, we are very curious to know who wrote this! It seems to have appeared in a Saturday/weekend newspaper column by Sydney broadcaster Mike Carlton, but it was not clear that Carlton wrote it, or not. Carlton confessed to writing it in his column of 25-11-2006. And it's very good! -Ed)
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Look
for this |
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www.danbyrnes.com.au |
I had written
him a letter, which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where it was I met him, at the wheat board,
years ago.
He was chairman when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him
Just on spec, to make the point that, "Howard doesn't want to
know".
And an e-mail
came directed, not entirely unexpected
(And I think the same was written in some Middle Eastern bar).
'Twas his CEO who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Trevor Flugge's gone to Baghdad, and we don't know where he
are.
"But when he
left Australia, he was going to meet with Alia,
"A trucking mob in Jordan, who were keen to grease the wheels.
"For 10 percent commission, they could swing Saddam's
permission,
"To get our wheat accepted; it's the mother of all
deals.
"But I
guarantee, Prime Minister, that there's nothing at all
sinister.
"The chaps at DFAT told us that the sums looked quite okay.
"When you're selling wheat in billions, what's a quick 300
million?
"If it keeps the Nationals happy, it's a tiny price to
pay.
Sitting here
at Kirribilli, I've been thinking, willy-nilly,
That it's somehow reminiscent of the children overboard:
But I can handle Rudd and Beazley, as I always do, quite
easily,
By endlessly protesting that there's nothing
untoward.
I'll tell
Bush next time I meet him at The White House, when I greet him,
That I'm sure he'll understand about the wheat board's quid pro
quo.
He'll forgive this minor error in the global war on terror,
When I look him in the eye and tell him, Howard didn't
know.
Cartoon riot fears: Islamabad: Pakistani authorities detained the head of the country main Islamist opposition, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, yesterday ahead of planned countrywide protests over [Danish] cartoons lampooning the prophet Mohammed. Thousands of paramilitary troops and police also patrolled major cities to prevent a repeat of last week's anti-Western riots that left five people dead? (Weekend Australian, 25-26 February, 2006) The Pakistani Islamists are a little over-stroppy. As Weekend Australian reported 18-19 March 2006, a ban on kite-flying appeared during the festival of Basant in Pakistan, also caused controversy. Some 1500 people were arrested for violating the ban. Arrested for kite flying? (It's a game which involves cutting the strong of an opponent's kite.) Certain Islamists (“din of the mullahs”, “bearded brigades of the self-righteous and their anti-fun allies”) have claimed it is all a Hindu game with no place in Muslim Pakistan. Other more moderate voices felt the festival has cultural significance, with a joyous history, and mass participation independent of culture, caste, creed or religious difference. Or as some said, has the festival become a mere tourist attraction, involving the use of alcohol, exotic food, dancing girls, singing,. music, and “ostentation”. But is not the anti-fun attitude a tad ostentatious in its own peculiar way? (Continuing Lost World's campaign for the world re-education of stroppy, anti-fun, slow-learning Muslims mullahs with over-active imaginations infested with joyless Puritanism. We cheerfully refrain from the deliberate (and unnecessary) offensiveness of reproducing badly-done Danish cartoons of The Prophet, etc, but see no reason at all to refrain from pointing out the stupidity of small groups of Muslims here and there, much as we sometimes point out the stupidity of various religions groups around the world. Religion is interesting, but it should not encourage stupidity, and nor should Muslim clerics encourage stupidity. What we do want to know, is, when are Muslim clerics going to begin to behave like responsible leaders of a responsible and realistic religion? - Ed)
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More news: Britain
unveils plan to ban Muslim hate preachers Get out if you want Sharia law, Australia tells Muslims Daily Times - All Rights Reserved |
Militant Islam invades school curriculum: A radical Muslim leader who inspired al-Qa'ida is being served up as subject matter for high school students in NSW. Sayyid Quth, an Egyptian militant hanged in 1966, but still a powerful influence on violent Islamists, and the Pakistan fundamentalist Sayyid Maudidi are the only two modern Muslim thinkers [listed] on a revised syllabus for studies of religion. Experts this week condemned the prominence of political [totalitarian??] Islam in the new syllabus, and especially the inclusion of Quth. The syllabus itself was actually written by a Catholic educationist, John McGrath. However, students interested in Islam could also study two wives of The Prophet, or, legal scholars, or, Sufi mystics. Ahmad Shboul, chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Sydney University, feels Quth is too complex and controversial a figure for students at this level of study. Abdullah Saeed, director of Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam at Melbourne University, would prefer to see students directed to Egyptian reformer Muhammad Abduh, rather than Quth. (Article by Bernard Lane, Weekend Australian, 25-26 February, 2006)
Osama is like a burned out rock star? New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is in fine fettle lately, as he just noticed that in the USA, of the Top Ten books, two are recommended by Oprah Winfrey and one by Osama bin-Laden. Friedman now thinks that Osama and his sidekick, Amman al-Zawahiri, are like two burned-out rock stars endlessly recycling their greatest hits. (And as this website has often thought since 9/11, the question lurking in the media these days, and in CIA circles, is often, “Have you see Osama bin-Laden's latest video?”) Friedman thinks, Al-Qaeda has killed more innocent Muslims than innocent Americans, and not just Shi'ites. Nor does Friedman feel that the USA is “winning” in Iraq. He was certainly proved correct by December 2006, see items above this entry on this webpage. (Sydney Morning Herald, 28-29 January 2006)
Careful what you wish for – The election of Islamic militants (Hamas) in Palestine wasn't exactly part of America's vision for a democratic world, writes Paul McGeough (article, Sydney Morning Herald, 28-29 January 2006, editorial, Palestinians vote in Hamas, radicals enter the mainstream)
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There have been very few genuinely funny things ever said in
Australia about Islamic clerics around the world, but one famous
remark came before the death in 1989 of Ayatollah Khomeini - the
Australian cartoonist Patrick Cook once joked that the Ayatollah
wanted "to turn the Middle East into a theologically-correct
ashtray".. |
Headlines Headlines Headlines: UK: Government drops religious hate law as election looms, following intense free speech campaign // Headline: Iran: Convert from Islam to Face Apostasy Charges // Headline: for SMH 11 November 2005, (Armistice Day) - The Deadly Wave Of Hatred Washing Across The Globe - As Australia tackles unrest brewing in the suburbs, dozens of tourists die in three hotel blasts and police confirm Bali's master bomber was shot dead after being cornered. // Headline: Odd Man Out - For the first time, the extraordinary full story of how born loser Jack Roche fell in - and out - with Islamic extremists and wound up in jail as Australia's first convicted terrorist - Fatal Attraction: article by Cameron Stewart - Jack Roche, "the terrorist wannabee" - The Weekend Australian Magazine, 24-25 September, 2004 //
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Stop Press: For late entries
From a column by Imre Salusinszky, Weekend Australian, 13-14 August 2005:
Cultural studies, that most maligned area of the contemporary humanities, may finally be about to have its moment in the sun, if it is prepared to take it. Some of the most urgent questions confronting us in the age of terror seem to me custom-made for a discipline that, on its own account, is about the promulgation of social values, and - most important - the formation of subcultures that to a greater or a lesser extent choose to separate from the parent culture.
It would not be unprecedented if cultural studies were suddenly to leap to the forefront of relevant academic research. One of the dangers of requiring universities to address the needs of the job market and the broader economy in their teaching and research is a subset of the whole problem of picking winners: you never know. You never know what shift in the supply and demand curves is going to create a glut of geologists, just as you are about to graduate the 1000 extra geologists you enrolled four years ago when rock crunchers were in short supply.
After 9/11, one of the most pressing questions forced on us was how young men young men who had lived and trained in the West, had known its tolerances and tasted its pleasures, could commit lunatic acts of terror designed to replace Western democracy with medieval theocracy. Following the sickening attacks in London on 7 July, this question was honed to an even finer point - how could young men entirely raised and educated in a wonderful country such as Britain tum against its values so utterly as to be led to commit acts of terror against their innocent countrymen?
In suggesting cultural and subcultural studies could be brought to bear on these questions, I'm not arguing that what we need to do in order to counter the terror threat is apply more sensitive understandings to it. What we need to do is, in the immortal phrase of Joseph Conrad's Mr Kurtz, "exterminate the brutes"; exterminate them before they create another 100 motherless or fatherless children in Madrid or London or Melbourne.
But to do that we need better to understand how they think and what forces mould them into such diehard enemies of the broader culture that nurtures and protects them. In some (but by no means all) ways, the young adult males who comprise these cells conform to cultural studies' description of a subculture. Subcultures are often defined by their opposition to the values of the larger culture to which they belong. And while nobody is accusing mods or rockers, punks or hippies of attempting a violent overthrow of the West, that is no reason why the subcultural template cannot be used better to get inside the heads of the Islamo-fascists. Several aspects of the template seem a good fit. According to Dick Hebdige in his seminal Subculture: The Meaning of Style, subcultures often attract working class boys who do badly at school and need to find alternative sources of self-esteem.
Does this not sound a lot like the story of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, or our own Aussie Taliban, David Hicks? In addition, subcultures do not have a manifesto but cohere around style: well, the home-grown Islamists may not have a discernible style but they certainly don't have a coherent manifesto. More important, cultural studies sees subculture as involving complex generational negotiations involving the parent culture - modem Britain or Australia, say - and the culture of the parents. Teddy boys with their drape coats and punks with their ripped T-shirts seem to be reaching nostalgically towards a version of their parents' working class culture that has ceased to exist.
I was educated at one of our leading multicultural meritocracies, Melbourne High School, and I saw a version of this in the way that some of my friends who were Orthodox - Jewish, Eastern or Greek - responded to the conflict between what their parents believed was acceptable and what the materialist, free-wheeling culture of modern Australia held out as possible. In a small number of cases, the second generation reacted by swinging wildly towards a much more radical separation from liberal- secular social values than their semi-assimilated parents. (Ends)
Tolerating religious intolerance in Italy: "An Italian court order to remove crucifixes from an infants and primary school at the request of a Muslim activist caused shockwaves in the traditionally Catholic country, Agence France Presse has reported. The situation is that Adel Smith, aged 43, an Italian-Egyptian convert to Islam, has obtained a court order for the removal of all crucifixes from the walls of a school in the central Italian town of 'Aquila. The Guardian has reported that Smith converted to Islam in 1987, and has described the crucifix as "a small body on two wooden sticks". He has sought to have prayers from the Koran displayed at his children's school. (Italy has about 800,000 Muslims). Smith also objects to Dante's famous cycle of poems, The Divine Comedy and wants to see it deleted from the school syllabus. Italian newspaper La Republica warns that the decision could increase religious tensions. (Reported 8 November 2003, Weekend Australian).
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