VIDEO: Hamza Yusuf talks about the King hearings and increasing Muslim-phobia in the United States

PROFILE: Brigitte Gabriel - American wacko

Brigitte Gabriel isn't her real name. Apparently she is too afraid to use her real name in case she is attacked.

Attacked? By who?

Gabriel is an all-American wacko, a master xenophobe who has made it her mission to convince Americans that any and every Muslim anywhere and everywhere is plotting and scheming to destroy America.

Gabriel has visited Australia in May 2007 when she was keynote speaker at a dinner hosted by the Jewish National Fund. Then Prime Minister John Howard was also present at the dinner.

The New York Times recently profiled Gabriel recently. She is described as

... one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders.

Here's how the NYT quotes her.

“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”

Any reasonably objective person would hear Gabriel's message and realise she is trying to push a barrel.

She presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion.

Like so many xenophobic fruitloops, Gabriel insists that she has no truck with 'moderate' Muslims. She's only worried about Muslims as extreme as her.

She insists that she is singling out only “radical Islam” or Muslim “extremists” — not the vast majority of Muslims or their faith. And yet, in her speeches and her two books, she leaves the opposite impression. She puts it most simply in the 2008 introduction to her first book, “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.”

“In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream,” she wrote. She said that there is a “cancer” infecting the world, and said: “The cancer is called Islamofacism. This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.”

And in case you thought Gabriel's followers only had problems with Muslims, think again.

ACT! members are challenging high school textbooks and college courses that they deem too sympathetic to Islam. A group leader in Eugene, Ore., signed up to teach a community college course on Islam, but it was canceled when a Muslim group exposed his blog postings denouncing Islam and denying the scope of the Holocaust.

And while Gabriel and her ilk claim to target terrorism, the reality is that their conspiracy-mongering and hate-speech is actually helping extremists.

Brian Fishman, a research fellow at both the New America Foundation in Washington, and the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said, “When you’ve got folks who are looking for the worst in Islam and are promoting that as the entire religion of 1.5 or 1.6 billion people, then you only empower the real extremists.”

Unfortunately I cannot embed this interview on CNN. Gabriel belongs to the Hilaly school of answering questions, forever claiming to be quoted out of context. She also claims that the Prime Minister of Australia is some person named Erbekan.

Still, here's Brigitte talking about Obama being a Muslim.




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COMMENT: Critical Muslim Studies?

The University of South Australia has just established the Bob Hawke International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding. Here is an excerpt from its website.

Critical Muslim Studies draws on and extends the insights of post-Orientalism, post-colonialism and post-structuralism in examining the assumptions of western hegemony, the political formations of Muslim and non-Muslim subjectivities and the unresolved imbrications of multiculturalism and racism ...

One of the ways of conceiving coloniality is to see it as a framework in which the distinction between the West and non-West becomes the overriding dyad that structures the world. The reduction of the non-West to a residual category announced the subaltern position of the rest of the world as a lack in relation to the West.

I believe English language interpreters will be provided in all courses at the Centre. And I thought lawyers were bad at communication.



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INDIA: Eleven sentenced to death as mass murderers remain in power

Eleven Indian Muslims have been sentenced to death by a court in Gujarat for setting fire in 2002 to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, amongst them a contingent of supporters of a fundamentalist political party. Some 60 people were killed in that fire which led to communal rioting that saw over 2,000 civilians systematically massacred. Those orchestrating the massacre have managed to escape responsibility.

63 other accused were acquitted while some 20 were given life sentences. Here is a timeline of the case. All accused had been detained since 2002.

The sentence was awarded as Indian Muslims across the world commemorated the 9th anniversary of the Gijarat pogrom.

Here is an excerpt from an AlJazeera report:

Narendra Modi, Gujarat's chief minister and a prominent member of the BJP, was accused of failing to stop the riots, and even of encouraging them.

Gujarat officials have denied the claims.

Last month an Indian supreme court panel criticised Modi for his "partisan" handling of the unrest, but found no evidence to justify criminal prosecution of him.

A national enquiry into the fire concluded the fire was an accident, but other official investigations have differed in their findings.

One prominent civil rights lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, questioned the verdict and the evidence used.

It is a totally wrong verdict, based on wrong evidence ... Though the sentenced persons can go to the higher courts, what is needed is a re-investigation. The case is based on wrong premise that warrants a re-investigation ... On any account, the sentenced persons cannot be charged with murder and conspiracy. At the worst, they should be charged for arson.

One of those acquitted was one Muslim religious scholar, Maulana Husain Umarji, who has been demonised by the Gujarati media. Here is what a columnist from The Hindu has to say about Maulana Umarji.

... the 70-plus maulvi became the monster that he remains now in the eyes of most of those who lost family members on the Sabarmati Express. The acquittal of 63 accused in the train burning case has annoyed them, but it is for the Maulana that they reserve their anger, citing his “role” in inciting the mob — as reported by the media. The tragedy is that the role played by the Maulana was exactly the opposite. It was only he who, after the burning of the train, expressed regret on behalf of his community, repeatedly and publicly. Again, he alone restrained the young Ghanchi Muslims whose blood boiled at the sight of raped and battered Muslims pouring into the relief camps in Godhra during the massacres which followed the Godhra train-burning, and who itched to retaliate against the police for their continuous combing operations in Muslim localities after the incident.

Anil Dharker writing in the Hindustan Times also has some pertinent things to say about the verdict.

On the face of it, the judgement seems to contradict itself. As we now know, 31 people were convicted for criminal conspiracy, while 63 were acquitted. Significantly of the 63, there were two people, Maulvi Hussain Umarji and the then president of the municipality, Billal Hussain Kalota, who were accused to be the main conspirators. If your main conspirators are innocent, how can you have a conspiracy?

Can't argue with that.



Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

NEWS: Housemaids in Saudi Arabia resorting to suicide

I've blogged about abuse of women in Saudi Arabia in the past. An article published around 12 months ago in the Arab News (a Saudi paper) reports about the situation with domestic servants working in the Kingdom. This includes violence and mistreatment of various forms.

In the last couple of years there have been countless reports of abuse in the media, including testimonies from maids about the withholding of salaries, verbal or physical abuse and restrictions on their movements ...

Maids who are physically or emotionally abused have no choice but to either run away or attempt suicide. Those maids are expected to work around the clock, sleeping for only two or three hours a night.

“I worked in a house where the sponsors used to feed us one meal a day and lock the fridge later to make sure we didn’t eat anything else,” said Salma, an Indonesian housemaid.

Earlier this year, a maid tried to hang herself from the ceiling. Another tried to drink detergent to end her life. Yet another threw herself from the window of a building. The lucky ones were saved. Maids are also beaten up or sexually abused by their sponsors. An Arab News report published on Feb. 27 told the story of an Indonesian maid taken to hospital when she fell from the third floor of her sponsor’s building.

The doctors later found that the maid had been beaten up and tortured and found burns and lashing marks on her back. They also detected internal bleeding and an injury to her head.

I'm not sure whether the Prophet Muhammad would recognise those employing these servants as his followers. And in case you thought it was just happening in Saudi Arabia ...



Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

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COMMENT: TreasoNamaz in Tennessee

Five times a day Muslims are supposed to perform a special kind of worship. In Arabic, it's called salaat. But to millions of Muslims in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Albania, Bosnia etc, it's known as namaz.

It is performed in accordance with certain regulations concerning washing and physical postures. All of these are governed by a sacred law known as sharia.

And if a number of lawmakers in the poor state of Tennessee have their way, it will become an act of treason.

The Tennessean website reports on 23/02:

A proposed Tennessee law would make following the Islamic code known as Shariah law a felony, punishable by 15 years in jail.

Wow. That's more than what you might get for bashing your Christian wife. So who is behind this unusual piece of legislation?

State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and state Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, introduced the same bill in the Senate and House last week. It calls Shariah law a danger to homeland security and gives the attorney general authority to investigate complaints and decide who's practicing it.

It exempts peaceful practice of Islam but labels any adherence to Shariah law — which includes religious practices such as feet washing and prayers — as treasonous. It claims Shariah adherents want to replace the Constitution with their religious law.

Believe it or not, similar bills have been moved in other US State legislatures. But the Tennessee one goes much further. It provides for criminal sanctions against anyone found to be involved in the practice of sharia.

And who drafted this bill?

The Tennessee bill goes further by proposing criminal penalties for following Shariah ... the bill was model legislation, given to him by the Tennessee Eagle Forum, a conservative advocacy group.

Bobbie Patray, state president of the Eagle Forum, confirmed that the law had been drafted by David Yerushalmi, a Chandler, Ariz.-based attorney. Yerushalmi runs the Society of Americans for National Existence, a nonprofit that says following Shariah is treasonous.

And so we see a bunch of alleged Christians attacking the liturgy of another monotheistic faith. The language is largely the same. The only difference is that the targets aren't Jews this time round.

And sadly some Jews are involved.

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

Throw this treacherous sandnigger in jail for 15 years!!

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REFLECTION: Anne and Nada

This article was first published on the Webdiary on 21 November 2005.

On the evening of Thursday 17 November 2005, I saw one of the unsung heroines of Muslim Australia tell it as it was. The good folks at the Uniya Jesuit Social Justice Centre invited Nada Roude to be grilled by Anne Henderson.

The night was billed as one feisty woman having a conversation with another. In this case, Nada came out the feistier one.

Anne is one of the leading lights of the Sydney Institute, headed by her husband Dr Gerard Henderson. Anne is also an accomplished author and (believe it or not) is a strong advocate for the human rights of asylum seekers. She has an Irish Catholic heritage, and has written much on post-war immigrants and their experiences settling in Australia.

Nada was a founding member of the Muslim Women's Association, and also founded Sydney's first refuge catering for the needs of Muslim women in need of crisis accommodation. For many years, Nada worked for the Premier's Department and what was then the Ethnic Affairs Commission of NSW.

Today, amongst her other activities, Nada collects mail for the Islamic Council of NSW. Sadly, much of it is hate-mail. Nada chose not to elaborate too much on the contents of some of these letters, preferring to focus on her life and vision for a better of Australia.

Unlike the bulk of Lebanese Muslim migrants, whose arrival in Australia coincided with the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli invasion (i.e. from mid-1970's to the mid-80's), Nada's family arrived in Australia in the early 1960's. When she arrived in Australia at age seven, Nada spoke no English but plenty of Arabic and French.

Nada commenced school in grade five. Back in those days, there were no ESL lessons in schools. Nada had to survive by relying on the extra care of her teacher, a New Zealander she remembers as Mrs Burns. Thenkfullay Nada doesn't speak Unglush un the minnar thus sintunse uz wruttin.

Nada did her serious adolescent growing during the 1970's, around the time I stull shuttung un my neppays (as Mrs Burns might have said). Those were the days when Muslim migrants didn't stand out like sore thumbs.

Back then, what counted most to Nada was surviving as the child of Lebanese migrants. She was somehow different, and spent much of her time trying to conform but also trying to educate her class fellows about her culture. She even admitted to starting a Lebanese dance group.

No, not belly dancing. Folk dancing.

In those days, Nada felt her ethnicity was the most important feature of her life as it was her greatest source of vulnerability. Those were the days when Lebanese were Lebanese, regardless of religion. Actually, in Australia, that has pretty much always been the case.

In Year 10, Nada was elected school captain. She didn't cover her head in those days, but she still stood out with her darker hair and skin colour. Nada's school principal wouldn't tolerate a Lebanese school captain, and Nada had to accept a less prominent role as vice captain. It was Nada's first experience of official discrimination.

In those days, the school authorities presumed that all Lebanese girls would just leave school and get married off to someone who wanted lots of kiddies. As such, Nada spent 6 months of her senior school, years involved in the pursuit of weaving. Her designs apparently continue to grace the wall of the office of the Director-General of the Department of Education. She ended up coming first in the state for Art.

Nada's family knew she was not going to be the orthodox Lebanese girl. She surprised Lebanese family friends by travelling overseas alone after finishing Year 12. She studied comparative religion in Malaysia, before moving to Singapore and eventually finding herself stuck at Beirut Airport with the late Al Grassby during the Israeli siege.

It was at this time that Nada decided that the only place she would ever call home was Sydney. I don't blame her. If I had to spend days being shelled by rockets and rained on with shrapnel whilst in the company of a man whose coloured ties shone more brightly than Israeli flares, I'd be calling Australia home as well.

When Nada returned from her overseas tour of universities and war zones, she made the decision to place a hijab on her head. This was also a revolutionary step, as few Muslim women identified themselves with the hijab. This didn't stop her from being a fiercely independent woman.

Nada told her story with such passion and gusto that Anne found it hard to get a word in. The only other question I remember Anne asking Nada was about her thoughts on how Muslims dealt with suspicion and hatred. It was here that Nada really showed why she made it to at least 2 episodes of Geoffrey Robertson's Hypothetical.

Nada made the important point that Muslims have always been part of the Australian landscape. Muslim involvement in Australia pre-dates the first European discoveries. Northern Australia appears in Arab maps dating back to the 11th century. Muslim fishermen regularly traded with indigenous peoples across Northern Australia. Around two-thirds of Australia's Muslim community were actually born in Australia.

Nada reminded her audience that Australia has forever been a land of migrants. She remembers the days when Indo-Chinese were treated with suspicion and hatred. She recognised that Australians as a nation are still learning to come to terms with differences in culture and language.

In the case of Muslims, the problem has become worse given that what makes some Muslims stand out from the crowd carries religious overtones. Aussies aren't exactly known for their religiosity or indeed their reverence toward the symbols of any religion.

Nada recalled a time when new Lebanese migrants would anglicise their names to fit in. Muhammad would become Michael, and Osama would become Allan. One Muslim stand-up comic from America, Azhar Usman, puts it like this:

I reckon somewhere out there, there's gotta be a guy named Haris Patel who says to his friends at work: 'If you can't say Haris Patel, just call me Harry Potter!'

But as multiculturalism really began to bloom during the Fraser, Hawke and Keating years, many Lebanese Muslims de-anglicised their names. Women starting wearing pieces of cloth on their heads, and open expression of religious symbols became the norm.

Muslim Aussies, especially recently arrived migrants, felt comfortable and accepted. I recall during the 2001 Auburn by-election, even the NSW Liberal Party started taking Muslim voters seriously. Though they wouldn't let an Aussie Mossie be their endorsed candidate. Such is life.

But then something happened. Two jets crashed into the Twin Towers, and one hit the Pentagon. People of Muslim and Sikh backgrounds were immediately implicated. Within a few days, Sydney's Daily Telegraph showed on its cover the headline "First Arrest!". Some bloke with a turban was being held by FBI agents and taken into custody.

I looked at the cover. I looked at the turban. The poor dude was a Sikh. The first person to be murdered in retaliation for September 11 was also a Sikh. In those days, it was bad enough just to be deemed Muslim.

Nada's work as a Muslim activist since September 11 has, in her own words, been just "putting out one fire after another". She says many young Aussie-born Muslims are returning to their parents' and ancestors' faith as an act of defiance. Many of these people feel their heritage is being unfairly targeted, and in a true Aussie fashion are seeking to protect the underdog.

Since September 11, more Muslims are feeling the heat. Comments made by certain politicians and media personalities are not helping in this regard. Nada resents the fact that only thick-Sheiks are being made accountable for their hate-speech but not certain tabloid columnists or Liberal backbenchers.

Nada's biggest hope is the grassroots Aussies who know Muslims through work or as good neighbours. She recalls how touched she was when her neighbour brought her a bunch of flowers and said: "I don't care what other people say. I know you had nothing to do with September 11."

Nada's prescription for the illness of social paranoia is normal human interaction. She wants people to relate to each other as human beings with human frailties, not as Muslims or Christians or Callithumpians. She made the point that all faith communities have shared problems and experiences. If people saw each other as fellow human beings and emphasised their commonalities, we would all realise that our differences are in fact a good excuse to break the ice and get to know one another.

Nada ended her speech by saying how much she wanted to have lunch with Alan Jones. Anne Henderson said she would try and arrange it. I wouldn't mind attending either. I'd love to see Nada gently de-constructing Alan's rhetoric and teaching him a thing or two about what it means to be Australian.

Words © 2005-11 Irfan Yusuf

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COMMENT: Senator Mitch Fifield on sharia

This car was convicted of adultery.

The Sunday Telegraph cited Liberal Victorian senator Mitch Fifield as follows:

Australians revel in diversity and embrace different cultures but they expect people who come to Australia to sign up to mainstream values. You have to muck in with the rest of the community and not develop a sort of separate society.

Indeed. I recall Captain Arthur Phillip adopting the values of indigenous spirituality and learning to speak local languages.

We need to heed the lessons of the UK where you have whole suburbs which are basically separate entities to the rest of the community.

A bit like Chinatown in Sydney. A huge tourist attraction.

There are some interpretations of Islam which aren't healthy and aren't compatible with Australian values, such as sharia law.

The values of sharia are totally alien to Australian values? Let's consider them for a short while. I'll quote myself on this one.

Costello says most migrants become Australian citizens because they want to embrace the things this country stands for. He lists six core Australian values, including economic opportunity, security, democracy and personal freedom.

In 2002, a visiting Indonesian academic lawyer delivered a series of lectures under the auspices of the Centre for Independent Studies. Professor Mohammad Fajrul Falaakh is a vice-dean of the Gadjah Mada University, among the top 100 universities in the world. Falaakh is also a senior figure in the Council of Theologians, or Nahdatul Ulama, the world's largest Islamic organisation.

In the annual CIS Acton Lecture, on the topic of sharia and pluralism in Indonesia, Falaakh listed five basic values of sharia, agreed on by sharia scholars from all schools of Islamic law. If one compares the five principles of sharia to the six values espoused by Costello, one finds they are virtually identical.

... sharia is not the name of a draconian system of legal punishments. It is not a synonym for amputations and beheadings. Rather, sharia is a legal tradition, a set of legal principles based on certain values. And those values are identical to those expressed in the Old and New Testaments.

Further, legal scholars in the East and West agree that the traditions of sharia, English common law (from which our legal systems are derived) and European civil law have borrowed from, and influenced, each other.

Some commentators present sharia as a system of medieval criminal punishments. But for Australian Muslims, sharia represents little more than ethics (honesty, enterprise) and liturgy (how to perform prayers, weddings, funerals).

Fifield is showing the same ignorance of sharia as Peter Costello did back in 2006.

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf



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