VIDEO: Chasers War On Everything Islamic

This is the video that inspired me to write this piece in The Age last year.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

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COMMENT: Obama's not-Muslim obsession

Here's an awfully silly, immature and almost racist joke ...

What did Hillary say when she found out she lost the final vote in Democratic Party primaries? "Oh bummer!"

Yes, I admit this is exceptionally lame. Poking fun at people's names is as bad as casting aspersions on their religion. Or casting aspersions on the religions of others.

Which makes me wonder why Barack Obama is so-damned intent on keeping away from Muslim American voters. Isn't he aware that some of these voters delivered victory to George W Bush in 2000? And what does it say about the allegedly inclusive America he wants to lead? Does Obama's view of social inclusion have its limits?

Ethnic and religious minorities across America are asking these questions. Is Obama's idea of inclusion limited by the types of exclusion practised by his political enemies? If neo-Cons despise a particular group, will Obama avoid that group in an effort to avoid being labelled by his political enemies?

Or is this an issue of past ghosts coming back to haunt? Many neo-Con writers such as Ann Coulter express hatred for anything related to Islam more because of their past relationships with Muslims than anything else. Mark Steyn also fits into this category. Barack Obama has perhaps better reason to resent Islam if he associates it with his father and step-father.

Whatever the reason, Obama's reluctance to embrace voters of all backgrounds is beginning to worry members of a range of minority groups. Writing in the Detroit Free Press, Jewish-American writer Emily Hauser expresses her discomfort with Obama ...

I am a Jewish American and an enthusiastic Barack Obama supporter. I can't tell you how much I hope he'll be our next president.

But for all my longing for change and insistence that "yes we can," there's a bee in my bonnet, a sense of real dissonance between the Obama rhetoric and the reality: the Muslim thing.

Not the idea that he might be one. No, what has me so bothered is that an American presidential candidate acts as if the word "Muslim" were a slur. And according to recent reports, the Muslim community is feeling the sting, too ...

... the campaign discusses, endlessly, the candidate's Christianity; the third item on its "Fight the Smears" Web site reads: "Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim." Months ago, Michelle Obama characterized references to her husband's middle name, Hussein, a "fear bomb," and recently, two Muslim women were kept from standing behind him at a rally.

Honestly, there's something noxious in all this - as if Obama isn't proudly declaring his own faith, but running as fast as he can from the other ...

I wish that rather than hand out pamphlets declaring him a "committed Christian," Obama had held a prayer breakfast with an Imam; rather than trumpet his own faith, he'd found some praise for that of 1 billion Muslims around the globe.

Or, in the words of Keith Ellison, a Muslim and a congressman from Minnesota: "A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim."

In his "Yes We Can" speech, Obama echoed a powerful Jewish notion: tikkun olam, repairing the world -- an idea that embraces not just the physical world, but the people in it, and our relationships.

To my mind, it would be a real step toward repairing the world if Obama were now to consider an equally powerful, Muslim concept: "Allah will put friendship between you and those who have been your enemies. Allah is mighty, forgiving, and merciful."

Obama's campaign team would do well to read and take note of Hauser's sentiments. His attempts to distance himself with one unpopular minority could land him in trouble with other potentially unpopular minorities.

UPDATE I: You can read more about Obama's Muslim problem at AltMuslim.com here.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: Muslim Aid Australia and Interpal

Richard Kerbaj writes in The Australian today of an Australian aid agency which has allegedly breached Australia’s anti-terror laws. Muslim Aid Australia (MAA), in conjunction with Muslim Aid UK, has been raising funds for Palestinians in Gaza caught up in the Israeli-enforced blockade arising from Gaza’s takeover by HAMAS. That aid has been allegedly channelled through another UK-based charity called Interpal, a proscribed organisation under Australia’s anti-terror laws.

The current Consolidated List of proscribed terrorist organisations and individuals has over 1,000 persons and entities listed. It’s an offence to hold assets on behalf of anyone on the list or to make assets available to them. This is all part of the terrorist assets freezing regime, details of which can be found here.

Interpal, also known as the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, is number 462 on the list. It was proscribed by former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on 21 November 2003, well before the HAMAS takeover of Gaza in June 2007 and the Israeli-enforced blockade. Kerbaj claims that MAA has channelled funds to Gaza via Interpal, an organisation proscribed under US and Australian legislation but not proscribed under UK legislation. Interpal is known to work with mainstream organisations working on the ground in Gaza such as the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA) that works with Palestinian refugees living in camps in the Occupied Territories, Lebanon and other places.

Kerbaj provides a list of MAA “principal directors”. Curiously, he mentions where each director was born. I’m not sure how this is relevant to the story, especially since all directors are known to be Australian citizens (or, at the very least, Australian permanent residents).

It’s unknown how many other Australian aid agencies have channelled funds and other forms of aid to Gaza through Interpal. However, the fact that UNWRA works with Interpal raises some interesting issues. Such as how any aid organisation is expected to deliver aid to Palestinians without involving Interpal in some way, shape or form.

The other problem is with the legislation itself, which relies on the executive adding an individual or organisation to the list. Interpal was listed in 2003, allegedly because it was linked to HAMAS. Yet the reality is that HAMAS has been running various health and welfare-related projects (such as clinics and schools) since even before the Palestinian authority was established. Indeed, Israel encouraged HAMAS in these activities in the hope that HAMAS would act as an effective counter to the Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organisation which Israel regarded as its enemy.

Given that HAMAS is now ruling Gaza, how can any organisation deliver aid to Gaza Palestinians without in some way involving HAMAS or a HAMAS-related entity? The listing of Interpal by former Foreign Minister Downer on the Consolidated List now effectively means that Australian aid agencies cannot donate to help the people of Gaza at all. I doubt this is what Downer intended when he made the directive in relation to Interpal.

Further, Australia has chosen to follow the lead of the United States instead of the UK, which has twice found Interpal having little or no substantive link to HAMAS. The United States doesn’t exactly have a brilliant record in proscription of individuals and groups as terrorists. ABC reported that the US only recently removed former South African president Nelson Mandela from its terrorism watch list.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: D'Souza on Christianity as "the only way" ...

Dinesh D'Souza poses this question: Is Christianity the Only Way? It's a legitimate question to be asked by someone living in a country as religious as the United States, where (according to Pew Research) some 92% of people believe in God. It's also legitimate considering the the United States has a strong and officially secular political system where holding a particular religious affiliation isn't a condition of holding any (including the highest) public office in the land.

At the same time, religious pluralism is very strong. Many Americans don't regard their own faith as being the only source of absolute truth or as the only comprehensive road to paradise.

What got the most attention, however, was Pew's discovery that a majority of religious Americans believe that other religions make valid claims about God and can lead to heaven. Around 80 percent of Catholics, Protestants and Jews, as well as 55 percent of Muslims, reject the idea that their religion is the only way.

D'Souza makes a very important point about how the monotheistic faiths view each other, yet how little this view is even known to many Americans.

... many people don't realize that just as Christianity sees itself as succeeding and incorporating Judaism, so Islam sees itself as coming after and incorporating both Judaism and Christianity. Consequently I'm not surprised that most Muslims view Jews and Christians as fellow monotheists rather than hell-bound infidels.

I was a bit confused by D'Souza's claim that ...

... Christianity is the only religion to hold another religion to be wholly true. That religion is Judaism.

Does that mean that Christians accept that Judaism's insistence on belief in a unitarian God is "wholly true"? What about Judaism's rejection of the belief that Jesus was the Messiah?

Followers of all faiths and none are welcome to comment.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: Canadian Human Rights Commission decision on Steyn and CIC handed down ...

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has just handed down its decision in the complaint brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) against Canadian news magazine Macleans and theatre critic Mark Steyn. The subject of the complaint was an article Steyn wrote entitled The future belongs to Islam. The offending article was an excerpt from Steyn’s book America Alone.
The article was published in October 2006. It probably would have been forgotten by November 2006, if not earlier. Steyn was a virtual nobody in Canada. Now, with all the fuss over these legal proceedings, Steyn has become a huge somebody.

The CIC should have thought this one through and obtained proper advice before going ahead. They might have consulted with other Muslim groups in similar circumstances (such as the Islamic Council of Victoria).

On the other hand, CIC took steps within the law, using remedies that the law made available to them. Whilst their actions could be presented as an assault on freedom of speech, they certainly weren’t offending the Rule of Law. Certainly arguing rationally before tribunals and commissions is preferable to burning embassies or issuing death threats.

The problem now is that the CIC have made themselves (and Canadian Muslims) look like they are against freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In the minds of many of their countrymen and women, Canadian Muslims will be seen as a group that considers themselves above criticism or offence.

Perhaps Dr Hesham Hassaballa should have written these wise words much earlier ...

While I understand the feeling that may have led to the lawsuit against Maclean's, the action was truly misplaced. It sends the message that Muslims are not proponents of free speech and the free exchange of ideas. While I agree that speech which incites violence and bloodshed against Muslims or any other group of people should never be tolerated, the Maclean's article by Mark Steyn- as writer Ali Eteraz said best - "could never, ever, never ever, rise to 'incitement'" under U.S. case law.

The CIC has much work to do in improving its relations with the popular media. I understand that engaging with some editors and columnists is just pointless. But Canada is a big place, and there are plenty of news magazines and publications that will give minority communities a fair go.

Of course, there's no substitute for having more and more young people engaging with media. This means studying mass communications or journalism and making media a genuine career path.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: The Oz and Tanya

The Australian today provides a lengthy piece about an Australian woman who converted to Islam (presumably in Australia) before joining some Australian Muslims to study religion in Yemen. It’s hard to believe I’m writing this, but by printing stories like this, The Oz is doing Muslims an enormous favour. Here's an excerpt ...

In December 2006, Ms Smith, from Winston Hills in Sydney's northwest, posted a note on an Australian newspaper's website explaining why she had converted to Islam. "To share and enjoy the life and love of a relationship that is not managed by fear and abuse, especially not abuse that is cloaked in the name of any religion," she wrote. "As a Muslim woman I am free from any abuse because of my religion - Islam. It is because of my Islam that I don't live infear of a husband that comes back every night to bash me untilI'm black and blue, and then rape me."

The posting went on to blame alcohol - banned in Islam - for most domestic violence. "It is because of Islam that I am empowered as a woman and not sexually exploited by man, I dress for God and not for man," she went on. Islam did not permit women to be used and abused to sell alcohol and bubblegum, she wrote. "That's why I am one of many converts to Islam and that's why Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world amongst women."

Ms Smith defended her religion on the newspaper website. "Islam liberated women 1500 years ago," she wrote. "We have enjoyed the freedoms and rights of keeping our last names as we are not the property of our husbands, we have had the right to vote before the women's liberation movement in the last century, the right to keep our own money, choose who I want to marry, have the right to inheritance, run a business, the right to be protected and maintained by our husbands regardless of how rich I am."

It all began a few years ago. Ms Smith first arrived in Yemen in October 2006, and quickly settled into a community of pious Islamic Australians studying Islam and Arabic in Sana'a. Among the expatriates were Mohammed bin Ayub and Abdullah bin Ayub, the sons of the alleged former leader of Jemaah Islamiah in Australia, Abdul Rahim Ayub. The two men were arrested along with a third Australian, Marek Samulski, as part of a broad anti-terror sweep by Yemeni and British authorities.

The trio was held for more than two weeks, but were later released without charge and asked to leave Yemen with their families. Samulski is living in South Africa with his wife, while the Ayubs and their families are believed to have travelled to Dar-es-Salam and then to Lebanon.

Ms Smith's Palestinian in-laws say she converted to Islam four years ago, and she was awarded a certificate of Islam from the Yemeni Government last year.

Regardless of her travails in Gaza, Ms Smith has apparently remained committed to Islam since returning to Australia, and she has consulted a fundamentalist Salafi imam.

I’m sure some Muslims will read this story and ask: “Why do they always print the simpler and less controversial convert stories? Why do they focus on the ones full of complications and controversy?” To some extent, I agree with that. But after reading the story of Tanya Louise Smith, I couldn’t help but ask myself why leaders of peak Muslim religious organisations spend so much money fighting each other in courts and so little providing basic support services to converts.

I also couldn’t help asking why so many mosques in Sydney and Melbourne are managed by first generation migrants who want to reproduce the Pakistan or Lebanon or Turkey they left behind in the 1960’s or ‘70’s. And why they insist on employing imams who cannot communicate Muslim orthodoxy in the English language and in a culturally appropriate manner.

Most of all, I wondered why so many young Muslim Australians find themselves going overseas to study just the basics of their faith, basics which kids in Indonesia and other Muslim-majority states master in primary school.

The day our ethnic and language-based religious organisations started helping new Muslims instead of shutting them out or using them as political fodder is the day we will start reading less of such stories.

Or maybe I blame peak bodies and mosque committees too much. Maybe the fault lies with ordinary Muslims. After all, our leaders reflect who we are. Perhaps we should have a situation where ordinary Muslims "adopt" a new Muslim and provide her or him with some kind of moral or spiritual support.

In fact, it seems Tanya may have received more support from her in-laws in Gaza than from Muslims in her home town.

Still, it may all just be a complete beat-up. Either way, the story should really get us thinking.

UPDATE I: My purpose in writing about this was not to in anyway denegrate Tanya, her family or her experience of her faith. Rather, it is to get Muslim and other concerned readers to consider what we are doing and what more we could be doing to provide more support services to new Muslims. It was for similar reasons that I wrote this piece.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: Polygamous ponderings ...

It seems Keysar Trad just can't get enough of polygamy. Just when Aussie Muslims were enjoying the calm of a Howard-free existence, with no Ministers breathing down their allegedly non-integrating throats, Keysar managed to manufacture a completely unnecessary controversy and make us all look stupid in the process. You can read Keysar attempting to undo the damage (only to make things worse) here. The nerve of him to write these lines ...

From my perspective as a Muslim, I really do not wish to rock the boat. I am happy not to talk about the issue and not to disturb the status quo ...

It's true. Keysar doesn't wish to rock the boat. He'd much rather sink it.

A more nuanced and sensible approach to the topic comes from Melbourne researcher Rachel Woodlock. Writing in The Age, Wooklock acknowledges (and asks her readers to perhaps grudgingly acknowledge) that there may be grounds for polygamous marriage. She then tells about her own experiences and those of the people she knows ...

... since embracing Islam I have become friends with about half-a-dozen different women who are co-wives (none of them with each other). Tellingly, all the relationships involved include at least one convert, which means that polygamy is not merely the preserve of refugees who can barely speak a lick of English and who know nothing of our culture or way of life.

Whether or not we like to admit it, polygamy is part of the diverse fabric of family life in 21st century Australia, although admittedly a minority practice. This is partly because although Australian multiculturalism requires assent to the law of the land, many groups (for example, Jews, Catholics, Baha'is and Aborigines) also operate under community-imposed religio-legal codes, particularly when it comes to family relationships.

Religio-legal codes. I like it. Though I prefer to use the term "sacred law". But do all Muslims insist on the right to polygamous marriage? Or rather, how many Muslims want polygamous marriages recognised in Australia under the Marriage Act?

When news started filtering around the Australian Muslim grapevine of lobbying for polygamy to be recognised, reactions ranged from outrage to ambivalence to cautious approval. If ever there was evidence that Muslims do not speak with a single, homogeneous voice, this is it.

Muslims come from many different cultures, some of which historically viewed polygamy with great disapproval and imbued it with social stigma, and others that considered polygamy perfectly normal, although it seems the practice is becoming less popular even in many traditionally polygamous countries.

Woodlock even claims a possible feminist argument in favour of polygamy. You'll have to read the article yourself if you want to learn more.

Now for those who, like me, prefer to laugh than engage in serious discussion, Lisa Pryor's column in the Sydney Morning Herald is essential reading. She begins her article with this profound observation:

Keysar Trad, you cheeky old fox.

Her summary of current marriage practices is a gem:

Australia has been well served by the Judaeo-Christian interpretation of marriage, in which two people fall in love, commit themselves to each other for life, pop out some sprogs, get divorced, shack up with someone younger and bitch about child support.

Priceless!


Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf


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MEDIA: Giving credit where credit is due ...

Regular readers (all 2 of you) will know that I have used this blog and other forums to bag the reporting of certain journalists and columnists reporting and writing about issues relating to Islamic faith, Muslim cultures and Muslim societies. One journalist who has occasionally come up for criticism has been Natalie O'Brien from The Australian.

When the polygamy issue was raised on Triple-J's Hack program and then reported widely in the press, I expected The Oz to lead the charge with vicious editorials and columns over the past 24 hours or so. And as I write these lines (at ~11:20pm on 26 June 2008), it is quite possible that some rather nasty articles may appear.

However, I must congratulate Ms O'Brien and her colleague Sian Powell for putting together two thoughtful articles on this issue. Their articles can be found here and here.

I personally do not believe it was appropriate for Keysar Trad and Khalil Chami to raise this issue at this very point in time or indeed at all. Still, this is a free country and they are entitled to express their views.

On the other hand, as we have increased migration from parts of the world where polygamy is widely practised (and not just by Muslims), this issue was bound to come up sooner or later. Further, it needs to be recognised that some communities among the first Australians also traditionally practised various forms of polygamy.

I've praised the two articles appearing in The Australian on this issue elsewhere. The Herald-Sun in particular ran a rather silly headline on its website today - "Muslim polygamy ruled out" - although Mark Dunn's article was quite fair.

The headlines of today's articles in The Oz didn't make Muslims or their faith the issue. They acknowledged that polygamy is practised by non-Islamic faiths and communities including certain African Christian communities and breakaway sections of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. A wide range of views, including those of researchers and experts in various fields, were canvassed.

I guess we'll have to see how the next 24 hours pans out. Most likely, media will be focussing more on issues that families of all faiths and backgrounds will be concerned with - the increasing child abuse and neglect amongst largely non-indigenous Australians. Perhaps it's time for an intervention ...

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf


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