The Da Vinci Code – Evidence of Muslim Selectiveness in Condemning Blasphemy?

The international Christian response to the release of the movie based on Dan Brown’s best selling novel The Da Vinci Code is hardly worth writing home about.

Thus far, the movie has been banned in that bastion of Christian power known as Samoa. Clerics from the Samoan Council of Churches had a preview of the movie before recommending to the government that it be banned.

In neighbouring Fiji, a Catholic organisation has also called for the movie to be banned. The same response might be likely in South American countries which are staunchly Catholic and where the Catholic lay order Opus Dei (portrayed in the novel and movie as a violent fundamentalist organisation) has an extensive following.

Western media outlets made much of the response by a small minority of Muslim extremists to the publication of 12 cartoons in a Danish neo-Conservative anti-immigrant newspaper. It will be interesting to see if media in nominally Muslim countries will report similar hysteria in nominally Christian countries.

Perhaps of more interest is if there is any hysteria to report. The Da Vinci Code storyline apparently suggests that Christ had an illicit affair with Mary Magdalene and then fathered a child. Christians claim that this story is blasphemous.

Few Muslims have bought into the discussion. Yet if Christians are right about the message of the book and its associated film, surely Muslims should also be offended by this blasphemy.

Some months back, I appeared on the Triple-J current affairs program Hack to discuss the Danish cartoon fiasco. I was joined by a well-meaning but clumsy young chap who later admitted to having no previous radio experience and whose only qualification was to be a former President of the Sydney University Muslim Students Association.

When asked about Muslim responses to the cartoons, this young fellow claimed that Muslims would behave the same way if Christ was insulted. At the time, I couldn’t help but think his claims were a little rich.

The Muslim response to The Da Vinci Code movie has been muted at best. I am not aware of any imam or Muslim organisational leader who has responded to the movie or has addressed the concerns Christian leaders. This situation exists not only in Australia but across the Western world.

As far as I’m concerned, this evidences a fundamental weakness in the faith of Muslims. Our faith requires us to defend the honour of all Prophets. If we are selective in that defence, it suggests we regard Christ’s honour as being less important than the honour of the Prophet Muhammad.

I am not suggesting Muslims start burning the US embassy to protest against American publishers and film makers behind The Da Vinci Code. But surely we must ask ourselves what has happened to our supposed love and honour of God’s Messiah that we cannot join with our fellow Christian believers in Christ to defend his honour against a work which, at least by Muslim standards, would be regarded as blasphemous.

We expect others to be sensitive to our religious sentiments. Yet how do we respond when sentiments we should share with our Christian brethren are violated? Why don’t we see Muslim governments and organisations and scholars issue press releases condemning Dan Brown’s book?

When Salman Rushdie wrote a work of fiction suggesting the wives of the Prophet Muhammad engaged in illicit sexual behaviour, Muslims were not the only ones to condemn the offence. The spiritual leaders of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches also condemned the book for its insensitivity to Muslim religious figures and symbols.

Now we have an opportunity to condemn what is clearly an offence to the honour of Jesus and his followers. It is also an opportunity to show how genuine we are in our claims to love and follow Christ. Further, it is a chance for us to show that we are not selective in our condemnation of blasphemy.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

Writing About Muslims (in English & Spanish)

It makes me sick to enter a mainstream bookshop like Borders or Angus & Robertson and visit the religious or history or politics or culture sections. Why?

Because I see Jews writing about Jews, Judaism, Jewish history and Jewish politics. I see Christians writing about Christianity, Christian history, Christian society and Christian politics.

And I see Jews and Christians (and Hindus and Sikhs and Buddhists and Jains and Parsees) writing about Islam, Muslims, Muslim cultures, Muslim politics etc.

Hardly ever do I see Muslims writing about themselves and their identity. Muslims allow themselves to be defined by others. And the way many young Muslims are making career choices, that situation is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. Muslims are too busy studying medicine or computer science or engineering to worry about the social sciences.

It seems that the best starting point to learn about who are Muslims (in their infinite permutations and combinations) is to pick up the work of some non-Muslim writer. We just never seem to want to tell people about who we are. We almost seem disinterested in who we are.

Yet when other people paint us in a picture we don’t agree with, we automatically dismiss them as being biased or subject to some fundamental misunderstanding. I am just as guilty of this as anyone else.

Recently a young arts graduate sent me a 3,000 word piece on why some Muslim converts are attracted to “extremist” fringe groups like al-Qaida or JI. Her essay relied completely on people like Pipes and other writers. It also contained some fairly interesting factual errors (such as painting JI as the South-East Asian wing of the Pakistani Jama’at-i-Islami).

I could have written back to her in some pompous manner telling her about how she was just another ignorant conservative non-Muslim with an axe to grind. And I almost did (knowing my luck, she probably perceived my response in that manner).

But looking back on it, the fact is that she went to all that trouble to read and research the topic. She then produced over 3,000 words on the subject. She tried to understand her subject, and she even tried to get my (allegedly mainstream Muslim) perspective on the topic.

If the first and most accessible works she has on the subject are written by hostile Muslim-haters like Daniel Pipes, whose fault is that? Is it her fault? Or is it the collective fault of Muslim communities who rarely encourage their own to study and develop enough expertise to be able to write in these topics?

On April 16, 2006 the New York Times Magazine profiled another non-Muslim who writes about Islamic culture and history. The magazine profiled Spanish expatriate novelist Juan Goytisolo, a regular contributor to Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Goytisolo is q maverick character. At 75 years of age, he chooses to live in Marrakesh (a city in Morocco) with current and former gay lovers and their children. He is considered one of Spain’s greatest living writers. Yet he is hardly someone we could describe as hostile to Muslim values and culture.

His passion for Islamic culture includes a scholarly interest in tasawwuf (sufi theology) and Arabic and Turkish grammar. He isn’t necessarily well-known in the Arab or Muslim world, but he remains a leading intellectural in Spain and Latin America.

During the 1990’s, Goytisolo introduced Spanish audiences to Islamic culture through a documentary series entitled al-Qibla (“The Direction of Mecca”). He has reported from behind the lines in Chechnya during the war, and has also interviewed HAMAS leaders in the Gaza Strip.

Goytisolo appears to be doing more to introduce Spanish consumers to Islam than any Spanish-speaking Muslim I am aware of. For all this, he is still able to win numerous awards, including Mexico’s prestigious Juan Rulfo prize for lifetime literary achievement.

Hopefully, I will get a chance to explore some of Goytisolo’s themes (as reported in the NYT Magazine article) on this site. Those wishing to receive a copy of the original NYT article should e-mail me on irfsol@yahoo.com.au.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

The Media Imperative

Muslims cop a raw deal in the media. At the same time, Muslims do have an opportunity to respond. Editors and journalists are always ready to hear and consider (and often, to print) a fresh perspective on local and world events.

However, there are only a small number of Muslims who work in the field of media and who have some understanding of how media operates. Generally these people don't have access to the ample funds and resources of Muslim peak bodies. Most are women, young people and converts.

In Australia, Muslim peak bodies pay little more than lip service to Muslim women, youth and converts. They continue to be dominated by middle-aged migrant men with poor English-language skills.

There are young Muslims with expertise in media and public policy. However, most of these people have bills to pay and mouths to feed. They would love to engage more in media but cannot find the time. Much of their time is spent working in jobs or businesses or attending to their family duties.

Muslim peak bodies have steadfastly refused to engage in proper and professional media work. Since the London bombing, governments have been begging Muslim leaders to reassure ordinary Australians of Muslims’ peaceful intentions in Australia. It isn’t for governments to educate people about the peaceful reality Islam and Muslims. It is for Muslims to do this.

Some years back, the Federal Government provided the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) with a grant of over $200,000 to set up a media unit. That unit was set up and a number of editions of the Australian Muslim News were published. Since then, the media unit has been all but disbanded.

The former media unit director for AFIC, Seyfi Seyit, now runs his own unit called the “Forum of Australia’s Islamic Relations”. FAIR seems to be suffering from a near-chronic identity crisis, unsure as to whether it is a thinktank or a media response unit. Its performance in both roles needs substantial improvement.

FAIR’s newspaper resembles “Green Left” more than any mainstream or even community newspaper. FAIR’s press releases in recent times have been written in childish language, reflecting a lack of experience in print media. A recent FAIR release entitled “Not Happy George” (making reference to the recent speech of Cardinal Pell on the Qur’an) was a source of embarrassment for Muslims trying to engage maturely with mainstream media.

FAIR officers need to consult more with their executive before sending out press releases off the cuff. They need to understand their limitations and not presume that their position allows them to embarrass the communities they claim to speak for.

The Islamic Council of NSW still hasn’t set up a properly functioning media committee. It has access to a radio station, yet the bulk of its programs are still in Arabic, a language that most Australians (Muslim or otherwise) cannot understand. As for the Muslim Council of NSW, its media work has been limited to frequent phone calls between Na’il Kaddoumi and Richard Kerbaj from The Australian.

Media work is a full-time job. There are people who have the skills and expertise to perform such a role. Yet these people have no incentive to perform the role as they know it will mean sacrificing income.

If Muslim organisations are serious about the image of Islam, they should put their money where their mouths are. Each Muslim congregation across the country should donate $50 a week from their Friday collections to media work. This means an annual payment of $2,600 per annum. With at least 60 Muslim congregations in Sydney alone, this would mean $156,000 per annum.

But who would run and manage the money? I somehow don’t think FAIR would be capable. Unless, of course, FAIR agreed to implement proper procedures for consultation and delegation of tasks.

Perhaps some kind of media trust could be set up. Either way, the work has to get done. There are a handful of people struggling to perform effective media work in Australia and New Zealand. They are being hampered by lack of time and resources.

This issue should be top priority for all Muslim organisations. Sadly, it will probably remain at the bottom of the pile of priorities. Muslim organisations are more interested in spending money fighting internal battles on halal meat certification and similar issues.

At least, that is the experience to date. I hope Muslim institutions can prove me wrong.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

On Robert Spencer and Peanut Allergies

I am so pleased and proud to have been described in glowing terms by the US-based Christian-Right pamphleteer Robert Spencer.

For those of you who don’t know, Spencer is the author of a variety of books "exposing" what he sees as the violent and sinister reality of Islamic theology and Muslim cultures.

Spencer wants the whole world to believe about Muslims what Nazi propagandists wanted Europeans to believe about Jews – that we are part of a huge conspiracy to destroy civilisation, that we are economic leeches and that our faith and cultures are inherently violent and psychopathic.

So when someone of this looney-tune mentality attacks and defames me, it only adds credibility to my humble efforts in building bridges between people.

Spencer, of course, isn’t interested in building bridges. His purpose in life is to generate as much hatred as possible toward anything and anyone with even the slightest relation to Islam. He is prepared to use all sorts of pseudo-scholarly methods in pursuit of his war-mongering purpose.

Spencer’s latest attack can be found on his Jihad Watch website posting for April 30 2006, entitled “A trip to the nuthouse”.

I’m not sure if the purpose of his title is to describe his own experiences with peanut allergy or whether he is casting aspersions on millions of people of all faiths and background who struggle with mental illness.

He then brings to his readers an offering of “on-the-record and for-the-record replies to various hacks, nuts, ideologues, jealous lovers, and conspiracy theorists.”

Certainly Spencer is most qualified to identify conspiracy theorists. After all, much of his work represents an attempt to prove that 1.2 billion Muslims are all involved in an evil conspiracy to destroy the world.

Things get more amusing when he describes me as a member of “the clown parade”. He describes my comments and criticisms of Messrs Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson as “outlandish false charges”.

Of course my charges are false. Daniel Pipes never wrote an article in which he suggested that persecuting and lynching Muslims was an effective deterrent against civilians being kidnapped in Iraq. It was just a figment of my imagination.

And as for Steve Emerson, we all know how wonderfully friendly he is to all North American Muslims. We know he has never suggested that most American mosques are used as training grounds for terrorist campaigns.

Just as we know Robert Spencer has never written any books suggesting mainstream Islam teaches Muslims to lie and kill to achieve certain religious and political goals. Such claims are all just plain fictional.

Readers, please give me a few moments to go outside and call my pet flying pigs to join me for dinner ...

... ok, thanks for that. Anyhow, returning to this discussion, I must congratulate Mr Spencer on one sentence in his piece which really says it all. Here it is.

I have never described myself as a "Middle East expert" or an expert on anything.

Yes, Mr Spencer, you certainly aren’t an expert. You are a propagandist. And a very clumsy one at that!

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

AFIC – Time Will Tell

The new AFIC executive has been announced. And once again, it looks like an episode of bro'Town.

No, there aren’t any Maori or Indo-Chinese persons on the board. But there are plenty of bros. And no sisters.

And the bros are all elderly. I doubt any of them were born in Australia. It remains to be seen whether any of them can speak English.

As we have come to expect, there were no women elected to the executive. It is unlikely any women will be appointed to the executive.

Further, the new executive is dominated by people who couldn’t exactly be described as young people or persons born and/or brought up in Australia on the executive. Once again, we can say with some confidence that the real composition of Australian Muslims is probably better represented at an Anglican Church synod than at an AFIC exec meeting.

The new president is Rahim Ghauri, a Perth-based chap. The vice president is Dr Waqar Ahmad from the Northern Territory, one of the authors of a document entitled “Worrell Report Recommendations" which was leaked to thousands of Muslims across the country.

The secretary is Harun Abdullah. I have heard on the grapevine that Mr Abdullah is an Anglo-Australian convert. I sure hope so. We tend not to see any of those in peak body organisations. Well, apart from the Islamic Council of Victoria and the Canberra Islamic Centre.

Once again, we see an opportunity wasted. As always, the AFIC exec is dominated by middle aged, first generation migrant men. Women and young Australians are ignored.

According to the 1 May 2006 edition of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, the new AFIC exec have announced it will be setting up a youth wing. Presumably this will operate in a similar fashion to, say, the youth wings of major political parties.

(I sure hope it isn’t like the NSW Young Libs. Otherwise it will probably more resemble al-Qaida!)

Existing youth bodies already exist. Most have arisen spontaneously in response to individual efforts. Instead of seeking to reinvent the wheel, AFIC would be better served working with existing youth groups and providing them with guidance and funding.

Or given AFIC’s own problems with corporate governance and workplace relations issues, perhaps it could focus its attention on getting its house in order.

Time will tell if Muslim Australians will enjoy the benefits of having a functional national body.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

AFIC Under The Microscope - Part II

In my last installment in the Worrell Report, I focused on the apparently unconstitutional nature of the role of AFIC’s CEO, Mr Amjad Ali Mehboob. I also queried whether he should be held responsible for the irregularities in AFIC’s financial and other procedures.

As I read further into the report and the summary co-authored by 2 current AFIC executive members, I noticed some of the extreme difficulties which Mr Mehboob and other employees of AFIC face.

AFIC isn’t the nicest of work places. The organisation has no written or set policies or procedures for recruitment or training of employees, virtually all of whom operate without job descriptions or set delegations.

It gets worse than that. There are also no policies for staff leave, including annual and long service leave. AFIC’s failure to properly document its workplace procedures is a particularly acute problem given the introduction of the Work Choices legislation.

Imagine working in an environment where such policies are not documented. For such an environment to exist in an organization which claims to represent Islam and Muslims in Australia is especially embarrassing.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace & blessings of God be upon him) is reported to have said: “Pay the worker before his sweat dries”. I am no scholar of religious law, but my reading of this particular saying leads me to believe that it is imperative for a Muslim institution to ensure its employees’ rights under law are readily met. How this can be done without properly documented procedures beats me.

The absence of documented employment procedures is a matter for which the executive members of AFIC are primarily responsible. It is not the responsibility of staff to find themselves something to do. Rather, it is the responsibility of those in management roles to provide staff with an environment where their roles are properly documented, set out and demarcated.

AFIC has not had duds or dummies for executive members. It has had senior people, many of them professionals, business people and academics. These are people accustomed to dealing with workplace situations. They know the law. And if they don’t, they certainly know where to get the advice from.

If the Worrell Report shows anything, it is the chronic mismanagement of Muslim institutions in Australia. What is happening in AFIC is reflective of what is happening at State and Territory level and in local mosque societies. Here, we will find professional people managing institutions in a manner they would never manage their own private, family or business affairs.

I’d like to think that AFIC executive members would realize they have fiduciary duties to the organization. I’d also like to think they would realize that the poor environment within which their employees work is not conducive to efficiency and productivity.

Further, an environment where workers feel vulnerable and where their rights and duties are undefined is one where corruption and graft could easily take place unnoticed. Where such instances occur, naturally the employees themselves are primarily responsible. However, part of the responsibility would also have to be shared by the executive members who failed to ensure proper workplace procedures were in place.

AFIC has been in existence for over a quarter of a century. It really is quite scandalous that these pressing employment issues have remained unaddressed for so long. What makes the situation even worse is that existing AFIC employees seem to be over-worked. Clause 182 of the Report recommends that AFIC consider increasing its administrative staff numbers to ensure administrative tasks are dealt with in a timely manner.

And while the executive members continually fail to ensure proper workplace procedures are in place, these same members then feel they should be compensated for time spent doing AFIC business as opposed to working on their professional practices or in their businesses.

It is not uncommon for executive members to seek payment from AFIC to compensate them for personal and/or professional time lost. Meanwhile, AFIC staff work undefined hours performing undefined but necessary tasks in an environment where they are over-worked and operating in procedures which, where documented, are in effect unconstitutional.

This is the peak national Muslim body. It is a matter of embarrassment and shame that a community which can produce CEO’s of some of Australia’s tope companies, partners of major commercial law and accounting firms, deans of university faculties and senior public servants is unable to ensure its own house is properly managed.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

AFIC Under The Microscope – Part I

Australian-based Muslim e-mail lists have been running hot with copies of a forensic accountant’s report dated 21 September 2005 and conducted by Worrells Forensic Accountants. The Worrells Report runs into 38 pages and seeks to investigate a range of matters concerning the financial systems and general corporate governance of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), Australia’s peak Muslim body.

AFIC set up a committee to appoint and oversee an Independent Consultant following repeated allegations of financial mismanagement and systemic incompetence. The committee consisted of Dr Ameer Ali (then AFIC president) as well as Dr Muhammad Akmal from Canberra and Mr Suliman Sabdia from Brisbane.

In reading the Worrells Report, it should be remembered that the Report makes certain recommendations for changes to AFIC’s operations. In some places, the Report’s recommendations may have already been adopted. In the case of other recommendations, AFIC may be in the process of obtaining professional advice. Any comments, therefore, can only be made cautiously.

Among the issues raised in the Report is whether the system of payments complies with the AFIC Constitution. The Report suggests that the AFIC Constitution requires the President to also act as Chief Executive Officer. In the absence of such an arrangement, AFIC’s payment systems will breach the requirements of its constitution.

The current AFIC CEO is Mr Amjad Mehboob. If the provisions of the AFIC’s constitution are followed to the letter, it seems Mr Mehboob’s continued employment as CEO would be untenable. Mr Mehboob would therefore be made redundant, be dismissed or be found an alternate position.

Mr Mehboob has been with AFIC for over 2 decades. I doubt anyone in Australia would have as much knowledge of the history, systems and workings of the organisation as Mr Mehboob. One would hope that he could at least be kept on, even if only temporarily as some kind of consultant.

It is a matter of grave concern that until the release of the Report, AFIC’s system of payments did not comply with the requirements of its own constitution. One would have expected the auditors, the CEO and/or the accountant have brought this to the attention of the Executive.

Given that compliance would almost certainly have required Mr Mehboob’s removal from the role of CEO, one wonders whether self-preservation was deemed more important than compliance with legal and constitutional requirements. I would find it hard to believe that someone of Mr Mehboob’s education and experience would not at least suspect that this may be an issue AFIC would need legal advice on.

It also reflects poorly on successive Executive Committees of AFIC that they were unable to address this issue earlier on. Such a fundamental issue of corporate governance must surely be a matter important enough for Executive Members to deal with at the earliest opportunity.

The Worrells Report goes onto discuss the adequacy of the current payments system. It concludes that the system relies heavily on the CEO being “diligent in his duties to his employer”. The Report also mentions the role of the Office Manager and the Treasurer.

Clause 76 of the Worrells report states that the “current approach may not provide management with a high level of assurance that fraud will be prevented or detected in a timely manner”. The Report recommends that AFIC appoint “a suitably qualified fraud prevention expert to review AFIC’s authorization and accounting systems and make recommendations on strengthening that system.”

In the next instalment, I will examine those sections of the Report which touch upon AFIC’s audit reports for 2005 and the previous 2 years. In particular, I will focus on the allegations published in The Weekend Australian recently concerning the relationship between AFIC and the Malek Fahad Islamic School.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

New Blog

I don’t always have the time to update my many blogs with article-size (700-plus word) analyses. But I still like to keep my brain ticking over with short snippets on what I am reading at the moment.

With this in mind, I’ve started a new blog which (I hope) will be updated with some regularity. You can check it out here.

Hopefully, I will have some stuff to write about on this blog in the near future. Anyway, back to my 6-minute units!

© Irfan Yusuf 2006