Varying approaches to media and Muslims

Last week, the NSW Parliament played host to a conference on the difficult subject of The Journalist and Islam. The conference ran over 2 days.

The first speakers included Tom Switzer from the News Limited broadsheet The Australian. Switzer defended The Oz’s reporting of 3 issues pertaining to what he described as “the Muslim question” – Hilaly, the Cronulla riots and the anti-terror laws. In relation to Hilaly, Switzer repeated almost word-for-word the criticisms of myself he made here. His criticisms didn’t go as far as the hysterical lynching I received in his paper’s editorial yesterday.

In question time, Switzer was asked to define three terms he frequently used – the “Muslim question” (a re-hash of Nazi Europe ’s obsession with the “Jewish question”?), the “Muslim community” and “Muslim clerics”. Switzer acknowledged diversity within Australia ’s Muslims, but mistakenly claimed that a Muslim cleric has the same authority and role as a Catholic priest.

Melbourne journalist and academic Nasya Bahfen dealt with how lazy journalists manufacture stories from internet forums. She castigated Luke McIlveen’s manufacturing of a story alleging Iktimal Hage-Ali is the subject of an organised vilification campaign. Instead of talking to Muslim critics of Hage-Ali, McIlveen lazily relied on infantile comments left on the Muslim Village forums by anonymous persons probably too young to vote.

(Presumably McIlveen won’t be doing a future story about hate-speech at this blog.)

Vic Alhadeff from the Jewish Board of Deputies made a brave presentation on anti-Semitism in (often government-controlled) media of Muslim-majority states. He certainly opened up my eyes to this scourge of anti-semitism which has been exposed even by prominent Muslims.

Alhadeff hardly mentioned Israel or Palestine during his presentation. That didn’t stop some people from asking him to explain the actions and attitudes of Israelis. When I criticise Western media for their anti-Muslim bias, I’d be insulted if people turned around asking me to explain the actions of al-Qaida and the Taliban. Surely some supporters of the Palestinian and Lebanese causes could relate to this and not have treated Alhadeff so shabbily.

The second day of the conference saw two contrasting conservative approaches to Islam.

Health Minister and former journalist Tony Abbott reminded us that for over a half a century, Catholicism had been the officially despised faith in Australia .

When asked in question time what Muslims could learn from Catholic experiences, Abbott admitted that he saw little violent anti-Catholic prejudice. Abbott said Muslims needed to understand that, while group defamation is easy, Australians find it difficult to demonise their neighbour or workmate.

Further, Catholics and Protestants were forced to share nation-building tasks. Muslims could overcome group defamation by simply getting on with mainstream life. Abbott said the presence of prominent Muslims like John Ilhan, Hazem ElMasry and Ahmed Fahour would assist in this process.

Both Abbott’s parents were converts, which perhaps might explain the overt fervour in his faith. It also explains why Abbott is more respectful to Islam and more sympathetic to the current Muslim experience in Australia . Abbott knows what it is like to be pilloried in the media for holding unfashionable religious beliefs.

Janet Albrechtsen showed little of that empathy, choosing instead to lecture her audience on the alleged clash between “conservative and radical Islam” and “Western modernity”.

Albrechtsen’s precise views on Islam as a mainstream religion were difficult to gauge. On the one hand, she acknowledged that terrorists had hijacked Islam, an assessment few Muslims would argue with. On the other, she called for Muslims to adopt the approach of allegedly “moderate” Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan, both of whom had openly renounced their faith.

Albrechtsen described Hilaly’s views as part of the Islamist attack on the West, similar to that of extremist groups in Europe . When further probed, she admitted Hilaly’s views posed no security threat and that he had no known links to terrorist groups or ideologies. She therefore contradicted the views of others expressed in The Oz.

After skirting around various questions, Albrechtsen finally described the struggle as not one between Islam and the West but rather an internal Muslim struggle for “the soul of Islam”. Yet she could not define exactly what this soul was. When asked to define “moderate Muslim”, the best she came up with was “someone who comes to terms with liberal democracy”.

Not very convincing.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

Polygamy in Indonesia

My old high school buddies would frequently tease me for being the school’s only “Mossie”. I’d remind them that being Muslim has its perks. Who needs 72 virgins in heaven when you can enjoy upto 4 wives here? Of course, polygamy isn’t that simple. It’s a contentious issue even in Muslim majority states.

In January this year, I visited Indonesia on a Muslim exchange program sponsored by the Australia-Indonesia Institute. I visited Bandung , a hill station used by Dutch colonists to escape Jakarta ’s heat. We stayed in a luxurious hostel owned and managed by Abdullah Gymnastiar, an eccentric and popular Sufi preacher known for wearing his trademark turban whilst driving a Harley Davidson.

Aa Gym (as his followers call him) has just announced he’s marrying a 2nd wife, sparking an enormous controversy in the world’s largest Muslim-majority state. I’m not sure where he’ll keep her. His small 2-storey house in Bandung (next door to our hostel), has hardly enough room for Aa Gym, his first wife and numerous children.

The decision has sparked angry e-mails and text messages from even his powerful and largely upper middle class admirers. Women’s groups will also, no doubt, complain. And with good reason. One NGO we visited was Rifka an-Nisa, a Yogyakarta-based Muslim women’s organisation dealing with domestic violence and other issues affecting women. RN activists told us that, while polygamy is rare, it’s frequently associated with physical and sexual violence against subsequent spouses.

The issue of polygamy was also raised by women’s activists I met during a similar exchange program to Malaysia in June. Groups like Sisters in Islam are agitating for reform in Malaysia where polygamy is far more common and culturally accepted.

Sadly, all too often shariah (Islam’s sacred law) is used as an instrument for repression. Women and non-Muslim minorities are frequently the victims. Hence, it’s little wonder that more and more Muslim scholars are calling for an end (or at least a moratorium) on the selective application of shariah that keeps the Mullahs happy but leaves the rest of us in shock.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

Muslim Village forums attacked

Daily Telegraph scribe Luke McIlveen has made some very unfair attacks on internet discussion forums frequented by a small minority of Muslim kids. His expose today of the attack on prominent young Muslim Iktimal Hage-Ali also makes interesting reading.

The reported attack on the Muslim Village forums has included claims that she has no right to represent Australian Muslims because she occasionally drinks alcohol and refuses to wear a traditional Muslim hijab. But others have also been pilloried on the same forums, including Asma Hilaly, the Lakemba Sheik’s talented and well-spoken daughter. Ms Hilaly was criticised for … wait for it … plucking her eyebrows!

I’ve been described on the Muslim Village forums as being in need of liposuction. Tanveer Ahmed and other prominent Muslims have also been attacked. It’s disturbing and it’s nasty. At times, it’s even defamatory.

But is it newsworthy? And how is the abuse on some Muslim forums any different to some of the abuse I cop from anonymous posters at the Online Opinion forums? Or to abuse copped by Stephen Mayne in moderated comments (not to mention editorial imputations) published on the personal blog of the DT’s own opinion editor about the assault on Stephen Mayne? Are we to conclude from this that Blair and/or the Tele support and promote violence?

McIlveen disturbingly claims Hage-Ali was “vilified for behaving like an Australian”. Is he suggesting you aren’t a real Aussie if you refuse alcohol and leave your head uncovered? If so, where does that leave non-Muslim teetotalers like Fred Nile? Would McIlveen castigate the Virgin Mary were she to return with her son for his second coming?

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

When murder changes religion …

When does the religion of a teenager accused of murdering her parents become relevant? Is it when police describe her motive as religious? Is it when she screams black and blue that she killed them for religious reasons? Is it when the magistrate mentions her religion?

Nope. Religion is only relevant when she follows the wrong kind of religion. And for the Daily Telegraph, on this occasion the wrong religion seems to be Islam.

The Tele runs a story of the Supreme Court bail application made by lawyers for a teenager. The last time I read of this story, the girl’s name had been suppressed as she was under age. I’m not aware if that suppression order has been lifted.

Still, that doesn’t stop the Tele from naming her and describing her as a “Muslim teenager”. The only real relevance of the girl’s religion to the story is that the girl’s parents objected to her going out with a 21-year-old uni student. The Tele wrote that the girl was “angry because her Muslim parents did not approve” of the relationship.

Why didn’t they approve? Was it because he wasn’t Muslim? Or was it because she was in Year 12 and her studies were suffering? Or was it because they preferred their daughter to marry later once she had completed her tertiary education (South Asian parents are often obsessive about their kid’s academic achievement).

The Oz has also made religion an issue when it first reported the story. It’s most recent report virtually avoids all mention of it.

The Courier-Mail report does suggest the police facts sheet mentioned witnesses hearing the girl yelling: “they are trying to kill me" and "I've just converted to Christianity from Islam, now he's trying to kill me”. The report goes onto mention that police dismissed this excuse, and found evidence the girl’s motivation had little relation to religion.

If the girl pleads not guilty, it may be that religion does feature heavily in this case. Until then, mention of her religion will serve no purpose except to further entrench stereotypes that people of certain religions are more prone to violence.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

UN says politics is to blame!

Two days ago, a group of political, intellectual and cultural leaders from across the world issued a report containing the secret to the widening gap between the allegedly monolithic entities known as “the West” and “the Muslim world”.

The group, known as the Fourth High Level Group of the Alliance of Civilizations, consists of 20 eminent persons including a Catholic historian, the Jewish adviser to the Moroccan King, the former Iranian President, an Anglican Archbishop and even a New York Rabbi.

The Group has been deliberating over the nature and causes of the alleged clash of civilisations. It was set up as a joint initiative of the Turkish Prime Minister and the Spanish PM some 6 months after the Madrid bombing by Islamist extremists that killed 191 people in 2004.

The Spanish PM, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, could easily have followed the lead of other Western nations and invaded countries deemed to be linked to terrorism. Instead, he withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq and initiated a process to get to the root causes and grievances which terrorists exploit.

The final report was released at the Group’s meeting in Istanbul , Turkey . And their conclusion? Here’s what Kofi Annan had to say:

… the problem is not the Koran, nor the Torah or the Bible … the problem is never the faith – it is the faithful, and how they behave towards each other.

Although religion is often exploited to support alarmist claims that the planet will soon face an apocalyptic religious war, the real root of the matter is … wait for it … politics!

The most intractable source of conflict has been perceived double standards by many Western powers in their approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Also mentioned were Western military occupations in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq .

All this confirms research conducted by Professor Robert Pape of the Chicago Project for Suicide Terrorism. Pape argues that the real problem lies not with religion or religious fundamentalism. His study of all “successful” suicide attacks shows that the common thread was foreign occupation of particular land. But don’t expect John Howard to embrace such hard realities in a hurry. He’s still waiting for orders from the White House …

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

Andrew Robb & The Government's preferred Lebanese sect

Andrew Robb has some serious explaining to do.

On Sunday morning, 12 November 2006, Robb appeared on ABC TV program Asia-Pacific Focus acknowledging his government openly favoured one Lebanese Muslim faction over another in both funding and in liaising with Muslim Australia.

They are really on the front foot and they're taking responsibility for the problem and I do think that's the answer … The Prime Minister has sent a short and special message of support and I'd like to read that now, if I may. And the Prime Minister says, “I commend the group on the work it has done in promoting harmony and tolerance throughout the nation.

Lebanese represent the largest ethnic grouping among Australian Muslims. Many live in South-West Sydney, coming from three major sects – Sunni, Shia and Alawite (an offshoot of the Shia).

Since the early 1980’s, the Lebanese Sunni Muslims have been divided into two factions. The smaller faction follow a Somali imam named Abdullah Hareri al-Habashi. They are known in Lebanon as ‘al-Ahbash’ and control a handful of Sydney mosques as well as a school with campuses in Bankstown and Liverpool. Outside Sydney, the group is non-existent.

The al-Ahbash sect tends to have what might be described as a George W Bush style of religion. You are either with them totally or you are against them. Those with the al-Ahbash are expected to oppose any Muslim sect, denomination, Sufi order or religious scholar al-Ahbash leaders decide.

At least one senior sect member in Lebanon, Ahmed Abdel-Al, has been implicated by an independent UN investigator in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (no relation to Sheik Hareri al-Habashi). Another person named in the report, Mahmoud Abdel-Al, has visited Australia at the invitation of the Australian wing of the sect.

The larger Lebanese Sunni faction consists of a coalition of both supporters and critics of Sheik Tajeddine Hilaly, senior imam at the Imam Ali ben Abi Taleb Mosque in Lakemba. It is supported by Lebanese communities across Australia, including by supporters of Melbourne-based Sheik Fehmi El-Imam, who is known to be closed to the Prime Minister.

The al-Ahbash sect are implacable enemies of Sheik Hilaly. The intense hatred predates Sheik Hilaly’s arrival in Australia in the early 1980’s, to a time when Hilaly and the sect held different theological and political positions over the sectarian conflict in Lebanon.

Hilaly proved his media timebomb credentials on Sunday night by justifying his infantile claims about allegedly exaggerated figures in the Holocaust, unnecessarily upsetting the vast majority of Jewish Australians (many of whom actively support ‘Muslim’-friendly causes). But al-Ahbash are not much better.

My initial exposure to the al-Ahbash sect was when they took over my childhood mosque in Surry Hills, Sydney. Their newly-elected mosque Vice President advised me that all heretical and secular books in the library (including ones I and other parishioners had donated) had been burnt.

In 1999, I ran as endorsed Liberal candidate for local government in Bankstown. I supported a proposal by a local Vietnamese Buddhist group to extend their temple. Senior members of the al-Ahbash sect told me that supporting non-Muslims in this manner was forbidden according to their puritanical interpretation of Islam.

So much for Muslim integration. Yet Andrew Robb and the Federal Government now openly side with this fringe Lebanese sect, supporting their claims to represent all Australian Muslims, including non-Lebanese Muslims who are not parties to what is essentially a Lebanese turf war.

Sheik Hilaly is unable to speak English, the native language of at least 70% of Australia’s Muslims. His claims to holding any representative position (including that of Mufti) are suspect. At best, he represents only a fraction of one ethnic group among Muslim congregations from over 60 different countries. The Government should never have appointed him to the Muslim Reference Group.

But even more suspect than Hilaly’s representational credentials are attempts by the Howard government to impose another competing Lebanese faction – the al-Ahbash sect – on 350,000 Aussie Muslims from over 60 nationalities.

This favouritism has led to suggestions that the government is openly favouring projects of the al-Ahbash sect in distributing funds for its $30 million-plus program to combat extremism and promote harmony. Now a former member of the executive of the Islamic Charitable Projects Association (an al-Ahbash front body) and of the Prime Minister’s Muslim Reference Group now publicly boasting on Muslim e-mail lists of receiving otherwise confidential information by people he describes as “DIMA bureaucrats”.

In an e-mail sent on Saturday 11 November 2006, Mustapha Kara-Ali claims that more than one DIMA officer advised him that a certain grant application was unsuccessful. He also claimed the application was related to an organisation in the ACT.

I’ve been told about Mr X’s unsuccessful involvement in a Department of Immigratrion (sic.) project by bureaucrats at DIMA. They also seem to know matters about his personal life … [name removed]

This is an extremely serious allegation. Kara-Ali is effectively accusing DIMA staff (including potentially staff in Mr Robb’s office) of breaching confidentiality and privacy laws.

Of course, this all assumes Kara-Ali is speaking the truth. However, the allegations are extremely serious and must be investigated forthwith.

To be fair, the government is faced with a religious community heavily fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines and lacking any formal hierarchy or structure. But by openly dealing with a fringe sect servicing only one ethnic group, the government is effectively ignoring some 59 other ethnic and cultural groups within Muslim Australia.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

The man who could determine Hilaly’s fate …

Sheik Hilaly’s future as Mufti of New Zealand has already been determined. The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ) has declared he is not their mufti, and have condemned his remarks on women’s dress and sexual violence.

However, Hilaly’s role as Mufti of Australia could well be determined by a National Board of Imams. A large number of these imams belong to the Turkish bloc.

Turkish Muslims are among the oldest ethnic Muslim communities to migrate to Australia. They are also among the most secular, and have by and large successfully integrated into mainstream Australian life. Turks have established mosques across Australia, including in regional towns and rural areas.

Each Turkish mosque is serviced by a Turkish imam. Most Turkish imams are trained by the Turkish Presidency for Religious Affairs, and their wages are paid by a trust known as the Diyanet Vakfi (literally translated as “Religious Trust”). Hence, the Presidency for Religious Affairs (known simply to most Turks as Diyanet) has an extraordinary degree of influence over the management of Islamic institutions in Australia.

Apart from mosques, Turkish religious and cultural foundations have also established schools. In New South Wales, Sule College has three campuses operating in Auburn, Liverpool and the Illawarra. Similar schools have been opened in Melbourne and Brisbane. Although independent of Diyanet, these schools teach a form of Islam acceptable to Diyanet’s Turkish secular focus.

Turkish communities tend to work within the broader Muslim community as a bloc. Unlike the rest of the Muslim community, Turkish mosques all celebrate religious festivals on the same day. Turkish imams have their own meclis (consultative assembly).

Turks rarely gain much media attention largely because they maintain a low profile. But with the upcoming formation of a National Board of Imams and the issue of Hilaly’s mufti-hood up for grabs, Turkish imams will become a more powerful force.

Hence the significance of the visit this week of the Head of the Diyanet, Dr Ali Bardakoglu. This Sunday, he opens the newly-completed Bonnyrigg Mosque, located in South Western Sydney. Apart from the Hilaly issue, Turkish imams would also be interested in hearing about preparations for an upcoming visit by the Pope to Turkey in November.

But will newspapers like The Oz pick up such crucial news? Or will they be carried away by the tide of caricatured Muslims protesting in support of Sheik Hilaly on Saturday? Time will tell.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

On the futile fatwas of Sheik Peter bin Costello

Sheik Hilaly may have apologised. He may have even stepped down. But nothing he says or does will stop pseudo-conservative political and media ayatollahs from attacking the faith-community he claimed to lead but which never elected him in the first place.

Despite their socially conservative leanings, Muslims are again becoming fodder for the likes of Liberal Sheiks including Mufti John Howard, his underling Sheik Peter Costello and other shallow-minded opportunistic political mullahs. Australia ’s political clerical class continue to target Muslims in a manner similar to Sheik Hilaly’s targeting of women.

In a seminar at Sydney University two decades ago, Hilaly made comments alleging Jews used sex and corruption to control the world. I was at that seminar. I recall him speaking. I did not protest. I simply couldn’t understand a word he was saying about Jews or anyone else.

Two decades later, Sheik Peter Costello is using similar language to issue a fatwa finding myself and all Australian Muslims collectively guilty of Sheik Hilaly’s excesses.

Hilaly made his comments about women’s dress to a group of 500 men. He did not address women directly. Sheik Costello repeats the same error. Instead of talking to Muslims, Sheik Costello talks about Muslims and at Muslims, inevitably behind their back.

Some months back, addressing a Christian fundamentalist conference in Canberra , Sheik Costello accused Muslims of being unfamiliar with the separation of Church and State. He suggested Muslims learn something from Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic .

No doubt, Ataturk was a great military commander, as the ANZAC’s learnt at Gallipoli. But the exact meaning of Ataturk’s legacy is the subject of almost constant debate in Turkey . Costello praised the alleged secularism of Turkey ’s military establishment. Presumably, he would also have approved of the same establishment sending writers to jail and threatening to topple Turkey ’s most pro-Western government ever should it attempt to decriminalise the wearing of peaces of cloth by women in universities.

So here we saw the almost comical scene of the nation’s treasurer addressing a conference of the Australian Christian Lobby, a group seeking to increase the influence of Christianity in the political process. And he uses this opportunity to talk at Muslims behind their back on why they need to remove their religion from the political processes of Muslim countries overseas.

I may have been born in Karachi . But I doubt General Pervez Musharraf would really care what I or any other Australian born in Pakistan might think of what role Islam should play in Pakistani politics.

Now, in the wake of Hilaly’s offensive remarks, Sheik Costello is in the mood for more fatwas punishing Muslims with collective responsibility. Hilaly’s comments have led to howls of protests from Muslims across the country. Muslim peak bodies in Victoria , Queensland and the ACT have called for Hilaly’s resignation.

Hilaly’s title as Mufti of Australia and New Zealand hasn’t stopped the peak body of New Zealand ’s Muslims from openly denounced his comments. Muslim women’s groups have even more forthright, with the national umbrella body condemning Hilaly’s remarks. Even Hilaly’s closest friends and supporters have publicly called for him to resign and have condemned his remarks in the strongest terms.

Writing in the Brisbane Sunday Mail on October 28 2006, Glenn Milne quotes one government figure observing: “The (Muslim) representatives were out of the block on radio from 6.15am the morning after his speech was translated into English. Both men and women together condemning him without caveat.”

Despite this chorus of condemnation and outrage and its recognition within Federal Government circles, Sheik Costello has issued a fatwa holding all Muslims responsible for the Sheik’s Arabic speech.

This sermon, it was preached to 5000 people, wasn't it? No-one seemed to complain when it was preached. It took a long time for it to come out. No people stood up in the middle of the sermon and said, 'This is unacceptable.’

Maybe, Sheik Costello, that is because 360,000 Muslims from across the length and breadth of Australia could not fit into the auditorium of the Ali ben Abi Taleb Mosque in Lakemba when the Sheik made the address. And even if they were present, maybe it is because only a small minority of Muslims can understand the language spoken by the Sheik.

Of course, language is the crux of the problem. Most Muslim Australians don’t speak Hilaly’s Egyptian dialect of Arabic as their first language. And despite over 2 decades in Australia , Hilaly cannot speak English.

However, notwithstanding his relative incoherence on matters Muslim, Costello can at least speak English. He should be able to address his sentiments directly to Muslims. At least he could gather Muslims living in his electorate and gauge their feelings on the matter.

But as usual, Costello is content to talk about Muslims behind their backs. He is content to hold them collectively responsible for words and actions they condemned well before he joined the fray.

Sheik Hilaly may have spoken of men as cats. But with his usual dog whistle politics, it’s obvious which animal Sheik Costello regards Australian voters as personifying.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006