IMAMS: Some old papers

How did an obscure Sydney architect become an overnight religious figure? Well, it's been going on for some time now. 

Affinity Intercultural Foundation is one of a number of Australian Turkish organisations associated with the followers of Fethullah Gulen.

REFLECTION: Australian Muslim Migrants & Cultural Integration

Some years back (I can't remember how many off the top of my head), I gave a paper at a conference in Adelaide. The conference brought together people who spoke about critical studies in whiteness. Apparently there is such a thing as whiteness studies. I'm still trying to get my head around it.

Anyway, I recently came across the handwritten notes to the "paper" I did. Nothing special. The heading on the notes is as follows: "From Ethno-Religious Communities to Faith-Community - Australian Muslim Migrants and Cultural Integration".

I've typed up the notes as they appeared on the rough notes.

[01] Islam in modern Australia is largely a migrant phenomenon. It consists of various ethnic groups for whom religious faith is often largely incidental and coincidental of ethnic identity.

[02] Multiculturalism as government policy emphasised ethnic and linguistic features. Largely locked out of the Muslim discourse were indigenous people of Muslim heritage, European converts and the 2nd and 3rd generation offspring of migrants. They were also locked out from Muslim religious affairs and from being the public face of Islam.

[03] The Howard government [this paper was delivered just before the 2007 election] has moved toward focusing on citizenship and integration. The goal has been restoring the hegemony of an allegedly "Judeo-Christian" heritage at the expense of belief systems deemed insufficiently European. This includes Islam.

[04] But in the case of Islam, this may have the opposite effect, especially as younger Muslims look to religious scholarship in North America and Europe for guidance. (A related phenomenon is the impact of of Muslimphobia creating a sense of united victimhood.)

[05] How do we define "community"? What are the building blocks of a community? Why aren't Australian Muslims a single community? What features do they lack?

* They have no single structure recognised by all or most as an institutional authority.

* They have no single language of liturgy (other than the nominal use of Arabic in formal prayers).

* They have no central clerical authority.

*They have numerous competing layers of identity.

[06] What is the reality of Australian Islam?

* Mosque management is divided along ethnic and linguistic lines.

* There is a high degree of jurisprudential pluralism with 4 Sunni schools of law, Ithna Ashariyya, numerous Shia offshoots and a variety of salafi/wahhabi branches.

* Limited ability to reach consensus on even basic things e.g. the start and end of lunar months leading to key festivals being held on different days.

[07] Why is it difficult to talk about this subject?

* So little empirical evidence.

* Much research funded by governments, with funds often received by groups with sectarian axes to grind.

[08] The paper was partially an attempt at predicting how institutions will be built. The "war on terror" has created a tension between neo-liberal governments imposing from above, as opposed to spontaneous institution-building in the sense advanced by F Hayek.

And there endeth the lesson!

POLITICS: Seated at the front

Edham Nureddin (or "Ed" for short) Husic, the Federal Labor member for the Western Sydney seat of Chifley, has moved to the front bench today. He is now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for broadband.

It is a massive milestone for Husic and the nation. Husic is of Bosnian Muslim heritage.

Husic's political career has suffered some setbacks along the way. His road to Federal Parliament was rocky thanks to prejudice from certain pundits and political operatives who distributed a fake election brochure when he ran in the 2004 election in the seat of Greenway where he grew up.

You can read Husic's thoughts on the 2004 election and the broader issue of Muslims in politics here.

COMMENT: imam Afroz Ali and the 100 extremists

News Limited tabloids report that allegedly qualified imam Afroz Ali has said some 100 extremists live in Western Sydney.

"We have had a program for the last seven years now in which we have had 240 people who were considered to be moving in a direction which may have led them to violent radicalisation - to terrorism ... 

"What we have found is, of the 240 people, 120, exactly half of them, are people who have changed their thinking, their mindset. That is something that I don't necessarily share too widely in public, but I am happy to share it here."

Mr Ali made these remarks to a consultative committee of Imams. He himself is not a member of any board of Imams in Sydney or Melbourne.

A video of his presentation is reproduced below. 

UPDATE I: Many Imams I have spoken to have openly questioned Afroz Ali's qualifications. I myself have serious reservations. To this day, he has not responded to this open letter.

PAKISTAN: Vein hope for minorities

Nations can be likened to human bodies. Injury or pain to one part can affect the rest. Key arteries and veins often lay hidden among more visible skin and bones and are only visible in our most vulnerable locations; when cut, the blood flow is almost always fatal. The most vulnerable and largely hidden parts of Pakistan are its minorities. Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah, himself from the Shia Muslim minority and Pakistan's first governor-general, guaranteed the rights of minorities. In his speech of 11 August 1947, Jinnah declared:

'You are free ... to go to your temples ... to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship ... You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State.'

If Pakistan is to remain a nation with something resembling a soul and true to the vision of its founding fathers, it must protect its ethnic and religious minorities. But as with its neighbour India, it continues self-harming by bleeding its minorities. It isn't just extremists engaging in the self-harm. It happens at all levels of society.

In theory, Pakistan is a democracy with free elections, functioning political parties and a free and diverse press. Minorities are represented in public life. The recently retired Chief Justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, was a Hindu. Hindus and Christians have allotted seats in the Federal Parliament.

But Pakistan was a nation carved out of British India at the beginning of the Cold War, a time when any enemy of communism was seen as a good friend. Muslim fanatics in Pakistan intolerant of non-Muslims were courted and funded because of their intolerance of the Kremlin.

The phenomenon became acute when Soviet forces entered Afghanistan. The US, its Arab allies and Pakistan's military dictator General Zia-ul-Huq encouraged fervour for anti-Communist jihad and introduced a process of 'Islamisation' that saw the partial introduction of sharia criminal law and major changes to the education system.

The position of minorities has worsened as the letter of Sunni Islam (but not its spirit) has transformed Pakistan. Key institutions and personalities allied with the sufi-inspired South Asian Sunni traditions deobandi and barelwi have used domestic and overseas provocation to attack Pakistan's Christian, Hindu, Ahmadi and other minorities.

An amateurish YouTube video produced by a Californian in 2012 somehow led a crazed crowd to attack a Hindu temple on the outskirts of Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that the attack

... took place in late September on the Day of Love for the Prophet, a national holiday declared by the government in response to an anti-Islam film made in the US ... Pakistan's Hindu community says it faces forced conversions of Hindu girls to Islam, a lack of legal recognition for their marriages, discrimination in services and physical abuse when they venture into the streets.

And where do we start on Pakistan's Christian minorities? A demented version of religious law, in the form of an amendment to the Pakistan Penal Code designed to punish blasphemy, has now encouraged the collective punishment of Pakistan's tiny Christian communities.

The case of Asia Bibi, an illiterate farmhand from Punjab, illustrates this phenomenon. Charged with blasphemy and facing the death sentence, her most powerful supporter was the Muslim Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer. His support led to Taseer's own bodyguard pulling the trigger.

As if to underscore just how far the bodyguard's fanaticism had reached, supporters at his hearing included lawyers who only recently had marched in favour of the Rule of Law and the reinstatement of the Chief Justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court.

Religious leaders and even respected mainstream journalists and commentators accused Taseer himself of blasphemy.

Muslim minorities are not exempt from this kind of murderous hysteria. Sectarian and ethnic minorities such as the Hazara, an Afghan Shia community settled largely in the north western city of Quetta, have been the subject of an organised campaign of killings. Given the scale of the attacks and the fact that they target a single community, one wonders how, as Pakistani journalist Kiran Nazish explains

... the media, particularly television media in Pakistan had been ignoring the issue ...

when smaller-scale loss of life, cricket scores and Bollywood starlets are readily reported.

The Lashkar-i-Jhangwi, a Sunni militant group outlawed in Pakistan, has been carrying out these attacks for months with complete impunity. Little has been done by the provincial government to protect the victims. In the most recent attack, over 100 Hazara citizens were gunned down in Quetta.

Hazara community members are conducting a constant vigil with the coffins of the dead. For these devout Muslims, whose faith requires almost immediate internment of the dead, refusal to immediately bury their martyrs is a powerful symbol of protest.

The Hazaras, like their Christian, Hindu and other Pakistani brethren, are bleeding thanks to the intolerance (or at least the silence) of the majority. The nation is dying as a result. Perhaps this is why the Hazara of Quetta chose to brave sub-zero temperatures and sit with coffins they have draped in Pakistani flags.

 It was only after nationwide protests that the federal government in Islamabad agreed to Hazara demands for the provincial government to be sacked. Only time will tell whether such steps will stem Pakistan's bleeding.

This article was first published in Eureka Street on 20 January 2013. Since then, there have been fresh attacks on Shia communities in Karachi and Christian communities in Lahore.

CRIKEY: Why Muslim leaders must change the rhetoric

The Daily Telegraph is having an absolute field day with the Sydney protesters. Yesterday’s front page featured some rather angry faces on the front cover. The words “Muslim unrest” featured at the top of pages four and five. They haven’t had this much fun down at Holt Street since October 2006 when the headline “YOU HEARTLESS IGNORANT MAN” was splashed over the front page along with a photo of a besieged Grand Mufti.

Many Muslims in Sydney haven’t been this embarrassed since Shaykh Hilaly’s infamous cat-meat comments. Readers may recall the then Mufti of Australia made remarks linking women’s dress to s-xual assault. And it wasn’t just tabloid newspapers condemning the man. Politicians, commentators and others weighed in, calling for Hilaly to resign.

Many in Muslim communities also echoed these calls. Many, that is, apart from a fair swag of those currently claiming to speak on behalf of Sydney Muslims in relation to the recent rioting in Sydney over the weekend.

On that occasion, many of these organisational heads felt the urge to publicly support and defend Hilaly. They made excuses for his remarks — that we were missing the context, the true message was lost in translation, etc. The media were collectively blamed. And Muslims who openly spoke out against Hilaly were condemned as traitors to the cause.

It’s the same kind of rhetoric now being used by supporters of the protesters on Facebook and other social media forums against these spokespeople. One can only imagine what is going through their minds as they listen and watch some “leaders” on the radio and TV. ”Oh great, so now you’re condemning us for using the same messages you used six years ago?”

In short, there are some credibility issues that need to be addressed. Or perhaps another way of looking at it is that some people have finally grown up and realised that “they” are not all out to get “us”.

(These observations don’t extend to all Sydney spokespersons, nor to the people at the Melbourne-based Islamic Council of Victoria, which openly called for Hilaly’s resignation. When Waleed Aly joined Randa Abdel Fattah on Lateline the other night and spoke about denial and siege mentality, he used the same themes he used as spokesman of the ICV during the cat-meat saga. On that occasion he also correctly noted that support for Hilaly was limited to a tiny but substantial pocket in a few suburbs of south-western Sydney.)

Yes, the broader community does need to be reassured. Thankfully we now have spokespeople who can speak without interpreters. But the rhetoric of “we condemn this” needs to change.

Why not mock the mockers? When Newsweek recently published a front-page story on “Muslim Rage”, it promoted it on Twitter with the hashtag #MuslimRage. Visit that hashtag today and you will find lots of people poking fun at the idea.

Humour can sometimes take you much further than self-righteous condemnation.

MEDIA: Thoughts on stupid movie and stupider response ...

[01] Professor Bruce Lawrence from Duke University wrote an incisive piece in Religion Dispatches that included the following:

Beyond all the issues that have been discussed, debated, and fine-tuned since the 9/11/12 tragedy in Benghazi, one central point has been missed, and it needs to be made again and again and again: expect the unexpected, look for the unrelated to be connected, then projected for the interest of dissident groups savvy about the nature of the modern world and, above all, media ‘neutrality.’ There are no topics so hateful or obscene that they’re debarred from the Internet. They travel virally in a world that welcomes them but cannot monitor either their content or their impact. What al-Qaeda did today, other ill-wishers or polemicists or terrorists can, and will likely, do tomorrow. This is the greatest, and sobering, lesson of the death and destruction that came out of the 9/11/12 debacle. Alas, it is a part of our brave new world of endless information and mindless usage of that information. Gertrude Himmelfarb once observed: “Like postmodernism, the Internet does not distinguish between the true and the false, the important and the trivial, the enduring and the ephemeral.”

... and he continues ...

... the still young but perilous 21st century. It is a century, our century, that belongs neither to the USA nor to China, neither to imperialists nor terrorists, but to the CyberKingdom and to those who grasp the endless good and evil wrought by the Information Age.

[02] Sarah Posner has this to say about the movie in Religion Dispatches.

... if whoever made the film actually spent $5 million on it, the expenditure hardly shows in the content, acting, or production values. Amateurish doesn't even begin to describe the 13-minute trailer on YouTube.

She provides further updates on the confused and confusing identity of the film's maker.

 [03] Haroon Mughal asks what all the fuss is about:

While many Muslims (especially Sunnis) find portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad, and other sacred religious figures (Jesus, Mary, Moses, etc.) to be offensive in and of themselves, this doesn’t quite explain the degree of offense Muslims feel when the Prophet Muhammad is mocked. As was the case in “The Innocence of Muslims,” that film that is supposed to offend me but, based on the 14-minute trailer, only embarrasses me… and leads me to ask two desperate questions: How is it that a $5 million budget can buy you so little? And, who produces a 14-minute trailer? That’s just offensive.

He partially answers the question from a religious perspective.

To mock Muhammad, then, is to mock what Muslims aspire to be, throughout their lives. Muhammad is not a divine or infallible figure in Islam, but he is the “mercy to all the worlds,” the best of God’s creation. As such, it deserves stressing that the reaction of a minority of Muslims to offensive portrayals of the Prophet, while inseparable from the present political climate, still does a massive and embarrassing disservice to Muhammad’s image—their actions are far more offensive than the efforts of silly filmmakers with unintentionally hilarious scripts. I recall learning in a conservative Sunday school how, time and again, Muhammad would forgive his enemies, and even inquire after them when they didn’t show up to mock him, abuse him, or even dump their garbage on him.

PAKISTAN: Thoughts on blasphemous law

[01] In 2006, Pakistan introduced special laws dealing with blasphemy. These are enshrined in Part XV of the Pakistan Penal Code. [02] Section 295 B states as follows:

Defiling, etc., of Holy Qur'an: Whoever wilfully defiles, damages or desecrates a copy of the Holy Qur'an or of an extract therefrom or uses it in any derogatory manner or for any unlawful purpose shall be punishable with imprisonment for life. The use of the word "willingly" seems to suggest that the act was not the result of force or coercion. The sentence of life imprisonment appears to be mandatory.

[03] Section 295 C states as follows:

Use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet: Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.

This is very broad in scope, and the wording seems somewhat vague. Also, there doesn't appear to be any consideration of criminal intention. Further, the only options for punishment are death or life imprisonment, with or without a fine. [04] Section 295C was used to prosecute an illiterate Christian woman from Punjab named Asia Bibi. A Pakistani jurist neatly summarises that story as follows:

In June 2009 in the District Nankana in Punjab, Pakistan, Asia Bibi, a mother of five and farm hand, was asked to fetch water. She complied, but some of her fellow Muslim workers refused to drink the water as she - being a Christian - was considered "unclean." Apparently arguments ensued resulting in some coworkers complaining to a cleric that Bibi made derogatory comments about Prophet Muhammad. A mob came to her house, beating her and members of her family before she was rescued by the police. However, the police initiated an investigation about her remarks resulting in her arrest and prosecution under Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code. She spent more than a year in jail. In November 2010, she was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence is yet to be carried out, and Bibi is filing an appeal.

[05] The same jurist mentions one judicial interpretation of the provision:

In October 1990, the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) ruled that "the penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet ... is death and nothing else" and directed the Government of Pakistan to effect the necessary legal changes.

He then discusses how this and other blasphemy laws have been implemented:

While several individuals have been sentenced to death for blasphemy, no one has yet been executed for the crime. A significant number, however, have been murdered after the accusation or during imprisonment after the conviction. On August 1, 2009 forty houses and a Church were set ablaze by a mob in the town of Gojra, Punjab. Nine Christians were burnt alive. The attacks were triggered by reports of desecration of the Qur'an. The local police had already registered a case under section 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code against three Christians for blasphemy. Hence a conviction or even an accusation under a blasphemy law provision is often a death sentence in itself.

[06] The latest case, involving a 10 year old Rimsha Masih, is also the first where the accused has been granted bail in a blasphemy case. According to one report:

A Christian girl accused of burning pages of the Quran became yesterday the first person in Pakistan to be granted bail in a blasphemy case. Judge Muhammad Azam Khan ordered that Rimsha Masih could be released once her lawyers submitted a guarantee that the family would deposit surety bonds to the value of one million rupees.

In a bizarre twist, Masih's main accuser has now been arrested for doctoring evidence.

Police last week arrested Khalid Jadoon, the imam of the local mosque who accused Rimsha of burning pages of the Quran. Two of Mr Jadoon's followers, Mohammad Zubair and Khurram Shehzad, accused him of framing the child by stashing pages of Quran in her bag to show that she had burnt them. Police alleged that Mr Jadoon had done so because he wanted to drive Christians out of the neighbourhood and the imam could yet face blasphemy charges.

[07] Laws inspired allegedly by the word of the Divine have become an excuse for sectarian mob violence. The BBC reports on what Rimsha's family suffered in the time leading upto her arrest.

Rimsha's parents, who are not being named for their own safety, told the BBC's Orla Guerin that their daughter was a shy 11-year-old who was illiterate - like the rest of the family - and had always been slow. They said she was sitting quietly at home in their poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Islamabad when a crowd gathered outside, claiming she had burnt pages from an Islamic textbook. Her mother described trying to hold off the mob. "A woman hit me," she said, "and slapped my face. People started running into the house to catch my daughter. I was scared they might kill us. We were all crying. My daughter was very upset." The family said Rimsha survived by locking herself in the bathroom. Her 14-year-old sister, who was locked in the house with her, was also traumatised by the events. "A lot of people had gathered," Rimsha's sister said, "and they were saying: 'We will cut off the hands of the people who burned the Koran.' Rimsha wouldn't come out of the bathroom. Later the police came and took her away." The entire family was at risk, according to Rimsha's father - a slight man with a hunted look, who used to earn his living as a house painter. He told our correspondent that their Muslim neighbours had threatened to set them alight. "They were saying: 'We are going to burn you inside the house,'" he said. "'We are not going to spare you or your kids. Then we will burn the homes of the other Christians.' "Even after we left the area they were saying: 'Bring the girl and the family to us. We want to kill them.'"

And why would Rimsha's family keep a noorani qaida in the house?

"We don't have [Muslim] books in our home," Rimsha's father said. "We don't use them and none of us could read them."

[08] Perhaps the arrest of Rimsha's accuser is slowly but surely enabling fair-minded Pakistanis to rethink their attitude toward the blasphemy laws. At least that is the case if the following Pakistani voices are anything to go by.

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