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

The Hawaiian Islamic Council of NSW?

Picture this. John Howard has an argument with Morris Iemma at the Premiers’ Conference. He then decides to punish Iemma by kicking New South Wales out of the Commonwealth, to be replaced by a couple of highly volcanic islands to the east.

Then after a few years Mr Howard has an argument with Helen Clark, and decides it is time to punish her. He then decides to kick New Zealand out and looks even further east for a replacement state.

The result? Well, perhaps Honolulu replaces Sydney as the new showcase capital city of Australia.

This is exactly what the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) is doing with its constituent member societies.

AFIC is the peak Muslim body in Australia. It is a federation of 9 State and Territory Councils, and is meant to have a 10th council which is to be a national young and student body.

Yet instead of behaving like a federation, the powers-that-be at AFIC engage in antics to ensure that only “reliable” councils are allowed to participate and vote.

In the last 5 years, AFIC has kicked out 2 Councils from New South Wales, the state with the largest Muslim population in Australia. The first, known as the Islamic Council of NSW, was removed after a period of sustained friction following the award of a lucrative Commonwealth Government job search contract to the 'wrong' party.

In any event, relations between ICNSW and AFIC deteriorated. AFIC then gathered some disgruntled former executive members of the ICNSW to form a new Council which AFIC would then endorse. The new Council was named the “Supreme Islamic Council of NSW”. Soon, it would become affectionately known as the “Supreme Pizza Council”.

Within a few years, AFIC and the Supreme Pizza Council were at each other’s throats. As a result, AFIC decided to form a new Council. Before it was even constituted, people were already jokingly referring to it as the “Super-Supreme Islamic Council” or even the “Hawaiian Islamic Council”.

The final result of all this fighting between AFIC and its NSW Councils was that a number of lawyers grew very fat. Sadly, I wasn’t one of them. And as those who have met me in person will attest, I probably wouldn’t need much assistance in that department anyway.

So now the good Muslims of New South Wales are ably represented by not one nor two but THREE Islamic councils. Of course, in the case of the first two Councils, we know exactly which mosque societies have decided to affiliate. But in the case of the new Hawaiian Islamic Council (its actual name is the “Muslim Council of NSW”), we have no idea who runs the show.

We certainly don’t. But Richard Kerbaj, a journalist at The Australian, certainly does. So when Muslims in Sydney want to find out what their leaders are thinking, they cannot rely on AFIC to tell them. Instead, they have to rely on Mufti Murdoch and the Jamiat al-News Limited to provide the details.

The AFIC Congress and elections start in a couple of weeks. The Islamic Council of Victoria invited members of the Victorian Muslim community to attend a “meet the candidates” night and sought community feedback on who the ICV should nominate for executive positions.

In Sydney, the Muslim Council of NSW President is a Palestinian chap known as Na’il Kaddoumi (though he prefers it if you just call him “Neil”). I’ve bumped into Neil on and off over the years. He’s an interesting chap.

The first time I met him was during the late 1980’s at a Palestinian mate’s place in Auburn. Neil came to visit my mate’s mum. I was already having a chat with my mate’s mum about the Intifadeh. My mate told me not to mention Yasser Arafat in front of Neil. I asked him why.

“Irfan, trust me. Neil hates Arafat. He is a big-time supporter of HAMAS.”

Not that being a supporter of HAMAS is a big deal these days. Well, not in Gaza. Perhaps in Australia, it isn’t the best thing. And I wonder how many New South Welshmen and women of Muslim background would be impressed if they knew their representative was at one stage an active HAMAS supporter and activist within the local Palestinian community.

During the mid-1990’s I worked at a small law firm in Revesby. The nearest mosque to me was in Winspear Avenue in Bankstown and was managed by an outfit known as the Islamic Charitable Projects Association (ICPA). I was at the Bankstown mosque one day finishing my afternoon prayers. Neil came in with a large batch of educational materials. He told me he was using them to teach Arabic and Qur’an to kids in a school he ran.

In 1996, I again saw Neil. It was the Friday before the Federal Election and I had former Parramatta MP Ross Cameron with me. Neil was looking after proceedings at the Friday prayer. I asked him and some Bangladeshi members of his executive if he would agree to allow Ross to say a few words. The Bangladeshis seemed happy enough. Neil wasn’t. He said that the Islamic Society of Parramatta would be supporting the ALP.

Just over a year after the election, I saw Neil again. I was doing a short stint in a personal injury law firm in North Parramatta. Neil was a frequent visitor, usually accompanied by an injured worker of Arab descent.

I never saw Neil much after that. I wonder how many Muslims in NSW would have met or heard of Neil. Yet Neil will be casting a vote at the next AFIC elections and will be representing us at the AFIC Congress.

And what are Neil’s contact details? I looked up the White Pages website but couldn’t find a single person of the surname Kaddoumi (or any other variations of spelling). The phone number of the Muslim Council of NSW given on the AFIC website rings out without anyone answering.

And so, my dear readers, if you would like to know what the officially endorsed leadership of NSW Muslims is upto, you will have to read The Australian newspaper. And if you want Neil’s number, give the Melbourne office of News Limited a call and ask for Dick Kerbaj.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

LETTER: Open Letter to Mr Afroz Ali

18 April 2006

Mr Afroz Ali
Al-Ghazzali Centre for Islamic Sciences & Human Development
PO Box L-14
MT LEWIS NSW 2200

Via e-mail

Dear Afroz,

Assalamu alaykum.

I refer to the telephone discussion we had during Ramadhan last year, which resulted in the posting on one of my Madhab Al-Irfy blog (URL: http://madhabirfy.blogspot.com/2005/11/qualified-and-unqualified-lunar-tics.html) dated 5 November 2005.

During our telephone conversation, you advised me that you would be prepared to show me all the credentials, qualifications and degrees you claimed to have after Ramadhan.

It is now late April 2006. Over 6 months have elapsed since that conversation and you have not made any arrangements to provide me with an opportunity to view your qualifications.

I have been raising this issue with you since, at the latest, April 2005. In that time, you have continually insisted that you have certain qualifications and credentials. However, you have not made any pro-active attempt to show them.

Further, when I have raised the issue with you on various forums, you claim that I would have no ability to understand or appreciate documents evidencing your credentials due to linguistic and other factors.

Indeed, at least 3 other persons have raised the matter with you and have sought details of your qualifications and/or requested an opportunity to inspect them. You have also avoided or refused their requests.

Indeed, you have also made personal attacks on myself and others seeking clarification of these issues, and you have accused us of having sinister motives.

You have become a public person, appearing in media and soon to be appearing on TV in New Zealand (or so I am advised by at least one Muslim from across the Tasman). Your refusal to provide evidence of your alleged qualifications does not reflect well on Muslims as a whole, and in the event that your claims are even partially exaggerated or bogus then any resulting embarrassment will be felt not only by your students but also by Muslims on both sides of the Tasman.

I have therefore decided to write to you publicly and advise that I will be referring this matter to the NSW and Victorian Boards of Imams and have them investigate your alleged credentials. Since you are not convinced of my abilities to verify your alleged qualifications, perhaps you will feel more confident putting the matter to those who are qualified.

I can only presume the Imams’ boards will request copies of your degrees and ijaza certificates from you. If you show the Imams the same reluctance, I believe they might take the step of contacting all the various persons or institutions with whom you claim to have studied and seek their confirmation. That means, as a bare minimum, contacting the Zaytuna Institute in the United States and the Islamic University of Madeena in Saudi Arabia.

Why am I doing this? You have suggested I am somehow jealous of the achievements of your Centre. Why should I be jealous, Afroz? Allah has blessed me with 3 university degrees, a practising certificate (which I am prepared to show anyone) and sufficient material means. May Allah enable us both to maintain our means.

Further, as I have advised you in the past, I believe your refusal to provide evidence of your alleged qualifications undermines the enormous good that does and will insh’Allah continue to come from your Centre.

In fact, I am taking these steps because I wish to avoid yet another Khalid Yasin-type episode. I don’t want your face to appear on national TV in Australia and/or New Zealand as someone who has charged money for holding courses whilst being not completely truthful about the extent of his qualifications.

Copies of this letter are being sent to the NSW and Victorian Boards of Imams. As this is a public letter, I will also be posting it on various websites, forums, yahoogroups and on my blog.

Ma salameh,
Irfan Yusuf

cc NSW Board of Imams (c/- Islamic Council of NSW)
Victorian Board of Imams (c/- Islamic Council of Victoria)
MuslimMediaWatch yahoogroup
Sydney Muslims yahoogroup
Mevlana Lawyers yahoogroup
Youth Emerged forums (Adelaide)
Aussie Muslims forums
Brisbane Muslims forums