The alleged jihad on Christmas

This year, for the first time, I’ll be joining my in-laws for Christmas up on the Sunshine Coast. Normally, I’d have Christmas lunch with an old school buddy after doing the Midnight Mass thing at St Mary’s Cathedral.

For me, Christmas is very much about Christ. Believe it or not, 1.2 billion non-Christians across the globe regard the Christmas story as part of their sacred tradition. Yet for some reason, Muslims are being blamed for some undeclared secular fundamentalist war on Christmas. The extent to which some will go to remove Christian (and Muslim) references to Jesus is truly astounding.

In the UK , some municipal councils want all public documents to refer to Winterval. Hopefully, councils here won’t be talking up “Summerval”.

Also, one Yorkshire school offered to serve halal meat at their Christmas dinner, to the outrage of some parents. What no one bothered to report was that none of the Muslim pupils or their parents is known to have requested halal turkey for Christmas!

Meanwhile in Indiana , one council won’t even allow a nativity scene on its courthouse lawn.

This year, Christmas coincides with Eid al-Adha, the most important religious festival on the Islamic calendar. The US Postal Service have been printing Eid postage stamps for years, despite complaints from some.

So Muslims are now being labelled as the Grinches of Western countries. And they aren’t happy. So unhappy that they have joined the Archbishop of Canterbury in calling for Christianity to remain in Christmas. Dr Ataullah Siddiqui, vice-chair of the Christian-Muslim Forum, is quoted as saying:

The desire to secularize religious festivals is in itself offensive to both our communities.

Perhaps the problem was best summed up by the Anglican Bishop of Bolton who said that any attempt by councils to re-name Christmas

… will tend to backfire badly on the Muslim community in particular … Sadly, it is [Muslims] who get the blame for something they are not saying. And after all, the Koran speaks with honour about Jesus and tells of his birth to Mary, a virgin.

Perhaps a Sydney newspaper could remember this before it prints editorials blaming Muslims for the woes of Bethlehem ’s Christian community.Then again, that same newspaper did publish a rather nice article last year on Christmas.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

OPINION: Why Sheik Hilaly Has To Go

Over the weekend, I joined people from a range of backgrounds and faiths in the heart of Canberra for the annual Eid Mela festival — which celebrates the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. This year, the festivals of Eid and Divali (the Hindu ‘Festival of Lights’) took place within days of each other, and the Hindi word ‘mela’ (Hindi/Urdu for “festival”) was used to provide a peculiarly sub-Continental flavour to the event.

In Canberra , Muslims gathered to celebrate the multicultural, multilingual and multi-confessional nature of our great capital city. Two Sikh gentlemen started the day, entertaining guests with a gorgeous rendition of traditional sitar music. This was followed by prayers and songs by performers of Sri Lankan, Chinese and Spanish origins — without forgetting a group of young children singing the Australian national anthem.

Representatives from Jewish, Catholic, Hindu and other faiths spoke of how pleased they were to attend such an event. Dr Anita Shroot, a respected member of the ACT Hebrew congregation [check word], greeted the crowd with ‘Salamu alaykum. Shalom aleichem’ and spoke approvingly of celebrating with her ‘Muslim cousins’ — the weekend also coinciding with a Jewish festival as well.

And why shouldn’t she and the other faith leaders be pleased? Ordinary Canberrans are happy to celebrate multiculturalism, as were Sydney-siders attending the Multicultural Eid Festival & Fair at the Fairfield Showgrounds.

It seems the only people unpleased with Australia ’s multicultural reality are a minority of pseudo-conservative politicians and commentators determined to impose their own version of a mono-cultural revolution on Australia . Unfortunately, the words of Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali in an address given in Sydney ’s Lakemba Mosque some weeks back have provided them with plenty of fuel.

Sheik Hilali’s remarks were first reported in The Australian — a newspaper which many Muslims regard as conducting a vendetta against their community. It is impossible to make sweeping generalisations about any newspaper — The Oz has provided space for commentators such as John Stone and Janet Albrechtsen to sprout their conspiracy theories about the alleged threats posed by Muslim migrants and their children, but similar theories are published in the Fairfax Press by the likes of Paul Sheehan and Miranda Devine.

For its Muslim critics, what makes The Oz different, however, is the frequency with which such views are published. Many Muslims see this in the context of reported comments made some months back by Rupert Murdoch when he suggested that Muslims weren’t to be trusted as they always put faith over loyalty to the nation.

In relation to Sheik Hilali’s comments, the Friday 27 October 2006 edition of The Oz carried a full 8 pages of broadsheet material on the issue. Yes, you read it correctly. Eight pages! You’d think the Sheik had just completed 10 years as Prime Minister or delivered his 10th budget!

John Howard, in particular, has shown a startling level of hypocrisy and double standards in his comments on the Hilali case.

He has placed the onus on Muslims to deal with Hilali. Ultimately, the only bodies that can control Sheik Hilali are the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) and the Lebanese Moslems Association (LMA). AFIC created the position of ‘Mufti of Australia’ and immediately appointed Hilali to fill it. Howard is aware that AFIC is currently under administration. I doubt any court-appointed administrator would be prepared to take so sensitive a decision as to sack the nation’s most senior Islamic religious jurist, notwithstanding the outrageous nature of his remarks.

That leaves the LMA, which owns and manages the Imam Ali ben Abi Taleb Mosque in Lakemba, where Hilali generally preaches. Hilali is not employed by the LMA as an official resident religious scholar (or ‘Imam’). Indeed, one former LMA Vice President has advised me that Hilali has never been on the payroll. Even before he was appointed Mufti, his wages were paid from a combination of sources — the Libyan Islamic Call Society and private individuals.

A few years ago, Howard clearly showed his views on sexual assault victims in his response to comments made by a former Governor-General of Australia. Readers will well remember this saga, and I do not wish to repeat details which could cause further distress to the parties directly affected. The point is that on that occasion, Howard could have pressured (and maybe even forced) the Governor-General to stand down. He chose not to.

Indeed, Howard’s cheer-squad from the allegedly conservative commentariat claimed at the time that the entire campaign against the Governor-General was a huge conspiracy by republicans to discredit the Vice-Regal office — just as today, Hilali’s supporters claim the attack on the Sheik is a conspiracy by News Limited and elements within the Sydney Lebanese community.

Conservative politicians and commentators critical of Hilali should recall their own refusal to deal with the gross offence caused to all victims of child sexual assault. That offence and hurt was compounded by the refusal of the conservative establishment to act on the matter. Indeed, far from acting, conservatives ignored loud protests from across the Australian community for the then Governor-General to resign.

Today, the LMA and many Sydney Lebanese Muslims seem to be playing the same game of strident defence that the PM and his allies did. In this sense, the LMA’s approach is perfectly in accord with the PM’s precedent and hence with the his vision of ‘Australian values.’ The PM has no right to criticise those who effectively follow his example.

Of course, the Governor-General on that occasion showed more decency than his conservative supporters. Notwithstanding the shield he received from their moral and political support, he resigned.

Contrary to claims from some media quarters, Hilali is not being shielded by the majority of (largely non-Lebanese) Muslims he claims to lead. Across Australia and New Zealand , Muslim leaders and community members are up in arms over the Sheik’s comments. Muslim women have expressed particular disgust. Even members of the PM’s Muslim Reference Group have expressed outrage.

Sheik Hilali should follow the example of our former Governor-General and resign of his own accord. But this seems unlikely. His followers are already planning a rally to show their support this Saturday. Their antics are orchestrated by a small minority of die-hards who rely on Hilali’s status as Mufti to gain some notoriety of their own. These people wish Mufti-day would never end, regardless of how much damage it causes to the image of Muslims or the person of Sheik Hilali himself.

Hilali was handed the mantle of Mufti-hood to suit the politics of then Acting Prime Minister Paul Keating, who felt nervous that his backyard was turning Liberal after the NSW State seat of East Hills was lost to the Liberals in 1986 following a by-election swing of 17.5%. It was a short-term decision with long-term consequences.

What the broader community knows about the Sheik are his frequent gaffes and his refusal to learn English. But many in his Lebanese Muslim congregation love him dearly. Even his Muslim critics have had no hesitation in acknowledging the good that Sheik Hilali has done over the years.

The Sheik has made himself available to people of all ages and ethnic groups and at all hours of the day and night. In most Muslim-majority countries, people holding the title of Mufti live like Governors-General, residing in palatial homes and attended to by servants. Their relationship with law-making is certainly similar to those holding Vice-Regal address. Often the Mufti has his fatwas (or religious decrees) written for him by government officials, and he merely rubber-stamps it.

To his credit, Hilali has not been owned by any government. He has been critical of all Arab governments, and he has steered his large congregation away from the nefarious influence of Middle Eastern governments that are ever-ready to provide short-term funding in return for long-term influence.

(It’s interesting to note that the man Hilali replaced as Imam of the Lakemba Mosque went onto form his own splinter group and established the Markaz Saddam Hussein Islami — The Saddam Hussein Islamic Office!)

And if Hilali goes, who will take his place? For many Muslims living outside the Lebanese ethno-religious ‘ghetto’ of southwest Sydney , the position of Mufti means nothing. But if there is going to be a Mufti, they believe they would be better off having someone who will not do such damage to the image of Muslims in Australia.

(First published in New Matilda on 1 November 2006.)

Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf


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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