I'll be posting more old stuff I've written elsewhere. Sometimes I'll add some comments but usually not.
My editor has almost finished editing my manuscript, so I'll be working on that for a fair while (as in 2 weeks or so).
After all that, hopefully this blog will have more original stuff. I'll be uploading more al-Jazeera videos from time to time also.
Enjoy!
Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf
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Some weeks back, I decided to nominate NewMatilda.com for the prize of "Media Outlet of the Year" as part of Mission of Hope's Austrlian Muslim Achievement Awards.
In my nomination, I noted that this news and commentary website had provided an outlet for numerous emerging Muslim voices to comment on a range of issues affecting Australia and the world. Among the Muslim voices heard in NewMatilda.com were Mohammed El-Leissy, Sarah Malik and Saeed Saeed.
The judges of AMAA clearly didn't regard NewMatilda.com as being a suitable recipient of this award, preferring to instead shortlist MuslimVillage.net, a site known less for encouraging and more for silencing emerging and critical Muslim voices on its forums.
Perhaps the real reason the AMAA judges decided against shortlisting NewMatilda.com is because it published an article containing these remarks:
The Council's last major initiative, earlier this month, was to prepare a petition complaining about an undergraduate course taught by an academic at the Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies. The course, Women in Arabic & Islamic Literature, has earned the ire of the Council because it allegedly doesn't reflect "normative" understandings of gender relations in Islamic sacred law. The lecturer, Dr Samar Habib, has written extensively on homosexuality in the Middle East.
Why would ANIC expect a course on Arabic literature to necessarily reflect "normative" understandings of Islamic sacred law? Is this a course on law or on literature? Don't they understand the concept of academic freedom?
Even more concerning is that the petition is being distributed by a person who moderates a popular Muslim youth internet forum. This person has previously used her position to promote among Muslim youth the work of North American "scientists" who allege that
homosexuality is a disease that can be cured.
Muslims aren't the only religious congregation to frown on homosexuality or to struggle with gay believers. But when religious leaders become captive of persons promoting homophobia through bad science, it's something we should all be concerned about.
Some two decades ago, a respected elder named Syed Kandil used to publish a newsletter from Canberra. In one editorial, he used the term "blank cheque fatwa" to describe the judgments of self-proclaimed imams who spoke on topics beyond their expertise.
An excellent source of black cheque fatwas is the Muslim Village forums. Here, you will find many a self-proclaimed imam and his supporters issuing all kinds of fatwas about matters beyond their understanding.
Let's start with Islamic studies, an academic discipline taught in universities across the world. Melbourne University, along with the University of Western Sydney and Griffith University, recently set up a National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies. You can find out more about the NCEIS from their first newsletter here.
Islamic studies is not the same as studies in a madressa or in a darul uloom, though there can often be some overlap. Rather, Islamic studies is an inter-disciplinary subject that focuses on a range of issues related to a nebulous (for want of a better term) "blob" of peoples, cultures, histories, theologies, languages etc etc which is often given the label of "Muslim" or "Islamic" or "Islam".
Similar subjects are taught in relation to other "blobs". Hence there is Jewish studies, Christian studies, Buddhist studies, American studies, Middle East studies etc etc. A Christian studies course at Harvard or Macquarie is not the same as a course at Moore Theological College, nor is it meant to be.
Yet repeatedly black cheque fatwas are issued by MV mass debaters about the NCEIS, its personnel, its subjects etc. A classic example of this is a remark by Olive Tree which can be read here, who seemed to be taking credit on behalf of ...
... the Muslim students and community members [who were the ones complaining ...
... personal and political agenda ...
It is not an issue of harming academic freedom but a realisation that they probably should be seeking proper Islamic studies lecturers similar to that of Griffith University and Melbourne University.Yet the same course Olive Tree complains of was also taught at Melbourne University, with not a single complaint made by any student. Was all this talk really about the course?
I attended the Ramadan Iftar with my sister this year. All these so called lecturers from the Islamic Studies Dept at UWS were no-where to be seen. No- where!Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf
Rageh Omaar talks to prominent African-American Muslims like (now the late) Imam Warith Deen Muhammad. He also visits a half-way house for Muslim ex-prisoners.
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Visiting Israeli Professor Raphael Israeli presents different faces for different audiences. Sometimes he says his target is only “Islamists”, ie, those Muslims who want to impose a political version of Islam on secular democracies.
Certainly this is what he said in a letter to The Australian. Here's an excerpt from The Oz report on February 19 2007 ...
A VISITING Israeli academic has blasted Australia's Jewish leaders for disowning him after he raised concerns about the level of Muslim immigration in Europe and the consequences of a similar approach here.Yet he wrote an almost identical, though more virulent (and need I say honest) letter to the far-Right polemical JihadWatch website. In that letter, he made it clear he was talking about “the Muslim thugs”, without differentiation. In other words, his attitudes are directed to all Australians who happen to tick the “Muslim” box on their census forms. Here's how The Age reported Israeli's remarks ...
Raphael Israeli, Professor of Islamic, Middle East and Chinese History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote to The Australian yesterday to complain about his treatment after a story in the Australian Jewish News which claimed he favoured a cap on Muslim immigration.
The story, which Professor Israeli said didn't accurately reflect his views, led to criticism from Muslim and Jewish leaders without further checks with him, he said. The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, co-sponsoring his lecture tour, decided to sever ties with him.
"Instead of standing by their guest, and supporting free debate in this country, Jewish leaders have elected to shamefully disown me in their statements that were geared to placate Muslims," Professor Israeli wrote.
"I come from a country dipped in solidarity and that never abandons its fighters in the battlefield. Here I feel abandoned, forlorn, betrayed by people who lack courage and stamina to stand up for principles."
Professor Israeli's attributed comments in the Jewish press last week in part suggested there would be demographic pressure for Indonesian Muslims to resettle. The article quoted him as saying "one of the big possibilities is Australia, so they will continue to come legally, or illegally, and settle here, and when they get to the rate of the 10per cent, like in France, then you will see life will become untenable".
A VISITING Jewish professor has lashed out at Australian Jewish leaders for their "shameful submission to Muslim thugs", saying his comments were less harsh than some by the Prime Minister and federal Treasurer.Regardless of where he stands, we’d be living in denial if we insisted Israeli’s attitudes to that nebulous Arab/Muslim/Islamist/Middle Eastern “them” aren’t gaining some hold.
Hebrew University professor Raphael Israeli, dropped from a proposed lecture tour after comments last week, said political correctness did not allow his remarks to be said, though, privately, all supported them.
He said Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello had said harsher things after "Muslim riots", but "someone elected to seize upon this opportunity now and sweep Australia into a storm in a teacup".
Professor Israeli, who will teach his six-week Islamic history course at the University of NSW, posted his version of the stoush on a website.
On the Dhimmi Watch section of www.jihadwatch.org, he wrote: "The dhimmi-like Jewish leadership cancelled all activities, in a shameful submission to the Muslim thugs and under the false claims of a 'multicultural society' in Australia, which they know is not true."
A local immigration expert has dismissed suggestions by a visiting Israeli academic that Islamic migration to Australia should be capped.I think much responsibility rests with Muslims themselves, especially with religious and organisational leaders who are largely first generation migrants who regard Islam as a relic of their lives “back home” and are generally disinterested in communicating Islamic theology to the broader community.
... immigration expert Dr James Jupp from the Australian National University said talk of limiting immigration for Muslims was the kind of idea "put forward by crackpots" — even though there is no legal barrier to doing so.
He said banning immigrants on religious grounds is possible as all migrant applications are done in other countries which are not subject to our racial vilification laws.
“You [immigrants] have no legal rights to Australian law if you are outside Australia,” Dr Jupp said.
Proving religious discrimination “would be extremely difficult” as immigrants cannot access our legal system before they arrive in Australia.
”I don’t think you’d have a leg to stand on, you couldn’t prove it,” Dr Jupp said.
He added that officials could easily hide religious discrimination behind the various other requirements immigrants must meet to enter this country ...
... Dr Jupp said that would not occur here as European countries gave full citizenship to emigrants from ex-colonial nations — many of which are Muslim countries.
As Australia has no colonial ties with Muslim countries like Algeria, it was unlikely that Muslims would come to this country in such large numbers as they do in Europe.
... in Islam, secular Islam, or secular Muslims, is a contradiction in terms.He also said that there is only one Islam, and that Muslims either adopt it or they don’t.
The town where I grew up had two Aboriginal settlements. Questions of the balance between races and, when two races don't get on particularly well, how they behave towards each other were everywhere. This was wartime, and the notion that Catholics couldn't be trusted if it came to the crunch, because they would side with the Pope not the Queen, was very strong. It is essentially the same rhetoric that is currently used against Muslims, and even at the time that fascinated me as much as it scared and affronted me. This stuff has always been my bag. It's what I'm interested in.
I've already posted the first part of this Rageh Omaar documentary here. Bwlow is Part 2 of this fascinating documentary.
Omaar traces its history in the US and talks to American Muslims about how their belief is compatible with the principles of American democracy. He also looks at the notion that American Islam is tied intimately to the African American struggle against slavery and for freedom from prejudice. There's also a fair bit of stuff on the establishment of Liberia, an African country created by freed African-American slaves.
Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf
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