What do Muslims really think?

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I've seen it said around the traps (including here) over the last few days this idea that Muslims don't do enough to disavow terrorism or that their beliefs are incompatible with Western society. I've never quite understood this idea, given that I pretty much ignore most things that the media has to say about them in this country, as it's usually the same old racist rhetoric, and that my experience with Muslims in Australia has been distinctly different. Most of the Muslims I know are through university, so it's admittedly not a complete cross section.


One of the first times I started to get an inkling that the media portrayal and reality might not be so close was when I first discussed the hijab with a Muslim woman. There was no one forcing her to wear it, she did so out of an expression of cultural pride (indeed her parents encouraged her to not wear it, in case she experience prejudice). In a country where it is seen the height of patriotism to wear the flag like a batman cape, get drunk and beat up Lebanese people, I'm pretty OK with the Hijab as an expression of cultural pride.

The next event was Sydney's "Mad Mufti" Sheik El Hilely. Now, this joker was actually someone of standing in the Islamic community; after negotiating the release of an Australian hostage in Iraq, he won Australian Muslim of the Year in 2005. He came out making comments that uncovered women were to men what uncovered meat is to a cat; referring to a woman who was gang raped in Sydney. The resulting outrage led to him standing down as Mufti of Lakemba Mosque. Yes, many Muslims agreed with him, but so did a disconcerting number of non-Muslims; the idea that a woman's clothing is responsible for her rape is quite common amongst the Aussie Male. Not to mention right wing politicians here refer to our PM as "she of the barren womb" (no kids) and make cat calls at a female Senator. After trying to say that he was misunderstood and then apologising for his words, he still had to fall on his sword and retire from his prominent posts in the Muslim community (it's worth noting that the right wing pollies didn't even apologies). If anything, the Mad Mufti was just fitting in with what is the predominant male culture in many parts of Australia; the only difference is that the Christians like to their women to be semi-naked when they oppress and denigrate them.

Next up, Who Put This Guy In The Spotlight?.

It’s tough being a Muslim. When we’re not being hounded by fellow Aussies for having "zero tolerance for a can of VB", we also have the fun task of policing the many fringe elements of our religion who have absolutely no regard for the way their behaviour reflects on the rest of us. These fringe elements are given much more than their fair share of airtime — and it’s time to start asking why

This is far closer to the voice of Islam in Australia as I have experienced than the previous example; strong, independent women, passionately fighting for their rights. The guy they're referring to in the article is even worse than the Mufti; a local convert who has absolutely ZERO following (ie speaks for NO ONE), again spouting the same ignorant crap as the Mad Mufti. Now think about this for a second; this is just Some Random Dude with offensive views who is being presented by the MSM as a legitimate voice of Australian Muslims. Let's forget that I'm yet to meet a Muslim who thinks like he does, who in their right mind can really think that it is legitimate or ethical journalism to give this guy a platform as a spokesperson for Islam? In my mind this kind of journalism is far more dangerous to the safety of my society than the Muslims are. Sure, there's Muslims out there inciting hatred and violence, but they don't have the kind of voice that the shock jocks who are inciting hatred and violence do.

So let's have a look at "Real Aussies" will we? Let's take Alan Jones, radio shock jock and all-round oxygen thief. I'm sure many of you remember hearing news about the Cronulla riots in 2005, it's something we finally made the front page around the world for. It began as two groups of fuckwits getting into fisticuffs (it seriously started: "What are you staring at?" "Fuck off, what are you staring at?" proving that being a meathead crosses ethnic lines); both groups had been on the beach all day and there were 8 Lebanese guys. It was reported in the Murdoch noise machine that "Middle Eastern Men converged on the area". Alan Jones' response to this was to call for a "rally, a street march, call it what you will. A community show of force." and to report only one side of the meathead douchebag parade as "What kind of grubs? Well I’ll tell you what kind of grubs this lot were. This lot were middle eastern grubs." Of course, many Australians reacted to this call by doing what Australians do in most situations; they got drunk. Here's a video of the "rally";

at the end you can see guys running off, but you don't see what for. From wikipedia:

Early in the morning people began to gather and impromptu barbecues and “partying” took place, however at 12:59 a young man of “Middle Eastern appearance” was spotted on the beach and the crowds began “chanting stuff [and] yelling out things” before rushing him.The man attempted to avoid the crowd by quickly entering "Northies" (a local pub) but the crowd forcibly dragged him out and attacked him. The police, having been in Cronulla since the early morning (including police helicopters and patrol boats), quickly intervened and resolved the situation.

This is what these dipshits considered to be a fair fight:



Here's the SMS that went around before the event:

”This Sunday every Fucking Aussie in the shire, get down to North Cronulla to help support Leb and wog bashing day...Bring your mates down and let’s show them this is our beach and they’re never welcome back”

“Just a reminder that Cronulla’s 1st wog bashing day is still on this Sunday. Chinks bashing day is on the 27th and the Jews are booked for early January”

“Every fucking aussie. Go to Cronulla Beach Sunday for some Leb and wog bashing Aussie Pride ok”

“All leb / wog brothers. Sunday midday. Must be at North Cronulla Park. These skippy aussies want war. Bring ur guns and knives and lets show them how we do it.”

Now, why aren't these people being presented as "the voice of white Australia?" Because it makes white people look bad, that's why. Yet this bloke arguably has thousands of more followers the idiot who makes it on the prime time current affairs programmes as "the voice of Islam" mentioned in the Zeynab Gamieldien article above. For more gold go and look at the comments on any video relating to the Cronulla riots on YouTube. This one is particularly ironic, given the above photo:

"Its funny how these lebo scumbags think its ok for them to fight in packs but once we fight back, we are weak? Lmao Lebo scum only ever fight with their cousins, all fuckin weak as piss. Bring back the riots, i missed em, wish i could of been there to show my fucken aussie pride and stomp some lebo scum!"

More from Alan Jones: "John has a good answer, he says that it seems that the police and the council are impotent here. All rhetoric, no action. My suggestion is to invite one of the biker gangs to be present in numbers at Cronulla railway station when these Lebanese thugs arrive, it would be worth the price of admission to watch these cowards scurry back onto the train for the return trip to their lairs...Australians old and new shouldn’t have to put up with this scum.
Peter's of Kensington's range of gift hampers are designed to hold useful goodies –oh there’s a stack of them aren’t there?"

Does the photo above look like it's the Skips who need help fending off the Lebs? (I've left in the last sentence to show how easily he can move from inciting racial hatred to inciting shopping; this guy has been in hot water before over a "cash for comments" scandal that saw him embedding advertising into his news reporting and opinion pieces).

More:

John: (continues)…if the police can’t do the job then the next tier is us.

Jones: Yeah, good on you John.

John: Now, ah, my grandfather was an old digger and he used to say to me when we were growing up ‘Listen, shoot one, the rest will run!’

Jones: (laughs)

John: Right?

Jones: (still laughing)

(Digger is an ANZAC soldier)

Keep in mind that this is whilst calling for thousands to go down to Cronulla for a "show of support". This isn't Somedude McRandom, this is the most influential radio presenter in Sydney.

More:

Y: And if we don’t have enough police what’s wrong with getting the army in?

AJ: Uh-ha.

Y: Get these blokes a bit of a rifle butt in the face and they’ll, they’ll back off, they’re cowards!

AJ: Well if it gets to that we might have to do that, you follow what I’m saying?

So what happened to Jones? Surely he went to prison and lost his job right? Nope, whilst he was found to have breached the Media Code of Conduct, our self regulating media industry watchdog has no teeth and couldn't do anything and his bosses loved the ratings bonanza he provided. However, probably most disgracefully, his words and actions were supported by then PM John Howard and treasurer Peter Costello (the real 2IC).

I'm proud to say that I was one of 2000 people who went to a counter rally in Melbourne the week after. That's just one of many reasons why I rarely go North of the tram tracks (ie Melbourne). There is a pretty direct correlation between racism and lattitude in this country, the more north you go the worse it gets. I think the sun must rot your brain.


Finally, rather than listening to what bigoted 'journalists' think Muslims think, why doesn't someone ask them? Well, luckily someone has. Unfortunately behind the Journal pay wall for those of you who don't have access, but here's the abstract:

"Over the past decade, issues concerning Islam and Muslims have featured prominently in public and media discourse. Much of this discourse is stereotypical, anecdotal and often unsubstantiated. Indeed, relative to the extent of comment on Islam and Muslims, few factual data exist on what Muslims really think. This article presents the views and opinions of the Queensland Muslim community based on the findings of a survey conducted at the 2009 Muslim Eid Festival in Brisbane. The findings of this research contradict many of the assumptions made about Australia’s Muslims concerning their views and opinions on a range of social and political issues. The research shows that Muslims highly value Australia’s key social and political institutions, including its democracy, judiciary, education and health-care systems. However, Muslims do express a lack of trust in certain institutions, namely the mass media. Also, consistent with the views of people globally, Muslims are deeply concerned about conflicts in the Middle East as well as the environmental crisis. This article suggests the need for a shift in public discourse to more accurately reflect the commonality, rather than incongruity, between Muslim views, opinions and concerns and those of the wider society."

Now there's problems with the study; for example it only questions 400 people (which is still 0.1% of all Muslims in Australia, so not insignificant), but the results line up with similar studies from elsewhere. But it seems to me to be pretty clear that Muslims are *shock horror* pretty much exactly the same as the rest of us. Most of them value our democratic and social institutions, so what if they don't drink beer and prefer soccer to rugby (I do too, the soccer thing, not the beer thing). It's not like they're ever going to get anywhere near to being numerically large enough affect a political or social change; if immigration has taught us anything it's that by the second or third generation they're just as Aussie as anyone else. We went through the same thing with Southern Euros, then Eastern Euros, then SE Asians, then Chinese; now its Africans and Chinese. They'll integrate, bring the good bits of their culture and slowly forget the shit bits.



In conclusion, yes, there are some dickheads in the Muslim community. Some people with views and opinions that are reprehensible to modern Western society. Mostly though, they're pretty sane, reasonable people with the same hopes and dreams as the rest of us. Indeed, if there *wasn't* a group of misogynistic, violent douchecanoes speaking crap and getting into fights then they really would be different to the rest of the country. The real issue comes to media access: Muslims have no power in the media, whilst those with an agenda against them own nearly all of it (seriously, Murdoch owns 70% of the newspapers, and the knobjockey deluxe Alan Jones isn't even on his payrole).

So when you ask "why don't Muslims condemn terrorism" perhaps you should be asking yourself "why aren't I hearing Muslims condemn terrorism". When you think "Muslims don't fit in", perhaps you should be thinking "Muslims, like any group, sure do have some fucktards amongst them".

Xposted to my journal.

Comments

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Well, I found the story disturbing , to say the least - but here in Britian, although we have been up against racism for a long time and have got legislation in place, there is still a lot of bigotry floating about in the system. people do not talk about 'wogs' and ' niggers' on the radio, or even at the office - getting called on it is a real risk, but it does happen when some guy on a bus or wherever is among strangers, that a lot of racism and bigotry comes out. So, I know it's still here.

I work in the Underground rail network - Londoners call it 'the tube'. Now, the deal is , the place is well unionised, and it pays well. You don't get in by being black or female, you get in by passing the tests. Even so , London Transport has always pitched directly to people they want, so we have a fair number of ethnic minorities representing our multicultural city.

When the bombs went off on 7/7, there were Muslims among the injured and even among the dead. A lot of Muslims turned up for work next day and drove the buses and trains, and stood on the gates at the stations, knowing that we were all sitting targets for the next fanatic with a bomb in his bag.

But before the bombings happened, I knew guys who lived in North London who were telling me that Abu Hamza, a notorious jihadist agitator , had come to the Finsbury Park Mosque and tried to stir up trouble there.

The moderate leadership of the mosque had gone to the Police and appealed for help, as hamza was using an imported gang of toughs to intimidate and drive out people who opposed him. the police decided that this was something for the local community to sort out itself - the way they used to look at domestic violence.

Hamza took over, and moderates, like the people I work with , went elsewhere. then the bombs went off and the local police woke up and smelled coffee, going down to Finsbury Park Mosque to close all the stable doors they could find.

Anecdotal, I know, but a friend at work tells me that the Imams who work for the jihadists as recruiters get their best leads from prisons. there are many young men in Britain who are jobless and turn to crime as a career.

The rogue Imams, visiting them in prison , are easily able to appeal to their sense of alienation and incite them to become 'Islamic Warriors', and fight against the system that they feel has let them down and not given them the jobs that they think they deserved.

It has to be said that in the immediate aftermath of the bombings, the Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch, did the right thing and flagged up the Muslims who were killed and injured in the blasts, as well as the Muslim transport workers who kept the system running against appalling appalling difficulties in the aftermath.

Much as I dislike the Sun, I have to say that on this occasion, they behaved with a serious degree of responsibility.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

The rogue Imams

I seriously hope this term starts getting more use, because it is the apt one.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Whenever people say "But Muslims don't condemn terrorism" I always find it worthwhile (at least on this side of the pond they're a narrowly defined group of Protestants) to ask them if Roeder and the clinic bombers are really Christians or not. If they say they aren't I say "You and they are not so different." I think a lot of Islamophobia is simply a replacement for hating on the Jews because Jew-hatred is a lot more unacceptable than it used to be, and Islam is more similar to Judaism than either are to Christianity....

Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, Dr. Iman Khalaf & Sadia Salam’s Research on non-Muslim Perceptions of Isla

[telemann.livejournal.com]

5% described Islamic da’wah material as quite positive and very positive.
71% had never come into contact with any dawah material.
70% did not change their perceptions about Islam after coming into contact with dawah material.
14% slightly worsened or significantly worsened.
76% had never spoken to a Muslim about Islam.
63% had no change in their perception after interacting with a Muslim.
13% had perceptions that significantly worsened or slightly worsened.
62% preferred not to receive any information about religion.
27% had negative perceptions regarding Muslims.
75% believed Islam and Muslims had provided a negative contribution to society.
32% believed that Muslims are a major cause of community tension.
2% responded positively concerning perceptions about Islamic law.
76% did not agree to the statement that Muslims positively engage in society.
36% did not know who the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon
him) was.
61% did not respond positively when asked about the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him).
71% of all participants did not agree that the media is negatively biased towards Islam and Muslims.
63% did not disagree to the statement that “Muslims are terrorists”.
70% did not disagree with the statement “Muslims preach hatred”.
94% did not disagree with the statement “Islam oppresses women”.
86% did not disagree with the statement “Islam is outdated”.
72% did not agree with the statement “Muslims are law abiding”.
85% did not disagree with the statement “Islam is irrational”.
71% did not agree with the statement “Muslims are peaceful”.
73% did not disagree with the statement “Islam cannot positively contribute to modern society

Re: Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, Dr. Iman Khalaf & Sadia Salam’s Research on non-Muslim Perceptions of

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

All of those "did not disagrees" make me wary. I mean, 76% had never spoken with a Muslim about Islam. So how much of that sample is "Well, I don't know any Muslims, so..." that gets counted as "did not disagree."

Re: Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, Dr. Iman Khalaf & Sadia Salam’s Research on non-Muslim Perceptions

[telemann.livejournal.com]

*Shrug*

I don't know, I'd guess that's in the study's appendix.

PDF is here. (http://www.irpp.org/choices/archive/vol15no2.pdf)

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Christians, however, are creationist homophobes.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Acceptance is the final stage according to Kubler-Ross, so congrats!

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

All the kool kids hate Christians. Islamophobia is so 2001!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Except the ones that whisper a condemnation of YEC at 4am in their pantry on every blue moon - and have gay friends.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

They need to speak up more!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Testify!

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I don't understand the point of this comment.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Look at the last phrase in quotes in your OP.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

This one?

"Muslims, like any group, sure do have some fucktards amongst them".

Still not following. Christians have a large chunk of creationist homophobes; I don't think anyone is going to deny that. Are you trying to say that saying "sure, some Muslims are bad people" is equivalent to saying "Christians are bad people"? I really hope not, because that's fucking moronic and you might want to check your persecution complex at the door. However, this is such a laughable idea that I don't think that's what you mean, which leaves me at a loss.

Don't be so obtuse; we're communicating over thousands of kilometres in different timezones; it's likely one or the other of us isn't going to make it back to this post again, so we'll probably just have to leave it as forever me not knowing what point you were trying to make.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Are you trying to say that saying "sure, some Muslims are bad people" is equivalent to saying "Christians are bad people"?

No, not at all. It's sarcasm. Sorry you struggle with it.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

They'll integrate, bring the good bits of their culture and slowly forget the shit bits.

Right. Because Western liberal capitalist democracies are magic filters of negative cultural attributes. That's why they are islands of good in a world of evil.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

No, they're not magic filters at all. The multiculturalism programme has been going for over 30 years here. It's taken a constant effort on behalf of the government, social agencies and the population at large to make this a reality. Australia was a land of sectarianism before multiculturalism - my parents couldn't get married in a church because he was Catholic and she was Protestant. It was the defining factor of your life, it determined who you married, associated with, where you went to school, what job you got. By the time we got the Viet Namese after the war it was becoming apparent that just asking the Southern, Eastern Euros as well as the new migrants, to become British wasn't going to work.

This post was deliberately Australiancentric, I wasn't trying to draw larger conclusions (although I think for a lot of the post you can). But that comment was specifically talking about here.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

So Australia's "multiculturalism programme" magically filters out negative cultural attributes?

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

No, not magically at all (the result of a lot of hard work), and it doesn't always work. Serbians marry Croatians in my country and Greeks marry Turks, I'm sure you understand why that is a big deal.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

That doesn't prove that people somehow selectively lose the "bad" attributes of their home culture, while exclusively retaining the "good" ones. The whole notion is absurd and racist.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Here's a good example of how multiculturalism has "helped" Canada.
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/4259/28/

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

That happens here all the time, what's your point? The gender thing? Yeah, I have issues with that, but that's how they do things (we did pretty much the same thing at Catholic school...). Not to mention you've missed the bit where I talk about it taking a generation or two to really work. This isn't "multiculturalism" this is assisting new migrants to assimilate. Focussing on Muslims and multiculturalism misses the point; they're very recent in terms of large numbers (at least here). The real communities to look at are the Greeks, Italians and Viet Namese; I can't see how multiculturalism hasn't been anything but a roaring success in those communities.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

It's showing that people don't assimilate when you have "multiculturalism".

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

I was one of 2000 people who went to a counter rally in Melbourne the week after.

Thank you. Just thank you.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Oh precious Western values... no wait, we are domineering, racist, destructive, greed-driven plutocrats bent on genocide.

Oh well, so much for Western values.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Yep, this. Things like gender equality, anti-racisma and homophobia movements (not embedded in our culture yet, but it will be by the time I die), the rule of law, democracy, faith in the scientific method; these are the good aspects of our society we should be holding on to. The greed, the colonialism, the remnants of racism and homophobia; these are things we should work to jettison just like the Muslims should be jettisoning some of their less perfect attributes. I think multiculturalism has helped all of these things.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Ahhh...Cronulla.

I lived there for a few years in my early 20's. My 2 next door neighbours were devout neo-nazis who I expect were almost certainly involved intimately with the riots. Strapping white lads with the obligatory shaved heads, who liked to drink lots of beer and admire the childish Norse iconography on their walls.

Blank stares when I pointed out that the Uzi stashed under the bed by one, along with a variety of other weapons, was invented by a Jew.

On the plus side, at least they told me that, being part white and not overly slanty-eyed, could be permitted to exist in their future vision of a pure, white Australia because I was an "alright guy who acted like a civilised westerner....just as long as I don't breed". Followed by twin fierce stares, as if to shrivel my very gonads towards that end. Fortunately ineffective, as it turned out.

Ahh...sweet memories.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it made world headlines, the world needs to know we're not just easy going larrikins, we're also chock full of bigoted racists.

Re: !#@(*&% ate my comment, good lord

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

There's no concept of individual/human rights in classic Islamic theology

Ditto Christianity. Nietzsche called it a slave morality for a reason.

Doctrines like the doctrine of Jihad explicitly cut the other way

Jihad just means struggle, you know that right? The rest is how you interpret it. Speaking of which, what is Jesus telling us to do here:

“Do not think that I have come to send peace on earth. I did not come to send peace, but a sword. I am sent to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Matthew 10:34-35)

But unlike Christianity where Biblical literalism is considered nutty

WTF? Creationism and the arguments against homophobia. Aside from the Catholics (which is largely a personal issues, having been brought up in that Church) the fundies are the only Christians I really have an issue with. You don't get to dissavow the 30% of Americans who believe the bible word for word (http://www.christianpost.com/news/in-us-3-in-10-say-they-take-the-bible-literally-52070/) just because they mess up your distorted world view. YOU may think they are nuts, but that's what most Muslims think about Jihadis.

that it is the final revelation sent to mankind and is meant to last until Judgement day

It's not like US presidents have ever believed this...



So, in conclusion, my entire post was directed exactly at you, but you don't seem to have read a word of it.

Re: !#@(*&% ate my comment, good lord

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Ditto Christianity.

That's absurd. Consider this passage from Acts:

“Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”

Sure looks like individual property rights to me.