Politics

TURNING TOWARDS A NEW ‘ALA’

It was nice of Dr Ameer Ali in his shoddy polemical attack on the Australian Liberty Alliance to remind us of the anti-Islam rhetoric of Peter the Hermit (1050-1115).

Ali, after his trip down a medieval lane, while writing in The West Australian (5/11), then likens the new political party to the KKK in his diatribe of nonsense.

Just why Ali wants to remind us of the brutal history of Islamic aggression is known only to him-but remind us he does.

The Crusades, far from being wars of aggression, were in fact defensive wars coming after four centuries of Islamic aggression and the capture of two thirds of the old Christian civilisation.

There was of course brutality, as in all wars, and the attack by some knights on German Jews, en route to Jerusalem, was despicable and condemned by the Church.

 Unlike Islam, Christianity does not exonerate adherents from crimes committed against others, and unlike many current Islamic practitioners does not call for the destruction of Jews and Israel.

Far from being ‘confrontational’ and ‘medieval,’ (like Islam has always been), as Ali asserts, the ALA is the product of concerned, responsible citizens who are fed up with a craven, fawning  political and media elite that denigrates their concerns of Islam.

The ALA president, and WA Senate candidate, Debbie Robinson, demolished Ali’s cant  in a well reasoned rebuttal (The West Australian 6/11).

As Robinson said there is no moderate Islam that is simply wishful thinking on the part of liberals. Islam means ‘submission’ and is an all embracing ideology. There is no separation between mosque and state.

Non-Muslims are always lesser citizens at law and in treatment, under Islamic rule.

Indeed how many Christian churches are there in Saudi Arabia and how many are being built? The answer is the same for both –none. Yet Ali has the temerity to rail against those citizens in Bendigo who do not want a mosque built.

Unlike Muslim’s in the Middle East, they are not rampaging through the streets of Bendigo, destroying, murdering, raping, assaulting and denying people a right to go about their business. Instead they are engaged in a legitimate exercise in civics in seeking to resist the encroachment of something they regard as alien and opposed to the traditional values of Australia.

When comments are made by Muslim clerics, like the Jordanian Sheikh Ali Hassan Al-Halabi, that the killing of ‘evil’ Jews, “the brothers of apes and pigs, is a  binding and mandatory duty,” it does not do a lot for interfaith harmony and social cohesion. Of course it may have nothing to do with Islam, as we are so frequently told, but the citizens of Bendigo, are just a tad concerned that such comments represent hate speech and they do not want it being fostered in that community.

A democratic state does not have to stand by and see a community subsumed by the intolerant demands of two percent of its citizens, accompanied by violence and vilification against the majority –and this country is not going to stand for such behaviour.

As constitutional law professor Augusto Zimmermann has argued the right to religious freedom while important is not absolute. The High Court in the Jehovah Witnesses Case (1943) ruled against that church after they had appealed to the High Court under Section 116 of the Australian Constitution. However, the Court determined that the National Security (Subversive Organisations) Regulations 1940 did not infringe against the said section of the Australian Constitution. The judgement was based in part on an interpretation of the Defence Power of the Commonwealth, demonstrating the possibility of reducing religious freedom during times of national emergency, especially when religious extremism is involved.

Recent disgusting comments by the group Hizb ut-Tahrir (banned in Germany) describing Australian security officials as ‘cockroaches’ does not sit well with Australians. Not surprising given the recent murder of a police civilian in NSW, by an Islamist thug, and the Sydney Lindt Café siege in mid-December last year which resulted in the murder of the manager and a customer. This odious group demands a caliphate to rule all Muslims and the imposition of Sharia law.

This Muslim group says cooperation with spy agenies is ‘outright haram’ (forbidden). A spokesman, Uthman Badr, claims Muslims should not have to submit to an oppressive campaign of so-called forced assimilation such as pledging support for democratic principles in the oath or singing the national anthem. Islam’s values are not negotiable, according to him, but most Australians consider that neither are time honoured Australian values.

As Professor Zimmermann says this radical group is the perfect example of a group that should be outlawed.

Australians want one law (not Sharia), equal rights for women, freedom of expression, democracy, separation of church and state, the right to be critical without being intimidated and the requirement that people who come into the country respect the nation’s ideals and traditions. Australians expect freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion and that includes the right of individuals to freely decide which path they take. That is not the experience in Islamic countries.

As Robinson said the ALA is not about hating anyone but rather the opposite in  promoting basic human rights in the western tradition. Ali, by way of contrast, regards her concerns, and those of the ALA, as on a par with Daesh scum, while he makes no mention of Badr and Hizb ut-Tahrir’s truly polarising comments.

Where too is Ali’s excoriation of the current atrocities against Christians, and other minorities in the hell-holes of failed Muslim States? He blames it on the former colonial powers. Failure it seems is never the failing of Muslims!

Unlike Geert Wilders, whom he vilifies, Ali does not require a constant police guard to ensure his safety, and whom is Wilders being protected from in the Netherlands? Could it be Muslims?

Particularly odious, gratuitous and offensive is Ali’s remarks about hoping the ALA does not become like the KKK? If there is anything like the KKK it would have to be Islam with its track record of ensuring the death of some 270 million, in its brutal intolerant 14 centuries of existence.

The ALA is not calling on people to go on a rampage against anyone, nor would it accept people of minority faiths having their homes marked as such for future “attention.” That does mean for rape and murder in territory held by murderous criminals whose religion has everything to do with Islam.

However, Pakistan is not governed by those animals and yet in that country homosexuals are thrown off the top of high rise buildings while a young married couple were hurled into a blast furnace. What was their crime? They were Christians. How shameful!

Despite Ali’s assertion about the threat from ‘confrontational minorities’ the only confrontational minority in this country comes from followers of Islam, and it is that which ‘threatens the multicultural harmony that has been built over decades.’

The ALA is no threat at all and many Australians are listening to the disciplined, controlled and reasonable statements of the new party.

Perhaps it is somewhat ironic, as one wit described, that in their legitimate concerns over Muslim aggression and anti-social behaviour Australians are now looking to  a new version of ‘Ala ‘– one with not only a different spelling but also a more democratic version than the Allah the Muslims are used to worshipping.