Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Faith, fervour and free speech

By Moira Clarke - posted Tuesday, 25 September 2012


In October 2006 the Sydney Imam, Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilali, delivered a Ramadam sermon in which he excused the convicted gang rapist, Bilal Skaf, declaring him innocent. Hilaly said that the true responsibility for such crimes lay with women, those who did not keep themselves veiled and, preferably, hidden away from the public eye.

Throughout the ensuing uproar, the imam’s supporters claimed that his remarks had been taken out of context. I wondered whether this was true, so I googled for the transcript, found it, read it, and was horrified.

Hilaly had compared women to cat meat. If such meat was left uncovered and the cat came along and ate it, whose fault was it, the cat’s or the uncovered meat’s?

Advertisement

It had never before occurred to me that someone in Australia, a community leader, a teacher commanding moral authority would be ‘allowed’ to say such things. Surely we had anti-discrimination laws; were they not in effect here? I was distressed. I couldn’t sleep. I dreaded to imagine what the victims and their families would be going through – the sheik and his cat meat were top of the news for days, so there would be little chance of escape.

Now that the national spotlight was on Hilaly it became apparent that he was in the habit of making controversial comments. These included assertions that the Holocaust was exaggerated, Muslims had more right to Australia than dishonest ‘convicts’, and 9/11 was God’s work against oppressors.

I turned to the BBC’s online coverage of the story and worked through hundreds of comments from members of the public. These were disappointing. Many of Hilaly’s supporters claimed that, due to that most cherished of liberties, free speech, the imam had a right to say these things and therefore should not be criticised. There was a profound, almost wilful misunderstanding here. Fortunately there were plenty on board to point out the bleeding obvious, that free speech is a two-way street, and Hilaly had set himself up for as much criticism as could be mustered.

Those demanding free speech — true free speech, as a two-way discourse — won me over. I realised that no matter how much we might loathe Hilaly’s words, if we really want to live in a society where we can be aware of unpalatable points of view, discuss them and explain why they are wrong, we must let him speak.

Which brings us to recent events.

You’d have to be living in an underground bunker to be unaware of the riots, violence and murders perpetrated in various parts of the world over the past couple of weeks, all because of a sordid, low-grade film, ‘Innocence of Muslims’. The death toll, as I write, has reached 49. Of concern, too, is the fact that these events will play into the hands of certain Australian shock-jocks, and right-wing extremists such as Geert Wilders, currently awaiting visa approval for a visit to Australia. Moderate Muslims are well aware of this; we’ve seen a deluge of commentary, much of it highlighting the non-violent nature of the greater Muslim community, some of it focused on attempts to understand the Sydney demonstrators in particular. We’ve heard differing viewpoints, the most popular being that it’s not ‘about the film’, but more an expression of disempowered Muslim youth, lacking identity, frustrated with perceived western contempt and an undeniable element of local racism.

Advertisement

Apart from the patronising tone some of these analyses, they do not quite add up. If western contempt were the main problem, we would be witnessing demonstrations against continuing Israeli incursions into Palestinian lands, we’d find Muslims marching in the streets against questionable US foreign policy, we’d hear much greater condemnation every time Sunnis murder scores of Shiites, or Shiites murder Sunnis, acts which now occur with such depressing regularity that they struggle for the status of ‘newsworthy’. Where are the public protests over the deaths of tens of thousands of Syrian men, women and children, victims of sectarian violence at the hands of their own government? Where are the wide-scale demonstrations when shocking images like those that came out of Abu Ghraib are splashed across newspapers worldwide?

Instead, such outrage is reserved for a novel, a set of cartoons, or for a puerile and amateurish video ridiculing a religious military leader who died in the late seventh century.

Add to that the nature of many of the placards, and we should conclude that the protests were, to at least some degree, a result of religious offence, and that it was, indeed, ‘about the film’.

  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

33 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Moira Clarke is a software engineer and is also on the committee of the Secular Party of Australia. Her main interest is human rights.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Moira Clarke

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 33 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy