Taking Islam seriously 101

Behead all those who insult the prophet
Obama, we love Osama
Our dead are in paradise; your dead are in hell

Chants and slogans heard and seen in Sydney’s Hyde Park, 15 September 2012

This is a bad, bad time to be a politician or a media executive.

How do you address current events or present the news, including all the facts, and simultaneously dodge the bullets of offending some members of the community?

O’Farrell, echoing President Barack Obama, claims that the anti-Islam video "Innocence of Muslims“ that sparked the global protests, including the one in Sydney, was “made by a fool in the U.S.”

Half right, Mr. Premier.

He/she may be a fool, but the film did not stir the extremist elements peppered amongst genuine protesters in Sydney’s Hyde Park to anger. What stirred them and what continues to stir them is our way of life and the values we hold dear.

Given the film in question was uploaded to YouTube over eleven weeks ago, on 2 July, one can only conclude that Saturday’s protest – in the light of the slogans paraded in abundance - had little to do with the film but a great deal to do with the way a few Muslims perceive their religion is portrayed in the Western world.

Then again, the gathering may have been little more than a reason to ring in the end of Ramadan, just two days earlier. Who knows?

Fairfax Media parroted the vice-president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Ikebal Patel, condemning the crowd violence. ''(Violence) is not something that the prophet himself would like. He always talked about peace.”

The joke of course is on Fairfax, who reported the text of what Mr Patel said but is ignorant of the context in which it was said.

An icon of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, often taught that Islam is indeed a religion of “peace” but he did not mean people living as equals in a pluralistic society.  He defined “peace” as a condition where (at best) all submit to Allah or (at worst) all live in an Islamic state (the infidels under onerous conditions). To achieve such goals, war must be waged.

Some claim the film in question is intolerant of Islam. But intolerance is a function of our tenet of free speech and intolerance in films has been a hallmark of Western film making for years. Intolerance of Christians and Jews that is. A recent example being Mel Gibson’s violently anti-Semitic Passion of the Christ. But Jews didn’t go out into the streets cursing, burning and longing for a beheading. Did they?

That said, many would agree that intolerant behaviour is unacceptable, wherever it is practiced. Not just in the West.

So what about intolerance abroad?

Daily, Arab school children both in the Muslim world and even in the United Kingdom are taught that Jews are the descendents of monkeys and pigs. And how Adolf Hitler was a great man. Surely this is intolerant behaviour. When will this be stamped out? Where are the demonstrations against those films?

Some Muslim nations regularly churn out assiduously fanatical films that demonise, degrade and delegitimize Jews in a manner matched only by the Nazis. Just last month a film depicting Jewish domination of the world, “Saturday Hunter,” was screened in Iran to an adoring public.

Why does such intolerance go unremarked? Why don’t Jews gather in crowds demanding the filmmakers and distributors be held to account?

Mr Premier, like many politicians and journalists, you seek all the facts but are in a frustrating position.

So let me simplify the issue for you.

First, the extremists in the crowd (certainly not all of those assembled) don’t give a hoot about our tradition of multiculturalism. To them, it is one of our many, many faults.

Second, to the extremists, an American is an Australian is a German is a Japanese is a Lithuanian is an Israeli. All infidels are equally guilty.  U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was simply the biggest prize on offer last week.

Next week another prize will no doubt be found. And another, the week after that. And another.

Third, blaming the film as the root of the anti-Western outburst plays into the hands of the haters. Just look at the slogans held up proudly. Most did not refer to the film.

Fourth, troublemakers, regardless of ethnic stock or religion, will always find an excuse for violence. They do not need to look hard. For instance in Catholic Poland, a year after the end of World War II, a lynch mob saw fit to butcher forty Jews on the back of a canard of a kidnapping of a child. And there wasn’t a Muslim in sight!

Mr Premier, in order to address the agitators amongst the rioters, you must examine their actions and motives; if necessary, you must ask uncomfortable questions; see the extremist elements for what they are and not how some may paint them and formulate a just response.

It’s not easy being Premier.

And harder still being a wise one.