An ignorant Australian?

Exactly the same can be said for Albanian and Bosnian Muslim migrants from the post-war era. It can also be said for many Turkish migrants, whose dress and appearance makes them indistinguishable from other European Australians. One wonders whether The Australian’s editors have ever visited Smithfield or Penshurst in Sydney and attempted to identify a Bosnian Muslim who isn’t sporting a prayer cap.

The Australian goes on to state “Asian immigrants of the last part of the 20th century are now doing likewise. None of these peoples harboured any hope or desire to imprint their culture over that which existed here.”

So how does one define the “imprint” of a culture? Have Vietnamese or Chinese migrants suddenly started eating only meat pies? Is Sydney’s China Town being dismantled? Did we see the last of the Chinese New Years celebrations in late January?

The Australian editorial shows how completely divorced it is from reality in the following lengthy paragraph:

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for some of our newest Muslim immigrants. They have arrived with attitude. They have a mindset that disapproves of our relaxed and socially unstructured lifestyle. Their young men, raised in the strictures of Muslim households, do not understand, and have no wish to accept, the freedoms young Australian women take for granted. It was this clash of cultures that fuelled the Cronulla riots and which is at the heart of Mr Howard's warning.

Again, none of the most recent Muslim arrivals had any involvement in the Cronulla riots. The riots were said to be in retaliation for the assault on surf life savers by certain people of “Middle Eastern” appearance. I am yet to meet someone from Bosnia or the Horn of Africa of Middle Eastern appearance. Further, there is no suggestion of involvement by Afghans.

Rather, if there are young Middle Eastern men showing bad attitudes to women and the law, they are from second and third generations of more settled migrant groups - Lebanese and Pakistanis. The boys convicted of gang-rapes were not Afghan or Somali or Bosnian. They were boys from Lebanese and Pakistani families.

In adding editorial baggage to the PM’s recent pronouncements, the editorial writers of The Australian are seeking to paint a coherent picture of a monolithic culture of recently arrived Muslim migrants. But examined against the reality of wave after wave of Muslim migration, the picture painted looks little more than incoherent pieces of paint hurled onto the canvas.