Mission & Justice

Dalia Mogahed & Ahmed Younis; 6/5/08

The Gallup Organization — a world leader in global opinion research — has recently self-funded a World Poll which gathers opinion data in the areas of leadership, law and order, food/shelter, work, economics, health, well-being, citizen engagement from the peoples of 130 countries. The World Poll gathers opinions around the world annually following Gallup’s guiding principles of independence and integrity. The Coexist Foundation, a UK-registered charity, has a mission to promote better understanding between members of the Abrahamic faiths and also their relations with other religions and the secular world through education, dialogue and research. As part of the World Poll, Gallup gathers data from the Muslim World and the West about people’s beliefs about education, religion, culture and democracy.

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5/6/08

Turkey’s highest court has ruled that Islamic headscarves cannot be allowed at universities. The decision is a defeat for the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which tried to allow the wearing of scarves as a matter of religious and personal freedom. The verdict of the constitutional court was issued on Thursday and says that amendments passed by parliament in February violated the secular principles of the constitution. Some observers think the verdict may bode ill for the government in a separate case in which Turkey’s chief prosecutor is seeking to disband the AK Party because it is “the focal point of anti-secular activities”.

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Annabel Stafford; 2/6/08

There is a new face of Islamophobia in Sydney. Gone are the images of angry young men draped in Australian flags and brandishing beer bottles as they rampage through Cronulla terrorising anyone who looks Middle Eastern. In their place is middle-aged, earnest-looking Kate McCulloch, wearing a large Akubra hat plastered with Australian flag stickers. She tells the TV cameras that she is not racist, but Muslims take our welfare, do not live by our rules and are not welcome in Camden.
They are different faces, but their message is the same. They do not want Muslims on their beaches, in their streets, in their suburbs.

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Paul Daley; 1/6/08

In the past few days Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has missed a golden leadership opportunity. …  Sometimes a leader needs to call a wrong for what it is, and damn the immediate consequences. … Local resident Kate McCulloch, wearing a towering hat covered in Australian flags, declared that the outcome was a victory for “decency”. “The ones (Muslims) that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don’t want to accept our way of life,” said McCulloch, eerily reminiscent of another woman who burst into national consciousness 12 years ago, Pauline Hanson.

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1/6/08

France plunged into a heated debate about its marriage laws on Friday after learning that a court had annulled the union of two Muslims because the husband said the wife was not the virgin she had claimed to be. Politicians, feminists and human rights activists denounced the verdict, handed down last month but only reported in the national press on Thursday, as an affront to the legal equality of men and women and a violation of a woman’s privacy. The hoodwinked husband’s lawyer responded just as forcibly that civil marriage was a legal contract. The court invalidated this one because the wife had lied about what French law calls an “essential quality” of a contracting party, he said.

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Damien Murphy; 31/5/08

The hair is assisted blonde rather than red, but the rawness of Kate McCulloch’s words curiously echoes Pauline Hanson’s redneck worries about dispossession and the need to curb Muslim immigration, especially in the white-bread community of Camden. Mrs McCulloch, a Catholic mother of four, became the poster girl for Camden’s Muslim-shy residents this week when local councillors voted unanimously “on planning grounds alone” to reject a Quranic Society proposal for a $19 million Islamic school on Sydney’s rural outskirts. Having railed against Muslims who “take our welfare”, Mrs McCulloch, 45, now says she is considering following Mrs Hanson into politics. She met the Queenslander when she pulled into Camden last November to help oppose the Islamic school as part her failed crack at a Senate seat.

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Sanna Trad; 29/5/08

The Qu’ranic Society has labelled a council’s decision to reject its plans for a Muslim school in outer southwestern Sydney as racially motivated and vowed to take the case to the NSW Land and Environment Court. Qu’ranic Society board member Fouad Chami said yesterday he had no doubt the court would overturn the council’s decision on the 1200-student school proposed for the suburb of Camden. “We have complied with the law, we have done everything right, we hired master planners. There was no reason for it to be rejected,” Mr Chami said. “Even the council could not say what was wrong with the plan.”

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David King; 24/5/08

A proposal to build an Islamic school on Sydney’s urban fringe has had a severe setback, with the local council’s town planner recommending against the development. The plan by the Qu’ranic Society to build the 1200-student school in the outer southwestern suburb of Camden has been divisive and sparked ethnic tensions within the community. The development has been the subject of heated town meetings and a protest rally involving up to 1000 people. Tensions reached a climax last November when two pigs’ heads were rammed on to metal stakes and an Australian flag draped between them on the proposed site of the school. Camden Mayor Chris Patterson said yesterday a planning report had recommended against the development, but a final decision would be made by council on Tuesday.

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Sanna Trad; 17/5/08

“Go home, Osama,” was not a particularly clever insult. “Go to hell, you educated pigs,” was much better, although a little unexpected. Waleed Aly, a counter-terrorism expert and founding member of the new SBS comedy Salam Cafe, reckons there came a point where the racist insults he received in the street stopped offending him and started making him laugh. “The funniest thing is the one-liners you get,” he said. “How can you compete with comedy like that? After a while it stops being offensive and just starts being funny.” Salam Cafe, the brainchild of the show’s regular panel members Mr Aly, Ahmed Imam and Susan Carland, takes a rare look at the funnier side of the issues that affect Muslims.

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Irfan Yusuf; 16/5/08

In 2006, I visited the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta. Before you reach for your National Security Hotline fridge magnets and mobile handsets, I should disclose that I was on an exchange program organised by the Australia-Indonesia Institute and funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Like many others in Indonesia, this university campus had an “American Corner” — a largish classroom with wall-to-wall shelves containing a range of books, magazines and other publications about American life and culture in both English and Indonesian. Computer terminals offered free English-language multimedia materials. Copies of the glossy American Muslim magazines and books by Arab and Muslim Americans were prominently displayed.

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