Australias
Shallow Multiculturalism
By Ghali Hassan
22 September, 2005
Countercurrents.org
Since
the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., racial and violent attacks against the
Muslims by the media, the elites and politicians have increased markedly
and are becoming part of a daily routine. Under the leadership of Prime
Minister John Howard, Australia evolved from a tolerant,
forward-looking society into one of the most intolerant and conservative
societies in the Western world. Today, Australias multiculturalism
is only useful as political rhetoric and an instrument of marginalisation.
In New South Wales
(NSW), the most populated state in Australia, the Planning Minister
of NSW, Frank Sartor told the Aboriginal Housing Company's chairman,
Mick Mundine, on Koori Radio to bring his black arse in
to talk about a dispute over the redevelopment of the Aboriginal Block
in inner Sydney. Just before that, the opposition leader of NSW, Mr.
John Brogden of the Liberal Party had to resign because he called his
long-time rivals Malaysian-born wife a mail-order bride.
Like Mr. Sartor, Mr. Brogden is no ordinary Australian.
He is well-educated and an influential Sydneysider. Mr. Brogden is also
a close confident of Mr. John Howard, the Prime Minister. As opposition
leader Mr. Howard did not resign when he attacked Asian Australians
and Asian migrants; instead he won government.
Following the Bali
bombing, and out of sadness and sorrow, the Liberal Government
of John Howard saw an opportunity to instil fear in the Australian society
and further inflame the situation by targeting innocent Muslims as terrorist
suspects. Without any evidence, homes of Muslim students in Sydney,
Melbourne and Perth were raided by Australian Police and the Australian
Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), seizing properties and interrogating
terrified Muslim families. Even before the 9/11 attacks and the Bali
bombing, Australia has always been a hot bed for racism against non-Anglo-Saxon
minorities. The recent attack on Black Africans and Asian Australians
by an obscure academic at Macquarie University is just one case in point.
Andrew Fraser, an
associate professor in the department of public law at Macquarie University
alleged publicly in the Australian media that Africans and Asians are
congenitally inferior in terms of their intellectual capacity and naturally
prone to violence. Fraser argued it was a mistake to abolish the White
Australia policy that allowed only whites to migrate to Australia.
He said that: [Blacks] IQ is 70 to 75 so there are differences
between the cognitive ability of blacks and whites. Blacks also have
significantly more testosterone floating around their system than whites
and therefore they are naturally violent.
The cold-blooded
slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and
children, and the destruction of the Iraqi society by white men like
Bush, Blair and Howard is a fact that contradicts sharply with Frasers
fraudulent theory. I'm dismayed that a colleague of mine could
have views worthy of Joseph Goebbels, [Hitlers propagandist],
said Dr. Alex Miller of the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University.
Fraser, who migrated
to Australia from Canada, argued that Australia should withdraw from
the refugee conventions to avoid becoming "a colony of the Third
World". He has no scholarship or credentials in the areas of Race
Relations or Biochemistry. In his e-mail to Woollahra councillor, David
Shoebridge, Fraser wrote that Chinese immigration directly threatened
the social, political and economic interests of ordinary Australians
and their children (Sydney Morning Herald, 16 July 2005). He doesnt
tell Mr. Shoebridge how, and provides no evidence or documentation to
support his prejudice. Perhaps Asians have an average IQ higher than
white Australians? Anti-racism campaigner Mathew Henderson-Hau said
Fraser was using his position at Macquarie University to promote white
supremacist views that are relics of the past.
Fraser, who is employed
by a public university, which protected his racist views until they
became public, alleged that he has the right to free speech.
Are racist attacks on people of colour free speech or abhorrent
hate crimes? If a student at Macquarie University or any other
Australian university calls an academic a racist bigot, the student
will be immediately expelled from the university. And there were many
cases where students have been expelled from universities in Australia
because of their objections to racist academics. It should be borne
in mind that without the funds brought into Australia by Asian students,
Macquarie University and the like would have to close their doors.
He was an instant
celebrity in the small and tightly controlled Australian media. Without
notable exception all major media outlets gave Fraser plenty of time
to advocate his racist views, but denied his victims any time to challenge
those views. In addition, the media have failed to investigate Frasers
ties with the neo-Nazi Patriotic Youth League in Australia, in which
he was a member. Fraser said; most ordinary people would find
what I'm saying more or less self-evident. A telephone poll conducted
by A Current Affair program after the broadcast of Frasers views
showed that 85 per cent of respondents said they support Frasers
racist views. It was the result of the Federal Governments anti-terrorism
campaign which specifically targets non-white, non-Christian Australians.
It should be borne in mind that the average Australian man and woman
are no more racist than other people. However, most Australians are
conditioned and manipulated by politicians and the media to disconnect
them from political issues. The educated elites prey on the ignorance
of the majority of Australian society to incite racism against Australian
peoples from non-Anglo-Saxon communities.
After the 7/7 London
bombing, Prime Minister John Howard, without hard evidence, deliberately
accused all Muslims of terrorism. He said: They [Muslims] must
have known of the attack, it couldnt be possible. Mr. Howard
is holding the whole Muslim community responsible for the (yet to be
proved) actions of few individuals. Islam is slandered, not only
by extremist groups, but also by moderate parties, intellectuals and
journalists, notes Professor Jocelyne Cesari, Principal Research
Fellow at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at Harvard
University, and coordinator of the European Commissions Network
on Comparative Research on Islam and Muslims in Europe (NOCRIME).
No one from the
self-appointed Muslim leaders or any other Muslim Australian
challenged Mr. Howard deliberate and false accusations. They simply
rushed to accept guilt and provide the Howard Government with ammunition
to attack Muslim Australians. In addition, Mr. Howard is asking Muslim
Australians to show loyalty and blindly follow the Anglo-Saxon culture,
but what will these loyal Muslims get in return for their blind loyalty?
The fact that the
only two Australians accused of terrorism are two white Anglo-Saxon
Australians, David Hicks in U.S-run Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Jack
Roche in a prison in Perth, with no connection to the Muslim community
in Australia is evidence that Muslim Australians are not in the business
of violence. Islam is peaceful religion, and peace is an essential precondition
for submission to the will of God, and Muslims
do not need to be lectured by Mr. Howard, a man of very dubious
moral character.
The new anti-terrorism
laws proposed by the Howard Government are specifically crafted to target
Muslim Australians. They will turn Australia into a police state and
alienate democratic rights. With immense power and indemnity, police
will be able to pre-emptively detain people for up to 14 days, without
charge. Even the police are acknowledging that the laws are discriminatory
and they are the implementers of the law. A court, on the
balance of probabilities will be able to issue orders such as
house arrest, electronic tagging and tracking, and bans on approaching
certain areas or people. There was no opposition or dissent to the new
laws, Australia is simply turning into an elected dictatorship. [T]hese
provisions have the potential to subvert entirely the conventional protections
and established civil rights that our system of justice has put in place
over the last 200 years, said Ian Harrison, President of the NSW
Bar Association.
The Howards
Government definition of terrorism is a wide and hard to apply.
It is certainly possible that legitimate acts of protest or support
for movements in other nations that fight against injustice or oppression
will fall into the net. Whether a person is a freedom fighter or terrorist,
the Australian law will apply, wrote George William, professor
of law at the University of NSW. There is very little protection for
fundamental human rights. Recent handling of Mr. Scott Parkin, an American
peace activist arrested by ASIO and deported to the U.S. is a case in
point. Simeon Beckett, president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights,
said the proposed new laws would remove fundamental rights of
Australians living in a liberal democracy. The draconian laws
will not protect Australians from terrorism; instead they will curtail
freedom of speech except by the likes of Andrew Fraser ,
freedom of movement but not of the wealthy whites and
infringe on peoples liberty.
Howards complicity
in the U.S. illegal war on Iraq, and in the criminal Occupation of Iraq,
made Australia a target for terrorism. This case was rightly argued
by the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House in relation
to the London bombing. If Mr. Howard is serious about protecting Australians,
he should follow Spain and withdraw Australian troops from Iraq. The
[U.S.] alliance is the last manifestation of the White Australia
mentality, said Mark Latham, former leader of the Australian Labor
Party.
Making matters worse,
the new anti-terrorism laws enforced a pre-existing fear in the Muslim
community. Muslim Australians are terrified. They are made to feel alienated,
and (as if they) do not truly belong in Australia. In an article in
The Guardian, Richard Drayton, an expert on imperial history at Cambridge
University, provides some facts about the shooting and killing of the
Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes by the London Police. Mr. de Menezes
was not a Muslim terrorist, but we know that he looks like
a Muslim and carry the Muslims signature on his body.
The young Brazilian looked just like an ordinary Muslim, and therefore
he was a target. With the new draconian anti-terrorism laws similar
executions of innocent people could easily happen in Australia.
Here in Western
Australia, the so-called red neck state, the new anti-terrorism
laws are so draconian that police have the power to enter peoples
houses (without the owners knowledge), search them and take whatever
they deem important. With random baggage and car searches Police have
the power to stop, search and question people. Again, Muslim Australians
are particularly targeted. A Muslim man risks being arrested by police,
fingerprinted, forced to provide DNA sample and charged without the
right to a lawyer or legal advice. Without a shred of evidence, Muslim
Australians have been convicted, not because they have committed crimes,
but simply for the purpose of racial profiling. The aim
is to deliberately criminalise Muslims, and in the process deny them
employment, as many places of employment, such as education require
a police clearance. The measures are reminiscent only to Nazi Germanys
racist laws against Jews.
Australian politicians
such as Liberal MPs Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopoulos are now attacking
Islam using Muslim women dress as the pretext to incite Australians
to stand up against the Muslim hijab (headscarf) not the Jewish
kippah or the nun's habits in schools. The purpose of this old
colonial feminism is not to defend Muslim women rights,
but to promote racism, denying Muslim women education, and their rights
to wear whatever suites them. What have these two MPs said about the
abuses and torture of Iraqi women by soldiers Occupation and their leaders?
Australian schools are for every Australian and families shouldnt
be dictated to by opportunistic politicians.
A study on racist
attitudes conducted by the University of New South Wales in 2003 found
one in eight Australians interviewed admitted they were prejudiced,
particularly towards Muslim Australians. The study, conducted by a team
led by geography senior lecturer Dr. Kevin Dunn, also found some Australians
were living in denial of such prejudice though 80 per cent of those
surveyed recognized racism was a problem. Unfortunately, the problem
has been promoted since, and continues to contribute to decrease in
the process of integration.
Integration is only
possible if people are allowed to live with the other, keep their
multiple identities, and be accepted as an equal member of the Australian
society. Muslim Australians should have the right to live as Muslims,
and criticise the Australian government policies. Like any other Australians,
Muslim Australians also have the right to question the Howard Governments
war on Iraq a Muslim nation , and to condemn Australian
Government participation in the war crimes committed against the Iraqi
people.
People have the
right to integrate into any new society they choose to live in; but
they also have the right to stay who they are amongst their own community.
A shallow multiculturalism, promoted by politicians and the media, has
created ghettoised and marginalised communities not living together
but living next to each other and against each other.
Ghali Hassan lives
in Perth, Western Australia.