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MEDIA ON FOUR-MONTH DELAY
Peter Costello’s controversial views on sharia-inclined immigrants led last night’s late news bulletins and were again among lead items tonight. The Sydney Morning Herald:
Anyone who believes Islamic sharia law can co-exist with Australian law should move to a country where they feel more comfortable, Treasurer Peter Costello says.
All Australian citizens must adhere to the framework in society which maintains tolerance and protects the rights and liberties of all, he said.
More from the SMH:
“Before entering a mosque visitors are asked to take off their shoes,” he told the Sydney Institute last night. “This is a sign of respect. If you have a strong objection to walking in your socks, don’t enter the mosque.
“Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objections to those values, don’t come to Australia.”
The SMH also has a poll (75% of respondents agree with Costello). Naturally, Islamic spokesman Keysar Trad disagreed, as is demanded by ritual:
Treasurer Peter Costello is promoting division and Islamophobia in remarks about Muslims and should be censured, a Muslim community leader says.
No censuring occurred:
Prime Minister John Howard has refused Muslim calls to censure Treasurer Peter Costello over comments he made about Islamic extremists.
Other pieces appeared in the Australian and the Age, which ran a Your Say forum and a comment piece from Michelle Grattan:
Peter Costello last night weighed into the culture wars — and almost outdid John Howard. Costello’s Sydney Institute speech, with its condemnation of “mushy misguided multiculturalism”, was unnecessarily confronting.
Can’t have that. The ABC led its AM program with two items on the Costello Comments Controversy; another two items ran on The World Today.
Question: why not the same reaction when Costello said essentially the same things more than four months ago? Bloggers—about forty of them, from Romania to Brisbane—quickly circulated those remarks, but press response was minimal. Odd.
UPDATE. Check out all the crossheads (crossheads! in 2006!) throughout this SMH wrapup:
Cheap shot, says Beattie
Plea to MPs to stand against Costello
‘Just a political pitch to conservative voters’
Costello accused of Islamophobia
Call for PM to censure treasurer
PM pandering to Islamophobia: Trad
‘Impossible to live under sharia law here’
No conflict between Islam and Australia
Challenge to Costello
Ongoing government theme
Man, talk about ongoing themes ...
Heh. The Keysar got his mug on TodayTonight of course with his usual bleating:
“We are shocked, horrified, offended by a small element within our communities.”
Today Tonight has set up a phone poll asking “Should migrants who don’t observe Australian values be stripped of their citizenship?”
If you agree, phone 1900 956 133. If you disagree phone 1900 956 134.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 02 24 at 05:25 AM • permalinkeastley should of asked trad whether he supported sharia law. that would have been funny.
Posted by drscroogemcduck on 2006 02 24 at 05:27 AM • permalink#1 Which comes first, The fever or the temperature?
What comes first is the infection. There is usually an incubation period during which the infected person feels perfectly well. Bad stuff is going on but the individual’s comfort level has not yet been affected. Then the processes associated with the infection stop being sub-clinical. The person starts feeling unwell and recognises that he is, indeed, infected and must do something to make himself feel better.
And so it is, for the West as a whole, with Islamofascism. First it was a few thousand folk who died elsewhere. Terrible, for sure, but that was far away and didn’t touch the corporate ME that embodies most of our opinion leaders, aka public intellectuals. Now, following the cartoons episode, those fools really see that there is no rhyme nor reason that even “elite” Westerners can understand that will explain, or justify, the murderous impulses of those who grew up to truly believe in a murderous god of fortresses, or citadels, or of just plain force. Those guys might really come for ME next! And suddenly all those previously carefree, terribly superior MEs are scared and it shows.
What I think about is that, prior to WWII, there were some Jews in Germany who saw the writing on the wall and fled. And then there were the others who couldn’t believe that that in a country with such a reputation for high culture people could descend into such barbarism. So they stayed and most of them died barbarically.
What place is left for anyone to go to escape this new, but also very old, barbarism? I think there is nowhere to go. There is nothing left for any of us but to stand and fight.
So how long do we have, do you reckon, before things get really nasty? Ten years? Five years? Less?
“Poll reveals 40pc of Muslims want sharia law in UK”
I wonder how those numbers break down by generation. Given that Muslim integration in the UK seems to have pretty much failed, it strikes me that second- and third-generation Muslims who were born in the UK may be more likely to want sharia, never having actually lived in a shithole country that has sharia - much like large numbers of ignorant Westerners want some kind of socialist order, having never actually experienced socialism in action.
In other words, I wonder how much those results are driven by people simply taking it on faith that sharia (or socialism) is “obviously” the better solution.
#4 eastley should of asked trad whether he supported sharia law. that would have been funny.
Reporters should also ask all those Australian Muslim leaders decribed as in the press as ‘moderate’ if they support Israel’s right to exist and to condemn Palestinian terror.
I think we’ll find there’s no such thing as a moderate Muslim in Australia - including those on the PM’s panel.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 02 24 at 06:26 AM • permalinkCould some kind person let me know how you can do a Google search to filter in only references from bloggers and not every other source?
FWIW, Tim did no such thing, either. I imagine he simply scanned the 74 or so hits and found around 40 blogs among them.
For a crude approximation, you can always add the search term “blog” to your query. Almost all blogs will have that on their pages somewhere, while most other pages won’t.
It’s a running joke amongst Queenslanders, when visiting southern states, to play a game of “Spot the Aussie” in streets and shopping malls.
Interesting that Peter Beattie, Labor Premier of the almost exclusively bronzed-Aussie state of Queensland would have a ready opinion on Federal immigration policy.
About Tim’s question. There is nothing odd about the media’s response to Costello’s speech. Strike while the iron is hot !! Does he really think that bloggers, even forty of them, have any effect on corporate media? Do any of you think we are engaged in anything but mutual masturbation. Aaahhh .. i feel better now. Hope it lasts.
Anyway, Bashing a minority group are the Libs forte. Hell, it might even get in as demonstration sport for the Commenwealth Games.
Question: why not the same reaction when Costello said essentially the same things more than four months ago? Bloggers—about forty of them, from Romania to Brisbane—quickly circulated those remarks, but press response was minimal. Odd.
I’d suggest it’s because the MSM didn’t notice then, that Costello had to say it again. He wants to be leader someday, remember.
Frank Devine has a go at the ABC in The Australian:
“Its record disqualifies the ABC for the late career opportunity to be an arbiter. The information tide is likely to sweep it up as just another blog, albeit a large, very expensive one.”
Worth a look.#21
Devine compares the ABC to a blog?? He is senile. Buy a 2 dollar radio. You get the ABC anywhere in Austaliasia. It’s as free as air. To even read a blog you need to at least buy an overpriced coffee at the local Greatur -Union Mult-plex Intnet- Cafe hell hole. It was nice to see his daughter trying to explain her old hobby horse, Tim Preist, stepping in shit in thursdays SMH. Love that rag!
What’s happening in Islam the world over - an increasing exclusiveness and intolerance of other beliefs and practices - is as plain as the nose on your face.
Muslim leaders who refuse to combat the increasing hold of Salafism on Islam and play up victimisation for the multicultural crowd in Fairfax and public broadcasters are behaving like hypocrites or worse.
Costello does no more than state a plain truth. The Australian Constitution is the highest law in this land not sharia - a code which is an affront to even the most basic human rights. Those who want to soft-peddle this fact are as deluded or duplicitous as Muslim community leaders.
Meanwhile, the left insists on digging deeper holes for itself by denying that Australians should be told the truth. And once again, right on cue, the boogyman gets dragged from the cupboard - Howard is feeding the racist beast that dwells in every (white) Australian breast. We must understand that this contempt is deserved and listen to the mandarins.
These trendies are sinking the Labor party and endangering the rest of us.
Peter Costello has delivered a sober and measured statement that clearly clearly echoes what an overwhelming majority of Australian’s are concerned about.
I have heard a range of Muslim opinions today on radio about how Sharia law is not what Muslims want, that it could not be implemented anyway, that in Saudi and Iran they have not properly implemented it so they are not examples etc etc etc.
Afghanaistan was not mentioned so maybe the Taliban are still the only folk able to properly implement this judicial system.
Yet we have a survey in the UK where 40% of Muslims say they want to live under Sharia rather than British law.
There was a major move in Canada to give Sharia law a status and role within the Canadian legal system. I gather that this has been abandoned. The fact that it could even be considered in a society with a similar constutional settlement to ours is a worry.
The UK and Canadian experience I believe requires Austrlia to be on our guard against Islam and any other religion seeking to gain any preferred status in law.
Is saying this a slur on Islam? No - because they are the only major faith in the world rejects a separation of religion and state, the only religion that in majority Muslim countries usually operate what we in the West regard a barbaric legal system. They are also the only major religion that in many parts of the West is actively seeking to establish a role for Sharia law in Western legal systems.
We mus continue to welcome Muslim immigrants to Australia, but be very firm on our rejection of Sharia law as alternative to the law of the Australian Parliament.
#27 - what Peter Costello said was quite reasonable. This is a not an issue of race.
The reaction was spontaneous. Talkback all over the country was dominated by this issue and even on the ABC audiences were very much onside with Peter Costello.
This is a concern to a great majority of Australian’s and geuss what - forget political correctness and sensitivity about multi-culturalism - we WANT to talk about it.
Its about time people started talking about issues like this. For too long the majority of people have been dismissed by the multicultural elite (including the politicians) as racist and extreme for simply raising issues like this.
This is precisely what the Cronulla protest was about (note I said protest - by no means was that a riot).
We need to discuss things like this openly, freely and in the mainstream rather than simply batting it away because it contrasts with the Ideology of a small “elite”.
#24 Islam itself is the problem not any diversion of it. The greatest prophet of Islam, who claimed to recite what Allah had directly told him, was a nothing short of a criminal who mass murdered, raped, robbed, beheaded and tortured. He also had sex with a 9 year old girl. He is not only a hideous role model by deeds, but his teachings are blatantly racist, violent and harsh. He is NOT worthy to lead a fifth of the world’s population. Muslims are victims of Muhammad’s lies.
A misguided writer to The Age’s discussion today, pointed out a length the wonders of Islam and gave quotes of the ‘nice’ teachings, as though these make up for the bad. The problem is that quoting the nice quotes (mostly stolen from Christianity, but that’s another story) will not make the violent ones go away. And it is even more insidiously dangerous to mix good and evil like this.
For anyone who wants to read more about Islam try these sites run by ex muslims themselves. They are pleading with the world to understand the root causes of the problems we see in Islamic countries and now the west;
Apostates of Islam
Marky, don’t sign up here just to insult other commenters. Other commenters, don’t encourage him.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 02 24 at 08:04 AM • permalinkOK. I’ll bite. What does “crosshead” mean, and why is it apparently exceptional in 2006?
Cheers
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 02 24 at 08:49 AM • permalinkGood on Costello. If a Muslim wants Sharia law, said Muslim can imigrate. Voting with your feet is perfectly legal in a democracy.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 02 24 at 10:36 AM • permalinkI thought what Mr. Costello said was very reasonable. Of course, it wasn’t instant capitulation (with accompanying head-tilt apology), so naturally your radicals jumped on it as racist. We have the same experience here in the U.S. whenever anyone says anything contradictory to established political correctness.
It’s time for political correctness to go away. It’s time for ordinary people to stop letting themselves be cowed by spurious charges of racism and religious bigotry whenever they express a critique that, in a sane world, would be perfectly reasonable.
Is it safe to assume that everyone who criticizes Costello is in favor of Sharia law in Australia?
You might want to keep their names in mind.
Posted by tim maguire on 2006 02 24 at 11:57 AM • permalinkMuslims FAILED to integrate into the UK, the UK did not fail to integrate Muslims.
Did I blame the UK for the failure? I don’t think so. “Muslim integration seems to have failed” as I wrote it is pretty much as neutral as possible. At any rate, my actual point was something completely different, as I’m sure you noticed.
Naturally, Islamic spokesman Keysar Trad disagreed, as is demanded by ritual: “Treasurer Peter Costello is promoting division and Islamophobia in remarks about Muslims and should be censured, a Muslim community leader says.”
Ok, it happened again. I’ve been offended by Trad’s blatantly insensitive remarks. I demand—excuse me—I DEMAND!! a resignation by him and an adject apology. And reparations comprised of Victoria bitter, pork rinds, and some bold and CAPITAL letters for the font cabinet.
If he refuses to offer up an apology by 4 pm today, I will comment that “Trad has recalcitrantly refused to admit error, instead choosing to pursue a path of hatred and division”.
I better work on my press release now.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 02 24 at 01:53 PM • permalinkIs it safe to assume that everyone who criticizes Costello is in favor of Sharia law in Australia?
Hardly, maguire. A pathetic attempt to build up a hysterical reaction, by the way. And a stupid strawman to boot. Not to mention lousy sarcasm. Run along now, the grown ups are talking.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 02 24 at 04:06 PM • permalinkTim wrote:
“Question: why not the same reaction when Costello said essentially the same things more than four months ago?”
Must be the Danish Cartoon Syndrome - a newly discovered illness that forces dull witted people to await the passage of 1/3 of a year’s time before becoming outraged by otherwise simple and correct commentary.
I am so tired of Costello/Howard and their cronies saying things that are correct. This is just typical dog-whistle tactics designed to appeal to those Australians who understand things.
Where does this leave people like marky and I? Alienated, sad and with nothing to do but draw pictures on walls with our own excretia.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 02 24 at 07:02 PM • permalinkOh look, I just did Che Guevera.
Now all I need is Kim Jong Il, Fidel and Saddam and it will be just like my own personal Mt Rushmore.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 02 24 at 07:19 PM • permalinkNo-one has mentioned that Costello’s charity leader brother Tim seems to disgree with him. In a Press Club speech not long ago Tim was asked about the Sharia Law requests. He replied that allowing ‘civic Sharia law’ for our Moslems wasn’t a problem, since it was not ‘political Sharia’! Yet it involves the treatment of women and marriage issues at the least.
What a confused, do-gooder Christian brother! Doesn’t he know that there is NO distinction between the ‘civic’ and the political in Islam?
Worse, no-one among the press challenged his naivety.8 PW: good point—salafist Islam and socialism are remarkably similar.
Leaving details aside, both groups are utterly convinced that they KNOW WHAT IS BEST for everyone else. Islam is not a religion as Christianity and Buddhism are. It is and always has been a complete social and political ideology, one that deems freedom inherently objectionable because humans, left to their own devices (i.e. free will), will INEVITABLY offend God. Islam aims to prevent this by providing strict rules for every single human act, from eating to wife beating, defecation and divorce. In its megalomaniac control-freakery, Islam is like socialism writ humongous and gone completely mad. No wonder the bossy, nannyish left feel such sympathy with the Islamists. They’re both on the same side, only the Islamists go further than the socialists ever dared dream of doing.
Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2006 02 24 at 08:20 PM • permalinkLook, if I never hear another word about Moslems, Arabs, Islam etc. It’ll be too bloody soon!!!
Having said that however, it sad to live in a society where articulating a reasonable proposition elicits such a reaction. I know it’s only a noisy few, but unfortunately many of them pull the media’s strings, so it’s amplified out of all proportion.
I must say I’m with Brian here. Totalitarians are ultimately just so fucking boring.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 02 24 at 09:22 PM • permalinkKeysar Trad huh - well lets read a few of Keysar’s comments regarding Australia:
* “…… yet, from the Muslim viewpoint, our ideology is the best salvation for the people of Australia, and the people of the world in general. Yes, we are a threat to the culture of drunkenness, paedophilia, and mostly we are a big threat to the culture of ELITISM…”.
* “It is astounding how, when Pauline [Hanson] started the assimilation argument that the media found a Muslim woman wearing the Hijab, slightly overweight, doing her shopping, and channel nine would show her in an advertisement for one of their shows, right after the assimilation comment. They do not film a fat Australian woman in tight bicycle shorts, or tight pants, or an Australian drunk, or a nun, or an Australian welfare cheat. NO!!! They show a Muslim woman wearing a Hijab, she is not assimilating, it would be okay if this same woman walked around in bicycle shorts, with her body vulgarly bulging out to the point of regurgitation”.
* “In a way, they [Australians] feel safe because of the quantity of water which surrounds this country, so they feel fortified behind this great body, it gives them a feeling of security. But the reality is, the land belongs to God, not to them, and if those foreigners, whom they fear as migrants are not permitted to enter as migrants, they will come as settlers, in numbers so large that they will not be able to process them, hold them, or stop them. What will they do then? If these foreigners who are restraining themselves, because they see a legal hope, that they can come to this vast mainly uninhabited land for whatever reason, are told that there is no longer a legal way to come here, what will they do? What will a starving person do when he wants food?”
* “The criminal dregs of white society colonised this country, and now, they only take the select choice of other societies, and the descendants of these criminal dregs tell us that they are better than us. And because we are not elitists, we tolerate them. Yet they want us {Muslims] to assimilate ..”
This practiced performer of taqiyya (who has been on welfare for several years along with his family) has made several such comments, so perhaps its time we started to seriously question his loyalties. I detect threats in most of his comments. So why is this man continually and selectively quoted instead of being exposed as the liar and hypocrite he truly is? Beats me.
I just want to make it clear that this ‘Marky’ clown is not me.
I have a functioning brain, and am able to sustain a logical and rational discourse.
‘Marky’ displays neither characteristic in detectable quantities.
Trad is a VERY nasty piece of work, but he knows how to manipulate the media. My Lebanese Maronite contacts tell me that he lost the weird beard and muslim KKK-white-sheet-and-hood look, and attended media training to improve his camera appearance.
He is a skilled propagandist.
Again, I’ll mention that the bulk of Lebanese in this country are Christians, who came here to get away from bastards like Trad and the lakemba islamofascist fundamentalist crowd.
Sorry to keep hammering that point, Andrea and Tim, but it bears a lot of repeating.
MarkL
CanberraHmmm… I wonder how people would react if you substituted the word “Jew” or “Aboriginie” into Costello’s comments.
What Costello, the media and even apparently some Muslims fail to realise is that shari’a is a concept and not a set of laws. Every time that a Muslim prays in Australia, s/he is following shari’a. Thus shari’a law is already here :)
Two things that the chattering class does not understand, first: there are very few refugees amongst the islamic people from the middle-east, as it was found by the U.N.upon examining the worth of some who had been called so by the chattering class.
They are economic immigrants, true refugees would recognise our achievements as a country and if the situation changes in their country of origin they usually return there.
Secondly: to islamist their religion is their politic, to continuosly call it a religion only arouses in the western mind a self-flagellating guilt. Islam is their political principle and we are their enemy.
They are not distracted by ethical or moral dilemmas when dealing with us, everyone on a beach deserves death for being in beach costumes, men women and children.
This is our Country, its not that difficult to get here fron anywhere in the world like it used to, citizenship should be awarded not given away.
Any immigrant should be invited after 10 years of residency and good behaviour to join the rest of us who love and will die to defend it.
Which is not what that clown omran said in melbourne: “your religion is more important than your life”.
That is their political agenda couched in religion, we must stop trying to discuss religion and the idea of freedom with them.
We are their enemy and we must begin to see them as such.#55 Howzat
I would not dream of following through with your suggestion because I do not believe in insulting helpless minorities.
I also do not wish the wrath of Allah to fall upon me via one of his 1.8 billion followers.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 02 25 at 12:13 AM • permalink#57 neither jews nor aborigines are loudly calling for violent overthrow of the institutions of this nation.
the aboriginal campaign for land rights has been essentially non-violent & reasonably successful thus far. black GST might get into a bit of a brawl if they camp in the domain during the commonwealth games, but they are not sending young men to train with osama, nor are they planning to blow up flinders street station any time soon.
jews aren’t looking to convert the world & make everyone live according to the minute prescriptions for daily life observed by, say, the lubavitchers - it’s very difficult to become a jew if you are not born one.
the suggestion of substituting either for muslims in the context of costello’s comments is therefore fatuous
Nothing reveals the old “we’re of a better class” snobbery than that wretched phrase “dog whistling”.
By using the term they declare that the majority are dumb, racist, selfish (insert pejorative).
It has studded most ABC bulletins on this matter, leading one to ponder whether those who use it are amplifying the whistle.#61: Oh I get it alright. Costello sees his dream of successorship fading fast and is desperate to make a noise. He’s picking on a vulnerable minority because offending us is meaningless and panders to the Hanson vote. Shari’a as the basis for Australian law is about as likely as Collingwood ever winning another premiership. I don’t think even the loonies at IISCA really think they have a hope for a caliphate in Australia.
#60: if you look at the lead-up to the Russian pograms and rise of Nazism, the Jews were blamed for all sorts of nefarious activities that set the stage for massive atrocities.
#65 Firstly, Costello and Howard have not attacked all Muslims, just in their own words, a small minority of extremists.
second,Jews were blamed for all sorts of nefarious activities that set the stage for massive atrocities
well I count september 11, the madrid bombings, the london bombings, and the bali bombings “nefarious activities.” And I count them as “massive atrocities”. The atrocities are being committed already, by the people who supposedly have ‘victim’ status.
Is it so absurd to be worried that it could happen here? Is it so absurd to link these things with extreme Islamism and to say that we don’t want it?Posted by daddy dave on 2006 02 25 at 01:50 PM • permalinkWhat’s your problem with this, Tim? Anyone with the barest education—say fifteen years the humanities academy, or a lobotomy—knows that blowing up embessies is a tragic but understandable response to Western intolerance. That doesn’t automatically mean suggesting that citizens obey the law is suddenly okay! A line must be drawn.
Tolerance has to end somewhere, after all.
Give your self-proclaimed enemies the power to veto your words and actions, and blood will run in the streets. Anyone with the barest education—say a lack of brain washing or stirring—knows that tolerance is only stable if it’s a two way street.
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