Muslim

Miniskirts will be declared pornography and Indonesia will ban them as a politician says “provocative clothing” made men “do things”.

Indonesia’s Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali will ensure tough new anti-porn laws will include criteria such as “a skirt above the knee”, The Jakarta Post reports.

Meanwhile, Parliamentary speaker Marzuki Alie is drafting rules banning miniskirts in Parliament because “there have been a lot of rape cases and other immoral acts recently and this is because women aren’t wearing appropriate clothes”.

Continue reading "Stop skirting the rape issue and cut it off at the knees" »

I have been asked by The Punch to offer a different point of view about Muslims in Australia. Being a white, Christian, male living in Australia’s most populated Muslim suburb, I should be the most vilified person in Australia according to some fellow Punchers.

Well the truth is, I’m not.

My background has many different layers and stepping stones to it. I was born in the mid 80s in Broken Hill to a dad that was local and a mum that was from Wilcannia. Growing up, she was one of the only few white families in town but never had a bad word to say about Aborigines, irrespective of how the situation is there now.

Continue reading "I’m white, Christian and live happily among Muslims" »

Happy Valentine’s Day. May your day be free from cutesy little devil horns and squealing flower recipients and (most of all) from pitying stares.

*Insert more appropriately acerbic and cynical commentary on Valentine’s Day here.*

While you’re audibly sneering at the hysterically happy young lass whose heart-shaped balloon is bumping against the ceiling, spare a thought for young lovers in Aceh, where Muslim leaders have banned Valentine’s Day.

Continue reading "Love in the time of sharia" »

A News Ltd survey of Australian imams unearthed a renewed call for the recognition of sharia banking in Australia. At The Punch we weren’t really sure what that meant, so we asked expert in Islamic banking Dr Hussain Rammal, a lecturer in International Business at UniSA, to talk us through the basics.

What are the main differences between Islamic banking and Western banking?

The main difference is in the way the two systems deal with money. Under the Islamic economic system money is seen as a medium of exchange and has no intrinsic value. Therefore charging a higher rate of return (interest) on lend money does not sit well under the Islamic system. Islamic financial institutions use an asset-backed system where they purchase the assets on behalf of their customers and then use various financing agreements to on-sell the asset to their clients. These include profit-and-loss sharing, leasing and hire-purchase, and mark-up based agreements.

Continue reading "Punch Q & A: What is this Islamic banking caper?" »

Waleed Aly is a well-rounded kind of chap. A lecturer in politics at Monash Uni and a former member of the executive committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria, he is also said to wield a mean axe in his rock, funk and jazz band.

Of Egyptian heritage, the Melbourne born-and-raised Aly has the gift of talking straight. And on the issue of the impending new NSW police powers to order drivers and suspects to remove their veils, he has a simple message: it was inevitable.

“This is the inevitable response to the scenario we saw a few weeks ago,” he told The Punch today, in what might cheekily be termed a “thinly-veiled” reference to the Carnita Matthews case.

Continue reading "Australia is still a long way from France" »

Congratulations shock jocks, David Oldfield, Cory Bernardi, Fred Nile. You have your anti-hero, your Carnita.

All causes need a strong narrative, and anti-Muslim and anti-burqa sentiment just got one. Carnita Matthews, 47, had a conviction for a false accusation against a cop overturned because the court could not be sure it was indeed her that walked into a police station and made the complaint.

It all started, and finished, with a burqa. Read all about it here, here and here.

Continue reading "A burqa, large lie, and behold the pickle" »

Sharia should never be part of Australian law. In fact, Australian authorities should be making more concerted attempts to get to grips with sharia law as it is already practised in Australia, and to make sure that the benefits of a secular democracy are better understood in migrant communities.

First of all, though, let’s just be clear that what the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has proposed in its submission to a multiculturalism inquiry is not about stoning women for adultery or lopping off hands for stealing. What they’re talking about – at this point – is family law; divorces and marriages.

And when AFIC says (in today’s news reports) that they want Government support for a wider spread of schools and halal shops to stop ‘enclaves’ forming, they’re not talking about empire building, but about community support.

Continue reading "I hear ya on sharia, but please no hysteria" »

On Anzac Day, I along with about 150 protestors stood across from the Villawood Detention Centre where the crumpled remains of a burnt building, barbed wire and a security guard stood between us and them: the scourge of this naton, the ‘refugee’. The protestors chanted while a lone figure of a detainee on top of a tiled roof squatted, looking on despondently.

I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking: That our brave soldiers who fought in Gallipoli and who today are fighting in Afghanistan, did so to protect our freedoms in the name of humanity. And ironically, while we celebrate those freedoms as a democratic nation, we are locking up people, depriving them of their freedom, their dignity and their common humanity, driving them to acts of insanity.

The Immigration Minister, the Prime Minister and the ALP at large may be caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the question of what should be done with asylum seekers; however, Australia not only as a signatory to the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, but as a democracy, should place human rights before politics.

Continue reading "Don’t blame Muslims for multiculturalism’s failings" »

There’s a lot of religion on the site today – sorry. Then again, there’s a lot of religion in the world… anyhoo, welcome to this week’s edition of I Call Bullshit.

They love a good Muslim stoush, those Liberal MPs. Cory Bernardi on the burqa, Kevin Andrews on ‘religious enclaves’ – and now Bernie Finn on beheadings.  Scott Morrison in general. Mr Finn jumped into what has become a rather messy debate on assimilation by saying on Facebook that he failed to understand “how concerns about a religion that seems to sanction decapitation can be construed as racism”.

The halal butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Continue reading "ICB: Does Islam sanction beheadings?" »

Public money should not be spent on promoting religion.

We don’t need religious school chaplains. State schools should be well and truly secular. Religion is a choice, not an educational need. Taxpayers should not foot the bill for others to indulge their beliefs.

Except in Indonesia.

Continue reading "We should fund Islamic schools for our own good" »