Religious Tolerance

Mrs IRWIN (Fowler) (4.36 pm)—The events of the last few weeks, with the government’s antiterror legislation and highly publicised raids on homes in Sydney and Melbourne, have left many Australian Muslim families greatly distressed. Their feelings were well expressed in an article by Muslim journalist Taghred Chandab in the Sun-Herald of 22 November. She wrote:

I am tired of defending a peaceful religion and condemning the actions of those who have turned Islam into a mockery. I am tired of hearing how we as Muslims need to be more vocal about denouncing terrorism. We have condemned terrorism over and over again but it doesn’t seem to be enough for the wider community.

Those words echo the thoughts of many of my Muslim constituents. Taghred Chandab went on to give examples of how taunts and jibes in the workplace and elsewhere are causing great distress. I know from walking around shopping centres in my electorate, with its small but significant Muslim population, that the reaction to women wearing the hijab or to men in traditional Pakistani dress is more than noticeable. Muslims may not be the target of terror laws, as the Prime Minister tells us, but Australian Muslims are certainly the target of unwarranted and divisive campaigns of whispers, smears and insults, and they could easily be excused for thinking that they are the target of proposed terror laws.

At a time when the government proposes to make changes to sedition laws, it focuses on direct incitement rather than on the more destructive whisper campaigns against Muslims in Australia. The rantings of late night radio talkback hosts and their ratbag callers are usually kept to whispers, but the message is clear— the ‘we know what you’re thinking’ kind of dog whistle that leaves some things unsaid but gets its meaning across all the same. Then there are those like the Prime Minister who use words like ‘fundamentalist’ when they really mean ‘violent extremists’. The two terms are not the same. If I were to say that someone was a fundamentalist Christian, I would be referring to someone who held the belief that the Bible was the literal and factual record of history and prophecy, as well as matters of morals and faith. But, while a Christian fundamentalist might cause some concern with regard to particular beliefs, few people would quake in fear at the term ‘Christian fundamentalist’.

Those who refer to Muslim fundamentalists may choose to quote from the Holy Koran, and there are passages that might be taken to show a vengeful God. But when it comes to good old-fashioned violence, the Judaeo-Christian God is hard to beat. I will take one example from the Bible story of the Exodus. In that story, God first hardens the heart of Pharaoh to make sure that the Egyptian ruler will not be moved by the pleas of Moses to let his people go. Then, because Pharoah’s heart is hardened, God turns the Nile into blood so that people cannot drink its water and will suffer from thirst. Not satisfied, God sends swarms of locusts and flies, rains hail, fire and thunder on them and destroys all the trees and plants until nothing green remains. God orders every firstborn male child to be slaughtered. The massacre continues until there is not one house where one is not dead. Then, while the Egyptian families are mourning their dead, God orders Moses to loot from their houses all their gold and silver and clothing. Finally, God’s thirst for blood is satisfied and God pauses to rest and boasts, ‘I have made sport of the Egyptians.’

If that is not enough, the story continues as Moses heads into the Promised Land. There he is urged to hack women and children to death, rip unborn babies from their mother’s womb and level the cities. The virgins are taken at God’s command for the pleasure of his holy warriors and, when his holy warriors spare the lives of 50,000 captives, God sends Moses back to finish the job saying:

And when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them; and show no mercy to them ... and your eyes shall not pity them.