Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It may not be the most polite topic of conversation; it may not be the sort of thing that is discussed at those chic dinner parties of the urban ‘merlot and escargot’ crowd; but the time for debonair self-censorship is over. The era of political correctness died on 11 September 2001, and the Bali, Madrid and London bombings drove yet more nails into the PC coffin. Australia is now facing some unpleasant truths that are long overdue for a public airing. We are currently engaged in a war with a global jihadist movement that seeks to force a resurrected medievalism upon us at gunpoint and sadly, within our own domestic Muslim community, there is a small radical minority that lends aid and comfort to the enemy.

It was a welcome development when the Prime Minister stepped up to state the bleeding obvious. John Howard declared that the principles of Australian democracy must always trump the customs of an immigrant group if those two value systems conflict. Mr Howard demonstrated political courage when he took that general principle and applied it to our current dilemmas. He explicitly criticised a small section of the Islamic population that is unwilling to integrate, and the Prime Minister promised that the treatment of women in an inferior fashion would not be tolerated in Australia.

Of course, the real surprise is why such a quintessentially mainstream Australian view should be regarded as controversial in any way. But predictable yelps of sanctimonious outrage over John Howard’s comments from all the usual suspects did not take long to emerge. Islamic leadership reacted by shooting the messenger rather than considering the message. One member of the government’s Muslim Reference Group accused the Prime Minister of racism, claiming that he was playing ‘the politics of the lowest common denominator’. This reference group leader then attempted to deny the undeniable, disputing Mr Howard’s claim that women in many Islamic societies were oppressed. But does he think that the widespread practice of female genital mutilation in Egypt, Sudan and Somalia is just a quaint ethnic custom that we are obligated to respect?

A former chairman of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils even stooped to playing the race riot card. He warned that John Howard’s comments threatened to ignite further Cronulla-style violence because young Muslims were ‘bound to react’ to such prime ministerial provocation. Yet while the defensiveness of Australia’s Muslim leadership is understandable, the cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty of its allies on the Left is not. The so-called progressive movement is unwilling to deal honestly with the elephant of domestic jihadism that looms large in our national living room. In their rush to the barricades of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism, leftist parliamentarians routinely turn a blind eye to the more unsavoury facets of Islamic radicalism—case in point: homosexuality.

The fundamentalists of Hezbollah make no bones about their belief that sexual relations between consenting male adults should be punishable by death. In fact, only last year the Lebanese Shi’ite movement’s Iranian patrons hanged two young men for that crime. There were Hezbollah flags in abundance during recent Australian street protests against Israel’s military action in Lebanon, but Australian Greens Senator Kerry Nettle did not let the flamboyant presence of the jihadist lobby deter her from speaking at an anti-Zionist rally in Sydney. Senator Nettle is an outspoken supporter of same sex marriage and legal equality for gay couples; yet the senator from New South Wales was willing to make common cause with exponents of a movement that would make homosexuality a capital offence. This ‘Red-Green’ alliance between the Left and Islamic radicalism is a particularly bizarre manifestation of the ‘politics makes strange bedfellows’ principle. But it seems that joint hostility towards the Jewish state creates common ground enough to cement even the most improbable of partnerships.

In the Middle East, the statute of limitations has expired on blaming European colonialism and Zionism for the self-inflicted ills of the Arab world. In Australia, accountability for Islamic radicalism cannot fairly be laid at the doorstep of federal or state governments. In both the Levant and Lakemba, Muslim leaders must face their internal problems honestly rather than pleading the abuse excuse. The commonsense comments of the Prime Minister about the need for Muslim integration into mainstream society are a good place to start.