The implied freedom of political communication is a constitutional principle introduced by the High Court in the early 1990s. This freedom should prevent any Australian government from disproportionately restricting free speech. This is based on the idea that our Constitution requires a system of representative government where people should freely communicate opinions about matters of social and political importance.
However, the idea of introducing laws which protect certain religious individuals from bieng “offended” is advocated by the likes of Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, an Egyptian-born and educated Sunni scholar and Grand Mufti of Australia from September 2011 to March 2018.[14]Dr Mohamed once told SBS Arabic 24 that, as the country’s highest Islamic authority, he had personally requested the Australian government to criminalise the criticism of Islam.[15] In Dr Mohammed’s own words, he is seeking ‘the introduction of new laws which would make it an offence to discriminate against Muslims’.[16] For good measure, Dr Mohamed once stated that ‘everyone, Muslim or non-Muslims, no matter what colour they are, we are all guests on Aboriginal land’.[17]
If the same rationale were applied to the countries of Northern Africa, and even most of the countries across the Middle East, then all Muslims inhabiting those regions would be considered “guests on Christian land”. After all, when Muhammad was born, in 570 AD, ‘a large area in northern Arabia was fully Christianised, and there were also a number of Christian towns in the south (modern Yemen).[18]
Following his conversion, the Apostle Paul devolved his initial missionary efforts to Arabia, not Europe (Gal. 1:17). As for North Africa, by 300 AD it was the most Christianised of the Western Roman Empire, and home to such great early Christian leaders as Tertulian, Cyprian, and St Augustine.[19]
Christianity did not start as a Western movement. Prior to Islam, Christianity was predominantly a Middle Eastern religion. By 325 AD, more than half of all Christians lived in the East and North Africa. Christianity existed as the primary religion of Syria, Persia, Armenia, North Africa, and considerable parts of Arabia. Christianity only became a “Western faith” because Europe was the only continent where it was not conquered by Islam.[20]
But let’s go back to Dr Muhammed. He once criticised Justice Fagan of the NSW Supreme Court for asking why some Islamic leaders fail to disavow “belligerent” verses of the Koran in order to weaken the convictions of radical Muslims. “This will never happen,” was Dr Mohammed’s response. “You don’t ask to disavow medicine if some doctors exploit it, you don’t ask to disavow law if some judge misuses it.”[21]
While the report demands Muslim be insulated by law and sanction from offence one cannot ignore the irony that certain Muslim leaders have no qualms in offending the nation’s majority ethnic group. Ahmad Malas, a director of the Lebanese Muslim Association, has called on the Australian government to create laws to combat what he describes as “white supremacy”. Mr Malas wants our politicians to address “the need for the Government to take responsibility at stamping out the ideology of white supremacy’.[22]
Having arrived in Australia, predominantly an ethnically white society with a rich Christian heritage, some Muslims escaping from oppressive regimes, rather than integrating, regrettably tend to develop a hatred for the host population and culture that so generously received them. Such people aspire, as author Rodney Stark puts it, to avenge the ‘sins’ of white Australians, leading to ‘a visceral hatred for the ethnic majority is developed’.[23] Evidence of this fact is found in a document issued by the Australian Muslim Community, Christchurch and Islamophobia.
Published on March 25, 2019, this document accuses all white Australians of bearing collective guilt for the “systematic massacre” of Aborigines. Apparently, Australians of many cultural backgrounds are collectively responsible for these crimes! White people, as an ethnic group, the statement goes on to state, are collectively accountable for the ‘white supremacist violence on this continent for over two centuries’.[24] This remarkably racist document has been signed by more than 450 Muslim leaders and organisations, including presidents, both past and present, of the Islamic Council of Victoria.[25]
Curiously, anyone who bothers to read Islamic sources would know that the prophet Mohammed is often described as being “very white”. He bought and sold dark-skinned slaves and took such slaves as spoils of war. The number of dark-skinned slaves owned by him is estimated as high as seventy.[26] Some of these non-white slaves were women whose husbands had been killed in Mohammed’s wars of conquest. The two primary books of the Islamic faith, the Koran and the Hadith, appear to endorse unlimited sexual relations with these female slaves, even if the women had just been captured.[27]
And since the Prophet owned dark-skinned slaves,[28] Muslim scholars such as the celebrated Ahmad Baba (1556 — 1627 AD), a Muslim jurist, writer, and cultural leader, authoritatively stated that Islamic law fully authorises the enslavement of non-Muslims.[29] This might be why the African slave trade has been carried out by Muslim Arabs for centuries.
In Saudi Arabia, slavery was abolished only in 1962, although the practice is still practiced in countries such as Libya[30], Mauritania,[31] and Yemen[32], to name only a few. In Libya, ‘thousands of black Africans find themselves bought and sold, forced to work for nothing, and facing torture at the hands of their owners’.[33]
The Islamic Grievance Industry
And now it is time to address the Islamic grievance industry. Not a long time ago the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at the United Nations a motion recommending stricter limits on free speech in the domain of religion.
On that occasion, the OIC urged the UN Secretary General to convene a special session of the General Assembly, to declare “Islamophobia” a form of discrimination akin to the crime of racism. A special rapporteur for the monitoring of Islamophobia was suggested to address “systemic Islamophobia” in Western societies.[34]
Turkey’s autocratic President, Recept Erdogan, claims that the integration of Muslims in Western societies amount to a “crime against humanity”. This matches OIC’s perspective that ‘Muslims should not be … attempted to be assimilated but should be accommodated’. [35] At the same time, Erdogan is successfully dismantling of country’s secular system.[36]
This form of accommodation suggested by the OIC is the opposite of real tolerance and healthy social integration.[37] This fact is identifiable in the discourse of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who postulates that ‘that the rise of Islamophobia in the western countries and India has morphed into violent expression of … abhorrent manifestation of racism’.[38] Curiously enough, Hindu Indians are deemed “racist” by him due to a fear of Pakistani Muslims who actually belong to the same ethnic group.
Of course, Islam is not a race and the problems related to such religion are not necessarily the by-product of fear-mongering and fiction, but sometimes facts and evidence. Be that as it may, due to ongoing pressure the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has proposed to Australia a range of substantive changes to combat alleged “Islamophobia”. This includes beefing up the anti-discrimination laws and censoring media and public commentary.[39] The UN Committee contends racist incidents in Australia are common occurrences often ‘treated with impunity’, and that the average Australian citizen must be better policed by ‘law enforcement officials’.[40]
In my humble opinion, such allegation is an insult to the generally highly tolerant Australian population. To speak of “Islamophobia” in Australia often means to censor reasonable opinion and avoid constructive debate.For a long time now, it could be argued that Australian governments’ responses to Islam are influenced by a desire to protect Muslims from criticism. The problem is aggravated by the fact that some universities have centres to promote Islamic and Arab cultures.
In this sense, the Pakistani-born Australian academic Samina Yasmeen is one of those who represent the academic side of the Islamic grievance industry. The Director of the Centre for Muslim States and Societies at the University of Western Australia, she is a self-described expert in ‘the role of Islam in world politics’.[41] Professor Yasmeen once criticised Tony Abbott for expressing ‘the wish that more Muslim leaders would say Islam is a religion of peace and mean it’.[42] She accused the former Prime Minister of ‘supporting a negative view of Muslims in Australia and “othering” them’.[43]
Ironically, what Abbott said has been confirmed in Shari’a Law in the West (Oxford University Press, 2010), a law book edited by law professors Rex Ahdar and Nicholas Aroney. The authors argue that,
since September 11, 2001, governments eagerly awaiting firm denunciation by Muslim community spokesmen of … terrorist attacks have been consistently disappointed. … The extent to which this silence represents tacit acquiescence and support for the radicals remains a moot point.[44]
When the media reported violent Muslim protests on the streets of Sydney, with protestors attacking the police, Professor Yasmeen excused such behaviour by attempting to establish a moral equivalence between real acts of violence and YouTube videos that might ‘inflame emotions across the Muslim world.’[45] These videos ‘violate the special place assigned to Prophet Mohammed. Any disrespect is felt as an intrusion into this sacred space’, she said.[46]
By scapegoating YouTube videos Professor Yasmin is placing the onus upon freedom of speech. The unmistaken implication is that if only people stopped criticising her religion, then terrorist attacks wouldn’t happen. Accordingly, any criticism of Islam is treated as a primary source of violence. For this is what she says:
I would argue that intentionally violating spaces sacred to Muslims or any other people falls within the space of violence. Though not obviously targeting anyone living today, deliberating inflaming emotions needs to be acknowledged as violence.[47]
By condemning “hateful rhetoric” in the same breath as actual physical violence, the implications for free speech are ominous. Professor Yasmeen represents the academic side of a jihad against free speech, warning that non-Muslims will continue to be “potential targets” of Jihadists so long as they keep offending Muslim sensitivities. She even talks about “coordinating financial sanctions” that, as he puts it, ‘could help the Muslims deal with such attacks on religions feelings’. To ‘help Muslims to deal with such attacks on religious feelings’, Professor Yasmeen recommends
a billion dollar lawsuit against those who target religious beliefs, and engage in intense violation of sacred spaces, would shift the whole discussion to a different place. Even if the courts throw out the suit, it would focus attention on legal pathways to oppose such violence aimed at space that is sacred for a quarter of humanity. It may even create pathways that counter violence of this kind. [48]
Professor Yasmin is the author of an article on countering Islamophobia. There she accuses “Australian leaders” of not having always ‘taken responsibility for countering Islamophobia. Politicians need to adopt a consistent policy of speaking out against acts of … negativity towards Australian Muslims when they happen’.[49] As a consequence, according to Dr Mark Durie, an Australian Anglican priest and a scholar in linguistics and theology,
We are seeing the privileging of Islam in the public square, mandating of compulsory respect for Islam, erosion of the principle of reciprocity and equality, implementation of Sharia restrictions on freedom of speech and religious practice, denial and deception about the teachings of Islam including jihad and the Sharia, and denial about the religious motivations of some Muslims who engage in intimidation and criminal acts.[50]
To place any religion beyond criticism just because some Muslims may feel offended is to ignore, as Salman Rushdie puts it, ‘the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well-funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, into cowed silence’.[51]
Furthermore, it is simply not possible to protect anyone’s right not to be offended without, at the same time, grievously impinging on the freedom of others who might strongly disagree. As for myself, I remain on the side of freedom and would never trust our notorious politicians to shield anyone, including myself, of certain speeches that may be disparaging of religion, including my own religion.
Augusto Zimmermann is foundation dean and professor of law at Alphacrucis University College and served as associate dean at Murdoch University. He is also a former commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia.