Daily Times

In a prime example of first-world problems, Australians took to their properly tarmacked streets on April 5, 2015, saying: “No to sharia law.” This movement, dubbed ‘Reclaim Australia’, attracted thousands of protestors in 16 cities nationwide. Muslim community leaders, meanwhile, scratched their heads in bewilderment. After all, the nearest place where any manner of sharia could surface is Indonesia, thousands of nautical miles away. Furthermore, with Muslims being only two percent of the population, the emergence of Australian ayatollahs is extremely unlikely. Supporters of the movement insist they only stand for “Australian values”. Values, in turn, have nothing to do with the original Australians: the trivialised Aborigines.
Beyond the abundance of free time and an anglo-centric worldview, what Reclaim Australia really wants is unclear. At the protests, there were skinheads marching with Israeli flags pretending the Holocaust never happened. The movement’s website lists nine goals, including the ban on halal certification, removing Islam from public school education, and to “introduce pride” in the national flag and anthem. Ironically, its own supporters would burn the Australian flag twice over the protest weekend. Their placards did not make much sense either: one read “Sharia Law = Pedophilia, Rape, Racism. God Save Us.” This sounds more like the Old Testament than any legit sharia interpretation.
Predictably, this bigotry has emerged with Prime Minister Tony Abbot in charge. Just last year, his ‘Stop The Boats’ anti-immigration push was condemned as Islamophobic. The accompanying graphic novel, showing Afghan asylum seekers in detention camps, was derided for poor taste. Ghaith Krayem, president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, fumed that elected officials had not exemplified “what Australian values are really about”. The protests came at an unfortunate time for Abbot, who had recently criticised the Muslim community for “not doing enough to combat radicalism”. As Ghaith says, when blatant racism is “directed at us they have remained silent”.
To be sure, Australia has its share of political loons and most are ultra-nationalists. The Australia First Party endlessly bleats “multiculturalism means death” and Pauline Hanson, of the One Nation Party, warns Australia could be “swamped by Asians”. The silence of mainstream politicians is more deafening. Since last year’s Sydney siege episode by an Iranian man that left three people dead, Muslims have felt increasingly scrutinised and isolated. A recent survey by the University of Queensland showed that 75 percent Australian-Muslims say they are unfairly profiled by antiterrorism laws. By comparison, German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out against her country’s own far-right nuts, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA), by condemning the “hatred in their hearts”.
Reclaim Australia’s John Oliver told the media that the protests were “not against any particular race or any particular religion”. He added: “We are against the extremists of one particular religion.” Going by his website, that would imply, facetiously, that only Muslim extremists eat halal meat or wear the hijab. Randa Kattan, CEO of Arab Council Australia, warns that “it only takes one incident” for racial tensions to blow up. She added that the turnout “might be insignificant” but the “damage, it is significant”. Even as Oliver stressed that “we are only opposed to extremism”, his sister-in-arms, Pauline Hanson, confirmed “we do not like Islam”.
Justifiably, the global war on terror is biased towards Islamic extremism but the problem here is deeper. Greg Fealy, from the Australian National University, believes that, though the movement wants “to protect an Australian way of life”, their vision of such a life very specifically “rejects the role of Muslims in Australia”. Oliver, though, insists that Muslims are on board with Reclaim Australia because “they can see what is happening and they do not like what is happening”. Of course some are; it is damn or be damned. How else would Nazi soldiers have justified mass slaughter at Hitler’s behest?
Australian Muslims have become the “other”, a figure of colour that keeps changing ethnicities. This tag, over time, has applied to everyone from Asians to Arabs, and now Muslims. Reclaim Australia’s Rhonda Cashmore says: “We are protesting against immigrants who do not want to follow our laws.” The suggestion that any naturalised Australian, regardless of religion, is conspiring against the state is highly inflammatory. “Islamification” also makes little sense when you consider the community’s political impotence; they just do not have the numbers. Kon Karapanagiotidis, from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, says the “community feels like it is under attack” and “isolated and unwelcome”.
The Australian obsession with ‘whiteness’ is nothing new. A ‘White Australia’ policy, officially known as the Immigration Restriction Act, was in play right until 1973. Some of the country’s jihadist fears are understandable, as 200 citizens have joined Islamic State (IS) and may become terrorist returnees. Anti-Muslim fear mongering, however, only fuels the myth of a large-scale western conspiracy against Islam. Unfortunately, the idea that a hateful ideology can be countered with more hate does not work. If anything, it breeds the kind of disillusionment that extremists are hardwired to exploit.

The writer is a freelance columnist and audio engineer based in Islamabad