Reading The Koran

Two recent developments in that regard are to be welcomed. The first is the encouragement of open public discussion and debate about Islam which ought to be afforded by a proposed national Koran publicity programme alluded to recently on the web site of the Islam Research and Educational Academy (IREA).

In the contemporary context, Australians can read the sentencing remarks of judges in the steadily increasing number of politico-religious motivated terrorism cases commencing with the decision of Justice Desmond Fagan of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in R v Bayda; R v Namoa delivered on 31 January 2019. After pleading not guilty, Mr Bayda and Ms Namoa were each convicted on a charge under the Commonwealth Criminal Code that in 2015 when they were aged 18 years they had conspired with each other to do acts in preparation for a terrorist act (or acts), an offence punishable by life imprisonment.

Justice Fagan concluded, amongst other factual findings based on the extensive evidence before him including admissions of Mr Bayda and Ms Namoa, that hostile verses in The Koran which ordain intolerance, violence and domination, would likely embolden terrorists to think they were in common cause with all believers, and that they are the spearhead of the religion. His Honour went on to state that such verses needed to be disavowed by Muslims. If Australian followers of the religion, including those who profess deep knowledge, were to make a clear public disavowal of these verses, as not authoritative instructions from The Almighty, then the terrorists' moral conviction might be weakened.

Justice Fagan was denounced by Islamic community organizations including the IREA and the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC). The rancorous tone of some of those responses is perplexing. It should not be difficult for ANIC to state publicly that, in Australia, Islam is no different from any other religion or collection of religious ideas, not least because of participation of Imams in a variety of inter-faith activities and ANIC's pursuit of successful integration within mainstream society.

However, readers of ANIC's web site, more particularly itsrecent public statements on Marriage (2017), Judicial Process and Participation of Muslims (2017), Homosexuality (2018), the "Disrespectful" Attitude to Islam in The Daily Telegraph (2018), and its disapproval of Justice Fagan's sentencing remarks in the Bayda/Namoacase, will discern that secular standards and Australian law are subordinated to The Koran, Islam and the Islamic community in descending order of importance of the criteria which govern ANIC in the carrying out of its activities.

Those statements suggest that ANIC cannot bring itself to acknowledge in unequivocal terms that in Australia the contents of The Koran are not supreme. As Justice Fagan observed in his sentencing remarks in an earlier terrorism case (Khaja, 2018), "Governance by unalterable faith-based laws would obviously be antithetical to Australian democracy."