More outrages, more revulsion, more enmity

Judge Michael Higgins famously asserted in his finding (pdf file 324KB) against the Christian Pentecostal group, Catch the Fire Ministries, and Pastors Nalliah and Scot, under Victoria’s racial and religious vilification legislation, that the “interpretation of the Koran by Pastor Scot represented the views of a small group of fundamentalists, namely, Wahabbists, who are located in the Gulf states and who are a minority group, and their views bear no relationship to mainstream Muslim beliefs and, in particular, Australian Muslims”.

Judge Higgins, demonstrating further his theological acumen, went on to declare that the one billion adherents of Islam “regard the Koran as equivalent to the Bible: that it agrees substantially with Christian beliefs save for particular events”. This would be news to most Muslims and Christians, if not downright offensive to both.

Furthermore, the judge remarkably assessed the shocking material cited from the Koran by Pastor Scot as no longer relevant to the 21st century. Such a judgment is clearly contrary to the views of those many Muslims, including Australian Muslims, who regard the Koran as the literal unalterable word of Allah.

Not that we particularly need it, but the events of the past couple of months, even weeks, have certainly undermined the judge’s decision in Victoria’s first religious vilification trial.

Contra Judge Higgins, consider the following:

• a former Qantas baggage handler, Bilal Khazal faces a terrorism charge in the NSW Supreme Court;
• Keysar Trad, president of the Lebanese Muslim Association in Sydney, is sacked and replaced by supporters of the radical cleric, Sheik Faiz Mohammad, whom he had criticised for claiming women incited rape;
• four Muslims caught up in the recent anti-terrorism raids in Melbourne, tell The Age reporter Ian Munro, "In our religion, they don't have democracy. When we say democracy, it means we are making a partner with Allah in making laws. Allah does not need a partner. That's why we don't believe in democracy.” According to Munro’s report, they affirm for themselves that religion embraces fighting for beliefs and fighting the enemies of Allah;
• this week a Melbourne Imam, Sheikh Mohammed Omran, excuses Osama bin Laden of any wrong doing over the New York and London bombings and says he doesn’t believe anyone following the Islamic faith was involved in the latter bombings while at the same time, the London police report a lead on four Britons, of Pakistani origin, heading up their list of suspects; and
• while all of this is going on, at the Amsterdam District Court, a middle class Dutch Moroccan Muslim takes full responsibility for his action in murdering the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, assuring the court, “one day, should I be free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same … I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion.”

The standard response from the Islamic Council of Victoria is that these people are not typical of Australian Muslims. While we must believe - or at least hope - that this assertion is true, the evidence is building up that there are sufficient Muslims in Australia who do believe as Pastor Scot depicted them and this has got to be a worry to the rest of us.

Rather than the token, ritual protestations from peak Islamic bodies, what ordinary Australians need to see are very public demonstrations by ordinary Muslims in large numbers out on the streets protesting the actions of Islamic terrorists. Some day we will have our own version of September 11 and July 7 in either Sydney or Melbourne. The more these outrages occur around the world, the more the revulsion and enmity will build up against Muslims in general, however unjustified that may be.

Which brings us back to Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot.

At no stage did these men incite their audience to rise up and attack Muslims, rather they exhorted their hearers to love Muslims.

As matters stand with the Victorian legislation, introduced to promote religious harmony in the State of Victoria, we can say without fear of contradiction that the government has managed to set Muslim against Christian, Christian against Muslim, and even Christian against Christian.

At the present time, petitions for the repeal of the religious aspects of the Act are widely circulating around churches of every description: Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Uniting, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Baptist, and so on, garnering tens of thousands of signatures. Meetings are being held to protest the legislation, members of Parliament are being spoken to.

Christians are not noted for scurrying off to the nearest lawyer whenever somebody violates their self-invented freedom never to be offended or reviled. However unless the government removes the religious aspects from the Act, it runs the serious risk of Christians losing their normal equanimity and to begin visiting other religions’ places of worship and instruction, making notes, recording speeches and taking away literature for further assessment and complaint.

Is this what the government wants?

And why stop at other religions? Expect the Comedy Festival to come under close inspection, for if there is one set of events that in the words of the Act, “incites hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, that other person or class of persons” on the basis of their religious belief or activity, it is the Comedy Festival. And why stop with the Comedy Festival, why not the next Piss Christ event, or for that matter the gross distortion of the Christian story in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code?

The government seriously erred in lumping religious vilification in with racial vilification. Race and religion, with few exceptions, in the modern world are not the same thing. Race for any person is a given, not so religion. Both Islam and Christianity are vibrant missionary religions, seeking converts wherever they can, and this situation will not change.

As far as the Islamic Council of Victoria’s action against Catch the Fire and the two pastors is concerned, the chances are highly likely that aspects of the judge’s decision will be overturned in the Victorian Supreme Court, though the pastors may yet face fines and time in jail for conscience sake - how good will that look for the Bracks Government or for Muslims generally when it is considered how thin-skinned they demonstrated themselves to be in not tolerating any quoting and analysis of the Koran and Hadith from a Christian perspective?

Quite apart from issues of freedom of speech and religious freedom, the government needs to understand this Act is very seriously damaging the social and religious fabric of Victoria. In view of the mounting criticism of the Act and the most recent disavowal of religious vilification legislation by the Premier of NSW, we remain confident that the Act will in fact be amended to remove the religious aspects from it, or at the very least, amended to prevent a repetition of the action of the Islamic Council of Victoria against Catch the Fire Ministries.