Accept it - Australia is secular, liberal, democratic

Further, the most recent study of Australia’s Muslim community conducted in 2004 by Professor Abdullah Saeed, of Melbourne University, shows that over half of Australian Muslims were born in Australia.

Much is made of the size and composition of congregations attending the lectures of radical clerics in Sydney and Melbourne. Yet the 1,000 or so that attend the lessons of these sheiks fade into insignificance compared to the 25,000 or so Muslim Australians that attended the Multicultural Eid Festival at Sydney’s Fairfield Showground on Sunday, November 20.

It seems in recent times some conservative leaders have found a niche in Muslim-bashing. What this small fringe of conservatives needs to accept is that Australia is no longer a Christian nation. Australia is a secular liberal democratic nation.

Further, despising followers of non-Christian faiths, especially other semitic faiths, is hardly a conservative agenda. Judaism and Islam are more similar to each other than to Christianity. Even the most cursory study of Jewish and Muslim scriptures will show that observant Jews and Muslims essentially share the same values as conservatives of Christian faiths or indeed no faith in particular.

Muslim voters are just as concerned about ensuring governments act to protect families, to ensure the rule of law and to allow business to operate in a free market economy. Readers who don’t believe me can ask prominent Australian businessmen John Ilhan and Ahmed Fahour.

The current anti-Muslim trend has worried Jewish leaders who rightly fear that their community will be next targeted. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry was one of the first non-Muslim groups to condemn Liberal backbencher-for-life Bronwyn Bishop’s call to ban the wearing of headscarves in state schools. The ECAJ statement expressed concern that this would be the first step toward the banning of other religious symbols, including the Jewish yarmulke.

Finally, a word of warning to anti-Muslim and allegedly conservative MPs seeking to discriminate against Muslims in migration policy. One of Australia’s most senior DIMIA bureaucrats is none other than Mr Abul Rizvi, the son of an Indian Muslim history professor who taught at ANU. The department’s own website states that Mr Rizvi is responsible for policy development and implementation in the areas of migration and temporary entry, refugees, settlement, citizenship and multicultural affairs.

But in case anyone doubted Mr Rizvi’s professionalism and impartiality, the website also states: “Mr Rizvi has had a long standing involvement in Australia’s immigration programs, both permanent migration and temporary entry. His leadership in reshaping the size and composition of Australia’s migration and temporary entry programs has positioned us to respond directly to Australia’s economic development, social and population needs.”

So we can thank Mr Rizvi for implementing a raft of policies deemed by some to be anti-Muslim and seen as popular to Muslim-bashers.

Mr Stone may be calling for the formation of the Queen Isabella Society. But for Jewish and Muslim Australians familiar with Spanish history, immigration policies inspired by the inquisition should be left in the history books where they belong.