Government Money Corrupts Community

If one were to survey the organisational landscape of the Australian Muslim community, it would soon become apparent that there exists something of a dichotomy: on one side sit grassroots, community-funded organisations and, on the other, sits a class of organisation that seems to exist only through the acquisition of government grants or the syphoning of money from community projects such as schools. There is no need to give specific examples, but suffice to say, there are some grants-fed organisations whose eyes remain firmly fixed on the public purse rather than the needs and aspirations of the communities they claim to represent.

And who can blame them? When community organisations are beholden to government for their continued operation (and therefore the continued employment of the people who run them), their focus must be on the government’s needs; in the same way as the providers of goods and services in a free market must ensure that they meet the demands of that market in order to stay viable. However, this is not an exact analogy: for whereas the businessman is tailoring his product to meet the needs of the buyer, the grants-fed Muslim organisation tailors the services it ostensibly offers the Muslim community to suit the needs of government because whereas the Muslims might use the services, it is the government that ultimately pays for them.

It is for this reason that we see that one of the few things that unites our fragmented community is a complete disatisfaction with some of the self-styled ‘peak organisations’. It seems, to many Muslims, that these organisations have no appreciable interest in meeting the needs of the Muslim community. This is because, ultimately, it is not the Muslim community that pays their bills. Whether they deliver worthwhile services to the community is immaterial as is whether the community is satisfied with the services being provided. Other than run schools — which are themselves, it seems, used primarily as cash cows by the owning organisations — what do they really do for the grassroots of our community?

Contrast this with community-funded organisations, and the disparity becomes even more clear: community-funded organisations, such as FAMSY, IISNA, IISCA, IDCA, or UMA, can easily attract over a thousand people to a single event and have a real and quantifiable support base. This is not to say that everything they do is perfect or everyone agrees with it, but by relying on the community, or a subset of the community, for financial support, they are forced to offer services and products that actually benefit their supporters. If they don’t, then they will no longer be viable and will be ‘forced’ from the market as other organisations appear to meet the unmet demand.

Now, just as the savvy businessman creates products to meet demand, some of our Muslim leaders have confected a product to meet government demand for ’security’. The government fears domestic extremism, so the sellers of security snake oil in the government’s Muslim Community Reference Group have offered the government a set of ’solutions’. Unfortunately, the government seems to have bought some of the proposals — at a cost to the Australian taxpayer of $35 million dollars.This is, of course, hardly surprising. Indeed, some community spokespeople and Reference Group members have long called for government money to be poured into a variety of social engineering projects in the name of fighting ‘extremism’. As Mark Twain quipped, prophecy is always rather difficult; particularly with respect to the future, but I would predict that a fair amount of this money will find its way into ‘programs’ and ‘initiatives’ being run by members of the government’s MCRG.

Some of the ‘initiatives‘ include the establishment of ‘employment coordinators’ to address Muslim unemployment, the establishment of a new institute to teach government-endorsed ‘moderate Islam’ to young Muslims, the funding of assorted ‘interfaith dialogue projects’, the continuation of the Muslim Community Reference Group (MCRG), the establishment and operation of a Muslim ‘helpline’ providing counselling services to Muslim youth, specialist training and educational material on Islam for law enforcement agencies and our personal favourite, the provision of ‘crises management’ training to Muslim community leaders.

It is unclear how these things will actually address the supposed problem of ‘extremism’ but one must wonder whether it is appropriate for government to be funding, creating and overseeing these sorts of projects. Should the Australian taxpayer, for example, be expected to foot the bill for providing specialist counselling services to young Muslims or should this be funded and operated by the community itself? If the government must fund a specialist hotline for young Muslims, then why should it also not fund and operate a specialist hotline for young Jews, Buddhists, or those who profess no faith at all? Is it really the job of government to teach Muslim leaders how to manage a crises or is this something that should be expected of anyone who has managed to reach a leadership position in the community?

Muslims who care about the sad state of leadership in our community should be concerned about the flood of government money into the community. If this money reaches those who purport to be our representatives it will only exacerbate our problems: by allowing these community leaders to continue to ignore the needs and wishes of the people they claim to represent.

The answer to most of our problems with Muslim leadership is to demand that those who claim to represent us are accountable to us. The best way to do this is to make them dependent on us for funding their projects. Then, and only then, might we start seeing our leaders do things that actually address real needs and deliver real benefits instead of chasing government funding and talking up the threat of ‘extremism’ in order to get it.