Last week, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard provoked a torrent of criticism when he told reporters:
Fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language if you don’t already speak it.
Ordinarily, such comments wouldn’t meet much controversy but the problem was the PM made them in relation to a section of the Muslim community. Here’s a summary of some of the responses.
Iktimal Hage-Ali, the Alawi representative on the Prime Minister’s Muslim Community Reference Group (MCRG) responded:
There’s a whole lot of other ethnic communities whose parents, whose grandparents don’t speak the English language, and it’s never a problem in the mainstream Australian community for them to go on living their everyday life without speaking the language.
Yet as soon as it’s a person of Arab descent or a Muslim person … politicians feel like they need to bring it to mainstream attention as the only group, like marginalising us even more then we already feel marginalised today.
Ameer Ali, former head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), responded with what some might see as a threat.
We have already witnessed one incident in Sydney recently, in Cronulla. I don’t want these scenes to be repeated because when you antagonise the younger generation, younger group, they are bound to react.
The Islamic Council of Victoria issued a similar warningi:
A lot of Muslims look at the Federal Government and see a Government that doesn’t like them, rightly or wrongly, and that drives . . . anti-social behaviour..This is not an isolated incident, and it is starting to construct a very dejected community.
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph described Dr Ali’s comments as ‘blackmail’.
Islamic leaders are trying to gag Prime Minister John Howard from speaking out against Muslims who refuse to integrate, threatening that any criticism of their culture could lead to another race riot.
Mustapha Kara-Ali, another MCRG member, accused the government of pandering to “white Australia”. And Aziza Abdel-Halim described the Prime Minister’s comments as “hitting below the belt”.
Firstly, the ‘veiled threat’ seems to be a technique employed by unimaginative Muslim leaders the world over. Change your foreign policy, or you will see terrorism here. We wouldn’t want that to happen but, you know, we can’t do much about it if you don’t change your policy. Or, if you don’t fund our project, then we’re going to see more and more Muslims radicalised. You get the drift. Surely, if we oppose government decisions or the Prime Minister’s comments, we can put forward more compelling arguments than what will be seen by many Australians as a threat of sorts?
Now, as for me, I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with what the Prime Minister said (Muslims should learn English) but, obviously, the criticism applies across a broad range of immigrant groups and not just to Muslims. If the Prime Minister was suggesting that this problem only exists in the Muslim community then he is wrong. There are many Europeans, Asians and Africans that don’t speak English and it would be unfair and inaccurate to focus only on Muslims. It is understandable why Muslims would take offence to being singled out (if that is what the PM did).
However, one cannot understate the importance of all immigrants learning the English language and it is, sadly, not uncommon to find people that have been in this country for decades and yet cannot speak English. This is particularly problematic in the case of those speaking on behalf of the Muslim community: it sends a message to the broader Australian public that Muslims are intrinsically ‘foreign’ when the person representing us is speaking in a foreign language or broken English.
7 comments ↓
There are many well spoken ENGLISH speaking Muslims here in Australia so why is that we constantly see the “broken English, hard to understand” types representing or speaking on behalf of us?
For what it’s worth, I do think the PM was singling out Muslims. I’m not sure of the context of the interview where he made those comments but had he just added one more minority group in there, it would have made it seem less as an “attack” (I say that because I don’t have a better word) on Muslims.
I think that we can safely say that western foreign policy is the root cause off Islamic terrorism worldwide, it has been stated by so many different terrorists that to deny it, one would need to provide a compelling case to the alternative. The piece in spiked online was well written, but a product of fantasy and not analysis.
Every intelligence agency, MI6, The CIA, the ONA have all stated this clearly. Muslim leaders are merely stating the obvious, it maybe an inconvenient truth, but it remains a truth nonetheless (right wing political correctness?)
Howard and his AG could start this new found enthusiasm for English by actually learning it themselves, both are semi-literate at best, and howies speech writer also appears to have failed pep level English grammar. Ruddock is even worse, if one banned speaking in passive voice and using the term “in relation to” then he would have nothing to say on any topic that one could care to talk about.
The general standard of English proficiency in the average white skinned govt schooled “aussie” is so low that Australia barely deserves its title as an English speaking nation. To believe that Howard was making an observation without understanding its political ramifications, should mark one as being especially credulous or extremely forgiving. Why else would he single out Muslims when every second person in this place is English illiterate, beginning with himself?
Do you think that he cannot control his tongue, that he meant to say all illiterate “Australians”, but “Muslim” popped out instead, somewhere between his single synapse (labelled “rat cunning”) and that poisonous piece of flesh that finds home in a hate filled mouth.
ICV and Yasser Soliman have both been singled out for harassment, including a crude and disturbing personal threat, this is a direct result of the timing, topic and tone of Howard’s comments.
link: http://www.theage.com.au/news/.....99273.html
Yes, but when Muslim leaders demand that something be done (change foreign policy, spend money on this program, or stop talking about such and such issue) or else there is going to be social unrest, terrorism or whatever here in Australia, they are implictly confirming the idea that Muslim communities in the West are a potential threat or ticking timebomb, as it were. I don’t disagree that the foreign policy of the US, UK and Australia has made each country a bigger target (I’ve been writing that for years), but I just don’t think this is a very wise way of making the case for change or criticising government policy. It is very hard for these same Muslim leaders to argue against anti-terrorism legislation, for example, when at the same time they are saying that Muslims are prone to react with the sorts of behaviours that these very anti-terror laws are meant to control and prevent.
In this case, it would have been more effective to simply highlight the fact that there are people in all communities that have been unwilling to learn English and that it is divisive, inaccurate and unfair to focus only on Muslims. I don’t have access to any statistics, but even within the Muslim community, I would imagine that English illiteracy would be more common in some ethnic groups than others. I don’t know any Pakistanis, Indonesians, Malays or Egyptians, for example, that don’t speak English; but I do know plenty from some of the other ethnic groups. Therefore, it’s hardly a ‘Muslim’ thing but more likely to do with the time those particular groups have been in Australia, the economic/social strata from which they were drawn, etc. etc.
Tasmiya, I think it has to do with the fact that the organisations that are seen as being ‘representative’ or ‘peak organisations’ are controlled by the previous generation of Muslims (i.e. first generation migrants) that established these organisations. There are, of course, some exceptions but I think this will change eventually and we will start seeing more spokespeople emerging for whom English is their first language (as is the case in, say, the UK and US).
The PM has a piece in today’s News Limited papers apparently trying to clarify things but it raises more questions than it answers. He speaks of ‘integration’ and accepting our culture, but doesn’t explain what that means. Dress is part of culture so does that mean there is an expectation that the Muslim migrant dress in a similar fashion to other Australians? The problem is that the line between compulsory cultural traits (that every citizen should adopt) and optional ones is left unmentioned and one can read their own prejudices into what he has written. The person who hates hijab, for example, might see this as endorsing the idea that Muslim women should not cover their hair in this country.
I personally think we need to do a better job with the media and have spokespeople who were born and raised in the country or community that they represent. Because when we have foreign-born, heavily-accented spokespeople it re-inforces the sterotype of Islam and Muslims as something foreign and from “over there” when the reality is that there are many of us who were born here (whichever country) and speak flawless English. I’m looking forward to moving away from the older generation to the new, young, and dynamic leadership.
As a Muslim Australian, I love to see our Federal and State Governments pay attention on the importance of “multiculturalism”, without playing politics with it. Australian values can be reflected much better through re-educating all Australians about the core principles of “multiculturalism. Alas, we are living under the shadow of an opportunistic Federal Government which tries opportunistically to score political points by abusing the name and principles of “multiculturalism”, and creating nation-dividing scenarios.
Australia is the home of all Australians, regardless of their cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds. Those of us who willingly and knowingly chose to become Australian citizens are not interested to walk in the trap of racially motivated political agendas of any politician, who likes to capitalize upon our economic disadvantages which are deliberately inflicted upon us, that deprive us from actively participating in many social, political and cultural activities.
Muslim Australians and Australian Muslims have played a great role in the nation-building process in Australia, since the arrival of Afghans in this marvelous land of all of us. In this part of civilized world, Muslims are deliberately, systematically and carefully targeted and victimized by racist, discriminatory and prejudice powerful elements of the government and business sector.
Why Muslim Australian and Australian Muslims are prevented by the discriminatory law from having equal religious, cultural, social and political rights?
Why there is one roof and two different weathers under the sky of our country?
Why?
It is discriminatory to pick on the accent of any overseas born Australian, no matter he or she is a Muslim or not. The main point is that there is Australian born generations who are adult and have their accents. The problem is not the accent, the issue is the message they pass to the public through the Media. The Media creates scenarios and presents some power hanger individuals to the wider public, as the community or ethnic leaders, while those poor self-appointed leaders have no audience within there own family and relatives, leave the community aside. Having accent represents some attributes of the personality, character, cultural richness and humor to the wider audience. How good an English speaking Australian can speak French, Chinese, Arabic, etc?
Why English speaking people pronounce Islam as Izlam and Muslim as Muzlim? Does it mean they must never use such words as they have accent during pronouncing such worlds? No! That is not the case. The issue is that we know what they mean and they know what we mean. However, it is our duty to make sure right, educated, elected and well behaved people represent us, no matter if they have an accent or not.
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