Entries from December 2006 ↓

We all know the moral and ethical arguments for why racial and religious discrimination is a bad thing. However, companies do not, to paraphrase Milton Friedman in The Corporation, necessarily see themselves as having a “social duty” beyond delivering a profit to their shareholders so these arguments are often not the most compelling.

It is therefore interesting to see that, aside from the moral arguments against racial discrimination, there are some very powerful commercial arguments. In another fascinating podcast at Econtalk, Russ Roberts and Bryan Caplan discuss the economics of discrimination.

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Yasmina Khadra is the pseudonym for Mohamed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer who decided to write under his wife’s name to avoid army censorship. He was in Sydney last year for the Writers’ Festival, at which he spoke about his novel The Swallows of Kabul. It was set in Afghanistan, but he confessed that he had never been there before, and I couldn’t help but wonder how he described the land and the atmosphere of oppression.

Reading The Attack, I wondered the same thing. While there is little description of surroundings, and Khadra is a very capable writer, I doubted he had ever been there. This doesn’t weaken the book so much as emphasise that his narration is an outsider’s voice. This is apt given that his main protagonist, through whom the story is told in first person, behaves very much like a neutral observer in the raging Israeli-Palestinian conflict - that is, until a horrifying event forces painful re-examination.

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As the English seek to impose their values on immigrants, we say to Muslims don’t do it, its tantamount to child abuse.

Cricket takes a long time to play, when overseas touring teams come to Australia, we can see close up what they are like, Pakistanis are aggressive, rude and oscillate between menacing and lazy (in equal measure), fine boned Indians are unfailingly polite as they unfailingly capitulate to the hosts, but for outright cowardice, none lay a glove on the Engerlanders. This tour was no exception.

This time around the tour got off to a typical start with one of the senior English batsmen stating that he was looking forward to the toughness of the series, seven days later he was off home with his tail between his legs after being “diagnosed” with a stress related illness for which I believe the medical jargon is “running home to mummy”. Before everyone erupts and tells me about the epidemic of depression etc, I should say that I do have sympathy with the well documented plight of the millionaire international sportsman, which ranks just above the Darfurian child or the Gazan teenager as the most hostile emotional environment on earth.

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Silma Ihram, noted Muslim educator and much respected campaigner for justice for her Islamic school, offers the following comments on the Iktimal Hage-Ali saga:

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The conference of ex-KKK leaders, trucker’s daughters, contrarian Jews, and innocent Canadian professors with tendencies towards career self-harm recently convened by the Iranian state to “discuss” the supposedly fake Holocaust has been cast by some as striking a blow for “freedom of speech”. (Of course, people promising dissenting views were banned from attending; even Iranian understandings of free speech have their limits)

It is, of course, true that some Western governments have laws against holocaust denial whilst still claiming to believe in freedom of speech; and the Iranians are feeding off this almost hypocritical position. If these Western governments were to practice more of what they preached, the idea of denying the holocaust would lose a lot of its appeal.

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The Age reported last week:

ISLAMIC leaders believe the Federal Government will use the community as scapegoats in next year’s federal election campaign.

Their fears are heightened by the Government’s failure to release the report of Prime Minister John Howard’s hand-picked Muslim advisory group examining how to tackle extremism, terrorism and other issues facing the Muslim community.

Apparently, this failure to release the report has led to members of the “hand-picked Muslim advisory group” feeling under attack from members of their own community:

Members of the now-defunct group regard the report, based on a year of consultations among Muslims by 60 leaders and submitted nearly three months ago, as vital unfinished business. The report discusses ways to tackle extremism and issues such as education, youth, women, unemployment and integration.

Mr Soliman said the group now had no idea what the Government planned and was under attack from their own communities. “The message politicians give is that Muslims don’t want to integrate or contribute to a better future, and that’s not the case at all,” he said.

Well, if the government isn’t willing to release the report in a timely manner, the obviously disgruntled members of the MCRG should just do it anyway. In fact, we’ll do it for them. Here’s a link [PDF] to a copy of the report courtesy of an Austrolabe reader.

Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad and Tarek el-Diwany have an interesting post on Islam21C about the current state of Islamic finance.

Although we conduct a purely contractual examination of the issues, it is important not to forget the socio-political context of the discussion. Muslims in the West are attempting to implement certain elements of Shari`ah within an environment that is frequently inhospitable, and the formulation of an appropriate strategy is therefore rather complex. The question is not limited to whether particular financial products are contractually valid. Wider concerns are also in play. For example, is it permissible to establish an Islamic bank that initially has some dealings with interest if the intention is eventually to become interest-free? Should we be content with a structure in which an essentially un-Islamic industry accommodates some Islamic products? Or should banking as an industry be avoided until a completely interest-free opportunity presents itself? If so, how will Muslims satisfy their banking needs in the meantime? Perhaps most fundamental of all, is the Western model of Islamic banking and finance something that can be ‘Islamised’ in the first place?

Although Muslims seem wedded to the Australian Labor Party and, at least in NSW, suffer from a perpetual case of battered wife syndrome, there is one Liberal politician who Muslims should listen to and engage with. That is the Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott, a Catholic and social conservative, has made frequent comment on Islam and the situation of Muslims in this country. His comments have stood out as entirely reasonable and sensitive; an interesting contrast to the bellicose commentary of his colleague, Ms Bronwyn Bishop.

In this article, published in The Australian, Mr Abbott likens the situation of Muslims today with the situation of Catholics yesterday and goes on to offer his thoughts on the challenges faced by Muslims in Australia.

In my childhood, Catholic schoolchildren walking past public schools after 3pm were likely enough to have stones thrown at them. If anything like this regularly happened today, it would trigger an agonised national debate, with all involved referred for counselling if not reported to the anti-discrimination board.

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Last week, the Daily Telegraph was singing her praises. Luke McIllveen wrote a gushing tribute to Ms Iktimal Hage-Ali, a member of the Prime Minister’s Muslim Community Reference Group and advisor to government on Islamic issues, defending her drinking of alcohol whilst collecting an award for representing Muslims. McIlveen wrote:

To her credit, Iktimal told The Daily Telegraph yesterday she had enjoyed a drink in the past and probably would again.

It’s appalling that, in 2006, a young Muslim woman who has done so much for her community should be vilified for behaving like an Australian.

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Melbourne’s Age newspaper runs a series of interviews of women who work in the “sex industry”. One is a Muslim girl “Julie”, who gives us a brief autobiographical sketch.

The piece and Julie’s account in particular are thought provoking in several ways. These are mine in no particular order

1. When one migrates to a society, one becomes part of it. One’s sensibilities, tastes, fashions come to reflect the wider community in which one lives and not of one’s ancestral home. Australian Muslims will develop the same dysfunctional habits as the rest of society . There is little evidence or precedent (although there is some), to suggest otherwise. It is also pointless now to blame society’s ills on the the wider populus, and believe that Islamic faith alone (like a Blockbuster Video card in one’s back pocket) is a talisman against society’s ills. Muslims should therefore join the organized effort against these things rather than indulge in magical thinking. Over time the rate of drug use, abortion and prostitution amongst Muslims will mirror the wider community, unless one is prepared to address it directly and thoughtfully.

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