“Please Sir, can I have some more?” asks Dr Ameer Ali, formerly the handpicked head honcho of the PM’s handpicked Muslim advisory board. This time, Dr Ali is asking for cash and a bit of encouragement from the government to help oppose Hizb ut Tahrir. It takes two to quango and the government isn’t giving moderates enough resources.
“There is a possibility they will fall into Hizb ut-Tahrir’s trap, so we have to be careful. But it’s a democratic country, and anyone can organise a conference.
“We need resources to counter it, and we have none. The Muslim Reference Group doesn’t exist any more. The Government should encourage moderates to promote themselves as an alternative, and allocate resources for this.”
The government the government, the government… It’s always the government’s fault for not providing enough cash, not enough quangos, and not enough hugs and encouraging pats on the back (”Come on lads, you can do it.”)
The problem, of course, is that even when the MCRG existed, it didn’t do anything. It’s primary function, it seemed, was to provide embarrassing content for the pages of The Australian with members apparently leaking internal documents and reporting on inter-group squabbling.
But leaving that aside, how can anyone possibly suggest that it is the responsibility of government to now fund a Muslim organisation to come up with counter-arguments to ideas advanced by another Muslim organisation? If Muslims are genuinely concerned about HT in Australia — and I see little reason to think they are a security risk or a threat — then why don’t they do what people have done throughout the ages and critique, respond, debunk and refute the fallacious ideas of the opposing group?
The irony is that Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Muslims demanding government intervention are in reality the flip sides of the same statist coin: one sees the return of the Caliph as the answer to all the Muslim’s problems; and the other sees the secular, federal government has holding many of the answers to the same questions.
All this controversy comes about because Hizb ut-Tahrir are, or rather were, holding a conference in Sydney’s South West. After publishing their promotional video on YouTube, the media jumped on it and after a few days, lots of interviews, and angry complaints from the usual suspects, Bankstown Council decided to cancel HT’s rental agreement for the venue. The essence of Bankstown Council’s complaint was that the booking was made under the name of Risala (HT’s Australian website) rather than HT themselves and that, had they known, they wouldn’t have taken the booking.
Bankstown City Council says one of the group’s speakers made hateful comments about women and challenged the authority of the Australian Government at a previous event at Bankstown Town Hall.
“They made strong, negative comments inciting hatred towards women,” Bankstown Mayor Tanya Mihailuk said. “Much stronger than Sheikh (Taj al-Din) al-Hilali’s comments,” she said of the controversial Sydney cleric who caused a storm last year when he likened scantily clad women to meat.
It’s fairly obvious from the promotional video that the conference would attract controversy. It might run well with a Muslim audience, but I suspect some non-Muslim viewers might find the footage intimidating particularly when they hear that HT wants to bring shariah law to Australia.
And HT are not impressed, claiming that the decision of the local council demonstrates the bankruptcy of the entire Western democratic system.
Wassim Doureihi, spokesperson for Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia, says: “The decision taken today by Bankstown City Council speaks volumes of the empty rhetoric surrounding the supposed noble epitomes of western liberal democracy.”
10 comments ↓
Id be interested to know, if the roles were reversed, would HT allow the Party of Christian Revival to hold a talk calling for the overthrow of the HT Town Council?
I am getting a bit sick of all these calls for cash from the government - can’t the muslim community support its on advocacy and welfare groups? I know that as a Muslim I would be more than willing to part with some hard earned cash to help whoever was actually doing something decent and worthwhile (long term).
i am not a member of hizb-ut-tahrir, but certainly my experience with the movement is enough to know that they want to introduce shari’a law to Muslim lands, not Non-muslim lands such as Australia.
i am sure you can confirm this with one of their members.
From this article:
HT may not want to establish sharia in Australia but that is what non-muslims are being told in the media so you can understand people’s anxiety when they see videos like the one linked above.
I don’t think it is being suggested that government should fund arguments. Obviously, constructing arguments is relatively cheap. Rather, it is institutions for dissemination and for various kinds of social support that are costly.
Providing the good to accuring to society arising out of such institutions is greater than the bad, then expenditure on such institutions would be a rational investment for the government. And that requires no appeal to ‘responsibility’ - only to the interest of the commonweal. (That, of course, doesn’t preclude non-governmental, civic institutions funding themselves - and may in some cases be prefereable to government funding if politically-loaded conditions are attached.)
For my money, the ‘real’ story here is one of either incompetence or faux-concern. Incompetence if, after such a long engagement in public life, Dr Ali doesn’t know that funds are already available for all sorts of community-based welfare programmes (which include ‘information services’). Faux-concern if Dr Ali does know this, but is pretending he doesn’t so as either to gain some self-satisfying publicity or to get some funding without having to go through normal application processes, rather than just going about the business of actually doing something productive.
Is HT big in Australia? They are basically a joke here in the States. A small group of people who barely know Islam and discuss the need for Khalifah at the coffee shop for hours while ignoring problems right in front of them
If Bankstown Council behaved badly, then the Muslims should vote them out next election. Oh wait, voting is haram according to HT so that won’t work.
i personally think they are a peaceful, harmless movement, and the majority of members are uneducated (in islam), but educated in HT ideology (which consists of a few books written by its founder).
in the UK, they have managed to prove they are a non-violent organisation opposed to terrorism, whether it be individual or state sponsored.
to sum up, they are waste of time, and people - muslims and non-muslims should not be worried by them
You might worry about the government being too involved in the Muslim community but aside from that I don’t actually see the problem of Australian government money going to help Australians.
The Muslim community has problems. Why not accept governemnt help to solve them? Just about every other community and interest group in Australia gets government help, and so they should. It’s what the government is FOR.
It reminds me of some of the issues discussed in this excellent post, which is specifically about the UK, but I feel a lot may also apply here in Australia.
Leave a Comment