As is now sadly typical, the chronically unimaginative Australian Labor Party (ALP) have attempted to go one step further than the Liberal Party by calling for British journalist Yvonne Ridley to be deported from Australia on the basis of comments she has allegedly made in the past.
For example, Labor’s Immigration spokesman Tony Burke was talking tough on the ABC.
TONY BURKE: This is right at the extreme end of the spectrum, and for her to be considered somebody who is welcome to Australia and having appropriate character to come and speak at conferences in Australia sends all the wrong messages.
TONY BURKE: Having had a look at the comments she’s alleged to have made, I don’t see how somebody who shows sympathy for the person who coordinated or masterminded the Beslan school massacre, the Moscow Theatre hostage crisis, somebody who describes suicide bombings as martyrdom operations, somebody who indicates support for the distribution of videos of the execution of hostages, I don’t see how somebody with those views could possibly pass the character test which the Minister for Immigration is meant to be implementing.
On this point, at least, the Liberal Party seem to be talking some sense.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said Ridley had been allowed to enter Australia because there was nothing to suggest she was a security risk.
“In the case of Ms Ridley, she was judged not to be a threat to the national security of Australia,” Mr Andrews said on ABC radio.
“There is a vast distinction between allowing somebody into Australia whose views you may not like, and somebody who is a threat to national security.”
Tony Burke says it is sending all the “wrong messages” to allow Ms Ridley into this country to speak at conferences.
However, if Ms Ridley is really as dangerous and as corrupting an influence as the ALP would have us believe, why haven’t the ALP commented on the fact that former ALP Prime Minister Bob Hawke shared a conference platform with Ms Ridley and co-signed a declaration at the 2006 Copenhagen Conference on Islamophobia?
Former ALP Prime Ministers sharing platforms with people on the “extreme end of the spectrum” who espouse ideas so dangerous they must stay out of Australia? Surely, the ALP’s continued silence on the matter is sending “all the wrong messages”: one of which might be that they are opportunistic hypocrites.
23 comments ↓
Can you please share a link to what exactly she said? I smell a fish here.
You can find links to some of the comments in this now deleted Wikipedia entry. I haven’t checked any of them so I can’t make any claim as to veracity which is why I described them as alleged statements in the above post.
I just came across your website and wanted to say that this is just the sort of thing that Australian Muslims need. Jazak Allah khair.
I don’t like the idea of people people working to implement a system which would have a woman stoned to death for sleeping with me. Should they be banned? Maybe not, but I’m sheding no tears.
Frank: That’s fine and nobody expects you or anyone else to agree with an idea like that. I certainly don’t advocate the implementation of such a system in Australia.
However, the nature of the ideas isn’t really the issue here but simply whether the government should be making immigration decisions based purely on the highly subjective measure of whether a particular government likes the speaker’s views.
For example, it is quite conceivable that the same arguments that the ALP expects the Liberal Party to deploy to keep Ms Ridley out might later be used by a successive government to keep people out who have critical things to say about Muslims or indeed any other topic that becomes unpopular in the future.
Amir, you presumably advocate such an idea in under Sharia in ‘Muslim countries’. It’s obscene wherever it happens. Presumably Idi Amin didn’t eat any Australian children, but we wouldn’t want him planning it here.
I agree that ‘ideas’ need to be given the utmost protection. That is not, however, what Ms Ridley wants. She wants people to be killed (of course “only” in Muslim countries for changing their religious ideas, for example.
In the same way that it is an unfortunate necessity to gag racists, violent anti-joy people like Ms Riidley should be severely discouraged.
Thanks!
Frank, I am not advocating that anywhere. In any case, the conditions stipulated in the shariah for the punishment you mention are so strict that I doubt there has been any case in the last 1,400 years that has satisfied the requirements. Suffice to say, one would need to try very hard indeed and have at least four friends of good character who are not easily disgusted or repulsed to meet the criteria for being punished
I don’t know Ms Ridley and haven’t checked whether she did indeed say the things that are being reported. In any case, she hasn’t called for people to be killed or incited violence against the West or any individual or group in the West (as far as I know). Therefore, I see no problem with her saying whatever she wants within these broad parameters. If she or anyone else steps outside those boundaries and incites violence or carries out violence, then, by all means, stop her, prosecute her or throw her out of the country.
I disagree we should gag racists. I wish more racists would put their heads above the parapets and speak their (small) minds. The more they speak, the more they marginalise themselves.
You’re saying that no-one has been executed for “illegal sex” in the past 1400 years? Come off it. And you’re also saying that you don’t want to live under Sharia?
Frank, are you stupid, dishonest or all of the above? He said that the conditions are so strict that he doubts they have been satisfied in 1,400 years NOT that people haven’t been executed for “illegal sex” in 1,400 years. Nice try, though.
I disagree, Frank has made his comment, we should respond constructively.
I have a couple of things to say in response
the first is that Frank, there is a fair chance that the lady concerned may in fact stone herself to death, after realizing that she has slept with you.
The second is that if a sharia court was to get involved it would be only if there were 4 adult witnesses to the act of sexual congress.
All societies make rules about the limit of sexual expression, this differs between societies and that should be of no surprise to anyone.
The other somewhat unfortunate misunderstanding that you have is that anyone here could wish for or care about your support or endorsement of any matter that relates to Muslims.
Can I categorically lay that incorrect assumption entirely to rest.
Please feel free to exercise the full reach of your influence to ban or prohibit any person or speech that you may disagree with or that intimidates you.
The censorship doesn’t harm us, the cost is borne by your civilization which you say cherishes freedom of expression.
In order for the woman to be stoned to death for sleeping with you, she would need to be (a) married, (b) Muslim and (c) having sex with you in front of four adult witnesses who were close enough to see the penis actually enter her vagina. These are the conditions which Amir alluded to earlier.
What a terrible picture you paint of your fellow Australians if you think that most of them are in the habit of inviting their friends over to watch them having sex with a married woman! Perhaps that is the way things are done in your world but I suspect most of your fellow Aussies would find it, well, a little icky.
Frank: As has been pointed out, the conditions stipulated in the shariah texts for the stoning of the adulterer is that he/she be Muslim, married and that there are four witnesses to the act of penetration itself. As I am sure you will agree, most people who commit adultery don’t do so with four adult witnesses in close enough proximity to meet that criteria.
I never said nobody has been killed for adultery and it’s rather disingenous of you to suggest I did. I simply said that, given these conditions, I find it hard to believe that they have been met in the last 1,400 years because a person would need to actually conspire to meet these criteria.
If people have denied having illicit sexual relations, subsequently prosecuted, found guilty and punished without these criteria being met then they have been dealt with unjustly and not in accordance with what the shariah actually demands in these cases.
Hi guys
um, we seem to have a clash of cultures here???
Australia is a country founded on the understanding that we will all tolerate each other because we’re all Aussies. Are there limits to any of this?
Well, yeah. We will not tolerate anyone who wishes to institute any of the following:
(a) sharia law as it is currently being practised in say, Pakistan… or bits of Nigeria…
(b) Old Testament Law (instituted by anybody at all)
(c) brutal police states
(d) ethnic cleansing and targeting of people on grounds of race, religion etc… (as it might be, in Darfur…)
Listen, guys, we hear what you’re saying. All the Muslims I know (in Melbourne) are brought up to believe that there can be no compulsion in religion. And they are extremely nice people. The suburb in question where they live has happily embraced them because, well, They Get It. About living in Australia.
Sheikh Whatever his name is clearly doesn’t. And there’s plenty of guys around worse than him. BTW, I also have heard that he is a very kind man who has worked tirelessly to help lost boys in trouble, but unfortunately that doesn’t get into the papers. And I can accept this. But he’s not a good PR guy because he doesn’t speak English, and that alone is a massive problem.
More to the point, it’s a bit late for anyone to say hey, let’s not reprise the Crusades, yeah? Because it’s already happening all over the world, and you can’t pretend it’s not. But we CAN choose how we want to replay them. My choice is we reprise the meeting of the Emir of Jerusalem and the Emperor Friedrich (II) Hohenstauffen of Germany. It was in the early 13th century and if you don’t know the story, I advise you all to look it up because it’s important.
Talib,
You misunderstand Frank when you say this:
It is incorrect to attribute ‘ownership’ of Australian civilisation to Frank.
Frank has made it very clear that he is opposed to freedom of expression. Insofar as freedom of expression is a value of Australian civilisation (let’s say it is), Frank is thus clearly opposed Australian civilisation.
“All societies make rules about the limit of sexual expression, this differs between societies and that should be of no surprise to anyone. ”
Umm maybe , but few (none?) of them stipulate the death penalty.
All this schoolkid tittering about having “four friends’ watch is really ludicrously innocent. You think the secret police wouldn’t arrange for 4 witnesses if they wanted someone out of the way? What does the law say about witnessing by video? (There are plenty of videos out there showing actual penetration.) Have you never been involved in sex in public or group sex… uh, no probably not, I guess. You want to get out more.
I repeat, I am shedding no tears over any retrictions on the ‘free speech’ of people advocating barbarism and repression such as is envisaged by advocates of Sharia.
Wizard,
Thank you for your comment. I think that if you look through our archive than you will see where we stand on all of the issues that you raise (a, b, c, d). If you think that we could be in favor of police states and ethnic cleansing, then you must ipso facto think that we are monsters, or at least uncivilized.
I have my own list which includes not stealing land from indigenous people and exterminating them for the bounty on their ears.
b,c and d are all things that we would be against as well (and probably a too). I think Sharia is not really the problem, rather it is the judges who administer it and the system of justice that develops around it.
An equivalent example in a western country is the US for example
Roger B Taney and the Dred Scott case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_B._Taney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott
Taney a staunch supporter of slavery proclaimed that a black man had no rights that a white man need respect, although this was on clear contradiction to the US constitution.
Amir alludes to something similar when he discusses the punishment for adultery.
BTW your condescending instruction to look the history of Emperor Freddy the second is a bit of a joke, I know him right down to the color of his beard. I suspect that everyone else here does as well expect you, so don’t say it
it make you look like an idiot, and that isn’t cool.
Frank, Talib speaks for all of us when he says
“The other somewhat unfortunate misunderstanding that you have is that anyone here could wish for or care about your support or endorsement of any matter that relates to Muslims.
Can I categorically lay that incorrect assumption entirely to rest.
Please feel free to exercise the full reach of your influence to ban or prohibit any person or speech that you may disagree with or that intimidates you.”
Reading comprehension isn’t all that good in this thread, is it? My position is that banning people from speaking is not a good idea, but in the case of people like this (or David Irving, or a neo-Nazi leader or any other person who wants to force a barbaric idea on my country) I am not at all bothered if they are banned.
It sets a precedent for future assaults of free speech? Not really, it just re-enforces the concept that absolutely unfettered speech it not permitted. Also something I disagree with in principle but am happy to reap the benefits of.
Frank,
you are in fact right, reading comprehension has not been good in this thread, and I did not read you post correctly, you do support freedom of expression, and I can’t read properly.
Frank,
So let me see if I’m comprehending your “position”: banning people from speaking is a bad idea except when it isn’t. Is that your “position”? Do all your “positions” involve self-castration on a fence, or just this one?
Again, read carefully. I’ll try an analagous situation to see if that makes it any easier for you:
I think that censorship should not exist (for adults). However, the fact that a movie gratuitously showing a real rape would probably be censored does not bother me at all.
It isn’t fence-sitting, it’s called living in a world that isn’t black & white.
Frank,
I think I understand your position now. You are not making contradictory claims. You are making two claims of quite different types.
(1) Moral imperative: Censorship should not exist.
(2) Personal psychological assertion: Under certain circumstances, if the moral imperative is intentionally violated, it would not worry (”bother”) you.
Then again, I wonder whether this really is a non-contradictory position. Presumably, if X doesn’t worry you, then you effectively find X to be acceptable. If you find X to be acceptable, that means it does not violate any moral imperative you hold. Thus, letting X be censorship, you do not in fact hold to an anti-censorship moral imperative - that is, if you genuinely hold to (2) (as you seem to), then you do not in fact hold to (1) at all (as I suspected). Your assertions of (1) are thus little more than rhetorical dross to provide cover for your actual position: you advocate the imposition of censorship on the basis of your own personal tastes. And therein, ladies and gents, lies the seed of demogogary.
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