Spiked-Online runs through their best and worst of 2008, and it’s good to see our Prime Minister gets a mention:

Voted in on a groundswell of post-Iraq War disgust towards former Australian PM John Howard, Kevin Rudd has proven even worse than his despised predecessor. In February he did what Howard had infamously failed to do; he apologised to the Aborigines for the ‘stolen children’ policy. Well, who needs employment and healthcare when you can get an apology from the prime minister? In that shift from the BC to the AD eras (that’s Before Clinton and After Diana), Rudd personifies the replacement of proper socially concerned politics with apologetic performances of emotional correctness.

If reducing the Aborigines to objects of special pleading wasn’t degrading enough, he also set out to implement the Great Australian Firewall, an attempt to block unsuitable online content from the presumably all too easily influenced, monkey-see-monkey-do Australians. Both more patronising and more censorious, Rudd outstrips Howard at every step – and is a lesson in not allowing our understandable fury with the Iraq War to blunt our critical political faculties.

Fred Nile is something of an oddity in Australian politics.  The NSW politician represents the Christian Democratic Party, a party supposedly established to represent people who support “Christian and Family values” and “the sanctity of life”.   Nile also has a history of making some outrageous comments about Muslims.

In 2002, Nile told that Australian media that he wanted to ban women from wearing veils in public.  He told the ABC:

FRED NILE: I’m saying they shouldn’t be allowed to wear it in public places. If they wish to wear it at the mosque, if they wish to wear it in their home, walking down the street in Lakemba or Auburn, that’s a different matter.

I’m talking about six women walking into the Opera House. There’s no…

He stood up in parliament and asked the government to investigate introducing French-style bans on hijab in public schools.

In 2007, an organisation linked to Nile was revealed as being behind the campaign to stop Muslims building a school in the town of Camden in New South Wales.

In the same year, Nile was calling for the government to start discriminating on the basis of religion and preventing Muslim immigrants from coming to Australia.

Further to wanting to see veils banned, Muslim schools banned and Muslim immigrants banned, Nile came out this week calling for topless bathing to be banned on beaches.

Conservative MP Fred Nile says he wants topless bathing banned in NSW to protect Sydney’s Muslim and Asian communities.

Protect Muslims?  He explains further:

“Our beaches should be a place where no one is offended, whether it’s their religious or cultural views,” he said.

“If they’ve come from a Middle Eastern or Asian country where women never go topless – in fact they usually wear a lot of clothing – I think it’s important to respect all the different cultures that make up Australia.”

A few short years ago, Nile was ranting and raving about Muslim women wearing a “lot of clothing” and calling for them to be banned from public places.  Now that the political climate and community sentiment towards Muslims seems to have softened somewhat, Nile is jumping on a different bandwagon and trying to recast himself as a ‘conservative’ protector of Muslim sensibilities.

The Age reported this week:

WHEN Shaheen Hasmat and his family arrived in Australia from Afghanistan as refugees five years ago, the year 8 student knew only a few words in English, like yes and no…

But yesterday, Shaheen was the dux of Reservoir District Secondary College, with a near-perfect tertiary score, or ENTER, of 99.8 and the promise of a scholarship to study medicine at Monash University.

Andrew Bolt, the Herald Sun journalist, linked to the story with a favourable title.  Some of the site’s readers didn’t seem too impressed; making unsavoury reference to Shaheen’s beard, religion and ethnicity.  This prompted Shaheen to write this response which was then published, to Andrew Bolt’s credit, on his blog (republished over the fold):

Continue reading →

Over at Thoughts on Freedom, John Humphreys writes:

I believe in private property rights and the right to discriminate. Logically then, I believe that any group of people (including racial or religious groups) should be able to buy property and use it as they wish. If you are white and you only want to live with other whites, then you should NOT use political power to remove non-whites from Australia, but you should be allowed to join together and buy a block of units (or a farm, or whatever) which only accepts whites.

I would agree.  As a believer in property rights, I have to accept that some people will choose to exercise those rights in a manner that I might find disagreeable or discriminatory.

The scenario described by John is not so far fetched as it might seem.  Indeed, this appears to be what some Muslims are also trying to do.   The West Australian reports this week that some West Australian Muslims are planning to build a $10M Muslim-only enclave.

Islamic Council of WA spokesman Rahim Ghauri said the group had an architect-designed concept plan for a six-storey housing development, an underground carpark and a hall for weddings, conferences and religious and recreational activities.

The council’s religious adviser apparently draws inspiration from apartheid South Africa:

“In South Africa, because of apartheid, all different communities were set up and it worked well. It kept people separate. We can be together in terms of our contribution to the wider community.”

The extent to which apartheid-era South Africa should be considered a model for Australian Muslims is, of course, debatable.  And the thought of living in a culturally or religiously homogeneous enclave might not necessarily appeal to all Muslims.  However, if these people wish to build such an environment using their own money and exercise their property rights in this fashion then on what basis can one really object?

There might also be some advantages from such an approach.  As John Humphreys summarises:

One advantage of allowing people to pursue their own lifestyles voluntarily on their own property is that you take away the need for them to become politically active on the issues that annoy them. Instead of lobbying the government for fewer immigrants, anti-immigrants can choose to live in a “non-immigrant” area. Instead of lobbying the government for special rights and funding for minority cultures, those cultures can choose to live together and maintain their own culture.

The MIT Arab Business Plan Competition looks like a good initiative:

The MIT Arab Business Plan Competition is the first of its kind in the Arab world. The Competition is designed to encourage all entrepreneurs in the region to start their own company and, ultimately, create a nest of leading firms in the Arab world. It also brings to the Arab world all the MIT expertise in entrepreneurship and in running such competitions.

The deadline for submitting the applications is Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 23:59, Beirut time.

The Competition is open to all Arab nationals with a business idea. The only requirement is to be part of a team. You cannot enter the Competition as one person. A team should comprise a minimum of 3 individuals and at least 2 members of the team should be citizens of the Arab world.  The business concept should also be implemented in a country within the Arab world.

At Cafe Hayek, Russell Roberts writes:

As we prepare to partially nationalize the American automobile industry, it is a good time to remember that George Bush is not a free market ideologue and that he did not pursue free market policies. Please remember that in his last year in office he initiated and condoned measures that helped destroy the natural feedback loops that allow markets to recover from the inevitable mistakes that human beings make. And tell your children. I know. It seems obvious. But twenty and thirty years from now, there will be people writing about how George Bush’s free market ideology caused the mess we’re in.

And, over at Cato, Daniel Mitchel writes:

According to Politico.com, Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied Republican senators to support the bailout of auto companies, arguing that it would be “Herbert Hoover time” in the absence of government intervention.

Cheney is right, but for the wrong reasons. To the extent that it is “Herbert Hoover time,” it is because the current administration has repeated many of the mistakes that were made by President Hoover. There was a huge expansion in the burden of government spending under Hoover, up 47 percent in just four years. There’s been an equally huge increase in government spending under Bush. Hoover dramatically increased government intervention with everything from schemes to prop up wages to protectionism. Bush’s intervention takes a different form, with mistakes such as steel tariffs, Sarbanes-Oxley, and bailouts.

Hoover’s legacy is statism. Bush’s legacy is statism. The only unanswered question is whether Obama will be the new Roosevelt — i.e., someone who compounds the damage caused by his predecessor with further expansions in the burden of government.

Architects Journal has a picture of a planned expansion to the Haram in Mecca.

The Journal explains:

According to sources, the scheme for Islam’s holiest city could create a huge new structure around the central Haram mosque that will eventually be capable of holding three million people, making it the ‘highest occupancy’ building in the world.

 

The top-secret plans are being backed by King Abdullah ben Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia who has asked a hand-picked collection of starchitects to ‘establish a new architectural vision’ for the 356,800m2 mosque complex.

 

The AJ believes that the project is likely to be phased, with phase one transforming the mosque from having an official capacity of 900,000 to 1.5 million. This will then go up to three million with the completion of several phases over the following five to 10 years.

In addition, there are also plans to build an additional 130 skyscrapers in the city.

Up to 130 new skyscrapers are anticipated, including the Abraj Al Bait Towers, a seven-tower project that will be one of the largest buildings in the world, with a 2,000-room hotel, a 1,500-person convention centre, heliports and a four-storey mall that will house hundreds of outlets.

Infochoice on MCCA:

The withdrawal of GE Money from the Australian mortgage market will adversely effect the market for Islamic or sharia-compliant home loans. The largest provider of sharia compliant finance in Australia, the Muslim Community Co-Operative Australia provides home loans under the S2L label. These loans are ordinary home loans financed by GE Money Australia, but subject to a series of contracts between the borrower and the MCCA that deem them sharia compliant in the eyes of the MCCA’s religious advisers.

Last week, the media was abuzz with reports on a study, funded by the previous government, into the conduct of Australian imams:

SOME Muslim religious leaders in Victoria are condoning rape within marriage, domestic violence, polygamy, welfare fraud and exploitation of women, according to an explosive report on the training of imams.

The Daily Telegraph covered the story under the headline “Rape within marriage OK: Muslim clerics” which more or less exemplifies the tone of much of the commentary on the report.

Needless to say, the Catch the Fire crowd can barely contain their excitement:

Yet a Howard government commissioned report, conducted by the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria and released exclusively by Barney Zwartz in The Age newspaper today, reveals that what Daniel Scott said was in fact the truth and that it is certainly happening here in Victoria.

Not having seen the report yet, it’s impossible to comment on the findings or the methodology that was used to derive them.  The sorts of issues identified almost certainly do occur although one must be cautious in drawing any conclusions as to how widespread or systemic such occurrences are.

The response to these allegations came today from “Australia’s most senior Muslim”:

Continue reading →

British National Party leader Nick Griffin is attempting to gain a visa to enter Australia.  If he isn’t allowed to enter, Darrin Hodges is ‘warning‘ that it may lead to another Cronulla:

Darrin Hodges, the NSW head of the extreme Australian Protection Party, which is backing his visit, said: “Having a full and frank debate was more helpful than not … and suppressing the debate leads to events like Cronulla.”

Nick Griffin’s British National Party is rather exclusive; the party constitution constraining membership to:

The indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘Indigenous Caucasian’ consist of members of: i) The Anglo-Saxon Folk Community; ii) The Celtic Scottish Folk Community; iii) The Scots-Northern Irish Folk Community; iv) The Celtic Welsh Folk Community; v) The Celtic Irish Folk Community; vi) The Celtic Cornish Folk Community; vii) The Anglo-Saxon-Celtic Folk Community; viii) The Celtic-Norse Folk Community; ix) The Anglo-Saxon-Norse Folk Community; x) The Anglo-Saxon-Indigenous European Folk Community; xi) Members of these ethnic groups who reside either within or outside Europe but ethnically derive from them.

And in other British National Party news, a leaked copy of their entire membership database has been released online today — complete with people’s names and addresses. There’s going to be some very unhappy members of the Celtic-Norse Folk Community tonight.