Every time I receive MCCA’s newsletter with my shareholder statement, I expect changes to the board of directors. Sure enough, this time, there was an announcement of a new board election. They officially have more leadership churn than post-war Iraq.

There was also an announcement of a new financial service, Tamleek. Tamleek is an allegedly shariah compliant home finance scheme based on the principle of ijara muntahiya bit-tamlik.

Tamleek has been developed in consultation with re-known [sic] international Islamic finance scholar Dr Mohd Daud Bakr and endorsed by reputable Shariah advisor in Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Muhammad.

With all respect to those scholars, many of us are just not convinced of their authority in Islamic finance. To paraphrase Marshall Bruce Mathers III, won’t the real shariah heavyweights please stand up?

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(via Abu Eesa)

Pastor Danny Nalliah (above) has them rolling in the aisles with his traveling exorcism and cripple healing show. Alzheimer’s, blocked arteries, epileptic seizures, brain tumors, and dog bites: no problem is too serious for Pastor Danny’s magic hands.

He might need to lift his game when it comes to political predictions and prophecy (he famously predicted John Howard would win the last election!) and, of course, he’s still not in the same league as Austrolabe’s favourite faith healer but for an outer-suburban Australian effort, Pastor Danny is not too bad.

But Danny doesn’t seem to like Muslims too much. In fact, he even thinks we’re part of the “The Secular Humanistic, Islamic, And Interfaith Attempt To Remove Lord’s Prayer From Australian Parliament”:

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For 14 years, Muslim students at Melbourne’s RMIT have had a Muslim prayer room in which to offer their obligatory prayers.

In 2007, the University promised Muslim students that it would replace the dilapidated prayer facility at their main City Campus and would commission a Muslim architect to build a new Muslim prayer facility that would accommodate the growing numbers of Muslim students and staff.

Minutes [doc] from the Student Advisory Committee meeting (dated 10/5/2007) confirm the university’s commitment to provide Muslim students and staff with the new facility:

Other activities on the City Campus include discussions on the proposal to develop a University Function Centre on Level 5, Building 28 and the planned relocation of the Muslim Prayer Room from Building 9 to Building 11.

…

Plans for the new Muslim Prayer Room in Building 11 have been finalised after broad consultation and involvement from the Muslim community, including the employment of a Muslim architect. Janet Burton confirmed that a Muslim Prayer Room will remain available throughout construction.

However, in March 2008, the University reneged on this promise to Muslim students and staff, and, without warning, transformed the Muslim prayer facility into a “Multi Faith Centre” prior to opening.  The verses from the Qu’ran that were on the walls of the prayer room (photos below) were even stripped following complaints from other users of the “Multi-Faith Centre”.

As The Australian reports:

Shortly before opening the rooms, RMIT toned down the original Islamic decor, first covering and then removing the sayings of the prophet that were originally on the walls in Arabic script.

In the 2007 edition of the university’s “guide” (called Salam) for Muslim students, a “Muslim prayer room” is advertised; and in the 2008 edition, the same map is retained but the wording was changed to “Spiritual Centre — Prayer Room”.  However, the Australian reports that, ‘at the nearby Bourke Street campus, signs still proclaim the prayer rooms there to be Muslim prayer rooms.”

Since then, the university’s Muslim community have been praying outside in protest.  Video footage can be found beneath the fold.

After the Muslim students complained, the University sought legal advice on its decision.  A copy of the advice has been obtained and can be viewed here [pdf].  Curiously, the University’s legal representative claims as a justification for RMIT’s decision that a number of other Australian universities with sizeable Muslim populations, such as the University of Western Sydney (UWS), do not have Muslim prayer facilities.  For example, the author writes of UWS:

UWS is a secular university and decided that separate prayer/worship areas would be divisive, so they basically drew some clear lands in the sand, which also dealt with issues such as medical students treating opposite genders.

Members of RMIT Islamic Society contacted the University of Western Sydney to confirm these claims.  The response reads:

The University of Western Sydney does provide Muslim Prayer rooms as listed on the website. I am not sure where information to the contrary may be coming from but I do hope that you are able to correct these misconceptions amongst students who may be interested in studying at UWS

This can also be further confirmed by the University’s own website, campus map, and statement in their annual report [pdf] that the establishment of dedicated Muslim prayer rooms was a key achievement of 2004.

As the RMIT Islamic Society have pointed out, the issue is ultimately just about the university keeping its promise to Muslim students and staff.  Their attempt to get their prayer facility reinstated is also supported by the other religious organisations on campus, the RMIT student union and National Tertiary Education Union.

RMIT’s decision is, of course, all the more surprising given its growing reliance on international students from Muslim majority societies such as UAE and Saudi Arabia.

As RMIT’s 2007 report [pdf] states:

International students on scholarships totalled 209, a 20 per cent increase on 2006, coming primarily from the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. … Other key sponsorship groups were from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Higher Education, and the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority scholarship programs…

Given this, one would have thought that rather than dramatically reduce the facilities available to Muslim students on campus,  RMIT would have sought to accommodate their religious needs — if only for purely commercial reasons.  Instead, it is behaving in a manner that, if reported more broadly in the Middle East, might harm the university’s ability to compete with other Australian universities; institutions that, contrary to what RMIT’s legal advisors may claim, have gone to some lengths to ensure that Muslim students can practice their faith with ease on campus.

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Spare a thought for the white pride community and what they must be going through right now.

The United States is about to elect its first black president. Not only an African American, but an African who is only one generation removed from herding goats.

The white pride community Stormfront have have been on a downwards spiral for the last few months as this near certainty began to sink in.  Thousands of men named Cletus and Bubba have been applying for Canadian residency. David Duke has organized a gathering in early November to allow them to strengthen their fraternal bonds, much like a tribe of chimpanzees do when they are challenged by another group.  Expect to see much urine boundary marking and sniffing of one another’s backsides.

Another white prider who appears not to have minded the odd masculine bottom-sniff was Jörg Haider, the Austrian fascist who has been posthumously outed as a homosexual.  Jorg died in a car accident brought on by a bitch fight with his boyfriend; the orange Audi TT with crimson crushed velvet seats and lavender piping was also written off.



Do you remember the opt-out internet censorship that the government promised during the last election?  The one that was meant to protect all Australians from the horrors of the intertubes?  Well, it turns out that contrary to what the Labor Party assured Australians during the election, you can’t actually opt out of it.

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

Under the government’s $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material.

Pundits say consumers have been lulled into believing the opt-out proviso would remove content filtering altogether.

As the Inquirer points out, Australia may well become the first Western nation to attempt to censor the internet.

Of course, the issue isn’t whether there is material on the internet that is inappropriate for children (obviously, there is) but whether we want the state to control what we can and cannot read.  This responsibility would better rest with parents and with internet users themselves: there are already many free and commercial filtering products available that will do essentially what the government is spending $125.8 million to do on our behalf.  Not being able to opt out of the scheme is cause for concern; as is the apparent absence of any objective criteria by which the state will decide what is and what is not safe for Australian eyes to read or view.

And, as government report [pdf] on the effects of the filtering schemes shows, there are also likely to be performance implications.  Or, as the Inquirier put it, “Internet Service Providers have warned that the glorious filter will slow Australian internet speeds down to that of a three-legged dingo dragging a baby up Ayers’ Rock.”

Read more about it here.

And in an interesting discussion over at Bloggerheads, noted economist and blogger Arnold Kling talks about the crises and its history.