Australian Jewish Democratic Society

Why are the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald giving voice to an Islamaphobe?
The Age and SMH have published a velvet-voiced piece by Mark Durie which to those who don’t know better, looks like an accurate portrayal of violence in Islam. There are two key things, however, missing in the article.
First, an acknowledgment that much of the contemporary response of Islam to the West is bound up in a response to centuries of domination and imperialism by the West in parts of the world where Islam has been a majority religion.
And second, what Durie argues is a hardwired violence in Islamic thinking could be equally argued about the intolerance in Christian theology and practice over the centuries (and which still goes on, for example, to justify violence agains ‘communists’ in Latin America by born again dictators. In fact, Muslim fundamentalists argue precisely this.

Keep children of refugees in detention is outrageous and an offense against human rights. Hear about it at Get Up . It has nothing to do with security, but everything to do with dog whistle and lowest common denominator politics.

Dimi Reider on the Israeli +972 blog site. Didi lays it on the line about the hypocrisy of some on the left (including the Israeli left) won’t call a spade a space.
This doesn’t mean that you cannot remain opposed to the Occupation and the disempowerment of Palestinians and all that goes with it. It does mean however, that you cannot support brutal violence and murder from anyone in either community. It hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work now. Many Palestinian organisations have denounced this act, yet the Netanyahu government’s response it to build more homes in the Occupied Territories. And so it goes.

Dimi Reider on the Israeli +972 blog site. Didi lays it on the line about the hypocrisy of some on the left (including the Israeli left) won’t call a spade a space.
This doesn’t mean that you cannot remain opposed to the Occupation and the disempowerment of Palestinians and all that goes with it. It does mean however, that you cannot support brutal violence and murder from anyone in either community. It hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work now. Many Palestinian organisations have denounced this act, yet the Netanyahu government’s response it to build more homes in the Occupied Territories. And so it goes.

Hold the back page! The detailed scoop on the QSociety’s links can be read in New Matilda.
The full version, edited down because of space limitations, includes a discussion of the ‘quite interesting views’ of Bill Muehlenberg of the Australian Family Association and Senator Cory Bernardi (html file, with links).
I don’t know if you can call it a conspiracy, but..be on the alert for this stuff. It reminds me of the propaganda put out by the League of Rights many years ago, ‘reason’ cloaking intolerance that is easy to find, once you scratch the surface. They say they are not racist, just against Muslim extremism, but it all collapses into stereotyping that translates as hatred of the strange and different other. All too familiar.
The academic Paul Gardner spoke of the League of Rights, an ancestor of many right-wing organisations in Australia as using “self-serving definitions, idealistic appeals, obfuscation, innuendo, illogic, blaming (or accusing) the victim, distortion and group libel”, and QSociety like other groups (including the Christian Democratic Party), seems to be using quite the same tactic. [see the excellent survey of the history of the right in Australia by Andrew Moore, from where Gardner’s quote is taken. The League too, had some strong links to conservative churchmen and theology]

Hold the back page! The detailed scoop on the QSociety’s links can be read in New Matilda.
The full version, edited down because of space limitations, includes a discussion of the ‘quite interesting views’ of Bill Muehlenberg of the Australian Family Association and Senator Cory Bernardi (html file, with links).
I don’t know if you can call it a conspiracy, but..be on the alert for this stuff. It reminds me of the propaganda put out by the League of Rights many years ago, ‘reason’ cloaking intolerance that is easy to find, once you scratch the surface. They say they are not racist, just against Muslim extremism, but it all collapses into stereotyping that translates as hatred of the strange and different other. All too familiar.
The academic Paul Gardner spoke of the League of Rights, an ancestor of many right-wing organisations in Australia as using “self-serving definitions, idealistic appeals, obfuscation, innuendo, illogic, blaming (or accusing) the victim, distortion and group libel”, and QSociety like other groups (including the Christian Democratic Party), seems to be using quite the same tactic. [see the excellent survey of the history of the right in Australia by Andrew Moore, from where Gardner’s quote is taken. The League too, had some strong links to conservative churchmen and theology]

The Melbourne Age has an account of the events surrounding the Alma Road Community House, as well as an editorial in which the AJDS gets a guernsey for its work.
As the Age says, “Encouragingly, this racist campaign has led some members of the Jewish community to support the prayer group (the Alma Road house is in the heart of a Jewish precinct). The prayer group’s supporters include the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, the Jewish Christian Muslim Association, the Australian Jewish Democratic Society and the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC).”
Sign the petition in support of freedom of religion and in support of tolerance.

The Liberty Victoria’s President Spencer Zivcak said that Q Society’s campaign against a Muslim prayer group in St Kilda “bears all the hallmarks of a deliberate attempt to deny to one religion the freedom of religious belief accorded to every other religion”.

Criticism and critical (‘higher criticism’) scholarship about religion and religious texts is par for the course, and expected in an educated, liberal, and secular society.
[The attached image is taken from the Australian Islamist Monitor Website just to provide some ‘flavour’and it is obviously not endorsed my me or AJDS]