A Coalition Senator May Have Accidentally Called For A Ban On Muslim Migration

Well that didn’t take long. Just a week after it was confirmed that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party had managed to elect four senators, including two from Queensland, a Coalition politician is calling for his party to crackdown further on immigration. Queensland Senator Barry O’Sullivan told The Courier Mail that all migrants to Australia should be “Quizzed about their religion” in order to filter out extremists.

O’Sullivan said that the Coalition had to “respond accordingly” to the rise of One Nation by taking seriously “community anger about migration”. He rejected Pauline Hanson’s call for an outright ban on Muslim migration, but he does want every migrant assessed according to their beliefs. Currently the Department of Immigration does not ask migrants about their religious beliefs when they arrive in Australia or when they are applying for citizenship.

“Everyone who comes to this nation needs to be confronted with the question about their beliefs,” O’Sullivan told The Courier Mail. “We spend a lot of time asking about someone’s kidney function or bank balance. We don’t even ask about their religious beliefs.”

O’Sullivan gave the example of migrants who adhere to “Sharia law” as the kind of people who should be rejected by Australia, but he also suggested members of Christian cults could also be turned away.  He also said the current government under Malcolm Turnbull had “defaulted to political correctness” and supported the call to wind back racial discrimination laws.

“If you are a devotee to a religion that is … also the legal platform for you, as is the case with Sharia law, we need to find out,” O’Sullivan said.

But here’s the thing: All Muslims follow Sharia law to some extent.  O’Sullivan’s comments betray the fact that he doesn’t really seem to know what Sharia law is. The term refers to the collective set of rules that underpin Islam. For example, adherence to a halal diet is part of Sharia law.

If O’Sullivan wants all adherents of Sharia law to be rejected from migrating to Australia he is basically calling for a ban on all Muslims, though he probably doesn’t know it.

According to Dr  Ghena Krayem, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Sydney and an expert on the application of Islamic law in Australia, Sharia law is a set of all encompassing rules around how to practice Islam. “It’s how I would relate to my neighbours, how I would pray and eat, principles around washing, and how I would raise my children,” Dr Krayem told Junkee.  “That’s what Sharia actually means. It’s a Muslim’s moral compass.

“I’m very frustrated hearing from these people who think there’s a distinction [between being a Muslim and adhering to Sharia law]. They’re just being xenophobic and playing the politics of fear.”

Presumably, O’Sullivan thinks that Sharia law refers to the creation of an entirely distinct legal code imposed upon the whole population. But Dr Krayem told Junkee that this is a misconception.

“I’ve been researching the Muslim community in Australia for 17 years. I’ve interviewed religious leaders and spokespeople. No one has ever said they want to set up some parallel  legal system, which seems to be what some people have in their minds. It’s definitely not about setting a parallel legal system.”

Dr Krayem also pointed out that O’Sullivan’s proposal is likely to be unconstitutional. “What’s the legal constitutional argument for what he’s proposing? Section 116 of the Australian Constitution guarantees religious freedom. We don’t have many rights in our constitution, but we do have freedom of religion.”

It’s clear that O’Sullivan wasn’t intending to call for a wholesale ban on Muslims. He explicitly rejected the idea. But his lack of understanding about a set of beliefs that he thinks should be the test for whether or not someone can enter the country is pretty concerning.

It’s not the first time a Coalition senator has expressed support for a crackdown on Muslim migrants. In July the President of the ACT Young Liberals, who also happens to work for Liberal Senator Eric Abetz, wrote an article arguing that Sonia Kruger’s call for a ban on Muslim migration was “right”. Abetz tweeted a link to the article, describing it as “A great article from a member of my staff on why we need an open and frank discussion on the future of immigration.”

A great article from a member of my staff on why we need an open and frank discussion on the future of immigration. https://t.co/ciEBvB6LPo

— Eric Abetz (@SenatorAbetz) July 24, 2016

The conservative wing of the Liberal party is clearly anxious about the rise of Pauline Hanson and the fact that they seem to be losing voters concerned about migration to One Nation. Instead of tackling her xenophobic views head on they’re experimenting with embracing them. But perhaps the most depressing part of the whole situation is that the politicians in charge of running the country, and in particular the ones most gung-ho about cracking down on migration, don’t even seem to understand the policies they’re suggesting. They’re just discarding the facts and mouthing off incoherent xenophobia.

Congratulations Barry O’Sullivan, you’ve read Trump status!