Jacqui Lambie Won’t Go Inside Mosques Because It’s “Not Her Moral Upbringing”
SHE HAS A WEAKNESS.
Jacqui Lambie had one of her scheduled eruptions of crazy yesterday, asking one of the ADF’s most senior officers what the threat from Ebola-spreading ISIS suicide bombers might be (answer: nothing, at all, ever). What a lot of us missed, though, was the bizarre nonsense she followed that up with when someone tried to help her out.
Yesterday Liberal MP Craig Laundy, whose seat of Reid in Sydney has a large Muslim population, invited Lambie to come visit a mosque in his electorate this weekend, which was a very nice thing of him to do. He also said that she should recognise that “your words carry weight” when you’re a Senator and that if she’s “not going to take to take the job seriously, resign and put someone in who is”.
“Come and meet an imam, come and have a chat, come and ask some questions”, Laundy said in the Herald. “My father has told me from a young age, if you find yourself in an environment where you don’t know what’s going on, shut up and listen and learn”. That’s an excellent point to make, and seriously refreshing to hear from a Coalition politician in this day and age. I feel kinda bad about pointing out his face looks like a baby’s face now.
Her response? According to SBS, Lambie refused the invitation on religious grounds because she “simply wouldn’t be comfortable” going inside.
“I’m a Catholic; I’m religious…It’s not my moral upbringing. I’m Australian. I simply believe in the church.”
What the hell? This doesn’t mean anything. Being a member of a religion doesn’t mean it’s against the rules to physically go inside another religion’s place of worship. Does she think that stepping over the threshold of a mosque will transform her into a burqa-wearing fundamentalist? Or that she’ll burst into flames, the way the Wicked Witch of the West melts if you get water on her, or how George Brandis can’t be exposed to direct sunlight?
Unfortunately, the answer is probably both less entertaining and much sadder. It’s one thing, as Laundy pointed out, not to know something, and it’s another to run your mouth on something you know nothing about. But to actively refuse to learn more about something you have strong opinions on, and people whose lives your words and actions effect in a very powerful way, is a pretty irresponsible thing for anyone to do, let alone someone with as high a profile as Lambie enjoys.
–
Feature image via Q&A/YouTube.