Labor Pollie Tim Watts Challenges Government MPs To Quit Making Inflammatory Statements About Islam
"If Islam is the problem, when was the last time they visited a mosque in their community?"
In the last 24 hours or so conservative politicians and the tabloid press have done a bang-up job drumming up the kind of fear and tension in the community that the Australian Federal Police, security officials, Muslim community leaders and the Prime Minister have repeatedly warned against. In typical understated fashion, the front cover of today’s Herald Sun demands ‘ISLAM MUST CHANGE’, featuring a photo of recently-elected Liberal MP for Canning Andrew Hastie geared up in army fatigues and urging an “honest conversation” around Australian Islam.
“Modern Islam needs to cohere with the Australian way of life, our values and institutions. In so far as it doesn’t, it needs reform,” Hastie is quoted as saying in the Sun.
Courageous call on front page of Herald Sun for Christianity to change following abortion clinic shootings. pic.twitter.com/iHRYv9znP1
— Jeremy Sear (@jeremysear) November 29, 2015
Another five Coalition MPs, including frontbencher Josh Frydenberg, Queensland’s George Christensen and Victoria’s Alan Tudge, are quoted in the same Sun article expressing concerns about Islam’s place in Australia. Despite urging people to refrain from inflammatory and divisive rhetoric after the Parramatta attack in October, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has offered no rebuke of the MPs. Nor has any member of the Liberal Party leadership.
The effects of this kind of open suspicion of Muslim people are painfully obvious; a recently released survey found that Muslims in Sydney are likely to experience”very high levels of racism” in public. Two-thirds of the 600 Sydney Muslims surveyed reported racial bigotry at work, at school, when shopping, or online.
Christensen, who has previously appeared at rallies for far-right group Reclaim Australia, went a step further in Parliament today, introducing a motion that would calling “continued action in countering violent extremism and in particular, radical Islam within Australia in order to prevent further acts of terrorism within our borders”. He also somehow managed to do this:
Please enjoy this vine of “allahu akhbar” said with a Queensland accent https://t.co/dhEIaRHDBq
— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) November 30, 2015
Fellow Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly spoke of a “tyranny of political correctness” preventing an honest discussion about Islamic extremism in Australia, and warned that “the future is what we see in Brussels” if Australia’s immigration policies aren’t tightened.
In response to all this, Victorian Labor MP Tim Watts delivered a fiery five-minute speech calling the actions of Christensen and his ilk “utterly counterproductive to the efforts to counter violent extremism in Australia.”
“If Islam is the problem, when was the last time they visited a mosque in their community, and what was it that they heard or saw that threatened our society? Do they want a religious test in our migration program? What do they propose to do about the largest Islamic nation in the world on our northern border?”
Throughout the speech Watts was heckled by Kelly and Christensen, who called him an “appeaser”.