Culture

Did Pauline Hanson Really Dedicate Her Cookbook To A Muslim Chef?

"Noh, my friend, may Allah be with you".

by Osman Faruqi  26 October 2016

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When Pauline Hanson lost her seat in the House of Representatives in 1998, she needed something to keep her busy. So apparently she put together a cookbook.

The book came out in 2000, was called Pauline Hanson’s Not Just Fish N Chips and boasted over 150 recipes. It also featured one very surprising dedication.

According to this tweet, the cookbook was dedicated to the late Mohammed Noh Hassan, the owner of a Malaysian restaurant in Perth. Hassan was also the President of the Malay Association of WA at the time.

The idea that Hanson, who is now campaigning for a ban against Muslims migrating to Australia, would dedicate a book to a Muslim chef and sign off with “Insha Allah”, Arabic for “God willing”, is pretty wild. It also seems pretty outlandish, and has only been referenced by one media outlet (and even then they said it “appears to be dedicated…”).

It turns out that the story of Hanson writing a cookbook and dedicating it to a Malaysian chef isn’t quite what happened. But the real saga of how a book named after the leader of One Nation came to be dedicated to a Muslim is just as perplexing.

It turns out the book was compiled by a guy called Frank Hough. Hough was an active One Nation member from Perth and in 2001 was elected to the WA parliament. He eventually quit the party and ended up losing his seat at the 2005 election.

According to the book’s introduction, Hough decided to write the book because cooking was one of his “favourite hobbies”. His self-confessed greatest creation is the “Marmite Petite Vegetable Soup”. Mmmhmm. Marmite vegetable soup.

His wife, Jan, eventually suggested he compile his recipes as it would “appeal to the majority of Australian women”. The introduction also states that Hanson “endorsed this publication wholeheartedly”.

14859583_10157696289935204_2047547291_oIt’s understandable that since Hough was from Perth he would dedicate a cookbook to the owner of a Perth restaurant. It makes slightly less sense, given One Nation’s notoriously anti-immigration policies, the owner of the restaurant would be a Singaporean-born Malaysian who migrated to Australia in 1975.

mohammadMalaysia is an Asian country. Pauline Hanson’s landmark first speech famously warned Australia was being “swamped by Asians”. Frank Hough, who was elected as a One Nation MP just a year after the book came out, would surely have known that.

Not only was Mohammed Noh Hassan from an Asian country, he was also a Muslim. A Muslim Asian! That’s like One Nation kryptonite!

To be fair to Hough, Hanson and One Nation weren’t making a fuss about Muslims back in 2000. The anti-Muslim rhetoric didn’t really kick off till the mid-2000’s.

Nevertheless we’ve got a cookbook written by a One Nation MP called Pauline Hanson’s Fish N Chips, “wholeheartedly endorsed” by Hanson that is dedicated to a Malaysian Muslim chef and includes a common Arabic phrase.

It turns out Hanson wrote her own introduction for the book. She compares the book to her own political career: “Simple, practical, common sense.” She concluded by commending the publication.

hanson

But of course the real question is, what kind of recipes did the book include (other than Marmite vegetable soup)? Fish and chips, of course.

fish n chips

So as it turns out Pauline Hanson did not write a cookbook and she didn’t dedicate it to a Muslim. She just endorsed a cookbook named after her, written by a One Nation colleague, who dedicated it to a Muslim.

I wonder how Frank Hough feels about the fact his favourite chef wouldn’t have been allowed into the country under Hanson’s current policies? We’ll try and track him down to find out.