Howard’s Comments Targeting Australia’s Muslim Community Leaders are both Divisive and Wrong
The Prime Minister’s suggestion in The Australian today that moderate leaders in Australia’s Muslim communities are “pussyfooting around” by failing to renounce terrorism, is grossly misleading and contrary to fact.
Moderate Muslim leaders and community groups across Australia have repeatedly condemned the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and they have repeatedly spoken out against terrorism. They are on record as having done so on numerous occasions.
This includes Muslim community leaders in my own electorate of Calwell, which has a large Australian Muslim minority, as well as members of the Prime Minister’s own Muslim Reference Group.
I challenge the Prime Minister to produce one moderate Muslim leader who has not yet renounced terrorism, or for him to name one moderate Muslim leader in Australia who refuses to do so.
All that the Prime Minister’s comments serve to do is further alienate Australian Muslims from the rest of Australia.
They send out a false message that moderate Muslim community leaders in Australia, as well as the communities they represent, are somehow answerable for the crimes of a small and marginalized minority overseas.
It is obvious that Australia’s mainstream Muslim community leaders, or anyone else for that matter, are not in a position to rein in extremists like those responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. That is the job of the Australian authorities.
Having the Australian Prime Minister target certain sections of Australian society is not the right way to respect the memory of those tragically killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Comments made by both the Prime Minister and the Federal Treasurer Peter Costello isolating Australia’s Muslim communities for criticism on the eve of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, look more like a case of cynical political opportunism rather than a show of leadership. Such divisive scaremongering flies in the face of Australia’s tradition of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism has been incredibly successful in this country, and it has acted as one of our greatest safeguards against the sort of attacks we have seen in both America and in the United Kingdom. This is the real message that the Prime Minister should be giving to the rest of Australia.
Media Contact: Alex Kouttab 0417 541 465
