|
April 24, 2008
Just in case anybody has been following the 'Griffith Uni promotes terrorism' stories that monument to honest reporting The Australian has been running lately, relax. The heartbeat of the nation is just doing what it does best. Beat. Up, that is.
On Tuesday:
A PROMINENT Australian university practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Islamic campus for $1.3million, even telling the ambassador it could keep secret elements of the controversial deal.
Documents obtained by The Australian reveal that Griffith University - described by vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor as the "university of choice" for Saudis - offered the embassy an opportunity to reshape the Griffith Islamic Research Unit during its campaign to get some "extra noughts" added to Saudi cheques.
James Cook University's Mervyn Bendle, a senior lecturer in the history of terrorism, yesterday attacked Griffith University for accepting the money and accused the Saudi embassy of wanting to promote hardline Islam.
On Wednesday:
A JUDGE has likened Griffith University to hardline Islamic "madrassas" in Pakistan - notorious for breeding radicals - and accused the Queensland institution of promoting a Muslim ideology espoused by Osama bin Laden.
Queensland District Court judge Clive Wall also accused Griffith of becoming an "agent" through which the Saudi Arabian embassy was propagating extreme Islam.
Today they published Vice-Chancellor Ian O'Connor's response, except a whole three pars at the start somehow got misplaced. The intro was a line of the fourth par in the original:
THE aim of Griffith University's Islamic research unit, established in 2005, is to promote a balanced and contextualised understanding of Islam and Muslims.
Thanks to the miracle that is email, here's the missing three pars:
Universities have a long history of being caught up in religious
controversy. A signal start was made by the German monk and
university professor Martin Luther posting his Ninety-Five Theses on
the Power of Indulgences on the doors of the Wittenberg Castle Church
on 31 October 1517. That catalyst for the Protestant Reformation was
to embroil universities, monarchs and other institutions in Christian
sectarian strife over four centuries and several continents.
The bitter and at times bloody dispute between Catholics and
Protestants reached Australia and affected the foundation of our
earliest universities. The Acts founding Australia’s two oldest
universities, the University of Sydney in 1850 and the University of
Melbourne in 1853, proscribe the administration of any religious
test. This is not because the universities’ founders were
irreligious – quite the contrary. It was to prevent the universities
being captured by any Christian sect and thus become inhospitable to
other Christians. Similar troubles in Ireland at the same time led
to the establishment in Dublin in 1851 of that noble failure the
Catholic University of Ireland, whose ideals were famously described
by its founding rector John Henry Cardinal Newman in his series of
lectures entitled The idea of a university.
Christian sectarian disputes faded to invisibility in the late
twentieth century in Australia, and so did our skill in managing
religious controversy. It is therefore no surprise that we should
struggle when another religious contest is imported from overseas,
this time between Christianity and Islam. Griffith University has
unfortunately become caught in the crossfire, with protagonists
trying to claim that the university has either actively or
inadvertently supported the ‘wrong’ side.
I bet somebody at The Australian is in a lot of trouble today for misplacing the entire context section of the piece.
|
We are pretty much at the point where any media watcher is probably beyond bothering to deal with the mass media. It creates sensations from nothing for the purpose of sales. So it is pointless trying to argue truth through the media's lens/publishing.