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March 06, 2006
Many conservatives say that it is unAustralian to advocate Sharia religious law and wear burqas or Islamic headscarves whilst forgetting to say that Christian and Jews follow religious laws. Hence the double standard.
Bill Leak
These conservatives, and Costello's recent speech on "confused, mushy, misguided multiculturalism" was a good example of this, do acknowledge that Muslims do not like representation of the prophet and that they do not think newspapers should print them. Then they add, as did Costello, that they too should recognise that this does not justify violence against newspapers or countries that allow newspapers to publish them. Muslim immigrants need to leave violent cultural baggage at the door. The Treasurer went on to say that not only will Australia never observe sharia or Islamic law, but those who wish to live under it should have no place in Australia.
This implies that such violence has been a problem in Australia despite the lack of demonstration, much less any violence, by Australian Muslims over cartoons in newspapers or elsewhere. The demonstrations overseas involved a small proportion of Muslims. So what Costello and his fellow conservatives are doing is defiining Muslim identity by equating the most extreme or fuundamentalist form of Islamist radicalism with Muslims generally.
Costello has even gone on record as saying that Australia was founded on the Christian faith and that the 10 commandments are the foundation of Australia's law and society--ie., that Christian religious laws are the foundation of Australia's secular laws.
So one can infer that Costello frames the issues in terms of a conflict between Christianity and Islam. Thus we have the dog whistle appeal to the talkback radio audience.
What is not being seriouslsy considered is whether Australia could introduce sharia-based arbitration in areas such as family law. As Sebastian De Brennan in The Canberra Times says it:
"... is only probably a matter of time before sharia law is proposed as a legitimate means of resolving disputes - including family law disputes - as they arise between Islamic Australians. The presence of Koori courts and sentencing circles for indigenous Australians and the fact that much of the law in this land is predicated on the Judeo-Christian legal tradition remind us that there is nothing novel about the interplay and tension between religion, culture and law.
This should be publicly debated. What Costello has done, in contrast, is to promote divisiveness between Muslims and non-Muslim Christians.
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