Pommygranate has posted a fantastic report on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s presentation at the Sydney Recital Hall last Sunday night. Inspirational stuff.

A couple of stories from The Australian:

“Extremist students take over Newcastle mosque”:

Up to 150 university students from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt who follow the fundamentalist Wahabbism ideology were central to the overthrow at the weekend of the executive board of the Newcastle Muslim Association.

Deposed association president Yunus Kara yesterday accused the students of pushing for new leadership of the port city’s mosque in order to advance their own extremist agenda and continue “brainwashing” local Muslims.

“The international students have used their puppets to come forward and dictate,” Mr Kara told The Australian.

“They’re driving them to whatever ideology that (suits them). Their ideology is extremism … but they teach under the banner of Islam.”

“Taxation office to probe Muslim cleric on Saudi cash”:

An ACT Islamic organisation has also accused the Palestinian-born imam Mohammad Swaiti of being “radical”, anti-Western in his religious teachings, and failing to declare payments he received from officiating at wedding ceremonies.

Documents obtained by The Australian reveal an Australian Tax Office investigation into Sheik Swaiti over allegations by senior Muslim community leaders that he failed to declare his clerical allowances of up to $US30,000 ($37,700) a year, which were paid to him by the Saudi Government.

The tax office sent Islamic Society of ACT president Sabrija Poskovic a letter in reply to written allegations made by him and his community regarding Sheik Swaiti.

“I refer to your letter relating to the imam of your mosque, Mohammad Swaiti, who also happens to be a tax office employee,” the ATO’s letter to Mr Poskovic says.

[..]

Mr Poskovic accused the Saudi Embassy of bankrolling the annual salaries of up to 20 imams around Australia, including Sheik Swaiti, through its Islamic donations (Daawa) office.

A letter understood to be sent on behalf of Mr Poskovic claims the Saudis pay the imams “mukafa”, which is regarded a “reward compensation payment”. It also alleges that Sheik Swaiti had been on the Saudi payroll for 12 years.

Are parts of Australia heading the way of some cities in Europe, like Antwerp, where the Saudi-sponsored radical Salafists/Wahhabists have taken over all 25 mosques? On a bigger scale, just watch what is happening in Kosovo, where the Wahhabis have sponsored about 200 mosques and religious schools since 1999:

Wahhabis open internet cafes associated with their mosques, “in a bid to attract children to listen to ‘naslihates’ against Skenderbeg and the Albanian national renewal movement, the Western civilization and even Kosovo’s traditional brand of Islam,” the media report.

The newspapers in Priština also say that “Kosovo and international mujahedins may be preparing for a rebellion on the brink of the status solution,”

Or look at the growing influence of the Wahhabis in Bosnia, . Rather predictably, in both places a growing section of the Muslim population is growing increasingly radicalised. Lets not be going in that direction.

‘TERRIFIED students and teachers at government schools across NSW are under attack by intruders at a rate of more than one playground invasion a day’:

Knives, broken bottles, poles, cane-cutters, a sword and even a paving hammer have been used to threaten or harm students, principals and teachers.

One of the victims of the incidents is a male Year 10 student who was assaulted by six youths while sitting an exam, while in another case an enraged parent tried to break down a door to “kill” a Year 7 boy.

Police were also called to a primary school in Sydney’s west after the father of two students pulled out a knife and told a mother in Arabic: “You see this, I’m going to put it in your stomach when you leave.”

This is outrageous! What are they doing mentioning he spoke in Arabic? What does that have to do with the story? Don’t they realise they are going to disturb racial harmony and threaten satotage upon our multicultural paradise? The same thing gets said in many different languages in schools right across Australia all the time, damn it, but go ahead and victimise our Arabic speaking minority. Again. Like they haven’t been through enough already. Makes much more sense to just blame John Howard.

A holiday sign sighting in Byron Bay:

Well, you were only going to smoke it anyway.

Unable to stand the shame any longer I promptly joined the queue nearby to have my car recycled into wind chimes. I now drive a fridge.

Meanwhile in Canada…
UPDATE: the link to the story in that post is dead, here it is on another site.

Paul Sheehan calls ‘bullshit’ in the Sydney Morning Herald, Oct 30: “Sheik tries to lie his way out of trouble”

On Thursday the imam of the Lakemba Mosque, Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, went on television and lied. Brazenly. In an interview with A Current Affair, Hilaly was asked to justify his comments that women bore the ultimate responsibility for the crime of rape, specifically his comment: “If one puts uncovered meat out in the street then the cats come and eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem.”

Hilaly’s response, in Arabic, came via his translator and spin doctor, Keysar Trad: “He’s saying that the man is responsible, that the cat is responsible.”

Absolute rubbish.

Next, Hilaly was asked about his comment: “She is the one wearing a short skirt, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay jail, then comes a merciless judge who gives you 65 years.”

Trad, on behalf of Hilaly, replied: “What is meant by that is that anybody who commits the crime of rape deserves 65 years. The judge should not show mercy to that person.”

Absolute rubbish.

The clearly sceptical reporter, Ben Fordham, using a transcript of Hilaly’s speech, insisted this was not what he had said.

Trad replied: “The intention in that context is that this person does not deserve mercy. That the judge should show no mercy to that person.”

There is a word for this: lying.

Deborah Hope in The Australian, Oct 28: “Islam’s gender crisis”

Some Muslim men’s fear of women is cast in sharp relief by an outlandish sermon.

A LEADING Muslim cleric’s recent sermon, translated this week, blaming women for inviting rape through their choice of clothes and make-up, brings to a head in Australia the titanic collision between conservative Islam and modernity.

Whether this collision can be reconciled is one of the key issues for the West today. The issue is far bigger than Australian Mufti Sheik Taj Din al-Halali’s preoccupation with rapes cases involving Muslim men.

Editorial in The Australian looks back at 20 years of Meat Sheik Hilalisms, Oct 27: “Time to muzzle the outrageous Mufti”

In 1988, he infamously told Muslim students at Sydney University that Jews used “sex and abominable acts of buggery, espionage, treason and economic hoarding to control the world”.

[..]In 2004, he visited Lebanon and described the September 11 terrorist attacks as “God’s work against oppressors” and said that “good lies in evil”. Sheik Hilali would later defend himself to the ABC’s Geraldine Doogue, saying that the controversy stemmed from errors in translation from his florid, High Arabic style. As he put it weakly at the time, “it was poetry and in poetry we go a little bit into the imagination of presentation”.

[..]In the midst of a sermon last November criticising anti-terrorism laws, the sheik complained that the Holocaust was a “Zionist lie” and asked, “What’s that six million all about? Is there six million?”. This past winter he described Israel as a “cancer” in the heart of the Muslim world.

Tanveer Ahmed ousts some uncomfortable truths in the Australian, Oct 30: “Islam can modernise”

A large number of Australian Muslims agree with Hilali’s rant

[..]As long as Muslims view their religion as sitting above history and culture - with the Koran as the literal word of God, which in their view makes Islam undebatable - there will always be Hilalis who can point to certain texts and argue for a social and legal structure consistent with 7th-century Arabia. Let’s not forget that a senior British cleric lavished praise on Hilali in response to this incident, saying Australia was lucky to have him, and suggesting he was “one of the greatest Islamic scholars in the world”.

This is a man who knows the Koran in intimate detail and his views are consistent with a strict reading of the Muslim holy book.

And if you believe the Koran is the literal word of God, how is anything other than a strict interpretation appropriate?

Tanveer Ahmed again on onlineopinion.com.au, Oct 27: “Draw back the veil”

The stabbing death of a Gold Coast woman in a domestic dispute that was apparently sparked by a daughter’s wish to convert from her Islamic faith is a clear example of why the debate on integration and Australian values is one worth having.

There will be many leaders, both from Islamic and academic circles, who will condemn this death and assure us all that it was extraordinary and had nothing to with Islam. They would be right, but not entirely.

The tragic episode highlights a common trend in large numbers of migrants, especially those from South Asian and Arab backgrounds.

Many have no desire to interact in any way with mainstream culture unless it is absolutely necessary. Their attitude is that they have sacrificed a great deal to leave their homes, families and ancestry. They are here to further their children’s education in order to give them a better chance in life as well as send money back home to help their extended families. Their purposes are economic and educational.

[..]What is unique about Muslim communities is that the paradigm of honour, shame, and the obsession with saving face are at the core of their identities. This is a derivation from the clan, village-based groups most have migrated from.

This world view results in seeing wives and children as an extension of male honour. A friend said that in his culture any deviation from authority by the children was viewed as the fault of the mother and her inability to guide them correctly.

While this may not be encouraged in Islam, although there are some quotes from the Koran that could be interpreted as such encouragement, the religion is based on a social system formed from tribes and clans. Its laws are very much about preserving the cohesion and honour of the tribe, at the expense of the individual.

Primus bring some (cl)ass to the debate on Sailing the Seas of Cheese: “Tommy the Cat”

“I remember as it were a meal ago”

Said Tommy the Cat as he reeled back to clear whatever foreign matter
may have nestled its way into his mighty throat. Many a fat alley rat
had met its demise while staring point blank down the cavernous barrel
of this awesome prowling machine. Truly a wonder of nature this urban
predator. Tommy the cat had many a story to tell, but it was a rare
occasion such as this that he did.

“She came slidin’ down the alleyway like butter drippin’ off a hot
biscuit. The aroma, the mean scent, was enough to arouse suspicion in
even the oldest of Tigers that hung around the hot spot in those
days. The sight was beyond belief. Many a head snapped for double,
even triple, takes as this vivacious feline made her her way into the
delta of the alleyway where the most virile of the young tabbys were
known to hang out. They hung in droves. Such a multitude of
masculinity could only be found in one place… and that was
O’malley’s Alley. The air was thick with cat calls (no pun intended)
but not even a muscle in her neck did twitch as she sauntered up into
the heart of the alley. She knew what she wanted. She was lookin’
for that stud bull, the he cat. And that was me. Tommy the Cat is my
name and I say unto thee…

Say baby do you wanna lay down by me.”

Fax that one to Keysar Trad pronto.

“What he meant was that he is a big fan of Primus and Tommy the Cat is a top notch song. Clearly the Arabic version has lost some of the meaning. What I am trying to say is the Sheik is one cool cat and wants to lay down with some of them sexy Western ladies, you know what I’m sayin’? Say baby!”

Sure, Keysar. Keep on sailing on, homie.

That is all.