verging_on_random

Imams

October 27, 2006 on 6:36 am | In Uncategorized |

Our beloved PM and leader of the nation John Howard has adopted a new tactic lately. When something happens that contradicts his preferred world view he simply ignores or dismisses it. When Qantas announced that 300 local jobs might be lost and the work outsourced to India, he said he couldn’t be expected to “give a running commentary on every single employment decision made by a company”. When an official report summarising the combined work of American intelligence agencies was leaked, revealing the consensus finding that the Iraq invasion had increased the risk of terrorist attack, he said it was “just another view”.

Well it’s understandable I suppose. He’s a busy man, with a schedule of media commitments and photo ops that would make it hard for anyone to keep track of everything that’s happening in the world. Which makes it so surprising that he can find time to give a running commentary on anything that reflects badly on Muslims, no matter how insignificant the event.

For example, yesterday that weird imam from Sydney who appears to be nearly as big a media junkie as the PM made some offensive comments about rape. From what I understand, he suggested that some rape victims who dress in a sexy manner, get drunk, flirt with guys and so on invite sexual assault and it’s a bit rough to lock the guys up for 50 years if they let their dicks do their thinking.

It’s funny, I can remember my mum and assorted other white Anglo-Saxon men and women from an earlier generation in Australia expressing very similar thoughts 30 or 40 years ago (not in those exact words of course - ‘brazen hussies’ I seem to remember was mum’s expression).

Be that as it may, the imam has rightly been condemned for expressing thoughts that are inconsistent with contemporary Australian social attitudes. But for some reason Howard found the time to acquaint himself with the details of the incident, and to ventilate his outrage all over prime time television last night. He’s too busy to respond to official reports that undermine his whole rationale for being in Iraq but he can find time to read up on what ministers of religion are saying about things that aren’t part of the federal government’s responsibilities.

Well actually make that “read up on what Islamic ministers” are saying … he’s remarkably tolerant of other religions’ representatives’ right to say outlandish things. It’s just the Muslims that he bothers to condemn … closely followed no doubt by a disclaimer that not all Muslims are bad people, just some of them. Nudge nudge wink wink, say no more.