verging_on_random

Overrun by Muslims

January 30, 2007 on 9:10 pm | In Uncategorized |

Remember how Pauline Hanson got our attention back in 1996? Australia was “in danger of being overrun by Asians”, she whined in her maiden speech to parliament. That caused significant damage to the way we were perceived in Asia but at least we could say with some justification that one ignorant woman’s ranting didn’t represent the views of a nation.

No such luck with contemporary perceptions. They’ve largely been created, and are certainly whipped along, by our prime minister and a handful of his key ministers.

That at least is my tentative opinion after a short trip to Singapore. When the cab driver from the airport found out I was Australian the first questions he asked were about the number of Muslims who lived in my neighbourhood. He was obviously under the impression that Australia had a big ‘Muslim problem’. So while I was there I made it my business to ask as many people as I could what their views were. Most of the replies were that yes, Australia had a big Muslim problem, by which they meant that Muslims were anti-social criminals making everyone else’s lives miserable. A few who had visited Australia said they knew this wasn’t the case, but confirmed that it was a widespread misconception in Singapore.

When you think about it, it’s hardly surprising. Our prime minister reads endless lectures to ‘leaders of the Muslim community’, whoever they are and whatever it is, telling them to control their ‘firebrands’. Retards like Peter Debnam constantly talk about ‘middle eastern thugs’ who’ve ‘taken control of the streets’. A few journalists are worryingly obsessed with Lebanese gang rapists. Sensible people here tune out this endless static so it’s easy to forget that when it gets reported overseas, people take it at face value.

It probably never occurs to the people of Singapore and similar nations that politicians would deliberately foster racial tension within a country for cheap political advantage. Then again, until Howard hit town it never occurred to me either.

One thought came to me as I was writing this: the deliberate nurturing of xenophobia within the federal government seems to be limited to a few individuals, most notably Howard and Ruddock. Might it be that the rest still have a spark of human decency and can’t bring themselves to join in their leaders’ contemptible behaviour? If so, their cowardice in not speaking out while Howard has created this divided society is every bit as despicable as his opportunism.