Does anyone still believe liberal Western democracy can ‘coexist’ with Islam? Are we still buying the ‘peaceful majority’ myth? Some clearly want us to.
A prominent Muslim leader says extremist figures lurking in the fringes do not speak for the wider community, and nefarious actors seek to divide by taking advantage of emotion and frustration.
So, why does the wider Muslim community keep appointing extremist figures to prominent, representative positions? Remember that extremists like Keysar Trad was elected president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. Even more extremist Taj El-Din Hilaly was appointed Grand Mufti of Australia and New Zealand.
Jamal Rifi, a respected community leader and key figure in historical deradicalisation efforts, said neither [Abu Ousayd] and his Al Madina Dawah Centre nor Hizb ut-Tahrir spoke for the community.
Oh, really? So why, when a Labor government attempted to cancel Hilaly’s tourist visa and deport him, did ‘strong support’ from the Islamic community force them to back down? Why do extremist centres like Al Madina Dawah Centre and Lakemba Mosque regularly draw thousands of worshippers?
Why does Ousayd, whose real name is Wissam Haddad, have nearly 10,000 followers? Followers he’s begging to bankroll propaganda to ‘save Islam’ from democracy? How’s that for ‘coexist’?
“With the shirk of democracy affecting (Muslims), we have put together a booklet refuting the common doubts surrounding the issue of voting,” Mr Haddad said.
Shirk, you must remember, is the mortal sin of idolatry in Islam. Haddad’s claim that democracy is a shirk is backed by many Islamic scholars, who see democracy as fundamentally un-Islamic, by placing the laws of man above the laws of Allah.
The Australian revealed in July how Mr Haddad had slammed democracy at his Bankstown-based Al Madina Dawah Centre, simultaneous but separate to an anti-democracy sermon by extremist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir.
In August, he ramped up his calls to shun democracy.
Not that Muslims aren’t prepared to weaponise democratic norms in their quest to tear down democracy.
A high-profile doctor running against Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke in his western Sydney seat has outraged Jewish community leaders by sharing social media posts celebrating Hamas’s October 7 attacks and portraying them as a dream come true.
Cairo-born GP Ziad Basyouny made headlines in August when he announced his candidacy for Burke’s seat of Watson, becoming the first of several independent candidates from Muslim backgrounds expected to challenge Labor incumbents in previously safe electorates […]
On October 12 last year, five days after the attacks that killed an estimated 1200 people in Israel, Basyouny shared a Facebook post containing an illustration of a rock-throwing protester and a machine-gun-wielding paraglider, according to screenshots provided to this masthead.
The original post by another Facebook user, which Basyouny shared to his 132,000 followers, featured an Arabic caption saying: “Dreams, my friend, come true for those who seek and work to see them come true!”
So, massacring Jews is his dream come true? Who wants to ‘coexist’ with someone like that? Apart, of course, from the Greens.
In a true show of Labor cowardice, Tony Burke’s office declined to comment on the anti-Semitic post.
But the would-be Muslim politician’s grotesque support for Hamas terror raises an interesting question:
Spy chief Mike Burgess has declared that backing Hamas is a barrier to getting a visa […]
“But I also said if you have a violent extremist ideology, or you provide material or financial support to a terrorist organisation, that will be a problem.”
Online support for Hamas – such as liking a social media post – would be a problem for applicants, Burgess said.
“Is it a one-off comment?” he said. “If it’s a tweet that actually – or reinforcement or liking of a tweet – that says the 7th of October [Hamas attack on Israel] was acceptable, that’s going to be a problem for that person.”
So, will ASIO or the Labor government have the guts to put their money where their mouths are, and strip this Hamas-supporting creep of his citizenship and send him back to Egypt?
Or are they still going to pretend we can ‘coexist’ with Muslim extremism?