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This from BBC News on May 19 last year:
It is five years since Iranian Masih Alinejad started a movement – since joined by thousands of women – protesting against the compulsory wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, in her country. It spread on social media and led to unprecedented demonstrations in the streets …Niloofar (not her real name) was arrested for demonstrating against the mandatory hijab. She says she was held in solitary confinement and subjected to torture and beatings. An active member of the movement who still lives in Iran, she says that through Masih’s campaigns “ordinary people get together to make the government react”.
Now let’s cut to New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern draping herself in a headscarf to signify solidarity with Muslims. Reportedly, New Zealand women generally were encouraged to wear a scarf to show their solidarity. A heavily-armed policewoman is pictured in newspapers with a headscarf while guarding a funeral of one of the victims of the shootings. It is false, it is virtue-signaling, and it is sickeningly unsupportive of brave Muslim women trying to throw off their oppression along with their scarfs.
It was a terrible event in New Zealand. An outpouring of grief and sympathy should be forthcoming. But perspective is required. You don’t have to show sympathy by donning clothing which is used in so many places to keep so many women in check and under the yolk of religious fundamentalists.
Women of the West should worry less about breaking through what is now an illusory glass ceiling and worry more about protecting their hard-won liberation. In fact, both we men and women of the West need to cherish the freedom won by our forebears; a good part of which stemmed from the separation of church from state. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” has echoed bountifully down the centuries.
When a tragedy like that in New Zealand happens, in almost all cases it is best to keep all generalisations, grand gestures, and politics out of it. At least for a respectful interval. It is time to feel for the victims and their families. Yet people who should know better go around laying blame.
Even Chelsea Clinton, for Heaven’s sake, was harangued by an activist for being complicit in the shooting because she had previously criticisedMuslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s antisemitic remarks. Anyone of note who had ever expressed concern about Islam was blamed. Donald Trump was blamed, of course, but that is simply reflexive. He is routinely blamed for everything by the Left.
This brings me to Fraser Anning – the bogeyman of the reputable class. Now I have made no study of Senator Anning. I don’t think he should be in parliament but that is because he got so few votes; nothing else. And he can’t be personally faulted for the flawed voting system that we have been gifted by our parliamentary representatives. However, to stick with my view about these matters, his comments on the New Zealand tragedy were ill-timed. He should have kept schtum. Even then, some of his comments (though not all) in his March 15 statement struck a discordant note. At the least he needs better help in framing his words.
Many people of standing (e.g., Mark Steyn, Douglas Murray, Mark Durie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to name just a few) are concerned about Muslim immigration and the violent and supremacist tenets of the Muslim faith. I share that concern. At the same time, I wouldn’t say, as did Anning, that “the real cause of the bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.”
I wouldn’t say this because it is patently not true. There is no evidence at all that the alleged perpetrator was influenced one iota by the presence or otherwise of “Muslim fanatics” in New Zealand. It seems, from the information available thus far, that his decision was opportunistic, based upon a seething resentment he had built up in Europe.
More than this, it is totally counterproductive to deflect from the culpability of the perpetrator to the effect of some societal condition. We have seen that playbook applied too often when Islamic terror has struck – as it does, be reminded, each day somewhere in the world. (The Religion of Peace website lists 121 Islamic attacks in the thirty days to March 22, which killed 726 people and injured another 786.)
Anning is a provocateur, it is fair to say, I think. He should expect strident verbal criticism. Both his statement and the resulting criticism should be protected free speech. Someone has got together a petition to remove Anning from parliament signed, allegedly, by 1.3 million Australians. Luckily the mob can’t remove a parliamentarian from office. But, again, getting such a petition together is another valuable form of free speech.
What isn’t part of free speech is smashing a raw egg on Anning’s head. Neither, in my view, is the Prime Minister calling for the full force of the law to be brought down on Anning for his understandable reaction to being egged in that fashion. Scott Morrison had no business, from his elevated office of state, making that gratuitous and authoritarian comment. Why not bring the full force of the law down on the person who attacked first? Here is an idea: Why not just leave it to the police to sort things out? Morrison should know better and it is regrettable that his instincts led him to speak so intemperately.
All in all, the tragedy In New Zealand didn’t bring out the best in people, which is what the victims and their families deserved. While police and security forces might be called upon to widen the scope of their activities and act expeditiously, for commentators and politicians there is time enough for looking at the broader picture after funerals have taken place.
Peter,
Why are we still talking about a single maniacal attack in NZ that killed 50+ people? Why are we no giving 121x as much quantitative time to the “121 Islamic attacks in the thirty days to March 22” or 14x as much qualitative time to the “726 (killed) and injured another 786” or should we give the injured a score of 0.5 each, making it more than 20x as much concern?
Let me make a prediction: there will be no Buddhist, Sikh, Catholic or Right Wing murderous terrorist attacks in the next 30-days. but the Islamic terror on massacre, mayhem and murder will continue as the ‘new normal’ we are told we must expect.
Here is a deal we can all support: there are now 15,000 ISIS fighters, supporters and brides in refugee camps. Surely we can find it in our hearts to open our borders and bring them all to Oz?
John Durie in the same class as Mark Steyn and Douglas Murray? Fair go; Durie is a financial commentator!
en passant: 15,000 ISIS fighters, supporters and brides …bring them all to Oz. To quote the late John Clark: is it a stabbing pain; is it a shooting pain; anything in the upper arms; lower legs OK; family history of this sort of thing? Better pop into the kitchen and get yourself a glass of water; it must be almost time for your tablet.
“He should have kept schtum.”
Cultural appropriation – who authorised this use of a Yiddish term.
/sarc (in case it’s misunderstood)
Damn, that ruined it.
Mark (not John) Durie Biggles
Biggles,
Are you saying you will not support the ‘rescue’ of these freedom fighters and their brides? Shame on you!
After all, on the 21st March, when their last stronghold fell they tidied up before they left and beheaded 50 Yazidi ‘sex-slaves’ and put their heads in a bin.
So, rather than me taking any medication, let me educate you as to the meaning of sarcasm: these people are merciless and should be dealt with accordingly.
Yet the Labor Shadow Minister for Immigration condemned Dutton for infringing the civil rights of Neil Prakash, the recruiter for ISIS, who now wants to come back to Oz, a nice comfortable cell for a few years, then back to business … Why not be insanely stupid and cut to the chase and let them all in?
On 21st March, the day that the last ISIS stronghold in the village of Berghouz in Iraq fell to Allied forces the headless bodies of 50+ female Yazidi ‘sex-slaves’ were found. Their heads had all been collected in a trash can. Up to 5,000 – 6,000 ISIS militants and supporters successfully withdrew into northern Syria.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-05/yazidi-refugees-rally-in-australia-to-highlight-plight/10867338
I live in the Wentworth electorate, and have Ms Kerryn Phelps as our federal member. I wonder if I’ll be called a hero, champion, or egg-boi (okay, egg-man) if I decided to crack an egg on her head? Somehow I don’t think I’d get the same glowing media support or have $50k dropped into a legal fighting fund in 24 hours.
Bravo Peter! Adern’s “empathy” has merely led New Zealanders and Australians to all rush to the other side of the ship.
The sad reality for the coming election is this: who would be worse than Scott Morrison? Sure enough it would be Bill Shorten. Scott Morrison is the greatest “conservatism scam” in living memory. Everything seems upside down: Labor doesn’t represent workers anymore, the Liberals increase taxes, increase debt and won’t fight for our freedoms. Western leaders suck up to Islam and God only knows why!
Sadly in NZ the hijab is now been elevated to a symbol of compassion not, as it is, a symbol of female oppression and atheists and the public generally are being asked to pray to a deity in which they do not believe. The hypocrisy stinks.
And now a royal commission into the Christchurch terror attack. Unbelievable. Decades of Islamic terrorism against the West didn’t trigger one RC. One terror attack against Muslims in NZ and voila. The virtue signalling of the NZ PM keeps on giving…!
Indeed one has to ask whether the NZ government has virtually elevated Islam to the status of the ‘state religion’?
It’s obviously a – albeit an extreme, tragic and brutal – response (as are Brexit, Le Pen, Salvini, Orban, etc) to the broader context and forces at work in the Western, liberal world, r.e things like, mass immigration, multiculturalism, dissolution of the majority culture, changing demographics, loss of culture and tradition, the effect of Islam in places that previously had little of it, etc; and as such cannot be removed from the broader context.
Would this have happened in the 1950s or 1960s, for example? Would this have happened today in say, Japan or Sth Korea?
Left-liberal types are obviously not personally responsible, but are they so blind and/or smug as not to notice the swamp that they’ve helped create out of which certain monsters have crawled?
The British philosopher John Gray has written quite well on this whole broader general issue of leftist hubris, sanctimony and their inability to accept some of the consequences of their policies and actions.
“Yoke” not “yolk”
Overt censorship of “selected” websites has already commenced.
By selected websites, I don’t mean the screamy, yelly, raving mad ideologue rat traps, but ones that make a genuine attempt at objective information and analysis of demographics.
By overt censorship, I mean the insidious message “Hmmm … we can’t seem to find that site. Perhaps the site is busy, so you could try later …” This for the websites I have occasionally opened over quite a few years. There is also no indication of who this mysterious “we” is that can’t seem to find … etc
Using other browser techniques (ie. *not* Firefox, IE etc), these sites open as they usually have. I am not about to detail how – the squalid little censors are now checking thoughtcrime everywhere, especially here.
George Orwell was indeed underrated. A true visionary.
Indeed, all Orwell got wrong was the number.
What Anning did, was exactly the same thing the trendy scum do on the rare occasions they acknowledge an Islamic terrorist attack. So why blame him? Blame them, they started it. We should be cheering on Lyle Shelton for calling out Di Natale, who blamed Shelton’s “homophobia” for the terrorist attack on the ACL building in Canberra, and then had the gall to condemn Anning.