RUTHFULLY YOURS

The slippery document in question, issued by the National Imams Consultative Forum, is titled “An Muslim Australian perspective on some key contemporary concerns.” It was apparently the product of workshops held in 2014/15. It is comprised of 53 paragraphs under a number of headings. I will just take up a few points, but really it needs thoroughgoing scrutiny and testing.

A first thing to say is here we go again. This lot operating under the banner of Islam are a problem writ large. That is why we have to put up with a stream of apologia to camouflage the obnoxious nature of their supremacist scriptural credo and its worldwide effect of poverty, violence, cruelty, intolerance, discrimination and sexism.

It sticks out like a beardless imam; there is not a mention of any confirming Koranic verses or hadiths in the document to support the underlying theme that Islamic and Australian values don’t clash.

Under the heading of citizenship we are told, inter alia, that Muslims can be Australian citizens, while retaining brotherhood and sisterhood to all Muslims worldwide, and are not “automatically” required to take up arms to support one side or other when Muslims fight each other. Moreover, we are told: “There is no conflict between loyalty to Islam and commitment to Australia.” Bully for Islam. But, when push comes to shove, what happens if Australia is pitched in war with a Muslim country? I will leave the question hanging.

We can breathe a sigh of relief. Muslims must honour contracts with non-Muslims. Equally, it is gratifying to learn that much of Sharia doesn’t conflict with Australian law. The parts that do, however, are pointedly left unmentioned. Sharia tends to be a moving feast, but it would have been nice for the imams to have said that cruel and unusual punishments, criminal sanctions for apostasy, heresy, homosexuality and adultery, and the unequal treatment of women and girls are all totally without validity in contemporary times, in or outside of Islam.

Instead we are left with their view that only a “legitimate Islamic government” can implement the penalties ordained by Sharia. This is totally unacceptable. Barbarism is barbarism whoever oversees it and wherever it is overseen. Australian Muslim citizens should be expected to disown it in the clearest terms. Instead they hope to get way with dissembling as a race apart from other citizens.

Apparently, Sharia also requires Muslims to deal with people “gently and kindly.” I don’t understand? Which people?

“The Hour will not be established until you fight with Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him’.” (Bukhari 52:177) How do our Australian imams rate Sahih al-Bukhari and his canonical hadiths? Obviously they must have disowned him or them or both? If so tell us; if not, please explain.

Also, doesn’t Allah (Koran 3:28) himself say: “Let not believers take disbelievers for their friends…guard yourselves against them.” Puzzlement overwhelms me. It gets worse when Allah (8:12) instructs believers to strike off heads and fingertips like mine. This doesn’t seem too gentle and kindly to me. Maybe this was aberrant. Was Allah having a bad day? No, there he goes again (48:29) saying that those with Muhammad should be hard against disbelievers and merciful among themselves.

Maybe this brew of scriptural poison, and much more like it, can be squared with devout Muslims being gentle and kind to non-Muslims. After all, the imams say that the Koran and the Prophet “emphasise that all human beings come from one family” and that Muslims should “maintain good social and neighbourly relations” with non-Muslims. Seems okay, but where are the scriptural references and the explanation as to how they fit with the discordant references. Without this, these are empty words. Worse, the suspicion arises that they are deceptive words.

I would like the imams to tell me straight. I don’t mind them thinking and saying that Muslims are superior to non-believers. I can take it. I was born in working-class England where there were plenty of people who thought they were better than me. But I don’t like being taken for a mug. If I were rude (which I’m not, of course!), I might tell them to nick off and practice taqiyya (deception) elsewhere.

Instructively, we are told that “no Muslim has the right to label or declare other Muslims as non-believers or apostates [and that] differences of opinion on interpretation by qualified scholars have always been recognised in Islamic tradition as legitimate.” If only this were widely known. All those Sunnis killed by Shias and Shias killed by Sunnis, right down the centuries to the present day, might have been spared. This important message mustn’t be heard only in Australia. It needs to be got to the Middle East and to everywhere else tout de suite.

This message to the Ummah must also be accompanied by another novel observation on the part of the imams. Apparently, “Muslims are bound by clear ethical and moral norms which prohibit Muslims from harming or killing non-combatants and from unnecessary destruction of property.” Say that again!

How in the world can this be said with a straight face in the light of the most god-awful carnage and enslavement being carried out in the name of Islam in the Middle East and North Africa, not to mention the regular and bloody Islamic terrorist attacks around the rest of the world? Don’t these imams read the news? Nothing to do with our religion of peace they must think. Do they really think that? I simply don’t know but I seriously doubt it.

Those of us with an ounce of common sense, who haven’t been lobotomised by political correctness, don’t buy it. And documents like this, which studiously avoid nasty facts about the Koran and the Hadith and the inspiration they are giving, and have always given down the ages, to intolerance and violence simply intensifies concerns about Islam rather than allays them.