Craig Laundy wants to combat opinions about Muslims in Australia
Reporter
Canberra
February 16 2016
Malcolm Turnbull’s new assistant minister for multiculturalism, Craig Laundy, has vowed to combat ”wrong’’ public perceptions about Australia’s Muslims.
Ethnic and religious leaders have reported increased tension in recent months amid the rise of Islamic State and calls from political leaders such as Tony Abbott for a “reformation” of Islam.
Mr Laundy, a former publican from Sydney’s culturally diverse inner-west, said the vast majority of inflammatory opinions about Islam and Muslims came from people who were “not well informed” and their views were “wrong”.
Although he acknowledged greater “tension” in the community following recent terrorist attacks, Mr Laundy said Australians should “come together in times of challenge, not fall apart”.
“People that dive into this debate and say controversial things, I would argue, the vast majority are speaking from a position that is not well informed,” Mr Laundy told ABC Radio.
“My job … is to enter the debate, knowing the background and the community, engaging and explaining to Australia the challenges that these communities actually face.
Mr Laundy said Australian Muslims were “not scared” about debating how their religious practices integrated with the Australian way of life, but the discussion should be “respectful” and “informed”.
“That has never changed be it the Snowy Mountains workers (from Europe) after World War Two or be it the Hazara Afghanis that are working in local abattoirs around the country as we speak – very good boners, for example – they are here to give their families more opportunities than they had,” he said.
“The humanitarian intake visa category is one of the most entrepreneurial classes of visa category we have. I see new arrivals start working for someone else and within six or 12 months they’ve started their own business.”
Where’s the Left when there really are people making Islam look bad? UPDATE: Craig Laundy fails
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, February 16, 2016 (11:33am)
Muslim leaders are quick to demand the banning of those who make Australians fear Islam. Take this, from last year:
Muslim leaders have pressed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to cancel the visa of Dutch anti-Islamic MP Geert Wilders during a meeting with seven Islamic community leaders on curbing violent extremism.
Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan told Fairfax Media that he had warned the Prime Minister, during a high-level meeting on Friday, that Mr Wilders’ visit would fan the flames of anti-Islamic sentiment...
And Leftist radicals are even quicker to scare venues into denying bookings from people who would make Australia fear Islam:
The anti-racism group United Against Bigotry and Racism has vowed to protest against Wilders’ presence in Australia.
Several venues pulled out of hosting events featuring Wilders when he visited in 2013.
Politicians are very quick to stop people they claim will make Australians fear Muslims from speaking in any area they control:
[West Australian] Opposition Leader Mark McGowan said it was a deliberately defiant act [by Wilders] to hold the press conference next to the WA parliament given Premier Colin Barnett had repeatedly said Mr Wilders was not welcome at state government venues…
“His presence is disruptive, it’s offensive to many people… “This is the sort of stuff that went on in Germany in the 1930s and I don’t want to see it happen in Australia,” he said.
So it is bizarre that these same people say nothing, prevent nothing and allow everything when - not for the first time- we get a conference of people who truly will make Australians fear Islam:
An Islamic anti-west fest is scheduled to be held at Sydney’s Olympic Park in May… Let’s check out some of the “12 great speakers from 4 continents” who’ll appear:
Brother Hamza Tzortzis
...Former Hizbie Hamza believes beheading is painless, apostates deserve to die and freedom of speech is wrong:
If someone’s going to fight against the community [Muslims] they should be killed … the punishment is beheading … you don’t feel any pain with it.
We as Muslims reject the idea of freedom of speech, and even the idea of freedom.Those who claim that making homosexuality a criminal act is wrong are totally inconsistent.
Hamza later recanted his opinion on the painlessness of beheading, claiming that his statement was made “while under pressure on an on-line video blog show.” ...Next up:Sheikh Zahir MahmoodThe Sheikh thinks Hamas child-killers are the good guys:Hamas are not terrorists. They’re freedom fighters, they’re defending their country …Also on the list...:Dr Zachariah MatthewsHe wants some changes to Australia’s legal system:Elements of Islamic law – the sharia – should be legally recognised in Australia so that Muslims can live according their faith, a prominent Muslim leader says …‘’I wasn’t talking about sharia law in its entirety – we are not calling for the introduction of the penal system which calls for cutting off hands,’’ he said…Of course, every conference needs a comedian, which brings us to:
Sheikh Alaa ElsayedSheikh Elsayed’s comedic stylings include:If you have one wife, she fights with you! If you have two wives, they will fight for you!
HA HA HA! He’s hilarious. The Project will book this guy for a whole week.
Here is another speaker booked to appear at this Sydney conference:
Abu Hamza from Melbourne-based IISNA ... has offered Muslims advice on “how to beat your wife” to make them “shape up”:
In a lecture titled “The Keys to a Successful Marriage”, ... Mr Hamza said men could beat their wives, “to shape them up"…
He also said women “must respond” if their husbands wanted to have sex, and ridiculed laws that prohibit rape within marriage…In the sermon Mr Hamza initially tells his listeners “don’t hit your wife”. But he goes on to detail how men should hit their wives, according to his interpretation of Islamic teachings.He says it is permissible to hit women as a “last resort” but that “the beating the Mohammed showed is like the toothbrush that you use to brush your teeth”.“You are not allowed to bruise them, you are not allowed to make them bleed...”
Also speaking is Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman, whose Sydney organisation hosted a speech by an Al Qaeda recruiterlater killed in a drone attack in Yemen alongside three other suspected Al Qaeda operatives:
AN AL-QAEDA recruiter, described as the No. 1 terrorist threat to America, was engaged by a Sydney youth group to address hundreds of young people…
At the same time as Anwar al-Awlaki was advising the extremist later charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas, he was in talks with a group, Sydney Muslim Youth, about delivering a sermon to young Australians. He was already well known to security agencies as the spiritual guide to three of the hijackers on September 11, 2001…
According to a director of the mosque, Ziad Ghamraoui, Shady Alsuleiman was in charge of organising evening youth events at the time of the sermon. Sheikh Shady refused to comment… IslamicMedia.com.au, an initiative of the Shady-affiliated United Muslims of Australia, streamed but did not record the speech and has 15 other audio sermons from the imam.
Much more at Tim’s blog, including links.
Question: where are the Left now? Where are the feminists? Where those militant Catholic-hating atheists? Where the civil libertarians? Where Labor?
And where is the Lebanese Muslim Association when we are visited by extremists who really will make Australians fear Islam, and not just visited by a politician who simply points out that such extremists exist?
UPDATE
But here we go again. Here comes another “Liberal” Minister to lecture not the extremists but those who fear them:
Wouldn’t he do better reading lectures to these radicals instead? Oh, and shouldn’t he always issue this disclaimer: Craig Laundy holds the Liberal seat with the biggest Muslim minority (10.4 per cent) and is battling to hold it.
In Islam, religion and politics are interchangeable. Wherever in the world Muslims settle, they form colonies. They expand the interests of Islam and, rather than dissolving over time, multiply and consolidate. Yet our leaders behave like fifth columnists and, despite the evidence, play down the growing Islamic threat. Critics are portrayed as bigots, racists and Islamophobes and the Muslim majority as victims.
