An American, Australian ,Israeli, British "Judeo Christian Friendly " blog.
Anthropogenic Global Warming SCAM
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Australian PM Tony Abbott and why he is hated by the "Progressives"
Australia’s carbon tax has gone for good
Terry McCrann
Herald Sun
June 14 2014
TONY Abbott promised to stop the boats. They’ve been stopped.
Tony Abbott promised to abolish Julia Gillard and Christine Milne’s dishonest, punishing and utterly pointless carbon tax. When the Senate changes in two weeks, that now looks certain after Clive Palmer on Friday finally committed his four senators to abolition.
That leaves only fixing Labor’s debt and deficit budget mess to go, of the three big promises that the prime minister made in opposition.
That’s going to be harder to achieve and was always going to take longer. Obviously, it could never have been done in a single budget, even with an opposition prepared to behave responsibly; holding the government to account but also letting it govern.
We might not now get all the way back to a balanced budget in three or four years time — ultimately that outcome is hostage anyway to what happens in the US and China.
But whether or not the government gets some or all of its measures through a ‘recalcitrant’ Senate, the deficit and the debt WILL be smaller than would have been the case with a continuing Labor government.
It is also the case that the Budget promise was the least important of the three, for saving Australia from the disastrous course it was on under the Rudd, Gillard and Rudd governments.
The other two went to the fundamentals of our national sovereignty. Border protection, or in the famous words of John Howard — deciding who comes to our country — is the most basic issue of sovereignty. That’s true, whether we are talking of Japanese heading towards us in 1942, or ‘subcontracting’ our immigration policy to people smugglers in 2008-2013 as Rudd and Gillard did.
But the carbon tax was equally destructive of sovereignty. We had a government imposing a massive cost on both consumers and business, deliberately if mindlessly undermining the national economy.
At its most basic it was a government prepared to hand control of the future price of our carbon (dioxide) emissions — and so, of the price of our electricity and our key exports — over to European bureaucrats in Brussels.
Abolition of the carbon tax will deliver real cash savings to all Australians. The savings per year will go close to cancelling out ALL the cost increases imposed in the budget — if indeed they are actually imposed.
Arguably more importantly, abolition will take a great dead weight off business. It will also have huge political implications.
First off, it will demonstrate the benefit of wresting control of the Senate away from the destructive and dangerous control of the Labor-Green left combination.
Yes, we have ended up with all sorts of odds and sods holding the balance of power. They range from the rational and reasonable group of Nick Xenophon, Bob Day, David Leyonhjelm and John Madigan, to the ‘Palmer trio plus Ricky.’
But for all their oddities and particular agendas, they are NOT Christine Milne and Penny Wong.
The Prime Minister’s North American trip completely shredded the desperate lie that axing the tax would leave Australia isolated.
Despite the frenzied and quite hysterical ‘projections’ of the Fairfax press and the ABC, it did NOT put Abbott off-side with US President Barack Obama.
Indeed Obama specifically noted that Abbott had a mandate to abolish the tax — putting if anyone ‘off-side’ with him, the said Shorten, who refuses to accept Abbott’s mandate.
Abolition of the carbon tax will rule out any prospect of a double dissolution election. That means this Government will run its full term.
Yes, it might not be able to get some or even most of its Budget measures through the Senate, but they are all secondary. The really important thing is that we do NOT have a PM Rudd or Gillard — or indeed, Shorten — proposing NEW spending initiatives.
One absolutely important thing that has not been well understood — and why avoiding a DD election was so vital — is that the way the Senate vote works, this non-Labor-Green control of the Senate will last through the next parliament as well.
But it also importantly means that a returned Labor government would almost certainly not have a Labor-Green Senate majority.
Specifically, it would not be able to bring back the carbon tax. And by 2019 — the time of the next election — the whole global warming craziness will likely have imploded on its own unsustainability.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott meets US President Barack Obama in Washington DC this week.
Terry McCrann
Herald Sun
June 14 2014
TONY Abbott promised to stop the boats. They’ve been stopped.
Tony Abbott promised to abolish Julia Gillard and Christine Milne’s dishonest, punishing and utterly pointless carbon tax. When the Senate changes in two weeks, that now looks certain after Clive Palmer on Friday finally committed his four senators to abolition.
That leaves only fixing Labor’s debt and deficit budget mess to go, of the three big promises that the prime minister made in opposition.
That’s going to be harder to achieve and was always going to take longer. Obviously, it could never have been done in a single budget, even with an opposition prepared to behave responsibly; holding the government to account but also letting it govern.
We might not now get all the way back to a balanced budget in three or four years time — ultimately that outcome is hostage anyway to what happens in the US and China.
But whether or not the government gets some or all of its measures through a ‘recalcitrant’ Senate, the deficit and the debt WILL be smaller than would have been the case with a continuing Labor government.
It is also the case that the Budget promise was the least important of the three, for saving Australia from the disastrous course it was on under the Rudd, Gillard and Rudd governments.
The other two went to the fundamentals of our national sovereignty. Border protection, or in the famous words of John Howard — deciding who comes to our country — is the most basic issue of sovereignty. That’s true, whether we are talking of Japanese heading towards us in 1942, or ‘subcontracting’ our immigration policy to people smugglers in 2008-2013 as Rudd and Gillard did.
But the carbon tax was equally destructive of sovereignty. We had a government imposing a massive cost on both consumers and business, deliberately if mindlessly undermining the national economy.
At its most basic it was a government prepared to hand control of the future price of our carbon (dioxide) emissions — and so, of the price of our electricity and our key exports — over to European bureaucrats in Brussels.
Abolition of the carbon tax will deliver real cash savings to all Australians. The savings per year will go close to cancelling out ALL the cost increases imposed in the budget — if indeed they are actually imposed.
Arguably more importantly, abolition will take a great dead weight off business. It will also have huge political implications.
First off, it will demonstrate the benefit of wresting control of the Senate away from the destructive and dangerous control of the Labor-Green left combination.
Yes, we have ended up with all sorts of odds and sods holding the balance of power. They range from the rational and reasonable group of Nick Xenophon, Bob Day, David Leyonhjelm and John Madigan, to the ‘Palmer trio plus Ricky.’
But for all their oddities and particular agendas, they are NOT Christine Milne and Penny Wong.
The Prime Minister’s North American trip completely shredded the desperate lie that axing the tax would leave Australia isolated.
Despite the frenzied and quite hysterical ‘projections’ of the Fairfax press and the ABC, it did NOT put Abbott off-side with US President Barack Obama.
Indeed Obama specifically noted that Abbott had a mandate to abolish the tax — putting if anyone ‘off-side’ with him, the said Shorten, who refuses to accept Abbott’s mandate.
Abolition of the carbon tax will rule out any prospect of a double dissolution election. That means this Government will run its full term.
Yes, it might not be able to get some or even most of its Budget measures through the Senate, but they are all secondary. The really important thing is that we do NOT have a PM Rudd or Gillard — or indeed, Shorten — proposing NEW spending initiatives.
One absolutely important thing that has not been well understood — and why avoiding a DD election was so vital — is that the way the Senate vote works, this non-Labor-Green control of the Senate will last through the next parliament as well.
But it also importantly means that a returned Labor government would almost certainly not have a Labor-Green Senate majority.
Specifically, it would not be able to bring back the carbon tax. And by 2019 — the time of the next election — the whole global warming craziness will likely have imploded on its own unsustainability.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott meets US President Barack Obama in Washington DC this week.
Labor's Socialism's Multiculturalism: Fifth Column War against the Host Judeo Christian Western Democratic Nation
Trojan Horse debate: We were wrong, all cultures are not equal
For years, we all turned a blind eye to the segregation of Muslim pupils. Now it is time to stand up to propagators of barbarism and ignorance
Allison Pearson By Allison Pearson
The Telegraph
11 Jun 2014
If I have learnt one thing working with children as a teacher, a volunteer and, more recently, a parent, it’s that what children want above all else is to fit in. The desire not to be different must be hard-wired, so urgent is the need of your average nine-year-old to have the same pencil case as every other nine-year-old. Individuality, much prized in adult life, is abhorred by our conservative juniors, who crave acceptance as the thirsty crave water. “Fitting in” is braided into the DNA of every child, regardless of creed or colour. When the deep, resonant bell of human evolution tolls, it says: “Belong, belong, belong.”
Integrating children into a new society, then, should not present too much of a problem. A football, some Panini World Cup stickers to trade, One Direction, Harry Potter, 97 episodes of Friends, especially the one where Rachel has a baby: common interests for youngsters are not hard to find. So how have we ended up with a situation where so many Muslims are adrift from the mainstream? Why this scandal in Birmingham where five overwhelmingly Muslim schools, some until recently judged to be outstanding, are to be put into special measures because they have sought to inculcate ideas that are repellent to this country?
Let me quote Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a writer and Muslim convert, who told Channel 4 News on Tuesday that she rejected calls by the Prime Minister and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, for schools to promote British values. “In many ways, the problem is creating a hierarchy of cultures when you say you need to promote British values,” she objected. “What does that say to children in a classroom whose heritage harks from outside the British Isles? It says this country has superior moral values and you are coming from some backward culture whose values you … must not consider equal to our own.”
Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we are saying, Myriam. Spot on! A Muslim girl who winds up in Bolton or Luton should thank her lucky stars she doesn’t live in Sudan – or Pakistan, where, only last month, a woman was stoned to death by her family for the crime of marrying a man of whom they disapproved. Farzana Parveen’s father explained: “I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it.”
Are British values superior to Mr Parveen’s? I do hope so.
Unfortunately, the great lie underpinning the creed of multiculturalism, as spouted by Francois‑Cerrah and her ilk, is that all cultures are “equally valid”. Well, patently, they’re not. The reason irate Pakistani patriarchs are not chucking bricks at their errant daughters in the Birmingham Bull Ring is because Britain has a basically uncorrupt police force, a robust judiciary and an enlightened, hard-won system of liberal values that regards women and girls as equals, not third-class citizens.
But instead of standing up to barbarism and ignorance, too often we have looked away in embarrassment or fear. How many teachers have averted their gaze when 13-year-old Muslim girls suddenly disappear from the classroom to be taken “home” for a forced marriage, because this would present unwelcome evidence that some cultures are less valid than others?
How many health professionals in Bradford are concerned, but never say so, that intermarriage in the Muslim community – 75 per cent of Pakistanis in the city are married to their first cousin – is causing babies to be born blind, deaf and with other disabilities? Back in 2008, when Labour environment minister Phil Woolas said that British Pakistanis were fuelling the rate of birth defects, he was slapped down by Downing Street, with a spokesman for prime minister Gordon Brown saying the issue was not one for ministers to comment on. Government after government has filed this thorny issue in “The Too Difficult Box”, the title of a timely new book edited by former Cabinet minister Charles Clarke.
This was all so predictable. Back in the summer of 1981, I was working in a primary school in west London where the children were dizzy with excitement about Prince Charles and Lady Di. The royal wedding was a great unifying event, but there was one group of pupils who were not allowed to fit in. The little Muslim girls did not wear cool, gingham-checked dresses in the heat like the others. Instead, they were dressed in the winter uniform – a polo neck and tunic worn over strictly non-uniform trousers and thick tights. As far as I could tell, no teacher dared challenge this clear breach of school rules. In a similar spirit, it was accepted that the Muslim girls could not attend the weekly swimming lesson.
When a trip was planned to Hampton Court, the children were told they would be seeing Henry VIII’s bed. Somehow, the word “bed”, coupled with the humongously horny Henry, set off alarm bells among Muslim parents, who withdrew their sons and daughters from the outing. This irrational boycott was tolerated. I remember thinking how awful and sad it was that liberal, white teachers didn’t stick up for the Muslim children’s right to play a full part in the life of their country.
It made me angry when I was practically a child myself, and it makes me even angrier now, 30 years on, thinking of the lost decades when good people did nothing to prevent the toxic situation outlined this week by the chief inspector of schools. Music and dancing banned in a primary school because they are un-Islamic. Muslim pupils not allowed to study Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing because it shows young people falling in love and marrying. A preacher who believes homosexuals should be stoned to death invited to address an assembly – in a British school in a British town, forsooth. Children as young as six told that Western women are “white prostitutes”, if you please.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Ofsted chief, said that hardline Islamists wanted to impose a “narrow, faith-based ideology” on schools in Birmingham, though clearly the problem is not confined to one city. Now Bradford, Luton and east London are being investigated.
And still our politicians will not face up to what multiculturalism has unleashed: one of the biggest peacetime challenges ever faced by Britain. Nick Clegg, at his most ineffectually Fotherington-Thomas, says he is “sure that all parents will support a wide curriculum”. As if. The promised “dawn-raid” school inspections, which will not give schools time to stage Christian lessons to fool Ofsted inspectors, are too little, too late.
Growing suggestions that all faith schools should be banned because some Muslims cannot be trusted to prepare their children for life in contemporary society are simply outrageous. Why should Catholic, Jewish and Church of England schools, which provide a terrific, disciplined learning environment for millions of children, be forced to cease their good work and shut down? Why must the tolerant be made to carry the can for the intolerable?
The crisis in Birmingham made me look up Ray Honeyford. The headmaster of a school in Bradford, Honeyford published an article highly critical of multiculturalism around the same time that I was wondering why Muslim girls in west London weren’t allowed to learn how to swim. Honeyford was damned as a racist and forced to take early retirement, but how prophetic his words seem now. The alarmed headmaster referred to a “growing number of Asians whose aim is to preserve as intact as possible the values of the Indian subcontinent within a framework of British social and political privilege”. Honeyford questioned the wisdom of the local education authority in allowing such practices as the withdrawal of children from school for months at a time, in order to go “home” to Pakistan, on the grounds that this was appropriate to the children’s native culture.
“Those of us working in Asian areas,” he wrote, “are encouraged, officially, to 'celebrate linguistic diversity’ – ie, applaud the rapidly mounting linguistic confusion in these growing number of city schools in which British-born Asian children begin their mastery of English by being taught in Urdu.”
Ray Honeyford died in 2012, so he didn’t live to see the Leeds secondary school where every single pupil, including a handful of white ones, is being taught English as a foreign language. He didn’t need to see it. He knew it would happen, and what the cost would be, and his warnings were shouted down or put away in the Too Difficult Box.
I think the battle we must fight now really has very little to do with sincere religious belief. It’s about social control, repression, misogyny and cruelty. The battle is about Kamaljit, a 14-year-old girl I once taught, who chided me when I read the class a story about snakes in India, like the good, clueless multiculturalist that I was. “Please, Miss, we don’t like that stuff,” she said. “We’re English. We like ice skating.”
We have to expose Muslim children to as wide a range of experiences as possible so they will feel the gravitational pull of British values. If a Devon primary school recently criticised by Ofsted for not being multicultural enough (yes, really) can arrange a horizon-broadening trip to the inner city, then surely it’s time that Birmingham and Bradford came to Hereford and Hampshire. It was Rodgers and Hammerstein who observed in South Pacific: “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear / You’ve got to be taught from year to year / It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear / You’ve got to be carefully taught. / You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late / Before you are six or seven or eight / To hate all the people your relatives hate / You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
But there is another song, and a better one, and children will learn it if they are only given the chance: Belong, belong, belong.
For years, we all turned a blind eye to the segregation of Muslim pupils. Now it is time to stand up to propagators of barbarism and ignorance
Allison Pearson By Allison Pearson
The Telegraph
11 Jun 2014
If I have learnt one thing working with children as a teacher, a volunteer and, more recently, a parent, it’s that what children want above all else is to fit in. The desire not to be different must be hard-wired, so urgent is the need of your average nine-year-old to have the same pencil case as every other nine-year-old. Individuality, much prized in adult life, is abhorred by our conservative juniors, who crave acceptance as the thirsty crave water. “Fitting in” is braided into the DNA of every child, regardless of creed or colour. When the deep, resonant bell of human evolution tolls, it says: “Belong, belong, belong.”
Integrating children into a new society, then, should not present too much of a problem. A football, some Panini World Cup stickers to trade, One Direction, Harry Potter, 97 episodes of Friends, especially the one where Rachel has a baby: common interests for youngsters are not hard to find. So how have we ended up with a situation where so many Muslims are adrift from the mainstream? Why this scandal in Birmingham where five overwhelmingly Muslim schools, some until recently judged to be outstanding, are to be put into special measures because they have sought to inculcate ideas that are repellent to this country?
Let me quote Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a writer and Muslim convert, who told Channel 4 News on Tuesday that she rejected calls by the Prime Minister and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, for schools to promote British values. “In many ways, the problem is creating a hierarchy of cultures when you say you need to promote British values,” she objected. “What does that say to children in a classroom whose heritage harks from outside the British Isles? It says this country has superior moral values and you are coming from some backward culture whose values you … must not consider equal to our own.”
Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we are saying, Myriam. Spot on! A Muslim girl who winds up in Bolton or Luton should thank her lucky stars she doesn’t live in Sudan – or Pakistan, where, only last month, a woman was stoned to death by her family for the crime of marrying a man of whom they disapproved. Farzana Parveen’s father explained: “I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it.”
Are British values superior to Mr Parveen’s? I do hope so.
Unfortunately, the great lie underpinning the creed of multiculturalism, as spouted by Francois‑Cerrah and her ilk, is that all cultures are “equally valid”. Well, patently, they’re not. The reason irate Pakistani patriarchs are not chucking bricks at their errant daughters in the Birmingham Bull Ring is because Britain has a basically uncorrupt police force, a robust judiciary and an enlightened, hard-won system of liberal values that regards women and girls as equals, not third-class citizens.
But instead of standing up to barbarism and ignorance, too often we have looked away in embarrassment or fear. How many teachers have averted their gaze when 13-year-old Muslim girls suddenly disappear from the classroom to be taken “home” for a forced marriage, because this would present unwelcome evidence that some cultures are less valid than others?
How many health professionals in Bradford are concerned, but never say so, that intermarriage in the Muslim community – 75 per cent of Pakistanis in the city are married to their first cousin – is causing babies to be born blind, deaf and with other disabilities? Back in 2008, when Labour environment minister Phil Woolas said that British Pakistanis were fuelling the rate of birth defects, he was slapped down by Downing Street, with a spokesman for prime minister Gordon Brown saying the issue was not one for ministers to comment on. Government after government has filed this thorny issue in “The Too Difficult Box”, the title of a timely new book edited by former Cabinet minister Charles Clarke.
This was all so predictable. Back in the summer of 1981, I was working in a primary school in west London where the children were dizzy with excitement about Prince Charles and Lady Di. The royal wedding was a great unifying event, but there was one group of pupils who were not allowed to fit in. The little Muslim girls did not wear cool, gingham-checked dresses in the heat like the others. Instead, they were dressed in the winter uniform – a polo neck and tunic worn over strictly non-uniform trousers and thick tights. As far as I could tell, no teacher dared challenge this clear breach of school rules. In a similar spirit, it was accepted that the Muslim girls could not attend the weekly swimming lesson.
When a trip was planned to Hampton Court, the children were told they would be seeing Henry VIII’s bed. Somehow, the word “bed”, coupled with the humongously horny Henry, set off alarm bells among Muslim parents, who withdrew their sons and daughters from the outing. This irrational boycott was tolerated. I remember thinking how awful and sad it was that liberal, white teachers didn’t stick up for the Muslim children’s right to play a full part in the life of their country.
It made me angry when I was practically a child myself, and it makes me even angrier now, 30 years on, thinking of the lost decades when good people did nothing to prevent the toxic situation outlined this week by the chief inspector of schools. Music and dancing banned in a primary school because they are un-Islamic. Muslim pupils not allowed to study Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing because it shows young people falling in love and marrying. A preacher who believes homosexuals should be stoned to death invited to address an assembly – in a British school in a British town, forsooth. Children as young as six told that Western women are “white prostitutes”, if you please.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Ofsted chief, said that hardline Islamists wanted to impose a “narrow, faith-based ideology” on schools in Birmingham, though clearly the problem is not confined to one city. Now Bradford, Luton and east London are being investigated.
And still our politicians will not face up to what multiculturalism has unleashed: one of the biggest peacetime challenges ever faced by Britain. Nick Clegg, at his most ineffectually Fotherington-Thomas, says he is “sure that all parents will support a wide curriculum”. As if. The promised “dawn-raid” school inspections, which will not give schools time to stage Christian lessons to fool Ofsted inspectors, are too little, too late.
Growing suggestions that all faith schools should be banned because some Muslims cannot be trusted to prepare their children for life in contemporary society are simply outrageous. Why should Catholic, Jewish and Church of England schools, which provide a terrific, disciplined learning environment for millions of children, be forced to cease their good work and shut down? Why must the tolerant be made to carry the can for the intolerable?
The crisis in Birmingham made me look up Ray Honeyford. The headmaster of a school in Bradford, Honeyford published an article highly critical of multiculturalism around the same time that I was wondering why Muslim girls in west London weren’t allowed to learn how to swim. Honeyford was damned as a racist and forced to take early retirement, but how prophetic his words seem now. The alarmed headmaster referred to a “growing number of Asians whose aim is to preserve as intact as possible the values of the Indian subcontinent within a framework of British social and political privilege”. Honeyford questioned the wisdom of the local education authority in allowing such practices as the withdrawal of children from school for months at a time, in order to go “home” to Pakistan, on the grounds that this was appropriate to the children’s native culture.
“Those of us working in Asian areas,” he wrote, “are encouraged, officially, to 'celebrate linguistic diversity’ – ie, applaud the rapidly mounting linguistic confusion in these growing number of city schools in which British-born Asian children begin their mastery of English by being taught in Urdu.”
Ray Honeyford died in 2012, so he didn’t live to see the Leeds secondary school where every single pupil, including a handful of white ones, is being taught English as a foreign language. He didn’t need to see it. He knew it would happen, and what the cost would be, and his warnings were shouted down or put away in the Too Difficult Box.
I think the battle we must fight now really has very little to do with sincere religious belief. It’s about social control, repression, misogyny and cruelty. The battle is about Kamaljit, a 14-year-old girl I once taught, who chided me when I read the class a story about snakes in India, like the good, clueless multiculturalist that I was. “Please, Miss, we don’t like that stuff,” she said. “We’re English. We like ice skating.”
We have to expose Muslim children to as wide a range of experiences as possible so they will feel the gravitational pull of British values. If a Devon primary school recently criticised by Ofsted for not being multicultural enough (yes, really) can arrange a horizon-broadening trip to the inner city, then surely it’s time that Birmingham and Bradford came to Hereford and Hampshire. It was Rodgers and Hammerstein who observed in South Pacific: “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear / You’ve got to be taught from year to year / It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear / You’ve got to be carefully taught. / You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late / Before you are six or seven or eight / To hate all the people your relatives hate / You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
But there is another song, and a better one, and children will learn it if they are only given the chance: Belong, belong, belong.
Pious Islamic Paedophiles "It is the young flesh they want"
Pious Islamic Paedophiles "It is the young flesh they want"
‘It is the young flesh they want’
Anne Barrowclough
The Australian
June 14 2014
ON a hot summer’s day earlier this year, a beautiful young Pakistani girl named Amina stood in the living room of her western Sydney home, listening in horror as her father explained how he planned to murder her.
“I am going to kill you now, right here!” he shouted at the 16-year-old. “And no one will say anything about what I do to you. I am too powerful in the community.” Amina’s parents had promised her to a man 13 years her senior and she had made the mistake of refusing to marry him. Her arguments would not sway her father and even when her husband-to-be beat her in front of him, her dad remained resolute, telling her: “He is already your husband in front of God.”
“She adored her father but he believed that by refusing to marry this man, she was damaging the honour of the family,” says Eman Sharobeem, manager of the Immigrant Women’s Health Service in Fairfield, Sydney. “I have no doubt that he would have killed her if I hadn’t intervened.” Amina might have been raised in Australia, adopting the attitude and dress of her teenage friends, but to her father she was “just a good sale item, a stunningly beautiful girl who would bring a good dowry”.
The child’s father eventually agreed to spare his daughter’s life — not out of any sense of mercy, Sharobeem says, but because he realised it would be difficult to kill the girl and get away with it. So he packed Amina off to Pakistan, where she has been held in his family’s home for the past two months. “She texted me the other day,” says Sharobeem. “She said, ‘They won’t kill me because they know you know. But they will keep me here until I agree to marry that man.” Her last text said: “I might give in.”
For years, child marriage in this country has been hidden under layers of culture and tradition in tight-knit communities — a fringe issue that’s been difficult to gauge and hard to investigate. Then came news of a 12-year-old girl who was “married” in January to a 26-year-old Lebanese university student in an Islamic ceremony at the girl’s home in NSW’s Hunter Valley, and the layers of secrecy began to peel away. On best estimates, the number of girls in Australia being forced into marriage here or overseas is in the hundreds every year. Girls as young as 12 or 13 are disappearing from schoolyards, packed off to the countries of their parents’ birth to wed men they have never met, while others are taken from their homes in southern Asia and the Middle East and brought into Australia to marry.
The National Children’s and Youth Law Centre has identified 250 cases of under-age marriage over the past 24 months, while Sharobeem, who was herself married to a cousin at the age of 14, says there are at least 60 child wives living in south-western Sydney alone. In Melbourne, Melba Marginson, executive director of the Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition (VIRWC), says she sees 150 women a week who are in forced and violent marriages, many of them married off when they were still children. “But what we are seeing is only the tip of the iceberg,” she says.
Those within the communities say the problem is greater than even these campaigners believe it to be. Alia Sultana, a Pakistani Hazara woman who works with Afghan Hazaras in Melbourne, told me: “I would say nearly every Afghan Hazara family in Melbourne is involved in this practice.” Sultana, who fled the Taliban two years ago with her family, added: “I only know about these girls because I am also a Hazara, and the other women tell me about them. They are kept prisoners, locked in their husbands’ homes and only allowed out if their mothers-in-law go with them, so they can never seek help.”
I am in a shopping mall in Dandenong, Melbourne, a vibrant area with a mix of migrant communities. With me is Badria, a pretty young Afghan woman who has lived in Australia almost all her life. One evening when she was just 15 years old, Badria was cooking with her mother in their Dandenong home when her father came in and hugged her. “Congratulations,” he told her. “You are engaged!” The man to whom she was promised was a friend of her 28-year-old brother, who had promised to help his mate leave Afghanistan and move to Australia. “My brother used me to get his friend an Australian visa,” says Badria. “But I didn’t know that at the time. I was so young I didn’t know what was happening to me. All I knew was that I didn’t want to get married yet.
“I wanted to make something of my life,” she says. “But in our culture you obey your father. I would not have thought of saying no to the marriage. On the day of the wedding, standing there marrying this guy, I felt helpless, trapped and scared. But I remember thinking, ‘If I say anything against this, I will shame the family’s name.’ ” Badria, who regarded herself as Australian, had hoped to finish school before she was married but she’d known her chances were slim: her mother was 14 and still playing with dolls on her wedding day. With two older sisters, Badria had expected to have more time to enjoy her teen years. “I knew my brother wanted his friend to marry one of us sisters; I had heard my parents discussing it,” she says. “But I was third in the [marriage] queue so I thought it would be one of the older girls.”
So why was she chosen? “That’s what I asked my mother. Why me? And my mother said because I was still so young and naive. She said, ‘You are a good girl, you are very quiet and sabore [patient]’. In our community, men like to marry very young girls because they can induct the girl into their lifestyle. Because she’s so young, she will soon forget her childhood and she will never question her husband. She is taken into her husband’s family and is told, ‘This is where your real life starts.’”
Later, I ask Sharobeem why children are so desirable as wives. She says her own husband had told her: “I take you as young clay so I can shape you the way I want. But really,” she adds, “it is the young flesh that they want.”
Badria’s marriage was brutishly violent. While her father persuaded his son-in-law to let Badria continue her education, she missed many days at school because of black eyes and bleeding lips. “I used to tell the teachers I had to stay home because I had a fever. They never thought I was married because I was so young, but I’m sure my friends knew. It was probably happening to them, too, but none of us talked about it. There is so much happening in our community that no one talks about. There are girls like me in every school in Dandenong. There are a lot of stories like mine, but it is a hidden thing.”
When Badria was four months pregnant, her husband beat her so badly — kicking her in the stomach with his metal-tipped work boots — that she lay in a corner, unable to move for a day and a night. The baby was born with severe heart problems and Badria is convinced it was the beating that did that damage. Soon after, she sought safety in a refuge with her baby. The little girl died, aged just eight months.
Badria shows me a picture of the infant, with her huge dark eyes and long curly hair, and sobs as she talks about her loss. She says the only thing that saved her from suicide was her parents’ decision to take her back to live with them. Badria insists they knew nothing about her husband’s violence until these last sad months. “So many times my father has kissed my hands and said, ‘I’m so sorry, my daughter, for putting you through this.’ But my brother never apologised. He didn’t think any of it was his fault. He only ever said: ‘I found you a husband.’ ”
Badria’s decision to leave her marriage makes her an exception in a community where the sense of duty is so strong that most girls would not refuse their parents’ wishes, and where the fear of fathers and husbands is so great that they will not flee even the most violent of marriages. The fear is very real; Amina is not the only girl whom Sharobeem has saved from a potential honour killing.
Recently, she was contacted by a mother whose 17-year-old daughter had shamed the family by having a boyfriend. The mother had heard her husband and son discussing whether to kill the girl or marry her off overseas. “This mother said, ‘I’m afraid she will run away and they will definitely kill her if she does.’” When Sharobeem went to visit the family, the girl’s father told her: “It would be better for everyone if she dies.” His son said, vehemently, “If it was up to me I would kill her right now. Either we throw her away [marry her off overseas to whoever would take her] or we kill her.”
This young man, who had been educated in Australia and knows Australian laws and values, explained: “She has shamed me and my family. I will be the joke of my peers — they will be laughing at me for the rest of my life. She has not only shamed me, she has shamed my future. No one will come near us now.”
The concept of honour underlines all areas of life in these strongly patriarchal communities. “It is important to protect their creed, their family, their honour and that’s why honour killings occur,” says Sarita Kulkarni, from the VIRWC. Panditji Abhay Awasthi, chairman of the Hindu Foundation of Australia, told me: “I am sure there are honour killings happening in Melbourne and in Sydney.” Awasthi, who counsels hundreds of young Melbourne women trapped in violent marriages, says he has become suspicious of a number of deaths and apparent suicides in the community.
“Honour killings happen in India and people have brought this culture here to Australia,” he says. “It is also going on in the Pakistan Punjab community. Last year I was told that families were taking their daughters back to Pakistan, and no one ever heard from them again. We are sure they’ve been killed, but it’s very hard to prove this is happening. Even those who are being tortured by their families don’t talk because that will only put them at further risk.”
Sharobeen says: “I have already saved two girls and failed to save one woman from murder. The violent enforcement against women in some of these communities is well known, and it is accepted. People don’t believe it is wrong.”
The woman Sharobeem was unable to save was a Coptic Christian who went to her mother for help after suffering daily beatings from her husband. But the girl’s mother brushed her concerns aside, telling her: “So what? Your father beats me.” The woman left her husband, but was persuaded to return to him by the family priest. Days later, the husband took her to a motel, drugged her, had sex with her and then murdered her.
This is the atmosphere in which young girls are growing up, only a few kilometres from the sophisticated centres of our major cities. “We are not in the suburbs of Kabul or Baghdad, but in Sydney,” says Sharobeem, but to all intents and purposes many of her clients could be living back in the cities of their parents’ birth.
The practice of underage marriage crosses cultural and religious lines. It is prevalent in western and sub-Saharan Africa, and in South Asia; for example, it’s estimated more than half of the girls in Bangladesh, Mali, Mozambique and Niger are married before the age of 18. One in nine girls will be under the age of 15.
Many of the women and girls Sharobeem deals with speak little or no English and the suppression of women is so inculcated that in many cases they themselves see nothing wrong with it. “I’ve heard men telling new arrivals, ‘It is our duty to keep the women away from the bad influences here and not let them learn English’,” says Sharobeem. “And both men and women believe they must treat their children harshly and marry them off early to keep them safe in a society where everything is loose.”
Many of those I spoke to, in Indian, Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani communities, stressed the difference between “arranged” marriages, where the girls’ consent was sought before an engagement could take place, and “forced” marriage. Many, including teenage girls, spoke eloquently of the advantage of arranged marriages over the Western version. One Hazara girl told me: “My friend’s sister is 15 and has just become engaged. But there is nothing wrong with that. She has given her consent and she probably won’t actually be married for a few years.”
However, others point out there is a fine line between the two. “There is a lot of manipulation,” says Manjula O’Connor, director of the Australasian Centre for Human Rights and Health. “Mothers tell their children that they will kill themselves unless the child agrees to the marriage. Some arranged marriages are done well but in others, the young people have no choice. They are effectively forced into the marriage.”
In February last year parliament passed the Slavery Act, which introduced the new offence of forced marriage; by its very nature child marriage was always illegal. Yet it would be wrong to suggest that even under-age marriages are planned with malevolence. Most parents genuinely want the best for their children and marry them to men whom they believe will be good husbands. Sharobeem’s father married her to an older cousin because he thought the cousin would keep her safe; Badria’s parents, too, believed that she would be cared for by her brother’s friend. Others marry off their girls to save them from what they see as the much worse fate of having a relationship outside of marriage, in the mistaken belief that as soon as a girl menstruates she is ready for sex.
Both Sharobeem and Marginson told me of being berated by men and women who accused them of encouraging children into sin by their campaigns against child brides. Instead, these people argued, once a girl was menstruating, she had to be married off quickly to protect her and her family’s honour. “One day when I was on the radio, a man rang to say: ‘You want our girls to have sex without getting married, and that makes you a sinner’,” says Sharobeem. “I had to tell him, ‘Having your period doesn’t mean you’re ready to have children’.”
In the Hunter Valley case involving the 12-year-old girl, court documents allege the father (an Australian man described as a Muslim convert) told police his main concern was that his daughter might commit “a sin against God” by having sex outside marriage. He allegedly consented to the marriage — even providing her with sexual advice — because she was beginning to “become excited around boys” and he didn’t want her to live “a sinful life”.
The father, and the girl’s “husband” — who has been charged with 25 counts of sexual intercourse with a child — are due to appear in court again on June 18. The imam who conducted the ceremony was fined $500 and is awaiting deportation.
Some families marry their girls off for mercenary reasons; they’re “sold” to men who will pay a large dowry for a young bride with an Australian visa. Hundreds of girls are brought into the country at the age of 17 under the Prospective Spouse Visa program, whose rules insist that a marriage must take place within nine months.
In a case reported in 2011, a Year 10 Lebanese girl brought to Australia was told by her family she would be “slaughtered and killed” if she didn’t marry her husband-to-be, although he was a violent drunk who already had another wife and three children.
Some brave girls stand up for themselves: in 2011, a 16-year-old Sydney girl applied successfully to be put on the Airport Watch List to prevent her parents from taking her to Lebanon to be married. A 13-year-old who told teachers at her Melbourne school that she was to be married was also put on the Watch List.
But girls who go against their parents’ wishes not only face rejection by their family but by their communities, who collude to keep them suppressed and silent. When I asked why girls did not leave violent, abusive husbands, I was told repeatedly, “The community will throw her away.”
Leyla, an Iraqi woman who at the age of 12 was taken off the street where she was playing, dusted down and taken into her engagement ceremony, is still with her brutal husband despite years of cruelty. Days after her wedding, furious that his child bride was refusing to have sex with him, and frustrated at his family’s demands to see blood on their sheets to prove her virginity, Leyla’s husband took a knife and slashed her vagina to provide his family with the all-important blood token. She was just 13 when she bore the first of her five sons.
Today, her face and body are disfigured: her broken jaw makes her face lopsided, and a dislocated shoulder hangs lower than the other. She is scarred inside and out by her husband’s brutality and her own self-harm. She weeps throughout our interview, and swears to me that she will leave her husband once her youngest son is married. But if she does, the community will turn on her. “I will never be able to marry again. It is impossible,” she whispers.
O’Connor describes the societal pressure on young girls as “the super-eye of the culture”. She explains: “You are not allowed to move too far out of it. If you do, or if you disobey their rules, not only are you excluded from your own society but so are your parents and family. No one will want to marry your sisters, and your brothers will be laughed at. The pressure on the girls is so enormous that they tend to behave themselves and don’t leave the family tradition.”
The power of the communities is so strong that Sharobeem, Marginson and the professionals who refer cases to them have to keep much of their work clandestine. When I ask Sharobeem to put me in touch with a doctor who has sent a number of child brides to her centre, she shakes her head. “He would never work in the community again,” she says. When I argue that his name would not be printed, she shakes her head again. “But the community will know.”
What makes it even harder is that so many women still accept it. There’s a saying they use for the wedding night: “Kill the cat to slaughter the cat.” Says Sharobeem: “The cat is the young bride and the saying means she must have her self-esteem slaughtered from day one so she will never raise her voice or have her say.”
Sarah, an 18-year-old Pakistani, tells me: “Girls know the first five years of marriage are a struggle. They are under so much pressure to make their marriage work that they don’t even think that what is happening to them is wrong. They think [violence] is just what happens.”
All those fighting for the rights of migrant women believe education is the key: not just a Western education, but teaching them that they don’t have to endure violent marriages. “These women feel very isolated,” says Nga Hosking, community development officer of the VIRWC. “They don’t realise they have the right to come out and ask for help. If they try to knock on one door and that shuts on them, they will not try again. It’s our job to teach them that they will get help if they knock.”
But it’s never an easy task. One woman told O’Connor: “Learning about my rights has made it harder for me because I still can’t leave. It was easier when I thought this was just what happened — I could stick my head in the sand and put up with it.”
“It is critical that the whole community is educated,” says Jennifer Burn of Anti-Slavery Australia. “The Koran does not support child marriage and the Grand Mufti of Australia says that consent is vital. But there are over 60 different traditions within the Muslim community, with different interpretations of the religious scriptures. We need the religious leaders to take the message into the communities, because they will listen to their leaders rather than us.”
There have been advances; some imams have begun to preach against underage marriage and teachers are now more aware of the issue. In the Hindu community, Panditji Awasthi and his colleagues try to convince women that it is not wrong to leave violent marriages. Thanks to programs run by organisations such as the VIRWC and the Immigrant Women’s Health Service, young girls are learning that they don’t have to agree to be married before they are ready and their parents are also being taught that the practice is cruel.
But there is still a very steep path to climb. One afternoon I find myself in Dandenong drinking tea and eating traditional Hazara cakes with the women of the Sultana family as they explain to me why the young girls brought from Afghanistan and married to men far older than themselves won’t seek help. Alia Sultana makes the most devastating point.
“These girls are just happy that they don’t have to get up at 5am to clean the house and work in the fields anymore,” she says. “In Australia they have a bed to sleep in; they have a dishwasher and a vacuum cleaner. They don’t mind if their husband is violent and they will never try to get help because they are just happy to be out of Afghanistan.”
Anne Barrowclough
The Australian
June 14 2014
ON a hot summer’s day earlier this year, a beautiful young Pakistani girl named Amina stood in the living room of her western Sydney home, listening in horror as her father explained how he planned to murder her.
“I am going to kill you now, right here!” he shouted at the 16-year-old. “And no one will say anything about what I do to you. I am too powerful in the community.” Amina’s parents had promised her to a man 13 years her senior and she had made the mistake of refusing to marry him. Her arguments would not sway her father and even when her husband-to-be beat her in front of him, her dad remained resolute, telling her: “He is already your husband in front of God.”
“She adored her father but he believed that by refusing to marry this man, she was damaging the honour of the family,” says Eman Sharobeem, manager of the Immigrant Women’s Health Service in Fairfield, Sydney. “I have no doubt that he would have killed her if I hadn’t intervened.” Amina might have been raised in Australia, adopting the attitude and dress of her teenage friends, but to her father she was “just a good sale item, a stunningly beautiful girl who would bring a good dowry”.
The child’s father eventually agreed to spare his daughter’s life — not out of any sense of mercy, Sharobeem says, but because he realised it would be difficult to kill the girl and get away with it. So he packed Amina off to Pakistan, where she has been held in his family’s home for the past two months. “She texted me the other day,” says Sharobeem. “She said, ‘They won’t kill me because they know you know. But they will keep me here until I agree to marry that man.” Her last text said: “I might give in.”
For years, child marriage in this country has been hidden under layers of culture and tradition in tight-knit communities — a fringe issue that’s been difficult to gauge and hard to investigate. Then came news of a 12-year-old girl who was “married” in January to a 26-year-old Lebanese university student in an Islamic ceremony at the girl’s home in NSW’s Hunter Valley, and the layers of secrecy began to peel away. On best estimates, the number of girls in Australia being forced into marriage here or overseas is in the hundreds every year. Girls as young as 12 or 13 are disappearing from schoolyards, packed off to the countries of their parents’ birth to wed men they have never met, while others are taken from their homes in southern Asia and the Middle East and brought into Australia to marry.
The National Children’s and Youth Law Centre has identified 250 cases of under-age marriage over the past 24 months, while Sharobeem, who was herself married to a cousin at the age of 14, says there are at least 60 child wives living in south-western Sydney alone. In Melbourne, Melba Marginson, executive director of the Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition (VIRWC), says she sees 150 women a week who are in forced and violent marriages, many of them married off when they were still children. “But what we are seeing is only the tip of the iceberg,” she says.
Those within the communities say the problem is greater than even these campaigners believe it to be. Alia Sultana, a Pakistani Hazara woman who works with Afghan Hazaras in Melbourne, told me: “I would say nearly every Afghan Hazara family in Melbourne is involved in this practice.” Sultana, who fled the Taliban two years ago with her family, added: “I only know about these girls because I am also a Hazara, and the other women tell me about them. They are kept prisoners, locked in their husbands’ homes and only allowed out if their mothers-in-law go with them, so they can never seek help.”
I am in a shopping mall in Dandenong, Melbourne, a vibrant area with a mix of migrant communities. With me is Badria, a pretty young Afghan woman who has lived in Australia almost all her life. One evening when she was just 15 years old, Badria was cooking with her mother in their Dandenong home when her father came in and hugged her. “Congratulations,” he told her. “You are engaged!” The man to whom she was promised was a friend of her 28-year-old brother, who had promised to help his mate leave Afghanistan and move to Australia. “My brother used me to get his friend an Australian visa,” says Badria. “But I didn’t know that at the time. I was so young I didn’t know what was happening to me. All I knew was that I didn’t want to get married yet.
“I wanted to make something of my life,” she says. “But in our culture you obey your father. I would not have thought of saying no to the marriage. On the day of the wedding, standing there marrying this guy, I felt helpless, trapped and scared. But I remember thinking, ‘If I say anything against this, I will shame the family’s name.’ ” Badria, who regarded herself as Australian, had hoped to finish school before she was married but she’d known her chances were slim: her mother was 14 and still playing with dolls on her wedding day. With two older sisters, Badria had expected to have more time to enjoy her teen years. “I knew my brother wanted his friend to marry one of us sisters; I had heard my parents discussing it,” she says. “But I was third in the [marriage] queue so I thought it would be one of the older girls.”
So why was she chosen? “That’s what I asked my mother. Why me? And my mother said because I was still so young and naive. She said, ‘You are a good girl, you are very quiet and sabore [patient]’. In our community, men like to marry very young girls because they can induct the girl into their lifestyle. Because she’s so young, she will soon forget her childhood and she will never question her husband. She is taken into her husband’s family and is told, ‘This is where your real life starts.’”
Later, I ask Sharobeem why children are so desirable as wives. She says her own husband had told her: “I take you as young clay so I can shape you the way I want. But really,” she adds, “it is the young flesh that they want.”
Badria’s marriage was brutishly violent. While her father persuaded his son-in-law to let Badria continue her education, she missed many days at school because of black eyes and bleeding lips. “I used to tell the teachers I had to stay home because I had a fever. They never thought I was married because I was so young, but I’m sure my friends knew. It was probably happening to them, too, but none of us talked about it. There is so much happening in our community that no one talks about. There are girls like me in every school in Dandenong. There are a lot of stories like mine, but it is a hidden thing.”
When Badria was four months pregnant, her husband beat her so badly — kicking her in the stomach with his metal-tipped work boots — that she lay in a corner, unable to move for a day and a night. The baby was born with severe heart problems and Badria is convinced it was the beating that did that damage. Soon after, she sought safety in a refuge with her baby. The little girl died, aged just eight months.
Badria shows me a picture of the infant, with her huge dark eyes and long curly hair, and sobs as she talks about her loss. She says the only thing that saved her from suicide was her parents’ decision to take her back to live with them. Badria insists they knew nothing about her husband’s violence until these last sad months. “So many times my father has kissed my hands and said, ‘I’m so sorry, my daughter, for putting you through this.’ But my brother never apologised. He didn’t think any of it was his fault. He only ever said: ‘I found you a husband.’ ”
Badria’s decision to leave her marriage makes her an exception in a community where the sense of duty is so strong that most girls would not refuse their parents’ wishes, and where the fear of fathers and husbands is so great that they will not flee even the most violent of marriages. The fear is very real; Amina is not the only girl whom Sharobeem has saved from a potential honour killing.
Recently, she was contacted by a mother whose 17-year-old daughter had shamed the family by having a boyfriend. The mother had heard her husband and son discussing whether to kill the girl or marry her off overseas. “This mother said, ‘I’m afraid she will run away and they will definitely kill her if she does.’” When Sharobeem went to visit the family, the girl’s father told her: “It would be better for everyone if she dies.” His son said, vehemently, “If it was up to me I would kill her right now. Either we throw her away [marry her off overseas to whoever would take her] or we kill her.”
This young man, who had been educated in Australia and knows Australian laws and values, explained: “She has shamed me and my family. I will be the joke of my peers — they will be laughing at me for the rest of my life. She has not only shamed me, she has shamed my future. No one will come near us now.”
The concept of honour underlines all areas of life in these strongly patriarchal communities. “It is important to protect their creed, their family, their honour and that’s why honour killings occur,” says Sarita Kulkarni, from the VIRWC. Panditji Abhay Awasthi, chairman of the Hindu Foundation of Australia, told me: “I am sure there are honour killings happening in Melbourne and in Sydney.” Awasthi, who counsels hundreds of young Melbourne women trapped in violent marriages, says he has become suspicious of a number of deaths and apparent suicides in the community.
“Honour killings happen in India and people have brought this culture here to Australia,” he says. “It is also going on in the Pakistan Punjab community. Last year I was told that families were taking their daughters back to Pakistan, and no one ever heard from them again. We are sure they’ve been killed, but it’s very hard to prove this is happening. Even those who are being tortured by their families don’t talk because that will only put them at further risk.”
Sharobeen says: “I have already saved two girls and failed to save one woman from murder. The violent enforcement against women in some of these communities is well known, and it is accepted. People don’t believe it is wrong.”
The woman Sharobeem was unable to save was a Coptic Christian who went to her mother for help after suffering daily beatings from her husband. But the girl’s mother brushed her concerns aside, telling her: “So what? Your father beats me.” The woman left her husband, but was persuaded to return to him by the family priest. Days later, the husband took her to a motel, drugged her, had sex with her and then murdered her.
This is the atmosphere in which young girls are growing up, only a few kilometres from the sophisticated centres of our major cities. “We are not in the suburbs of Kabul or Baghdad, but in Sydney,” says Sharobeem, but to all intents and purposes many of her clients could be living back in the cities of their parents’ birth.
The practice of underage marriage crosses cultural and religious lines. It is prevalent in western and sub-Saharan Africa, and in South Asia; for example, it’s estimated more than half of the girls in Bangladesh, Mali, Mozambique and Niger are married before the age of 18. One in nine girls will be under the age of 15.
Many of the women and girls Sharobeem deals with speak little or no English and the suppression of women is so inculcated that in many cases they themselves see nothing wrong with it. “I’ve heard men telling new arrivals, ‘It is our duty to keep the women away from the bad influences here and not let them learn English’,” says Sharobeem. “And both men and women believe they must treat their children harshly and marry them off early to keep them safe in a society where everything is loose.”
Many of those I spoke to, in Indian, Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani communities, stressed the difference between “arranged” marriages, where the girls’ consent was sought before an engagement could take place, and “forced” marriage. Many, including teenage girls, spoke eloquently of the advantage of arranged marriages over the Western version. One Hazara girl told me: “My friend’s sister is 15 and has just become engaged. But there is nothing wrong with that. She has given her consent and she probably won’t actually be married for a few years.”
However, others point out there is a fine line between the two. “There is a lot of manipulation,” says Manjula O’Connor, director of the Australasian Centre for Human Rights and Health. “Mothers tell their children that they will kill themselves unless the child agrees to the marriage. Some arranged marriages are done well but in others, the young people have no choice. They are effectively forced into the marriage.”
In February last year parliament passed the Slavery Act, which introduced the new offence of forced marriage; by its very nature child marriage was always illegal. Yet it would be wrong to suggest that even under-age marriages are planned with malevolence. Most parents genuinely want the best for their children and marry them to men whom they believe will be good husbands. Sharobeem’s father married her to an older cousin because he thought the cousin would keep her safe; Badria’s parents, too, believed that she would be cared for by her brother’s friend. Others marry off their girls to save them from what they see as the much worse fate of having a relationship outside of marriage, in the mistaken belief that as soon as a girl menstruates she is ready for sex.
Both Sharobeem and Marginson told me of being berated by men and women who accused them of encouraging children into sin by their campaigns against child brides. Instead, these people argued, once a girl was menstruating, she had to be married off quickly to protect her and her family’s honour. “One day when I was on the radio, a man rang to say: ‘You want our girls to have sex without getting married, and that makes you a sinner’,” says Sharobeem. “I had to tell him, ‘Having your period doesn’t mean you’re ready to have children’.”
In the Hunter Valley case involving the 12-year-old girl, court documents allege the father (an Australian man described as a Muslim convert) told police his main concern was that his daughter might commit “a sin against God” by having sex outside marriage. He allegedly consented to the marriage — even providing her with sexual advice — because she was beginning to “become excited around boys” and he didn’t want her to live “a sinful life”.
The father, and the girl’s “husband” — who has been charged with 25 counts of sexual intercourse with a child — are due to appear in court again on June 18. The imam who conducted the ceremony was fined $500 and is awaiting deportation.
Some families marry their girls off for mercenary reasons; they’re “sold” to men who will pay a large dowry for a young bride with an Australian visa. Hundreds of girls are brought into the country at the age of 17 under the Prospective Spouse Visa program, whose rules insist that a marriage must take place within nine months.
In a case reported in 2011, a Year 10 Lebanese girl brought to Australia was told by her family she would be “slaughtered and killed” if she didn’t marry her husband-to-be, although he was a violent drunk who already had another wife and three children.
Some brave girls stand up for themselves: in 2011, a 16-year-old Sydney girl applied successfully to be put on the Airport Watch List to prevent her parents from taking her to Lebanon to be married. A 13-year-old who told teachers at her Melbourne school that she was to be married was also put on the Watch List.
But girls who go against their parents’ wishes not only face rejection by their family but by their communities, who collude to keep them suppressed and silent. When I asked why girls did not leave violent, abusive husbands, I was told repeatedly, “The community will throw her away.”
Leyla, an Iraqi woman who at the age of 12 was taken off the street where she was playing, dusted down and taken into her engagement ceremony, is still with her brutal husband despite years of cruelty. Days after her wedding, furious that his child bride was refusing to have sex with him, and frustrated at his family’s demands to see blood on their sheets to prove her virginity, Leyla’s husband took a knife and slashed her vagina to provide his family with the all-important blood token. She was just 13 when she bore the first of her five sons.
Today, her face and body are disfigured: her broken jaw makes her face lopsided, and a dislocated shoulder hangs lower than the other. She is scarred inside and out by her husband’s brutality and her own self-harm. She weeps throughout our interview, and swears to me that she will leave her husband once her youngest son is married. But if she does, the community will turn on her. “I will never be able to marry again. It is impossible,” she whispers.
O’Connor describes the societal pressure on young girls as “the super-eye of the culture”. She explains: “You are not allowed to move too far out of it. If you do, or if you disobey their rules, not only are you excluded from your own society but so are your parents and family. No one will want to marry your sisters, and your brothers will be laughed at. The pressure on the girls is so enormous that they tend to behave themselves and don’t leave the family tradition.”
The power of the communities is so strong that Sharobeem, Marginson and the professionals who refer cases to them have to keep much of their work clandestine. When I ask Sharobeem to put me in touch with a doctor who has sent a number of child brides to her centre, she shakes her head. “He would never work in the community again,” she says. When I argue that his name would not be printed, she shakes her head again. “But the community will know.”
What makes it even harder is that so many women still accept it. There’s a saying they use for the wedding night: “Kill the cat to slaughter the cat.” Says Sharobeem: “The cat is the young bride and the saying means she must have her self-esteem slaughtered from day one so she will never raise her voice or have her say.”
Sarah, an 18-year-old Pakistani, tells me: “Girls know the first five years of marriage are a struggle. They are under so much pressure to make their marriage work that they don’t even think that what is happening to them is wrong. They think [violence] is just what happens.”
All those fighting for the rights of migrant women believe education is the key: not just a Western education, but teaching them that they don’t have to endure violent marriages. “These women feel very isolated,” says Nga Hosking, community development officer of the VIRWC. “They don’t realise they have the right to come out and ask for help. If they try to knock on one door and that shuts on them, they will not try again. It’s our job to teach them that they will get help if they knock.”
But it’s never an easy task. One woman told O’Connor: “Learning about my rights has made it harder for me because I still can’t leave. It was easier when I thought this was just what happened — I could stick my head in the sand and put up with it.”
“It is critical that the whole community is educated,” says Jennifer Burn of Anti-Slavery Australia. “The Koran does not support child marriage and the Grand Mufti of Australia says that consent is vital. But there are over 60 different traditions within the Muslim community, with different interpretations of the religious scriptures. We need the religious leaders to take the message into the communities, because they will listen to their leaders rather than us.”
There have been advances; some imams have begun to preach against underage marriage and teachers are now more aware of the issue. In the Hindu community, Panditji Awasthi and his colleagues try to convince women that it is not wrong to leave violent marriages. Thanks to programs run by organisations such as the VIRWC and the Immigrant Women’s Health Service, young girls are learning that they don’t have to agree to be married before they are ready and their parents are also being taught that the practice is cruel.
But there is still a very steep path to climb. One afternoon I find myself in Dandenong drinking tea and eating traditional Hazara cakes with the women of the Sultana family as they explain to me why the young girls brought from Afghanistan and married to men far older than themselves won’t seek help. Alia Sultana makes the most devastating point.
“These girls are just happy that they don’t have to get up at 5am to clean the house and work in the fields anymore,” she says. “In Australia they have a bed to sleep in; they have a dishwasher and a vacuum cleaner. They don’t mind if their husband is violent and they will never try to get help because they are just happy to be out of Afghanistan.”
Friday, June 13, 2014
Up Date Australia :Home grown Muslim LOON,Musa Cerantonio, cheers on fellow Savages in Iraq.
AFP after ISIS-supporting sheik Musa Cerantonio
Paul Maley
National Security Correspondent
Sydney.
The Australian
June 14 2014
The Australian Federal Police is preparing to move against one of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s most influential supporters, radical Australian sheik Musa Cerantonio.
As militants from the al-Qa’ida offshoot continue to pour into northern Iraq, The Weekend Australian can reveal that the AFP has launched a formal investigation into the Melbourne-born Islamic convert, considered one of ISIS’s most influential propagandists.
It is understood the AFP is preparing to approach authorities in The Philippines — where Cerantonio is believed to be living — and is likely to issue an arrest warrant for him.
The warrant is expected to cover alleged offences committed under the Foreign Incursions Act.
The AFP declined to comment, saying it did not discuss current investigations. However, since the civil war in Syria began three years ago, Cerantonio has emerged as one of ISIS’s most strident and influential backers.
A study conducted earlier this year by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation named the former Catholic as one of three most influential online preachers.
The study, which examined the social-media diets of foreign fighters in Syria, concluded that one in four foreign fighters followed Cerantonio’s Twitter account and that his Facebook page was the third-most ‘’liked’’ page among jihadists.
Cerantonio has been outspoken in his support for ISIS on that page and his more inflammatory postings are likely to form part of the police case against him.
In a Facebook post in December, the 29-year-old called for the assassination of Western leaders.
“If we see that Muslims are being killed by the tyrant leaders of the USA then we must first stop them with our hands (that is, by force),’’ Cerantonio said.
“This means that we should stop them by fighting them, by assassinating their oppressive leaders, by weakening their offensive capabilities, etc.”
ISIS, along with Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qa’ida’s recognised affiliate in Syria, has attracted the bulk of Australians believed to be fighting in Syria, a number authorities estimate at about the 150 mark.
Like al-Nusra, ISIS is a banned terror group here. I t was disaffiliated by al-Qa’ida this year due to the extreme brutality of its tactics.
Cerantonio is one of a number of Australian radicals whose star has risen as a result of the Syrian conflict. Another is Sydney sheik Abu Sulayman, one of Jabhat al-Nusra’s most senior officials.
Like Cerantonio, Sulayman is active on social media and is considered by authorities to be a key propagandist for the Syrian cause.
The head of the al-Risalah Islamic Centre in Sydney, where both Sulayman and Cerantonio have lectured, Wissam Haddad, said Muslims were rejoicing at ISIS’s stunning gains. “There’s a feeling of joy,’’ Mr Haddad told The Weekend Australian.
Paul Maley
National Security Correspondent
Sydney.
The Australian
June 14 2014
The Australian Federal Police is preparing to move against one of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s most influential supporters, radical Australian sheik Musa Cerantonio.
As militants from the al-Qa’ida offshoot continue to pour into northern Iraq, The Weekend Australian can reveal that the AFP has launched a formal investigation into the Melbourne-born Islamic convert, considered one of ISIS’s most influential propagandists.
It is understood the AFP is preparing to approach authorities in The Philippines — where Cerantonio is believed to be living — and is likely to issue an arrest warrant for him.
The warrant is expected to cover alleged offences committed under the Foreign Incursions Act.
The AFP declined to comment, saying it did not discuss current investigations. However, since the civil war in Syria began three years ago, Cerantonio has emerged as one of ISIS’s most strident and influential backers.
A study conducted earlier this year by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation named the former Catholic as one of three most influential online preachers.
The study, which examined the social-media diets of foreign fighters in Syria, concluded that one in four foreign fighters followed Cerantonio’s Twitter account and that his Facebook page was the third-most ‘’liked’’ page among jihadists.
Cerantonio has been outspoken in his support for ISIS on that page and his more inflammatory postings are likely to form part of the police case against him.
In a Facebook post in December, the 29-year-old called for the assassination of Western leaders.
“If we see that Muslims are being killed by the tyrant leaders of the USA then we must first stop them with our hands (that is, by force),’’ Cerantonio said.
“This means that we should stop them by fighting them, by assassinating their oppressive leaders, by weakening their offensive capabilities, etc.”
ISIS, along with Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qa’ida’s recognised affiliate in Syria, has attracted the bulk of Australians believed to be fighting in Syria, a number authorities estimate at about the 150 mark.
Like al-Nusra, ISIS is a banned terror group here. I t was disaffiliated by al-Qa’ida this year due to the extreme brutality of its tactics.
Cerantonio is one of a number of Australian radicals whose star has risen as a result of the Syrian conflict. Another is Sydney sheik Abu Sulayman, one of Jabhat al-Nusra’s most senior officials.
Like Cerantonio, Sulayman is active on social media and is considered by authorities to be a key propagandist for the Syrian cause.
The head of the al-Risalah Islamic Centre in Sydney, where both Sulayman and Cerantonio have lectured, Wissam Haddad, said Muslims were rejoicing at ISIS’s stunning gains. “There’s a feeling of joy,’’ Mr Haddad told The Weekend Australian.
Catch Up: The Bolt Report June 8 2014,Palmer United Party and the LOONS who will rule Australia for the next six years
“The danger to Australia is not Clive Palmer but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the control of the Australian senate. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of a Palmer controlled senate than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man and his fellow senate team control their senate and the legislation that comes before it.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Clive Palmer and his Palmer United senate team, who are merely symptoms of what ails Australia.
Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their Prince.
Our great nation,Australia can survive a Clive Palmer and his Senators,the Greens and various other Loons elected to the Australian senate from time to time, after all they are merely fools.
Australia is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made them their senators.”
Adapted from anon,by ANV. to suit Australia's present political situation.
Sunday, June 01, 2014
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Labor's VOTE People : Muslim Father gave 12 year old daughter SEX tips for "marriage" to 26 year old Lebanese " international student"
Father of Islamic bride, 12, gave her sex tips, court papers claim
Lema Samandar
The Daily Telegraph
May 22,2014
THE father of a 12-year-old child bride advised her to only have unprotected sex after he organised for her to wed an older man in an Islamic ceremony, court papers claim.
In a case that has shocked the nation, the girl’s 61-year-old Muslim convert father was charged with procuring his young daughter for sex and being an accessory before the fact to child sex after consenting to her “marrying” a 26-year-old man.
The girl’s “husband” was charged with 25 counts of sexual intercourse with a child after he wed the girl in the living room of her Hunter Region family home on January 12.
They had met at a mosque through the girl’s father, who police allege facilitated the relationship by allowing them to exchange phone numbers and letting them meet three times before they were wed.
The matter was yesterday mentioned in Burwood Local Court, where the man and the girl’s father were expected to enter a plea. However the magistrate was told the parties needed more time to negotiate with authorities.
For the first time, The Daily Telegraph was granted access to court papers filed in support of a successful AVO application brought by police against the girl’s father earlier this year. The court papers claim that on the day of the wedding her father gave the girl sexual advice.
“The advice was that she should not use the contraceptive pill nor should (her husband) wear a condom when they have sexual intercourse,” the papers said.
The pair stayed at a motel in Nelson Bay on their wedding night and had sex several times that night, police allege.
They then moved into a home in southwest Sydney but visited her father’s home five times before the 26-year-old Lebanese international student was arrested in February.
Her father even organised a queen size bed for the pair and on one occasion allegedly asked the girl if she needed to shower before morning prayers. The girl, now 13, told him she did need to shower.
“The (girl) indicated that this is how the defendant would have known that (they) were engaged in sexual intercourse,” the papers claim. It is a requirement of Islam to shower after sex and before commencing prayer, the girl allegedly told police.
Asked about having knowledge of his daughter having sex he said: “It’s not something I want to think about.”
When the father was first told by police that the husband had been arrested he allegedly said “but they are married”.
The AVO application claims the father told police his main concern was his daughter was not committing “a sin against god” by having sex outside marriage, and he consented to the marriage because she was beginning to “become excited around boys” and he didn’t want her to live “a sinful life”.
Asked if he would allow his eight-year-old daughter to marry at 12, police allege the man said he would, to prevent the “sin” of sex before marriage.
The girl and her sister are now in Department of Community Services care.
The imam who performed the ceremony, Muhammad Riaz Tasawar, 35, was fined $500 after pleading guilty to solemnising the marriage.
The 26-year-old man is being held at Villawood Detention Centre after his visa was cancelled and the father is in custody. They will face court again in June.
Lema Samandar
The Daily Telegraph
May 22,2014
THE father of a 12-year-old child bride advised her to only have unprotected sex after he organised for her to wed an older man in an Islamic ceremony, court papers claim.
In a case that has shocked the nation, the girl’s 61-year-old Muslim convert father was charged with procuring his young daughter for sex and being an accessory before the fact to child sex after consenting to her “marrying” a 26-year-old man.
The girl’s “husband” was charged with 25 counts of sexual intercourse with a child after he wed the girl in the living room of her Hunter Region family home on January 12.
They had met at a mosque through the girl’s father, who police allege facilitated the relationship by allowing them to exchange phone numbers and letting them meet three times before they were wed.
The matter was yesterday mentioned in Burwood Local Court, where the man and the girl’s father were expected to enter a plea. However the magistrate was told the parties needed more time to negotiate with authorities.
For the first time, The Daily Telegraph was granted access to court papers filed in support of a successful AVO application brought by police against the girl’s father earlier this year. The court papers claim that on the day of the wedding her father gave the girl sexual advice.
“The advice was that she should not use the contraceptive pill nor should (her husband) wear a condom when they have sexual intercourse,” the papers said.
The pair stayed at a motel in Nelson Bay on their wedding night and had sex several times that night, police allege.
They then moved into a home in southwest Sydney but visited her father’s home five times before the 26-year-old Lebanese international student was arrested in February.
Her father even organised a queen size bed for the pair and on one occasion allegedly asked the girl if she needed to shower before morning prayers. The girl, now 13, told him she did need to shower.
“The (girl) indicated that this is how the defendant would have known that (they) were engaged in sexual intercourse,” the papers claim. It is a requirement of Islam to shower after sex and before commencing prayer, the girl allegedly told police.
Asked about having knowledge of his daughter having sex he said: “It’s not something I want to think about.”
When the father was first told by police that the husband had been arrested he allegedly said “but they are married”.
The AVO application claims the father told police his main concern was his daughter was not committing “a sin against god” by having sex outside marriage, and he consented to the marriage because she was beginning to “become excited around boys” and he didn’t want her to live “a sinful life”.
Asked if he would allow his eight-year-old daughter to marry at 12, police allege the man said he would, to prevent the “sin” of sex before marriage.
The girl and her sister are now in Department of Community Services care.
The imam who performed the ceremony, Muhammad Riaz Tasawar, 35, was fined $500 after pleading guilty to solemnising the marriage.
The 26-year-old man is being held at Villawood Detention Centre after his visa was cancelled and the father is in custody. They will face court again in June.
Sydney's Occupied Territories Barbarous Muslim Savages to stand trial over Genital Mutilation of child.“she suffered a cut to her private parts”.“hurt in the bottom”.
Sydney sheik, mum and nurse to face mutilation judgment
Sarah Crawford
Daily Telegraph
May 24 2014
A SYDNEY mother stood in the dock holding her baby daughter as she became the first person in the state to be committed to stand trial for genital mutilation.
Why does the author of this story call this Sadistic Muslim Pervert a "priest" instead of his correct term of Imam,is she trying to invoke some moral equivalence of barbarity and perversion is equally approved of by Christianity ? If so why ? I have never heard of any Australian female Christian been spirited away to, say, the Vatican, for Genital Mutilation or Child Marriage rituals, happy to post reports detailing same here if any readers can supply same.
The mother, who can’t be named, and retired nurse Kubra Magennis became the first people in NSW to stand trial for female genital mutilation, accused in Parramatta Local Court yesterday of performing the circumcision ritual on the mother’s daughters, aged 6 and 7. The pair face a maximum sentence of seven years in jail if convicted.
Sheik Shabbir Vaziri is charged with being an accessory to the circumcision ritual, allegedly telling locals to lie to police about the prevalence of female genital mutilation in the community.
The alleged circumcisions took place in Wollongong and Sydney some time between October 2010 and July 2012.
Defence lawyers unsuccessfully tried to argue the girls were not victims of female genital mutilation because they only received a nick to their clitoris.
Magistrate Roger Brown dismissed the submission, saying: “Any cut or nick to the clitoris will amount to mutilation.”
Dr Brown said female genital mutilation incited a strong response in the community.
“The nature of the allegations and the language used in the legislation can arouse strong passions,” he said.
Ms Magennis stood quietly as she was indicted to stand trial responding “No sir,” when Dr Brown asked if she had anything to say.
Outside of court she covered her face with her headscarf and swatted a journalist who approached for comment.
The mother whispered “No,” when Dr Brown asked her if she wished to provide any evidence in her defence.
The prosecution will largely rely on a police interview and a phone intercept between the mother and Ms Magennis.
Dr Brown said the oldest girl, known as C1 to protect her identity, had told police that, “she suffered a cut to her private parts”.
Her sister, C2, said she had been “hurt in the bottom”.
The girls’ father, a GP, and four other female relatives, who can’t be named to protect the girls, were also charged over the circumcision but their charges were dismissed at earlier court appearances.
A lawyer has been committed to stand trial with perverting the course of justice over the ritual circumcisions.
A date for the trial of Sheik Vaziri, Ms Magennis and the girls’ mother will be set on June 20.
Sarah Crawford
Daily Telegraph
May 24 2014
A SYDNEY mother stood in the dock holding her baby daughter as she became the first person in the state to be committed to stand trial for genital mutilation.
Why does the author of this story call this Sadistic Muslim Pervert a "priest" instead of his correct term of Imam,is she trying to invoke some moral equivalence of barbarity and perversion is equally approved of by Christianity ? If so why ? I have never heard of any Australian female Christian been spirited away to, say, the Vatican, for Genital Mutilation or Child Marriage rituals, happy to post reports detailing same here if any readers can supply same.
The mother, who can’t be named, and retired nurse Kubra Magennis became the first people in NSW to stand trial for female genital mutilation, accused in Parramatta Local Court yesterday of performing the circumcision ritual on the mother’s daughters, aged 6 and 7. The pair face a maximum sentence of seven years in jail if convicted.
Sheik Shabbir Vaziri is charged with being an accessory to the circumcision ritual, allegedly telling locals to lie to police about the prevalence of female genital mutilation in the community.
The alleged circumcisions took place in Wollongong and Sydney some time between October 2010 and July 2012.
Defence lawyers unsuccessfully tried to argue the girls were not victims of female genital mutilation because they only received a nick to their clitoris.
Magistrate Roger Brown dismissed the submission, saying: “Any cut or nick to the clitoris will amount to mutilation.”
Dr Brown said female genital mutilation incited a strong response in the community.
“The nature of the allegations and the language used in the legislation can arouse strong passions,” he said.
Ms Magennis stood quietly as she was indicted to stand trial responding “No sir,” when Dr Brown asked if she had anything to say.
Outside of court she covered her face with her headscarf and swatted a journalist who approached for comment.
The mother whispered “No,” when Dr Brown asked her if she wished to provide any evidence in her defence.
The prosecution will largely rely on a police interview and a phone intercept between the mother and Ms Magennis.
Dr Brown said the oldest girl, known as C1 to protect her identity, had told police that, “she suffered a cut to her private parts”.
Her sister, C2, said she had been “hurt in the bottom”.
The girls’ father, a GP, and four other female relatives, who can’t be named to protect the girls, were also charged over the circumcision but their charges were dismissed at earlier court appearances.
A lawyer has been committed to stand trial with perverting the course of justice over the ritual circumcisions.
A date for the trial of Sheik Vaziri, Ms Magennis and the girls’ mother will be set on June 20.
Labor's VOTE People Hag in Bag Fatima Elzamtar, Pimp , refuses to stand in Australian Court.
Muslim man refuses to stand in court due to religion
Ben Mclellan
The Daily Telegraph
May 24 ,2014
A MUSLIM man who threatened to “slit the throat” of an intelligence officer has refused to stand for a judge in court. ( he should have been flogged into submission ANV.)
Milad Bin Ahmad-Shah al-Ahmadzai, 24, yesterday declined to stand as he pleaded guilty to threatening serious harm to a Commonwealth official and using a carriage service to harass and menace.
His lawyer Nick Hanna yesterday told the District Court his client’s refusal to stand was due to his religion.
Judge Ian McClintock queried what religious view prevented al-Ahmadzai from standing, which Mr Hanna was unable to answer.
“It is a perceived view that it is not appropriate for him to stand in court. It is not advancing any discourtesy to the court,” Mr Hanna said.
Commonwealth prosecutor Karen Leavy said “on the face of it it’s disrespectful”.
Mr McClintock did not instruct al-Ahmadzai’s to stand but said he had noted it.
Al-Ahmadzai pleaded guilty in December last year to threatening the intelligence officer in a phone call in May 2013, telling him “I’m gonna crack your neck” and “come near my family again, I’m gonna slit your throat pig”.
He was refused bail. His wife Fatima Elzamtar was in court yesterday with their child. Al-Ahmadzai had been under surveillance by the Joint Counter Terrorism Team since December 2009 because he was “allegedly committing terrorism-related offences”.
The court heard al-Ahmadzai was sentenced to five years and six months jail last year for an ATM ram-raid in 2011.
He is also charged over the attempted murder of a man at Rydalmere on May 1 last year.
The sentencing hearing was adjourned until July.
Ben Mclellan
The Daily Telegraph
May 24 ,2014
A MUSLIM man who threatened to “slit the throat” of an intelligence officer has refused to stand for a judge in court. ( he should have been flogged into submission ANV.)
Milad Bin Ahmad-Shah al-Ahmadzai, 24, yesterday declined to stand as he pleaded guilty to threatening serious harm to a Commonwealth official and using a carriage service to harass and menace.His lawyer Nick Hanna yesterday told the District Court his client’s refusal to stand was due to his religion.
Judge Ian McClintock queried what religious view prevented al-Ahmadzai from standing, which Mr Hanna was unable to answer.
“It is a perceived view that it is not appropriate for him to stand in court. It is not advancing any discourtesy to the court,” Mr Hanna said.
Commonwealth prosecutor Karen Leavy said “on the face of it it’s disrespectful”.
Mr McClintock did not instruct al-Ahmadzai’s to stand but said he had noted it.
Al-Ahmadzai pleaded guilty in December last year to threatening the intelligence officer in a phone call in May 2013, telling him “I’m gonna crack your neck” and “come near my family again, I’m gonna slit your throat pig”.
He was refused bail. His wife Fatima Elzamtar was in court yesterday with their child. Al-Ahmadzai had been under surveillance by the Joint Counter Terrorism Team since December 2009 because he was “allegedly committing terrorism-related offences”.
The court heard al-Ahmadzai was sentenced to five years and six months jail last year for an ATM ram-raid in 2011.
He is also charged over the attempted murder of a man at Rydalmere on May 1 last year.
The sentencing hearing was adjourned until July.
Sydney's Occupied Territories Labor's VOTE People demonstrate how Multiculturalism has enriched Australia yet again..........When your three year old child lies dyeing on the road in front of your drive way what do you do?
Question : What do you do when, through your own parental (Criminal?) neglect,child abuse, your three old son is able to run out of his home following his Father across a road and is hit by a car and lies dieing on the road in front of you ?........thinking thinking..... alah is great...... allah is blah blah blah ....what would allah do, what would mohammed do, predetermined destiny.......blah blah, all cultures behaviours, belief's are equal ?
Answer : Easy ya Dumb Infidels, You Trash the Car of the Nurse kneeling down on the road desperately trying to save the life of your three year old son.
Hey what else would you do? Try and HELP save your three year old Son's life? Oh yeah right.. typical Infidel response.
In the Video below the BLACK car is the car driven by a male nurse (thankfully a male,who knows what these Godless savages would have done to a Female Nurse ?) who was driving behind the car, the SILVER car, that was unfortunate enough to strike this poor little boy as he ran out onto the road unattended / unsupervised by either his Mother or Father for reasons best known to them.
There has been a number of these incidents where parents have permitted their children to play in the traffic,over the past week in Sydney,where children have been permitted by their parents to run free onto public roads and subsequently have been struck by, oddly enough, Motor Vehicles.
These parents in my opinion, have only one saving grace when compared to this incident and it is, that, they chose to at least do nothing, as opposed to the parents in this case they chose to attack and vandalise the car of the Nurse trying to save the life of their child, who, for reason's best known to them they felt was able to take it's chances with motor vehicles on a public road.
Answer : Easy ya Dumb Infidels, You Trash the Car of the Nurse kneeling down on the road desperately trying to save the life of your three year old son.
Hey what else would you do? Try and HELP save your three year old Son's life? Oh yeah right.. typical Infidel response.
In the Video below the BLACK car is the car driven by a male nurse (thankfully a male,who knows what these Godless savages would have done to a Female Nurse ?) who was driving behind the car, the SILVER car, that was unfortunate enough to strike this poor little boy as he ran out onto the road unattended / unsupervised by either his Mother or Father for reasons best known to them.
There has been a number of these incidents where parents have permitted their children to play in the traffic,over the past week in Sydney,where children have been permitted by their parents to run free onto public roads and subsequently have been struck by, oddly enough, Motor Vehicles.
These parents in my opinion, have only one saving grace when compared to this incident and it is, that, they chose to at least do nothing, as opposed to the parents in this case they chose to attack and vandalise the car of the Nurse trying to save the life of their child, who, for reason's best known to them they felt was able to take it's chances with motor vehicles on a public road.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Monday, May 05, 2014
Halal SCAM moving forward in Australia
Halal’s Hard-To-Swallow Offensive
Quadrant
Antonia Newton
May 3 2014
There is much more than meets the eye to those little labels proclaiming foodstuffs fit to be consumed by the Prophet's dutiful adherents. Much more than statements of religious purity they represent a concerted and organised attempt to further Islamic influence in the West
The Byron Bay Cookie Company must have been shocked by the number of angry comments on its Facebook page regarding “halal-certified Anzac biscuits”. The company had cheerfully declared that it would be “sending cookies to the Australian troops stationed overseas for Anazc day. If you would like to send them a special message, please comment on this post and we’ll collate all your messages.” No mention was made of the halal certification, but the word was out, courtesy of the sleuths at Boycott Halal in Australia.
The comments ranged from bafflement to fury at the company’s alleged betrayal of Australian values — “Halal certified cookies which finance the spread of the very ideology that motivates the killers of our sons and daughters? Your moral compass needs a serious re-adjustment”, ” for example. There were vows never again to buy Byron Bay Cookie Company products, as well as expressions of support for Australian troops and their sacrifices. The company responded that it was trying to be “respectful and inclusive”, which drew further lashings of ire.
Multiculturalism, that brilliant policy by which people in all Western countries, that is, all developed nations, were to enjoy “unity in diversity” and become “strong” by means of non-discriminatory and fast-paced immigration (in Kate Lundy’s earnest but hilarious words, “One of the reasons I believe Australians are so good at sport is because we are so culturally diverse”) appears not to be producing another iteration of the post-World War II immigration boom’s “New Australians” so much as as a re-made Australia. It hardly needs to be said that deep divisions are appearing in the overall population on which the policy was imposed.
Even some of the most ardent “tolerance and diversity” enthusiasts are becoming uneasy about the ever-burgeoning demands by Muslim arrivals, whose more enterprising members have found ways not only to extract expensive privileges to do with “religious requirements” (prayer rooms, special Muslim officers in councils, and so on) but also (to promote the halal-certification business.)http://www.halalchoices.com.au/
There are several halal-certification bodies in Australia, and their annual fees appear arbitrary, depending on the body which has found its way to the particular food producer. Manufacturers tend to be coy when asked about the fees they are paying, and most of this information tends to come from companies which have been offered and refused certification. While halal butchers have long been familiar to Australians, the tiny Arabic markings found on manufactured foodstuffs, denoting permissibility for consumption by Muslims as free of any traces of forbidden foods, are a recent phenomenon. While it is understandable that observant Muslims might enjoy the convenience of simply locating the mark on processed food products, rather than peering at those small-print lists list of ingredients, the little halal mark is finding its way onto a range of unlikely comestibles.
Would a Muslim really concern himself with the contents of a can of coconut milk or pure corn oil, or the possible affront to his faith posed by an ingredient in his chocolate Easter egg, given that he might be keen to celebrate the resurrection of the man revered by Christians as the Messiah? He would be unsettled, apparently, and he might be further discomforted to learn that the driver of the van transporting items marked “halal” was actually an infidel. And what about ships? If the transported foodstuffs are to be deemed truly halal, should not the captain and crew be Muslims? Then there is the matter of the port where the ship docks, as foodstuffs can so easily be made impure. Don’t laugh, there is an officially declared “halal port” in Rotterdam,Rotterdam-Port---Important-halal-gateway.html and no doubt more are coming. Logistics is just a step in that expansion and evolution, but there are many others.
Yes, indeed, many a reader will say, we know they’re fussy, those Muslims, and so what? Jews also can be fussy with their kosher requirements. It doesn’t matter, the logic of conspicuous tolerance goes, because we are a sophisticated nation and entirely correct to scoff at our knuckle-draging fellow citizens’ “xenophobia” and reluctance to make a big noise “celebrating difference”. And, hey, isn’t Australia a much more interesting place nowadays?
But kosher labels do not target the entire community. And, as the Byron Bay Cookie Company, Cadbury and Purina Catfood, and hundreds of other non-Muslim companies are finding out, Australians have started to notice manufacturers’ amenable attitude to the suggestion made by certification bodies regarding potential Muslim buyers of their products, both in Australia and in Muslim countries, should they sign up and pay up. Research by interested citizens shows that Australians have little choice but to donate to the cause of Islamic expansion and imposition of sharia worldwide because of widespread manufacturers’ compliance with the scheme.
In a submission to a 2011 parliamentary inquiry, Australian Federation of Islamic Councils’ (AFIC) Ikebal Patel stated:
“The submission cites regulations governing Islamic finance and halal certification in Australia as examples of how legal pluralism can work … It seems that in two areas, namely Islamic finance and halal food, the Australian government has been actively involved”.
Choice of purchase is made difficult because some companies pay for certification but do not display it on their packaging, and also because many supermarkets simply do not think it worth providing choice. (I was treated quite rudely at a supermarket I regularly frequent when I asked if the store buyers could try to provide non-halal choices. At first I was told it “didn’t make any difference”, then that I should “tell the manufacturers” and finally, “well, this is Brunswick!” as if Brunswick, with a growing number of Muslim residents, were already under unassailable sharia law).
Such a hostile reaction is not uncommon in our new, race-obsessed Australia. Opposition to Islamic cultural inroads and even imposition of fees and other costs on Australian citizens is often met with the accusation of “racism” or “bigotry” or both. One can only imagine the reaction from that side of the cultural divide should a Christian group mine the Bible for suitable words and set up a similar scheme. Apoplexy would be only the beginning.
However, Muslim “scholars” keen on expanding the halal concept to further the cause of Allah have perused the Islamic texts for inspiration, and found it. The halal foodstuffs ruse has been so successful, and opposition so negligible, that new avenues have been discovered which combine the sensibilities of the modern West with Islamic pride and ambition. Thus does “halal” meet “sustainability”. A Monash University School of Business research project is exploring the possibilities. Its head of management, Professor Pervaiz Ahmed, is “investigating the meaning and practical implications of halal in the areas of sustainable economic development, societal health and community welfare.” As a report in The Australian explains:
“For a country’s halal industry to compete internationally, Professor Ahmed says its ecosystem must meet the standards imposed by Islamic philosophy, and also place its benchmarks higher than those of conventional systems. To this end, the Monash project is broadening the definition of halal to its original and deeper philosophical meaning – a process that calls into question the status of many things classified as halal. Under this reading, fish (usually regarded as halal) would not be halal if it came from an endangered or over-fished species. Cruelty to animals in halal abattoirs would also render the meat ‘not halal’.”
The implied flattery of non-Muslims and their environmental concerns is a change from the usual assertion of higher ethics claimed for Islam banking practices and personal matters, but the message is tailored to the market as befits the goal, which is the expansion of Islamic influence. In this instance the courting of fashionable opinion would seem to represent an astute and prudent strategy.
“Some will say we are setting the bar too high,” Professor Ahmed explains. “But if non-Muslims are to buy halal products, the label has to signify animal rights and species protection.”
The academic world also represents a shrewd stage for the promotion of “halal ecosystems” because the post-modern community, if I can label it thus, has largely rejected Christianity. The rejection is broad-based, but one specific element in which Christianity has become discredited is its reputed disrespect for the natural world in placing mankind, allegedly made in God’s image, at the centre of His creation. If Islam can impress with their green credentials those who feel Westerners have despoiled the earth — here, conjure a mental image of those credulous souls who turned out at rallies to support the Carbon Tax, then imposition of an Islamic eco-tax, such as that manifested by halal certification, is likely to seem justifiable. Gaia, after all, would approve of any measure that makes her lot a little esier.
As Islamic violence, increasingly macabre, rages throughout the Middle East and Africa and sporadic attacks occur in too many other areas to mention, as Christians are abused, murdered and their churches destroyed in foreign lands, Australians are being encouraged to purr over the concept of “halal ecosystems” and halal-approved “freshness”; and purr the writer of this Monash article certainly did. Had journalistic curiosity been a factor, the article might have asked about “endangered or over-fished” Middle East Christians, or whether the knives of the Prophet’s head-lopping militants are kept very sharp and in full accordance with halal requirements.
“War is deceit,” advised the Prophet Mohammed, and our “anti-racist” activists, as well as most academics and journalists have neither the training and imagination nor the will to recognize it — unlike the Byron Bay Cookie Company’s opponents.
Antonia Newton is the pseudonym of a Melbourne writer whose desire for anonymity reflects her frequent travels in the Muslim world
Quadrant
Antonia Newton
May 3 2014
There is much more than meets the eye to those little labels proclaiming foodstuffs fit to be consumed by the Prophet's dutiful adherents. Much more than statements of religious purity they represent a concerted and organised attempt to further Islamic influence in the West
The Byron Bay Cookie Company must have been shocked by the number of angry comments on its Facebook page regarding “halal-certified Anzac biscuits”. The company had cheerfully declared that it would be “sending cookies to the Australian troops stationed overseas for Anazc day. If you would like to send them a special message, please comment on this post and we’ll collate all your messages.” No mention was made of the halal certification, but the word was out, courtesy of the sleuths at Boycott Halal in Australia.
The comments ranged from bafflement to fury at the company’s alleged betrayal of Australian values — “Halal certified cookies which finance the spread of the very ideology that motivates the killers of our sons and daughters? Your moral compass needs a serious re-adjustment”, ” for example. There were vows never again to buy Byron Bay Cookie Company products, as well as expressions of support for Australian troops and their sacrifices. The company responded that it was trying to be “respectful and inclusive”, which drew further lashings of ire.
Multiculturalism, that brilliant policy by which people in all Western countries, that is, all developed nations, were to enjoy “unity in diversity” and become “strong” by means of non-discriminatory and fast-paced immigration (in Kate Lundy’s earnest but hilarious words, “One of the reasons I believe Australians are so good at sport is because we are so culturally diverse”) appears not to be producing another iteration of the post-World War II immigration boom’s “New Australians” so much as as a re-made Australia. It hardly needs to be said that deep divisions are appearing in the overall population on which the policy was imposed.
Even some of the most ardent “tolerance and diversity” enthusiasts are becoming uneasy about the ever-burgeoning demands by Muslim arrivals, whose more enterprising members have found ways not only to extract expensive privileges to do with “religious requirements” (prayer rooms, special Muslim officers in councils, and so on) but also (to promote the halal-certification business.)http://www.halalchoices.com.au/
There are several halal-certification bodies in Australia, and their annual fees appear arbitrary, depending on the body which has found its way to the particular food producer. Manufacturers tend to be coy when asked about the fees they are paying, and most of this information tends to come from companies which have been offered and refused certification. While halal butchers have long been familiar to Australians, the tiny Arabic markings found on manufactured foodstuffs, denoting permissibility for consumption by Muslims as free of any traces of forbidden foods, are a recent phenomenon. While it is understandable that observant Muslims might enjoy the convenience of simply locating the mark on processed food products, rather than peering at those small-print lists list of ingredients, the little halal mark is finding its way onto a range of unlikely comestibles.
Would a Muslim really concern himself with the contents of a can of coconut milk or pure corn oil, or the possible affront to his faith posed by an ingredient in his chocolate Easter egg, given that he might be keen to celebrate the resurrection of the man revered by Christians as the Messiah? He would be unsettled, apparently, and he might be further discomforted to learn that the driver of the van transporting items marked “halal” was actually an infidel. And what about ships? If the transported foodstuffs are to be deemed truly halal, should not the captain and crew be Muslims? Then there is the matter of the port where the ship docks, as foodstuffs can so easily be made impure. Don’t laugh, there is an officially declared “halal port” in Rotterdam,Rotterdam-Port---Important-halal-gateway.html and no doubt more are coming. Logistics is just a step in that expansion and evolution, but there are many others.
Yes, indeed, many a reader will say, we know they’re fussy, those Muslims, and so what? Jews also can be fussy with their kosher requirements. It doesn’t matter, the logic of conspicuous tolerance goes, because we are a sophisticated nation and entirely correct to scoff at our knuckle-draging fellow citizens’ “xenophobia” and reluctance to make a big noise “celebrating difference”. And, hey, isn’t Australia a much more interesting place nowadays?
But kosher labels do not target the entire community. And, as the Byron Bay Cookie Company, Cadbury and Purina Catfood, and hundreds of other non-Muslim companies are finding out, Australians have started to notice manufacturers’ amenable attitude to the suggestion made by certification bodies regarding potential Muslim buyers of their products, both in Australia and in Muslim countries, should they sign up and pay up. Research by interested citizens shows that Australians have little choice but to donate to the cause of Islamic expansion and imposition of sharia worldwide because of widespread manufacturers’ compliance with the scheme.
In a submission to a 2011 parliamentary inquiry, Australian Federation of Islamic Councils’ (AFIC) Ikebal Patel stated:
“The submission cites regulations governing Islamic finance and halal certification in Australia as examples of how legal pluralism can work … It seems that in two areas, namely Islamic finance and halal food, the Australian government has been actively involved”.
Choice of purchase is made difficult because some companies pay for certification but do not display it on their packaging, and also because many supermarkets simply do not think it worth providing choice. (I was treated quite rudely at a supermarket I regularly frequent when I asked if the store buyers could try to provide non-halal choices. At first I was told it “didn’t make any difference”, then that I should “tell the manufacturers” and finally, “well, this is Brunswick!” as if Brunswick, with a growing number of Muslim residents, were already under unassailable sharia law).
Such a hostile reaction is not uncommon in our new, race-obsessed Australia. Opposition to Islamic cultural inroads and even imposition of fees and other costs on Australian citizens is often met with the accusation of “racism” or “bigotry” or both. One can only imagine the reaction from that side of the cultural divide should a Christian group mine the Bible for suitable words and set up a similar scheme. Apoplexy would be only the beginning.
However, Muslim “scholars” keen on expanding the halal concept to further the cause of Allah have perused the Islamic texts for inspiration, and found it. The halal foodstuffs ruse has been so successful, and opposition so negligible, that new avenues have been discovered which combine the sensibilities of the modern West with Islamic pride and ambition. Thus does “halal” meet “sustainability”. A Monash University School of Business research project is exploring the possibilities. Its head of management, Professor Pervaiz Ahmed, is “investigating the meaning and practical implications of halal in the areas of sustainable economic development, societal health and community welfare.” As a report in The Australian explains:
“For a country’s halal industry to compete internationally, Professor Ahmed says its ecosystem must meet the standards imposed by Islamic philosophy, and also place its benchmarks higher than those of conventional systems. To this end, the Monash project is broadening the definition of halal to its original and deeper philosophical meaning – a process that calls into question the status of many things classified as halal. Under this reading, fish (usually regarded as halal) would not be halal if it came from an endangered or over-fished species. Cruelty to animals in halal abattoirs would also render the meat ‘not halal’.”
The implied flattery of non-Muslims and their environmental concerns is a change from the usual assertion of higher ethics claimed for Islam banking practices and personal matters, but the message is tailored to the market as befits the goal, which is the expansion of Islamic influence. In this instance the courting of fashionable opinion would seem to represent an astute and prudent strategy.
“Some will say we are setting the bar too high,” Professor Ahmed explains. “But if non-Muslims are to buy halal products, the label has to signify animal rights and species protection.”
The academic world also represents a shrewd stage for the promotion of “halal ecosystems” because the post-modern community, if I can label it thus, has largely rejected Christianity. The rejection is broad-based, but one specific element in which Christianity has become discredited is its reputed disrespect for the natural world in placing mankind, allegedly made in God’s image, at the centre of His creation. If Islam can impress with their green credentials those who feel Westerners have despoiled the earth — here, conjure a mental image of those credulous souls who turned out at rallies to support the Carbon Tax, then imposition of an Islamic eco-tax, such as that manifested by halal certification, is likely to seem justifiable. Gaia, after all, would approve of any measure that makes her lot a little esier.
As Islamic violence, increasingly macabre, rages throughout the Middle East and Africa and sporadic attacks occur in too many other areas to mention, as Christians are abused, murdered and their churches destroyed in foreign lands, Australians are being encouraged to purr over the concept of “halal ecosystems” and halal-approved “freshness”; and purr the writer of this Monash article certainly did. Had journalistic curiosity been a factor, the article might have asked about “endangered or over-fished” Middle East Christians, or whether the knives of the Prophet’s head-lopping militants are kept very sharp and in full accordance with halal requirements.
“War is deceit,” advised the Prophet Mohammed, and our “anti-racist” activists, as well as most academics and journalists have neither the training and imagination nor the will to recognize it — unlike the Byron Bay Cookie Company’s opponents.
Antonia Newton is the pseudonym of a Melbourne writer whose desire for anonymity reflects her frequent travels in the Muslim world
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