Well folks, it’s that time of year again. The time when your Muslim work colleagues probably aren’t inviting you out for a coffee or lunch. When they’re yawning incessantly for much of the day and not just for having stayed up late to watch the World Cup. And when they either leave early or scoffing down dates and water just as the sun goes down.
We’re in Ramadan. For me, this month couldn’t have come any sooner. It’s a time of relief, a time when you can add more spiritual currency to your otherwise dwindling heavenly bank account. It’s also a time when you’re supposed to be nicer than you normally are, not just at times when people are nice to you.
In recent times my mob hasn’t received much niceness from certain quarters. Some of the nasties have been inspired by hysteria related to a proposal to build a mosque in Bendigo. What really shocked me about the project wasn’t so much the opposition. Heck, we’re used to such antics by now.
No, what really amazed me is that all fund raising was done locally. Unlike mosques built yesteryear, this project didn’t involve a delegation heading off to Saudi Arabia and prostrating before a prince for oil money in return for naming the place His Eminence Abdul Garbage bin al-Recycled Mosque.
In fact, the only people relying on outside funds were the anti-mosque brigade. The self-styled Restore Australia is based on the Sunshine Coast, and one of its leaders told the Bendigo Advertiser that the group shares its ideology with the rather violent far-Right English Defence League (EDL). An anti-mosque 'jihad'. How nice.
I’m not quite sure what Bendigo’s largely university-based Muslim community did to deserve so much vitriol. And in this World Cup season, I’m also not sure what Muslims across Australia did to deserve the own-goal kicked very deftly kicked by the fringe group calling itself Hizb-ut-Tahrir (or 'Party of Liberation').
The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is an annual event co-hosted by the St James Ethics Centre and the Sydney Opera House. For years, FODI had been wanting to find someone silly enough to argue the case for honour killings, a rather gruesome form of domestic violence often associated with people associated with violent jihad (no, not the Gold Coast mob referred to above).
In previous years, FODI managed to get Keysar Trad, prominent self-appointed spokesman for all things Islamic in Australia, to spruik the case for blokes marrying more than one sheila at once. Now that is surely controversial in a country like Australia where blokes wouldn't dream of cheating on their partners. FODI asked me to chair the talk, perhaps hoping they could get two Muslims for the price of one. I refused, preferring to introduce Cardinal Pell.
But I doubt even Keysar would have been silly enough to agree to defend honour killings. And neither was Uthman Badar, the young Sydney-based spokesman for Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT). He agreed for the moral justification for honour killings to be his headline much like I agreed to 'SEX' being the headline for my poster when I once ran on a ticket for a student election.
(I mean, I had to find some way to get apathetic students to read the poster.)
Undergrad antics aren't the best way to get the attention of even the cosmopolitan FODI audience, especially if you aren't the same colour as them and have a name they'd rather not put any effort in to pronouncing. (OK, is that Ootmaarn? Or Ottoman? And who is that bloke writing about you? Is he Earphone of Eefarn or iPhone?)
It's also an awesome way to unite the ABC/Fairfax/Guardian Australia/Black Inc brigade with the Newscorp/IPA/CIS/Quadrant mob. It gives them an awesome opportunity to pretend this kind of thing is only a brown Muslim problem (when it isn't an Aboriginal problem) whilst ignoring the large number of white nominally Christian men who kill their partners.
At the same time, it provides a minority of fringe allegedly radical Muslims an opportunity to channel Malcolm X (before he went to Mecca and realise that black or white shouldn't really matter) and remind us we are all victims of a vicious 'whitey' conspiracy. This crowd want me to believe that the country I live in is a greater enemy of Muslims than, say, Bachar al-Assad.
Seriously, if I want to see oppressed coloured people in Australia, I don't need to visit Broadmeadows or Lakemba. I can see far more oppressed coloured people in Cherbourg or Palm Island. And I can see oppressed people of all colours by working in a regional or metropolitan office of Anglicare or St Vincent de Paul. At a Magistrates Court, I can see victims of domestic violence of al colours and shapes and sizes.
Anyway, enough from me. It's the middle of the day and I have started yawning. Have a happy Ramadan and be nice.
Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney based lawyer and blogger.