[72] The Politics of Ignorance and Fear

I consider myself to be very lucky to live in Australia. I believe I am even more fortunate to live and work on the Gold Coast. Australia is a beautiful and diverse country with a very small population compared with total land mass. The Gold Coast is an exciting and interesting place to live. The population of the city is constantly growing with a steady influx of both foreign migrants and interstate settlers. The population of the Gold Coast is also very diverse – a mixture of many nationalities and cultures. It is a fun place to live.

There is a growing problem on the Gold Coast however. I have long formed the view that a large proportion of white Australians are racist bigots. Not all white Australians, but a substantial and vocal percentage. I won’t call it a minority because it could be a majority. I will settle for a substantial percentage.

Carrara is a suburb on the northern side of the Gold Coast. It is a nice area with a lot of residential housing, from large multi-million dollar mansions to small 1 and 2 bedroom townhouses. It is also the home of the Gold Coast’s largest and busiest weekend market and a handful of shopping centres. The area hosts a number of schools – a mixture of faith schools (Catholic, Jewish and Anglican) and State Schools, both junior and senior. In common with the rest of the Gold Coast, many nationalities reside in Carrara. One only needs to visit the weekend market to witness the vast array of races and cultures which lend themselves to an interesting and colourful shopping experience.

Like any modern multi-cultural population, there is a number of Muslims living and working on the Gold Coast. The nearest Islamic faith school is in Brisbane and for some years now, Gold Coast Muslim families have been sending their younger children to Brisbane to be educated, a round trip of 150 kilometres each day. The Muslim community on the Gold Coast has decided it is time to set up their own Islamic school on the Gold Coast, and have chosen Carrara to be the site of the new building which will be known as The Australian International Islamic College.

The Muslim parents and clerics got together and drew up a proposal which was put before the Gold Coast City Council (GCCC) for outline planning permission. Everything seemed reasonable and above board. The school would house a maximum of 60 Islamic pupils between the ages of 4 and 11 and would be situated on vacant land not far from the existing Catholic school and a reasonable distance from local housing.

As is the normal practice, the Council communicated the proposal to interested parties – local residents and business people – and asked for any objections to be submitted in writing. So far, so good. With a maximum of 60 pupils, there would obviously be a minimum of traffic congestion in the area and there clearly would not be a large increase in the number of school children on the local streets during lunch breaks and after school etc. All very straightforward, one would think.

How wrong could one be?

As soon as the letters went out from GCCC headquarters, all hell broke loose. Local people demonstrated on the streets at the site of the proposed new school. Some even dragged their own small children along to carry placards which proclaimed:

No Muslims in Carrara.

No to Islamic School.

Not in my back yard.

The local newspaper – The Gold Coast Bulletin – ran with the story. The online version of the Bulletin carries a Comments Page on most stories in which readers can express their opinions. The story of the proposed Islamic School has resulted in the Bulletin’s busiest comments page for many years.

Here is an unedited sample of some of the comments placed:

disgusting... it’s always australians who have to bend over and cop these minorities... your here to assimilate not start up your own little school niche - why can’t they go to australian schools and assimilate into australian culture? and to think this is the crap our rates go toward supporting... bending over to support these minorities who wouldnt let us do anything against their religion in their countries... Posted by: jim

Is this what we want here. Taliban release video of beheading: PAKISTANI Taliban militants released a graphic video on Sunday showing the beheading of a Polish engineer whom they said was killed because Islamabad refused to free detained insurgents. Gold coast will soon be flooded with terrorists and suiside bommers. Send thes muslims back to there own country. You have been warned. Posted by: Peter of Carrara

Get real Cr. Grew, would we be able to go and open a Catholic school in a muslim country. Id think not. We need to start treating these people like they treat us. If they want to be Muslims send them to a islamic country. Posted by: JohnS

Now you may appreciate why I left these comments unedited.

Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke said that providing the school met planning requirements there should be no reason why it should not go ahead.

"I strongly believe Australia is a place where everybody can practise their religion, whatever it may be," he said.

"I've been to the Muslim temples and they practise religion the same as anybody else does.

"I think they have every right to put a church up and especially a school. We need education."

Not just content to report the story, the Gold Coast Bulletin decided to take sides and stoke the flames by running a clandestine campaign to stop the building of the Islamic school in Carrara.

A few days after the controversy broke, the Bulletin managed to locate a man who was once employed as a janitor in the Brisbane Islamic school. The janitor had been dismissed from his job at the school several months previously. The janitor claimed he had suggested to the school head that the pupils sing Advance Australia Fair – the Australian national anthem – at morning assembly. The school has an assembly evey morning for prayers. His request was refused and the janitor was now claiming that his suggestion was the sole reason for his subsequent dismissal, which took place no fewer than five months after his alleged offence. The Bulletin quoted the janitor extensively. The head of the Islamic school was also quoted. He asserted that the janitor was dismissed on a specific and completely unrelated disciplinary matter, the details of which he did not wish to disclose to the newspaper. Clearly he saw the reasons for the janitor’s dismissal as a private matter. In other words, he was protecting his former employee. Furthermore, the head explained that his morning assembly does sing the national anthem – on the last school day before Australia Day, which is a school holiday.

Firstly, there is not a school in the whole of Australia which has its pupils sing the national anthem every morning at assembly, so why should this one school be any different? In fact, like the Brisbane Islamic school, most Australian schools sing the anthem on the eve of Australia Day, and at no other time, other than on special occasions.

Secondly, despite the head of the school explaining that the janitor was dismissed for another reason, and the fact that his dismissal came five months after he made his national anthem request, the Bulletin article went on to ask its readers why this janitor should lose his job because he made the national anthem suggestion to his employers. In other words, according to the Bulletin, the disgruntled ex-janitor was telling the truth and the head of the school was lying through his teeth. If I know that the national anthem is not sung at every morning assembly at other schools, then presumably the Bulletin would know this too. So why didn’t they take this into account? Why wasn’t it mentioned?

The comments page that day was in meltdown. The bigots and racists had a field day. The Gold Coast Bulletin had clearly set its agenda. Mission accomplished.

What the protestors and the Gold Coast Bulletin fail to appreciate is that the Muslim children who will attend the new Islamic school already live on the Gold Coast with their families. They and their families are Australian. Why would the establishing of an Islamic school for a maximum of 60 children between the ages of 4 and 11, children who already live on the Gold Coast, result in the area becoming an "Islamic Ghetto" full of "terrorists" and "suicide bombers"?

Do the bigots seriously believe that Muslim adults, who already live in various parts of the Gold Coast with their families, and who have a child attending the Islamic school, are going to wake up one morning and say, “Hey, let’s sell our house and move to Carrara, so that we can be close to little Ali’s school. I know he’s only going to be there for another year, but let’s sell up and move to Carrara anyway.”

That’s not to mention the thousands of other Muslims on the Gold Coast and throughout Australia who don’t have a child at the school, but who will apparently sell up and move to Carrara to be near the Islamic school – if you believe the bigots.

What do these Islamic children and their families have to do with the Taliban?

How are they responsible for 911?

Should I ostracise my Irish grandmother because of IRA atrocities?

One Gold Coast radio presenter spoke out against the school in an utterly bizarre way.

When asked by one caller what he means by assimilate, he claimed that Muslim women in Australia should be banned by law from wearing the burkah because it is un-Australian. Furthermore, he went on, it can be used to hide weapons. So immediately this idiot is equating ordinary Muslims with guns and killing. But why stop there? Why not ban Catholic nuns from wearing their habits? These can also conceal weapons. Do armed robbers on their way to the bank wear burkahs to hide their guns? Oh, and according to this radio presenter, the burkah frightens children. In that case, let’s ban Santa Claus, because I have seen lots of young children flee in terror at the sight of the old man in a red suit with white hair and long white beard.

Whenever bigoted Australians face the issue of brown, black or south-east Asians migrating to their country, they invariable claim that they “refuse to assimilate/integrate (delete as appropriate)” and “If they come to our country they should embrace our culture”. I for one would love to know what this “Australian culture” really is. And when these same morons talk about people or things being “un-Australian” I would also love to know what they define as “Australian”. Also, you will note that I speak of “brown, black or south-east Asian immigrants”. That is because white European migrants like yours truly are fair dinkum. We don’t have to integrate or assimilate.

A few weeks ago, the Gold Coast Bulletin – yes them again – ran a front-page story about a village to the south of Brisbane. The community is comprised mainly of English immigrants, or Poms as the Aussies like to call them. Apparently the village is swarming with Poms and they have their very own English style pub and their own English-only village cricket team. The story was written in a positive vein. The community was held up by the Bulletin as a shining example of how the English migrants had pulled together and built a vibrant community. So when Muslims “stick together” they are refusing to assimilate and are being un-Australian, but when white English settlers do it, it’s all fair dinkum.

What completely amazes me is that the entire population of Australia, with the exception of the Aboriginals, is based around immigration. That fact would appear to be lost on today’s Aussie racists. Now why is that not a surprise?

When Australians shout from the rooftops that “these immigrants” refuse to “integrate/assimilate”, what they really mean is that they refuse to:

a) Give up practising their Muslim faith.

b) Refrain from attending the Mosque.

c) Stop speaking their native language.

d) Cease wearing their Islamic clothes.

e) Shave off their “Muslim-looking” beards.

These people don’t know the meaning of the words they spout so often in defence of their bigotry and racism.

Recently an acquaintance of mine complained that he had heard a group of Asians in a restaurant speaking their own language. Actually he called them slopeheads. Yet another lovely word used by the bigots to describe natives of and descendants from south-east Asia and Japan. Apparently they were a family – Mum, Dad and 3 children. When I asked why he found a family speaking in their native language, a family who may very well have been on holiday in Australia, something to be abhorred, his response was, “It was embarrassing. They should integrate and speak Australian (sic).”

Assimilate. Integrate. You just cannot escape those two words in everyday Australian life when the bigots are on their soap boxes. And why such a situation should have left him feeling embarrassed is way beyond me.

I’d love to know how many Australians who visit or migrate to Japan, Spain or Brazil immediately launch into fluent Japanese, Spanish or Portuguese so as not to offend or embarrass their hosts.

I have come to the conclusion that anti-Islam and anti-Asian bigotry, and the fear that every Muslim is a terrorist, and that every follower of Islam is a danger to our safety and the safety of our children – this fear has now become something of a fashion accessory here in Australia. It is something to be carried with pride and, if you do not hold such views, you are un-Australian and indeed, a threat in your own right. For simply questioning people like the man who saw the Asians in the restaurant, or speaking up for the rights of Muslims to build their own Islamic school, I have been called a Muslim-lover, by which term my accusers do not have the intellectual capacity to realise that they are openly admitting to be Muslim-haters.

Happily, the Councillors of Gold Coast City Council voted unanimously to grant planning permission for the new Islamic primary school in Carrara, presumably because in all honesty, there simply was no sane and valid reason not to do so, other than to pander to the wishes of the racists and bigots, who are by the way, now calling on the electorate to vote every last one of them off the council at the next election. Apparently these Councillors are guilty of not supporting the view of “the majority of voters”. They are un-Australian.

Just how these Neanderthals know they are a majority in Carrara is anyone’s guess.

Sanity, reason, common sense and fair play has prevailed in the end, while the bigots lick their wounds and wait for the next opportunity to vent their spleens by demanding that certain types of Australians “go back to where they came from”.

I leave you with a comment from a Gold Coast Bulletin reader posted on the morning after the Council’s decision was announced.

I hope this will be one of the last stupid actions that Ron Clark does before he is kicked out of office. The trouble is that next election he will be booted out but this 'school' will still be here. It will be a legacy that will be a blight on the Gold Coast for decades.It is another perfect example of not listening to the locals and the majority that dont want this 'school'. Remember, next council election, make sure the councillors who voted for this 'school' are kicked out of office. Posted by: Al of Gold Coast

The politics of ignorance and fear.