COLUMNS

G'day from the Sentinel Team

PM John Howard met with Australia's leading Muslim leaders in Canberra today.

The meeting was organised in order to consider strategies that eliminate the promotion of violence in Australia and encourage a commitment to shared values.

The Age reported that Mr. Howard "deliberately excluded extremist Muslims from the Islamic community summit in order to lessen their influence.

"I see no merit in inviting unrepresentative people who have an extreme view," Mr Howard said. "To invite people who represent an extreme point of view is to give them disproportionate and unmeritorious recognition which would anger people who are trying to do the right thing."

This update a quick look at the news highlights and also includes a thought provoking look at the "hate rhetoric" preached via the Palestinian Media.

Under His Banner

Bev Holmes-Brown

Excerpts From PM's Opening Speech at Islamic Summit, Canberra :

Well ladies and gentleman I would like to welcome all of you here for this very important meeting. I greet you of course as my fellow Australians, and this is a meeting of Australians to try and address an issue which if we can address it effectively, can be of enormous benefit to the future of our country. There is a terrorist challenge around the world; Australia is not immune from that, any Australian who imagines that we can escape terrorism on our own soil indefinitely is deluding themselves. Whilst the likelihood of a terrorist attack in Australia is less than in many other countries, it is nonetheless a possibility and I have never disguised the potential of a terrorist attack occurring on Australian soil.

...I think I owe it to you that there is concern in the Australian community and I know that you share that within the Islamic community there are some who do encourage violence and hatred, there are some who do give comfort and aid and encouragement and sucker to terrorism and our responsibility is to work together to identify the causes of that to prevent the spread of it and to do everything we can to enlist the great mainstream of the Islamic community in Australia to fight the challenge of terrorism. There is a common thread to be found in acts of terrorism that have occurred around the world and that is that they are depicted in some perverted way as being done in the name of Islam. Now I know, and you all know that it is an obscenity on Islam to justify acts of terrorism and murder by reference to the Koran or by reference to the Islamic faith.

There are a number of people in our community who are a danger to all of us, not many but some, and we have an obligation to try and identify them, to neutralise them, to prevent them influencing others particularly the young, particularly the young, and in the process learn from the experience of working together effectively as Australians. But my starting point is that we come together as Australians with an overriding loyalty to the future of this country and to nothing else and that we will work together as Australians with that overriding loyalty to try and prevent problems that have occurred in other countries and I will finish on this note.

I was as many of you know in Britain immediately after the attack on the 7th July and at the time of the abortive attack in London a couple of weeks later, and the most arresting thing for the British public was that the acts of the 7th July were apparently carried out by people who had been born in the United Kingdom and were British citizens, they weren't citizens of another country, and that brought a new reality as far as the British were concerned. Now I think the dimension of the problem in Britain is much much greater than it is in Australia but there are similarities and whilst we should keep perspective, we shouldn't kid ourselves that it can't happen here and our responsibility as Australians is to see that it doesn't or to do all that we can to see that it doesn't.


For Full Transcript visit the Prime Minister's website at http://www.pm.gov.au/
(... it wasn't online at the time of preparing this update)

From The Australian - August 23, 2005 :

PETER Costello is urging radical Muslim clerics to leave Australia if they do not share the nation's values ahead of today's national terrorism summit organised by the Prime Minister. ... "If you don't like those values, then don't come here. Australia is not for you," Mr Costello said yesterday. "This is the way I look at it: Australia is a secular society, with parliamentary law, part of the Western tradition of individual rights."

"... In an interview with The Australian, Mr Costello said migrants needed to understand and respect the "core values" of democracy, a secular society and the equality of women.

And he warned that Australia needed to be clear that the nation's core values would not change. "If you are looking for a country that practises theocracy, sharia law - which is anti-Western - there are those countries in the world ... you will be happy there. But you won't be happy in Australia ... he stopped short of supporting the deportation of radical Muslim leaders, in the wake of similar debates in Britain and France. "

From The Herald Sun - August 23, 2005 :

A MEETING of Muslim leaders has unanimously repudiated terrorism in all its forms and committed to working within the laws of Australia.

...."In the end, we will win this fight if there is a determination within the Islamic community to shun and repudiate and reject people who hold extreme views and that can't be mandated by legislation," Mr Howard said.pe"You cannot legislate to change an extremist to a moderate. You have to change the person's outlook.

"We have to win the hearts and minds of people." He said it was also important for the Islamic community to feel the support of all Australians.

"In the end, the debate within the Islamic community is crucial, but I want that community to feel that we are with them and that as Australians together, we are tackling the problem."

From The Courier Mail - August 23, 2005 :

The Prime Minister said Muslim leaders had a "particular responsibility" to make clear that Islam totally rejects violence and terrorism and he wanted them to take ownership of the process of dealing with extremists' views.

"The purpose of this meeting is to underline to the leadership of the Muslim community that it has responsibilities," Mr Howard said.

He refused to budge on suggestions he should include extremists in the summit and said they would flood the media with extreme remarks.

Kim Beazley and Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said it was important to speak as widely as possible but said the Government would be receiving sensible advice on who should be included.

"I want to see the determination that we're going to uphold respect for Australian values; Australian values of tolerance; Australian values of ensuring that we respect another person's rights, both in religious terms and their own dignity; and to make sure that this notion of respect is included in the curriculum of all schools," Mr Beazley said.

From The Daily Telegraph - August 23, 2005 :


Mr Howard said education was a key issue discussed at today's meeting.

"One (issue) is the education and sourcing, if I can put it that way, of imams in Australia and we do believe that more can be done to bring an Australian perspective to that," he said.

"There was discussion about what is taught in Islamic schools.

"I make it very clear that consistent with the maintenance of our non-discriminatory policy towards supporting all religious schools, providing they adhere to the ... (curricula) of the Australian states, that that policy would continue.

"... But we have sought as part of the dialogue advice from the Islamic community as to ways in which we can be totally satisfied that the appropriate denunciations and repudiations of terrorism occurs."

Ameer Ali, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, told reporters, We agreed to denounce extremism, terrorism and the teaching of hatred in this country. "We believe in the Australian family, we are all members of the same family. "There is no place for hatred, there is no place for terrorism, there is no place for violence in this country." ....

.... The issue of commonwealth vilification laws had been raised but Mr Howard indicated it was not government policy to introduce such laws.

"I did explain my own philosophical reservations about anti-vilification laws that go back to the time when they were being urged not by the Islamic community but, in fact, by the Jewish community,' he said. AAP

Andrew Bolt highlighted the community concerns mentioned above by the Prime Minister in his Herald Sun column on the 10th August:

"HOW much longer can we pretend our Muslim clerics are mainly moderates who are allies in our war against Islamist terror?

When eight out of 10 imams surveyed by this paper refuse even to blame Osama bin Laden for the September 11 attacks we know we have a bigger problem than it's been polite to admit.

As I've warned for years, the duty of Muslim leaders is not just clear, but urgent. They must take responsibility for the extremists in their midst and fight them. They must attack those who, like bin Laden, make so many Australians fear their faith. They must join themselves to us, and side with us against our enemies.

This is still so far off, given not what Muslim clerics say in surveys, but what they actually preach in mosques."

Andrew highlights some of the advice offered by the "moderate" Islamic Information and Services Network of Australia:

"The scholars of Islam are unanimously agreed that whoever supports the kaafirs (infidels) against the Muslims and helps them in any way is a kaafir like them . . ."

"If you are sent to wage war against the Muslims, then it is not permissible for you to take part at all. Helping the kaafirs against the Muslims is a form of major kufr (blasphemy) which puts one beyond the pale of Islam."

Back in July, Andrew spoke strongly about the Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj el-Din el-Hilaly:

Just look at the harm Hilaly has done by spreading hatred of Jews, calling suicide bombers "heroes", telling the kidnappers of Douglas Wood "we value your jihad", praising the Hezbollah terrorist group, and calling the September 11 terror attacks "God's work against oppressors".

If such a man is the spiritual leader -- the Mufti -- of Australia's Muslims, what must the rest of us think of his followers?... (Herald Sun, No buts about it, Muslims must speak out - Andrew Bolt - 13 jul 05)

The following was preached by imam Ibrahim Mudayris on national Palestinian TV on May 13:


"With the establishment of the State of Israel, the entire Muslim nation was lost because Israel is a cancer that spread in the body of the Islamic nation; because the Jews are a virus similar to AIDS, from which the entire world is suffering... The day will come and we shall rule America, Britain, we shall rule the entire world, except the Jews. The Jews will not live under our rule agreeably and permanently, since they have been treacherous in nature throughout history...

Listen to your Beloved [Muhammad], who tells you about the most dire end awaiting the Jews. The stones and trees will want Muslims to finish off every Jew."

Honest Reporting.Com brought this sermon to our attention when they took Oprah Winfrey's "O" magazine to task for a feature they ran on "the plight of an 18-year-old Palestinian who was tried, convicted and is currently serving time in an Israeli jail for conspiring to perform a suicide bombing."

In particular, Honest Reporting took exception to comments made by David France, an author and university professor who asserts that: religion is not the cause [of Palestinian suicide terror]... these are people who define their situation as hopeless. They feel that they have no way to respond against what they see as Israeli military aggression.

HR say, "Incredibly, the lengthy 'O' article completely ignores a main factor behind Islamist terror ? the incitement to violence that continually spews forth from Palestinian media and mosques such as Ibrahim Mudayris' cited above ... the Palestinian girl featured in 'O', ... was likely bombarded by such messages her entire life.

Source: Honest Reporting.Com, "Oprah's Mag Misses the Mark" - Continued media omission of incitement to violence in Palestinian culture." - 24 May 2005

From Assist News Ministries
August 22nd, 2005 :

Arab countries get a different message to that received in the West about Palestinian attitudes towards Israel, a conference heard in Doncaster, England.

In a City of Two Tales – a Powerpoint presentation of the issue based on material provided by Palestinian Media Watch – delegates learnt that there is a gross contradiction between the image the Palestinians present to the world in English and the messages they give to their own people in Arabic.

Though they talk in English of peace and ceasefires over Jerusalem, clerics and other Palestinian Authority leaders repeatedly cast slurs against the Jews in public media broadcasts in Arabic, inciting their people to hatred and violence against their neighbors.

Palestinian Media Watch was established in 1996 to gain an understanding of Palestinian society through the monitoring of their Arabic language media.

They have recorded pop videos glorifying suicide bomber ‘martyrs’ and shown Jews depicted as worms, monkeys and pigs in Friday sermons from leading Imams.

Even the late President Yasser Arafat is seen sponsoring sports events dedicated to ‘Shahids’ – those who have killed themselves and others for the cause.

Dr. Issam Sissalem, senior historian at the Islamic University in Gaza, is shown on PA TV as saying: “We are the people of this land, generation after generation. Let the intruders be erased.”

Dr. Ibrahim Mudayris, an expert on the Quran who refers to the Jews as “pigs”, said on the same outlet earlier this year: “The Jews are a cancer that spreads inside the body of the Arab and Islamic nation.”

And in a Friday sermon, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, member of the PA Religious Consultative Council, said of the Jews: “They must be butchered and must be killed…Have no mercy on the Jews anywhere in any country. Fight them wherever you are – wherever you meet them kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them and those who stand with them. They are all in one trench against the Arab and Muslims.”

But the distortion of truth about Israel does not only come from the Arab world. This is most tellingly illustrated by the sympathetic coverage the British media gave to the story of young American radical Rachel Corrie, accidentally killed after jumping in front of an Israeli army bulldozer. She has even inspired a new play,

‘My Name Is Rachel Corrie’, now being shown at London’s Royal Court Theatre, parts of which Times critic Clive Davis dismissed as “unvarnished propaganda”.

But there have been several real victims of the intifada called Rachel who died within a short time of Corrie – and in circumstances that weren’t disputed. They were deliberately murdered. Yet few will have heard of them.

One of them was 16-year-old Rachel Thaler, a British citizen blown up by a suicide bomber at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. “Not a single British journalist has ever interviewed me or mentioned her death,” her mother Ginette told Tom Gross, former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph.