An Essential Research poll released yesterday found
49% of Australians support a ban on Muslim immigration primarily due to “fears
of terrorism” and the belief that Muslims don’t share “Australian values” or
integrate. Whatever the accuracy of this particular poll, there is little doubt
that anti-Muslim sentiment is growing throughout the West.
Hizb ut Tahrir Australia emphasises the following in
this regard:
1. The hardening of anti-Muslim sentiment is alarming but
hardly surprising. It is the obvious and expected result of a 15 year
politically motivated campaign to encourage hatred and suspicion of Islam and
Muslims. A campaign instigated by mainstream politicians and dutifully carried
by the mainstream media. A campaign that used terrorism as the excuse to
implant the false idea that Islamic
beliefs were the cause of violence, so Islam itself was the suspect and needed
reform. For fifteen years straight all things Islam have been abused as a
political football by politicians and demonised in the media. For fifteen years
straight Islam and Muslims have been viewed squarely through the prism of
national security, terrorism, values and integration. What other result can we
possibly expect?
2.
The irony is
that in the last decade and a half two Muslim countries were invaded and
destroyed by western powers, the Arab uprisings exploited for western benefit
to devastating effect as in Syria, dictators were propped up and supported in
the Muslim world, all sorts of abuses committed in the like of Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo Bay, yet somehow those who have been the worse victims are now
considered the problem. Indeed, those who lost everything and were forced to
seek refuge elsewhere are seen as most suspect. This is the logic of blind
prejudice fostered by narrow political agendas.
3.
While the far
right has become the face of this open prejudice, to focus critique on it would
be to miss the mark. It is the mainstream of politics that created the social
and political environment that fosters suspicion and hate of Islam, which those
on the “fringe” exploit. The path for the open prejudice of the likes of
Pauline Hanson is paved by the agendas and policies of the likes of John
Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbot and Malcolm Turnbull. The latter
scapegoat the former – recent comments at the UN by President Obama and PM
Turnbull on refugees being a case in point – while it is their policies that
are the core of the problem. That is where our critique must be focused.
4.
What we have
here, ultimately, is the remarkable failure of the secular liberal paradigm and
its resultant politics. An ideology which encourages selfishness and
individualism, the relegation of the spiritual, the primacy of the material,
the commericalisation of everything, and the division of humanity into
arbitrary “nations”, each motivated by its own narrow “national interest”. The
result is a world of powerful nations exploiting weaker nations by whatever means
they can, in each of which the elite classes exploit the masses by whatever
means they can. The prevailing political systems, thoroughly corrupted by the
influence of corporations, have no solutions to real human problems faced by
the masses, in whom the lowly sentiment of nationalism and patriotism is always
latent. The result of scapegoating one minority or another is predictable.
5.
In this context,
Muslims have a formidable challenge. We must not only face increasingly hate
and prejudice with the nobility that Islam demands but we must do so while on
the front foot. Going insular and defensive is not an option for us, for such
is entirely out of sync with the noble prophetic way. We must be on the front
foot, critiquing the mainstream ideology and system and showing how Islam
alone, far from being the problem, is the need of the time. We must move beyond
the narrow politics of self-image and compromise to a politics of truth,
resistance of oppression and leadership of humanity.
Media Office of Hizb ut
Tahrir in Australia
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