By: Ahmed Kilani
Source: MuslimVillage.com
Life can become untenable when the Jewish population of a state reaches about 10 per cent, as shown by New York, a Muslim expert on Judaism says.
Australian Muslim arabic media yesterday quoted Israfel Arabi as saying Australia should cap Jewish immigration or risk being swamped.
Professor Arabi told MuslimVillage.com that was a misunderstanding. But he said: “When the Jewish population gets to a critical mass you have problems. That is a general rule, so if it applies everywhere it applies in Australia.”
Professor Arabi, an expert in Jewish history from the Islamic University Gaza, said Jewish immigrants had a reputation for manipulating the values of Western countries, taking advantage of their hospitality and tolerance.
Professor Arabi said that when the Jewish population increased, so did the risk of violence.
“Where there are large Jewish populations who are prepared to use violence you are in trouble. If there is only 1 or 2 per cent they don’t dare to do it – they don’t have the backing of big communities. They know they are drowned in the environment of non-Jews and are better behaved.”
In Australia, Jews account for about 0.5 per cent of the population.
Professor Arabi said that in New York, which has the highest proportion of Jews in the US at about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There were regions even the police were scared to enter, and militant Jews were changing the country’s political, economic and cultural fabric, and demanding anti-Muslim and anti-Arab policies.
“New Yorkers say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.
“If you are on a collision course, what can you do? You can’t put them all in prison, and anyway they are not all violent. You can’t send them all back. You are really in trouble. It’s irreversible.”
Professor Arabi said that in Australia a few Rabbi’s had preached violence. “You should not let fundamentalist Rabbi’s come here. Screen them 1000 times before they are admitted, and after they are admitted screen what they say in the Synagogue.”
He said some Jews wanted to impose Halakha (Jewish law) in their adopted countries, and when propaganda did not work they turned to intimidation.
Professor Arabi said his task was to describe, not prescribe. He also said his warning did not include immigrants, including Jews, who simply wanted to improve their lot. As long as they respected the law and democracy, their numbers — Buddhist, Muslim or Jew — were immaterial. It became material when a group accepted violence.
“The buildings in Gaza were not blown up by Christians or Buddhists but by Jews, so it is them we have to beware,” he said.
Antony Loewenstein, of the Jewish Friendship Association of Australia, said “Not only religious clerics need to be screened before entering Australia but also academics … this type of academic does nothing but create hatred, suspicion and division … We should review not only what the man has said but also those who have sponsored him, to see if they endorse those comments.”
END – PLEASE KEEP READING.
Freedom of speech a right for some more than others
If you’re an individual who, like the overwhelming majority of people believes in treating everyone with decency, at the moment you are most likely feeling a sense of outrage…and rightly so. Please take a deep breath and relax.
The “article” is actually almost an exact word for word copy of one that was written by Barney Zwartz and published in the The Sydney Morning Herald in Feb 2007 reporting on comments made by a Professor Raphael Israeli – you can read it at the end of this page or here: “Limit Muslim Migration, Australia warned”. The only difference is that all references in the original article to Muslims/Islam have been changed to Jews/Judaism.
For the record, the above article is totally ficticious and is intended only as an educational tool in an intellectual debate about freedom of speech laws. All claims made in it are totally refuted and false.
When the original article was published there was justifiably also some outrage, clarification and Professor Raphael Israeli defended himself using the pretext of being taken out of context and freedom of speech – “Raphael Israeli: Muslim apologist, thy name is coward”.
If I today published the above as a genuine piece of journalism, not only would Jewish community leaders be justifiably outraged, every shock jock, tabloid journalist and politician from every side of politics would be lining up to offer their strongest condemnation and asking for me to be silenced, sent to jail and perhaps even deported (even though I was born in Australia).
More importantly I would be subject to legal action under a whole heap of discrimination and vilification laws. The reason for me writing the above “article” was to provide a very powerful and real example of the injustice we have with our modern day laws when it comes to the issue of freedom of speech in Australia, and it would appear other Western countries.
The reality is there is a massive double standard when it comes to freedom of speech, both legally and socially. If a Muslim academic or cleric makes any politically incorrect or offensive comments and tries to justify them under the same arguments that Raphael Israeli did, such a defence would be rejected and a media lynch mob would be set loose as recent history has shown.
From a legal perspective, despite the fact that the state of New South Wales has by far Australia’s biggest Muslim population (almost 9% of Greater Western Sydney residents now identify themselves as Muslim according to the 2011 census); and is the base for Australia’s major media outlets, there are no laws that can protect ANY religious group besides Jews and Sikhs from being vilified or discriminated against.
This was evidenced by the recent slap on the wrist from a tribunal imposing a forced apology after seven years on shock jock Alan Jones for his 2005 comments about Lebanese Muslims (lets not even mention the Cronulla riots). It should also be noted that the Jones reprimand was due to the comments made against Lebanese (a race) and not Muslims.
Socially, academic studies and government inquiries keep highlighting there is an emerging social issue with the acceptance of Muslims in Australian society. But despite this it seems the current thinking is:
“Australian Muslims need to work harder to assimilate, de-radicalise and never say anything politically incorrect while we allow others to publicly question your loyalty and identity, and disgustingly vilify you and your religion. If you dare react in any way, it is because you are uncivilised, against freedom of speech and democracy. But don’t worry, we don’t have a problem with you as an individual Muslim, just Islam”.
The problem is that for the majority of Muslims, Islam is an individual identity. It is a belief system that impacts on almost every aspect of a Muslims life – from how they eat, dress, trade and live day to day to how they will be buried when they die. Islam is a very personal and prominent factor of ones identity, just like race and indeed religion is to many others as well.
Restricting freedom of speech to prevent religious vilification should thus be about protecting people, not religions. It’s about protecting the rights of individuals in a society, not about preventing a religion from being scrutinised. As Muslims we believe that God will protect Islam and we are ready to engage and debate any aspects of our religion, no matter how hurtful and ignorant the acquisitions may be. It’s not about preventing parody, ideological debates or extremists vilifying Islam. Society will respond accordingly and will either have a laugh and not take them seriously, intellectually engage or shun those that want to engage in a ignorant and derogatory manner.
As such, it isn’t a debate about preventing freedom of speech. It’s a debate about preventing freedom of hate speech… and the inevitable consequences that come with it. That’s why it is unacceptable for societies that claim to uphold justice equally for all it’s citizenry to allow the likes of Raphael Israeli, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Danny Nalliah and Geert Wilders to say the most ignorant, hypocritical and offensive things about Islam and Muslims and get away with it in the name of some false notion of freedom and liberty.
The sad reality of human existence is that millions have been killed in the past after being incited by agent provocateurs simply for having a different religion, skin colour or culture. That is the reason why we today have laws that provide protection and limits to what is acceptable.
But have we forgotten our history lesson? Do we need another holocaust to once again have to ask the question “how did we get here?” and answer “never again!”. If we are to accept the argument of freedom of speech as it is now being debated by some in the West, then we may as well repeal all the laws that prevent discrimination and vilification currently in existence. It should be either protection for all, or protection for none.
Another often ignored reality to this debate is that we now live in an age where people are virtually logged into the internet nearly every waking hour. Beyond that, each and every one of us is now a “media publisher” thanks to the power of social media. Add in the concept of virality and an individual can now be sitting alone in some small room in the middle of nowhere and with the simple click of a button reach potentially millions of people with a message of incitement and hate.
Humanity has never experienced such a unique phenomenon. It is an amazing power that can not only be used for good to bring down dictators as we recently witnessed with the Arab springs, it can also be used for evil. That one click of a button to upload a slanderous video about the Prophet Muhammad in the US led to the death of an Ambassador in Libya and rioting in Sydney. It is always challenging for society to make sure that the laws that govern how we live can keep step with technology, and this is another aspect to this debate that people are disregarding.
Be it in the UK with the revelations of the journalists phone hacking or in Australia with the outrage over the comments made by Alan Jones regarding the death of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father, societies all around the western world are having the debate of what constitutes freedom of speech. Everybody agrees that freedom of speech needs to be safeguarded, but importantly, as was proven by the collective outrage in the UK & Australia, everybody also agrees that there needs to be limits set in place.
Despite the fact that since Sept 11 2001 we are always being reminded that “the terrorists hate us because of our freedom“, society has numerous laws that recognise that it is far more important to uphold the benefit, good order and stability of a society over the right to freedom of an individual. Think of the laws that control simple everyday things like smoking in public, littering, noise, pollution, security at airports, etc.
Islam follows the same methodology in many aspects. For example , we have laws that prohibit alcohol. The Quran acknowledges that yes there may be some benefit from alcohol, but the harm posed by alcohol is far more destructive to society than any individual benefit rendering it prohibited for all – Quran 2:219. We are all aware of the billions of dollars a year spent on policing, the health system and the courts having to deal with alcohol related social issues.
So the notion of giving up or limiting individual rights for the benefit of the greater good of a society is not some new backward philosophy that is an attack on individuality and freedom. It is something that already exists in many facets of our daily lives and has been doing so for centuries in all societies.
In case you are still not convinced, let me use another modern day analogy that most people can relate to. Restricting freedom of speech is like having traffic lights to control our roads. If the traffic lights are blacked out, most people will show common sense and courtesy, slow down and proceed with caution and the traffic will flow as if the traffic lights were working.
But there is always that minority of drivers that are selfish, inconsiderate and reckless that will not stop or give way. They are probably the people that don’t give you a wave when you let them in. It is inevitable that this small minority of drivers will eventually be the cause of accidents and lead to mass frustration, anger and chaos if allowed to go unchecked. Now can you imagine a world without traffic lights?
There are very good reasons why we have traffic lights in place and only an anarchist would disagree that they are not needed. It is for these very same reasons that we need to have controls on freedom of speech.We need to have limits to protect society from those reckless individuals who will vilify and incite against individuals simply because of their race or religion. We need to have limits in place in order to have a hope of one day creating a society where equality and justice prevail for all.
Until that day exists, we need to fill the missing gaps in the current laws to prevent vilification of individuals based on their race or religious beliefs. This is not only to personally protect individuals today, but to protect us all now and in the future from the cancer of intolerance and the destruction it can have on a society. If we can leave that legacy for our future generations, we will have learnt from the lessons of the past and left them the greatest gift of all….true humanity.
RELATED: The original article from SMH
Limit Muslim migration, Australia warned
Barney Zwartz
February 16, 2007
LIFE can become untenable when the Muslim population of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per cent, as shown by France, a Jewish expert on Islam says.
The Australian Jewish News yesterday quoted Raphael Israeli as saying Australia should cap Muslim immigration or risk being swamped by Indonesians.
Professor Israeli told the Herald that was a misunderstanding. But he said: “When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems. That is a general rule, so if it applies everywhere it applies in Australia.”
Professor Israeli, an expert on Islamic history from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has been brought to Australia by the Shalom Institute of the University of NSW. The Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council is co-hosting many of his activities.
He said Muslim immigrants had a reputation for manipulating the values of Western countries, taking advantage of their hospitality and tolerance.
“Greeks or Italians or Jews don’t use violence. There is no Italian or Jewish Hilaly [a reference to the controversial cleric Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly of Lakemba mosque]. Why?”
Professor Israeli said that when the Muslim population increased, so did the risk of violence.
“Where there are large Muslim populations who are prepared to use violence you are in trouble. If there is only 1 or 2 per cent they don’t dare to do it – they don’t have the backing of big communities. They know they are drowned in the environment of non-Muslims and are better behaved.”
In Australia, Muslims account for about 1.5 per cent of the population.
Professor Israeli said that in France, which has the highest proportion of Muslims in Europe at about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There were regions even the police were scared to enter, and militant Muslims were changing the country’s political, economic and cultural fabric, and demanding anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies.
“French people say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.
“If you are on a collision course, what can you do? You can’t put them all in prison, and anyway they are not all violent. You can’t send them all back. You are really in trouble. It’s irreversible.”
Professor Israeli said that in Australia a few imams had preached violence. “You should not let fundamentalist imams come here. Screen them 1000 times before they are admitted, and after they are admitted screen what they say in the mosque.”
He said some Muslims wanted to impose sharia (Islamic law) in their adopted countries, and when propaganda did not work they turned to intimidation.
Professor Israeli said his task was to describe, not prescribe. He also said his warning did not include immigrants, including Muslims, who simply wanted to improve their lot. As long as they respected the law and democracy, their numbers — Buddhist, Muslim or Jew — were immaterial. It became material when a group accepted violence.
“The trains in London and Madrid were not blown up by Christians or Buddhists but by Muslims, so it is them we have to beware,” he said.
Keysar Trad, of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said “Not only religious clerics need to be screened before entering Ausralia but also academics … this type of academic does nothing but create hatred, suspicion and division … We should review not only what the man has said but also those who have sponsored him, to see if they endorse those comments.”