Gagged down under

Fear and loathing are not the only things which can unite people in Australia. It seems there is nothing like banning free speech to get us all singing from the same hymn sheet, as Australia’s top Muslims are gagged by the Lebanese Muslim Association in Sydney.

Not so long ago, there was media uproar over a sermon given by Australia’s top Mufti, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, in which he (reportedly) claimed that women wearing revealing clothing and no headscarf were like meat left out for the cats to attack. Granted, it’s pretty awful stuff, but I thought we had gotten used to judges, clerics and other unelected members of the establishment making idiots of themselves by ranting on about women ‘asking for it’ because of how they dress, dance, smoke, drink or wear their hair. In 2001 we had a possibly worse example, courtesy of the Anglican Church. While he was Archbishop of Brisbane, Governor General Peter Hollingworth seemed to excuse the actions of an Anglican priest accused of sexually abusing a 14 year old girl.

Like al-Hilali, Hollingworth was another unelected figure with ‘weird and dangerous’ views. The difference between the two cases is that no one associated Hollingworth’s opinions with that of the entire Australian Anglican population. Hollingworth only spoke for himself and possibly for Elizabeth II. The Governor General eventually moved on, as did the controversy.

For al-Hilali, his case has proved different. Seeing the Mufti’s words as incitement to rape, Pru Goward, Australia’s Federal Sex Discrimination Officer, sought to have him not only gagged but also deported (to where of course, I don’t know). After John Howard also stepped-in to condemn him, the Mufti hit back saying that if his comments were indeed an incitement to rape he would stand down and quite literally gag himself, for 6 months.

The Mufti then commented on Egyptian TV that ‘Muslims [are] more entitled to be in Australia than those with convict heritage’. For the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA), this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the LMA officially gagged al-Hilali and four other top Muslim clerics for the ‘immeasurable damage’ they had caused. According to Tom Zreika, the LMA President, the organisation was trying to put an end to ‘perceived un-Australian viewpoints by some clerics’.

The knee-jerk censoriousness and hypocrisy on all sides is remarkable here. While comparatively few complained over Hollingworth, many more believe al-Hilali’s views too offensive to be heard. Meanwhile, the LMA seem to have bought into al-Hilali and his unelected cohorts’ pretences to speak for the entire Muslim community – and so tried to stop them making public statements altogether.

Despite the late summer warmth here in Australia it is quite chilling to think the one thing that may unite Australians from many different backgrounds is an ever increasing desire to limit freedom of speech.

Dom McCarthy