Muslims in Oz

The past few weeks have seen atrocities committed in several countries, notably France, with the massacre in Nice and the beheading of a Priest at Mass in Rouen. And in Oz we have been dissecting the management by police of the ISIS 'lone wolf' attack on a small cafe in Sydney where several innocents were murdered in the name of Islam.   Then there was the murder of a police accountant right outside a cop-shop, by, yet again, a Muslim. Again, we are told, a 'lone wolf'. And Melbourne has experienced the murder of police by a muslim youth and continued riots, burglaries, killings and beatings by an 'African' gang of likely muslim members.

It is hardly surprising that some people fear for their lives and for the country. It is hardly a surprise that fearful eyes are turned on the muslim 'community' here. Yet when a woman on TV expresses that fear in a cogent and controlled manner, all hell breaks loose condemning her. Poor Sonia Kruger. She didn't know what hit her. The first verbal tirade came from her left, her fellow presenter.  That is him giving her the evil eye and preparing mimself for a PC- outrage tongue-lashing.

Where do these weasels come from?

It took a week or so of condemnation and threats against her life before one or two others came from behind their autocues to say 'hey, leave the gal alone, she's right'.  The 'debate', if one can call it that) continues.

"We are coming to get you. Oz will submit"

Everyone has an opinion but few seem to have any facts, apart from the explosive ones and the bloody-knife ones we see every week.

Even the gummunt has put its oar in. Yes, the gummunt is up and running again, after the election, and the few remaining members of the  rump are flexing their vocal chords. 

"Islam is The Religion of Peace."

We had Pauline Hanson, of course, saying 'please exploin' in that now familiar Queensland accent. She now has an ally in Jacqui Lambie  who has not quite got the full Tasmanian drawl, but who is equally forceful and demanding. Pauline cops more flack of course as she is a red-head while Jacqui is a miniscule-part Aboriginal. 

But to the Gummunt fellow, Craig Laundy, of whom no-one knows much. Jared Owens was in the bar telling what he heard Craig singing from the gummunt PC song sheet.

Craig Laundy wants to combat opinions about Muslims in Australia

Malcolm Turnbull’s new assistant minister for multiculturalism, Craig Laundy, has vowed to combat ”wrong’’ public perceptions about Australia’s Muslims.

Hmmmmm. 'Wrong' by what measure, one might ask? Presumably the 'multicultural' one with the hierogliphs on it. He didn't get to  the bit about having a mandate to 'counter' the opinions of people who elected him. 

Ethnic and religious leaders have reported increased tension in recent months amid the rise of Islamic State and calls from political leaders such as Tony Abbott for a “reformation” of Islam.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/craig-laundy-wants-to-combat-opinions-about-muslims-in-australia/news-story/9728b09a2d5ec44b6f4251c7f24980ce?nk=1dc4d9f3f2a05effc85fce79fb2efc8a-1469946975 

Mr Laundy, a former publican from Sydney’s culturally diverse inner-west, said the vast majority of inflammatory opinions about Islam and Muslims came from people who were “not well informed” and their views were “wrong”.

Although he acknowledged greater “tension” in the community following recent terrorist attacks, Mr Laundy said Australians should “come together in times of challenge, not fall apart”.

No mention of just who it is who is being 'divisive', dividing heads from shoulders and separating fixtures and fittings from buildings. 

“People that dive into this debate and say controversial things, I would argue, the vast majority are speaking from a position that is not well informed,” Mr Laundy told ABC Radio.

“My job … is to enter the debate, knowing the background and the community, engaging and explaining to Australia the challenges that these communities actually face.

Er..... what about the challenges we ALL face? 

Mr Laundy said Australian Muslims were “not scared” about debating how their religious practices integrated with the Australian way of life, but the discussion should be “respectful” and “informed”.

Agreed. No bombs. No guns. No machetes. But which side has them? 

He said the story of Australian multiculturalism was new arrivals “rolling up their sleeves and having a go”.

“That has never changed be it the Snowy Mountains workers (from Europe) after World War Two or be it the Hazara Afghanis that are working in local abattoirs around the country as we speak – very good boners, for example – they are here to give their families more opportunities than they had,” he said.

Hello. Of COURSE it has changed. The Snowy River migrants never had plasma TVs and centrelink benefits. They weren't a protected class. That has changed.

“The humanitarian intake visa category is one of the most entrepreneurial classes of visa category we have. I see new arrivals start working for someone else and within six or 12 months they’ve started their own business.”

Hmmmm. Not a lot of information there with which to be informed.  Not a lot of respect for those in the 'Community' that are concerned when death threats come through the front door.

So, let us look at some pertinent information and become a little better informed.

We has a screed land on the doorstep from the Australian, but it disappeared quickly behind a paywall.  Some kind soul, a regular and Prof of this parish, delivered the words. There might be some cheer here.

Muslim migration to Australia: 

the big slowdown

When it comes to immigration, the government and opposition are in agreement. Our migration program is proudly non-discriminatory and that is how it should remain.

Hmmmmm. Again, someone who wrote that nails his/her colours to the mast. Why NOT have some discrimination?  Or is this claim just more weasel words? Read on....

Yet the Australian government is pursuing a migration strategy that makes it extremely difficult for large numbers of Muslims from the Middle East to settle here, even if that is not the policy’s aim.

While governments of all stripes insist Australia’s migration program is non-discriminatory, an analysis of available data by The Australian suggests that the migration of Muslims from Lebanon, in particular, has slowed to a trickle, with no sign of a rush coming anytime soon.

Must be our naval presence  detering Muslims, eh? 

Immigration officials tell The Australian that the low number of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East arriving in recent years has nothing to do with their religion, since applicants are not asked to state their faith when they apply to settle.

Instead, they say, it’s an unintended consequence of a migration policy that is almost entirely focused on attracting skilled and family reunion migrants from countries such as India (now Australia’s No 1 source of permanent migrants, with 34,874 arrivals last year) and China (27,874).

The strategy, which both major parties insist is not deliberate, means that while Islam was once the fastest growing religion in Australia, there are now more Buddhists (2.5 per cent of the population) than there are Muslims (2.2 per cent), and the Hindus are rapidly catching up.

“There are officials and politicians who openly favour Christians including Orthodox Christians (and Jewish migrants over Muslims),” one of Australia’s most eminent scholars on immigration, James Jupp of the Australian National University, tells The Australian. 

Still Worried.

But, he says, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection “will never admit bias as many decisions are made locally” — that is, by officials in the country of origin.

Islamic Sciences & Research Academy Australia’s director Mehmet Ozalp says the local community could not help but notice that “the Muslim population from the Middle East was at one point growing fast, but that was about 10 years ago, and now it is slowing, whereas the Buddhist and Hindu population was pretty low but has increased dramatically.

“It is concerning because there are calls for stopping Muslim immigration,” Ozalp adds. “It’s not too far to assume that people in parliament may agree with these calls, and we need to worry: are these numbers indicative of an underlying problem?”

Muslim immigration came to the fore during the recent federal election when Senate candidate Pauline Hanson called for a complete ban. A debate kicked off just last week, when Nine Network presenter Sonia Kruger said she, too, wanted a ban on Muslim immigrants coming to Australia.

And this week Liberal senator Eric Abetz sent out a tweet saying: “We need an open and frank discussion on the future of immigration.”

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton insists, however, that Australia’s migration program is proudly non-discriminatory. “We don’t focus on religion. We focus on skills,” he tells The Australian.

The question of how many Muslim immigrants come to Australia each year is difficult to answer. The Department of Immi¬gra¬tion says it does not ask newly approved migrants to state their religion and therefore does not keep statistics.

In an effort to find an answer, The Australian studied immigration statistics from 1974 to last year and compared them with census data held by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, specifically on the religious affiliation of overseas-born Australians. The two sets of data are not a complete match, making a precise extrapolation impossible, but some trends immediately become clear.

No Bhuddist Bums here

While Lebanon once provided Australia with 2000 to 4000 migrants a year, that number had dropped by 2010-11 to 1143 people (last year’s figure was 1242). The department says it does not know how many of these people were Muslim, but according to ABS data most of the Lebanese migrants who arrived in recent years (57.2 per cent) are not Muslim. If that trend is holding — and there is no reason to suppose that it is not — then Australia is taking as few as 550 Lebanese Muslims a year.

The situation for Iran is similar: while figures show Australia continues to welcome immigrants from Iran (4093 people in 2013-14), the ABS data suggests that as many as 62 per cent of those who arrive are not Muslim but Christian or of the Baha’i Faith.

Halim Rane, associate professor in the school of humanities at Griffith University, who worked for the Department of Immigration for six years, says the trend towards non-Muslim immigration is not new.

“Even in the 1990s, before Islamic extremism was even on the radar, the majority of people coming to Australia from Muslim-majority nations were not Muslim,” he says. “Take Egypt: it is majority Muslim, but Australia takes mostly Coptic Christians because they tend to have more of the skills Australia needs.

“But I don’t believe there is a policy or an anti-Muslim bias because they don’t even ask the question. They wouldn’t know if you’re Muslim or not. What happens is, the government of the day will focus on attracting certain skills — say, technology — and those immigrants will come from China or India, where there are not a lot of Muslims.”

The focus on skills means Australia takes more people from Ireland (5541 in 2013-14) than from Iraq (4304), and more from Nepal (4470), whose population is about 80 per cent Hindu, than from Bangladesh (2569), where most of the population is Muslim.

There is one clear exception to the general rule: Australia welcomed 8281 immigrants from Pakistan in 2014-15, most of whom are assumed to be Muslim, since ABS data shows that 87.7 per cent of Pakistani-born Australians identify as Muslim.

On the other hand, ABS data shows that Hindus are experiencing the fastest growth, with numbers increasing by 189 per cent to 275,500 across a 10-year period, mostly because of immigration.

By contrast, while the number of Muslims in the community is still increasing, it is doing so at the much lower rate (69 per cent across the same 10-year period) and most of that growth would seem to be coming not from immigration but from a high birthrate.

Muslim community leader Jamal Rifi tells The Australian that migration from Lebanon has definitely slowed in recent years, but “it is for a couple of reasons, including that not as many people are trying to come”.

“For some families, it’s expensive to apply, but also because the Lebanese community in Australia is very integrated now,” Rifi says. “There aren’t as many people going back (to Lebanon) to find a partner. It’s better to find a partner here, who will be more educated and liberal and compatible. The marriages between here and there, we have seen failures.”

Rifi says the local community supports the rigorous, skills-based program. “We don’t want anyone who might end up being radicalised. It’s not an anti-Muslim policy, it’s a conscious decision to take people who will contribute, and that is why we don’t have the same problems here.”

Well, there's some 'facts' to be going on with, which shed, frankly, little light on the Muslim issue. The incoming numbers may be slowing but those already in have done a huge amount of damage. Personally I think 'discrimination' is prudent. They seem to be the ONLY religious or even secular group that threaten to take over, kill people, and even change our friggin' menu options.

There is no halal in my restaurant.

But heck, I am just a barkeeper. Send me your views.

Pax