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Author: Rita Panahi
It took Muslim students to show that the supposed rise of Islamophobia in Australia is nothing but a straw man designed to shut down debate and portray Australians as intolerant xenophobes.
Members of the Macquarie University Muslim Students Association were so disturbed by talk of anti-Muslim sentiment in the community they orchestrated a social experiment in which a number of women and a boy in traditional Muslim garb would be accosted in a public place.
The Muslim subjects would be abused by a man who would accuse them of being troublemakers and looking like terrorists.
What would ordinary Aussies do when they heard these slurs? Would they join in the abuse, ignore it or would they intervene and stand up to the racist bully?
The wonderful news is that in every scene, ordinary people, be they schoolgirls or middle-aged men, came to the defence of the person being harangued.
The students behind the experiment were shocked and delighted by the response, with filmmaker Kamal Saleh moved by the actions of bystanders.
“This social experiment was possibly one of the most eye- opening experiences ever. Every single person stopped and interfered. Nowhere else in the world have we seen such a response,” he wrote. “This video is hard proof that the Australian public do not welcome hate against Muslims. Yes, it does occur. But it is clearly not welcome.”
Saleh told the Herald Sun that he was overwhelmed by the readiness with which members of the public got involved in the conflict.
“It has, indeed, restored our faith in humanity,” he said.
The experiment was filmed and uploaded on YouTube where it clocked up more than 800,000 views in less than a week. In one scene, the abuser tries to elicit support from passers-by and all but pleads with them to condemn an Islamic woman’s chador, a head-to-toe covering with only the face exposed, but is rebuffed repeatedly and told in no uncertain terms that his bigotry is not acceptable.
Meanwhile, a group of young girls whisk the Muslim woman away while others make a point of telling the aggressor that his views have no place in this country.
“You’re not being Australian, you are not acting like one,” says one young man.
“You shouldn’t be talking, you should just go, ‘cause I will stand up,” says a businessman in a manner that is calm yet ominous.
“Everybody has a right to be here,” says a woman clearly distressed by the mock abuse she’s just witnessed. “Don’t you dare speak to people like that, these people belong here, too, as much as we do.
“If you don’t like it, go live somewhere else.”
I’d encourage everybody to watch the video titled Muslim Hate in Australia, Social Experiment but particularly those among us who are determined to paint our population as bigoted simpletons.
Of course, the Left-wing media has barely touched on the video despite the enormous response it has received online. It seems some are simply not interested in a story, even one generated by young Australian Muslims, that doesn’t fit the “rise in anti-Muslim attacks” narrative.
As a migrant, it bewilders me why sections of the community are desperate for any opportunity to disparage their own country and misrepresent its people. Look around the world and you will struggle to find anywhere that is as warm, welcoming and cohesive as Australian society.
The proof that Australia is not an inherently racist country is evident in the way we beat ourselves up over any isolated incident, whether it be a drunken heckler at the football or a feral on the Frankston line. It takes only one mouth-breathing moron to spew out an incoherent racial taunt and it will feature in the nightly news and result in a dozen shrill columns from the ABC-Guardian-Fairfax-Crikey-Mummy blogger vortex.
Now the fear of Islamophobia has become the go-to tool to shut down debate; we can’t talk about how confronting, not to mention dehumanising and oppressive the burqa is because it may whip up anti-Muslim sentiment.
What a load of unmitigated hogwash. No one wants the few women forced to wear the garments to be a target of abuse, but to be emancipated from a subjugating symbol of patriarchal oppression.
It should be noted that the burqa and niqab are very different from other Muslim garments in that they cover the face and restrict normal human interaction; one of the many reasons why the European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s burqa ban earlier this year.
If some commentators had their way, we would not tackle any issue that would give rise to religious or cultural practises being criticised. Should we not condemn child marriages or female genital mutilation because of cultural sensitivities? Do we pretend that women being treated like second-class citizens in many devout Muslim families is not a concern? What about the treatment of homosexuals in the wider Muslim community? How can the Left be so deliberately blind to the fate of such disempowered people?
We are, by no means, perfect as a nation and, of course, some measure of racism does exist in Australia as it does in every corner of the globe. But let’s not allow self-loathing miscreants to portray this country as a racist backwater; nothing is further from the truth.
