Imagine the boss calls everyone to a meeting and announces that Trevor just got the Assistant Manager’s job. “It was a strong field,” he continues, “and I’d just like to assure Jim that it wasn’t because he’s black that Trevor won the job over him. We have many fine black employees and the vast majority of them do a good job. As for Moira, well, she’s an excellent worker and the fact that she’s a woman didn’t even enter our heads when deciding the next assistant manager. So let’s all give Trevor a round of applause…”
Yes, that’s the way to do it. The boss has clearly made Jim and Moira feel much better and reassured them that the firm welcomes them and is in no way racist or sexist, hasn’t he? There’d be no lingering resentment after something like that.
And I guess that’s the thing that starting to concern me when I read about the “terror raids”. On one hand, the media emphasises their Islamic faith and uses words like “jihadist”* (whatever that actually means), then it goes on to make the point that these people being arrested aren’t typical of Islamic people.
After all, how strange would the following sound:
Christian serial rapist, Wayne Kerr was taken in to custody today. Police acting on DNA evidence were able to identify Kerr as the man behind a number of attacks. The Premier praised the work of police in catching him and wanted to stress the vast majority of Christians weren’t rapists and found his actions abhorrent.
OR
Presbyterian investment banker I. G. Reedy was arrested after it was discovered that he had defrauded the company of over $3 million dollars. The Prime Minister said he hoped that people wouldn’t hold all Presbyterians responsible for this shameful act.
So why do the words Islamic or Muslim have to be attached to these stories at all? Particularly when there seems to some sort of understanding that it’s more about politics than religion.
Which sort of brings me to the wonderful re-tweet from Jaqui Lambie
I don’t know about anyone else, but it strikes me as odd that when looking at that image that it’s the burqa and not the pistol that someone sees as threatening. Perhaps it should be labelled: “Ban the Burqa but let this person keep the pistol, taking guns away from people is an invasion of their civil liberties!”
But I guess that’s the sort of Alice-in-Wonderland world we live in, where a growth is unemployment is because we’re fixing the economy and you don’t have to keep all your promises just the ones you actually meant. Where we righteously condemn beheadings as “barbaric” and say that this is taking us back hundreds of years, ignoring the fact that the USA still executes people and a Saudi man was recently tried and then beheaded for “witchcraft and sorcery”. A world where we acknowledge that ISIL are doing things to shock and disturb us – why else would they film and distribute it, after all – but the media organisations think that they should assist the terrorists to spread the word by having front page photos of those about to be beheaded, and politicians who cite “Operational Matters” on almost everything suddenly find it reasonable to tell us in detail exactly what these publicity-seeking assassins are doing.
Still, the five pages devoted to the terror raids managed to take both the Royal Commission into unions AND Moreland City Council off the front page in the Murdoch Misinformation Unit this morning. (Moreland City Council, for those who haven’t read Rupert’s Rag aka “The Herald-Sun” should be sacked and administrators appointed because they’re insulted Jill Meagher’s memory by not installing CCTV cameras in Sydney Road quickly enough AND they’ve been wasting ratepayers money by opposing the East-West Freeway link in court. Stories about this are accompanied by a photo of Jill Meagher to make us aware that this is all about her and not some vendetta to attack a democratically elected council because it’s views are different from the paper.)
Would be a shame if all this terrorism stuff made us feel that the Royal Commission didn’t really matter all that much and was really a waste of money!
It’s already led to Mr Abbott cutting short his trip to Arnheim Land thereby, not really breaking his promise to spend a week there because, as we all know, changing circumstances are a perfectly good reason to break your word. I’m sure the aboriginal people will understand, because most of them are decent, law-abiding people who just want to be part of Team Australia.
*Although this is from Wikipedia, I think it’s worth pointing out
Jihad –
is an Islamic term referring to a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād is a noun meaning “struggle” or “resisting”. A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid, the plural of which is mujahideen. The word jihad appears frequently in the Quran,[1][2] often in the idiomatic expression “striving in the way of God (al-jihad fi sabil Allah)“.[3][4][5]
Muslims and scholars do not all agree on its definition. Within the context of the classical Islamic law, it refers to struggle against those who do not believe in the Islamic God (Allah) and do not acknowledge the submission to Muslims,[6] and so is often translated as “Holy War”,[7][8][9] although this term is controversial.[10]
