To Andrew Bolt
What a condescending twat you are. You, who have no qualifications and no experience outside being a media whore, dare to criticise two admirable women, who are far more educated, credible and informative than you, just because they are speaking out.
For the vast majority of you who will not be aware of the Dolt’s latest offering, he wrote an article in the Telegraph titled “Fledgling Pundit is in over her headscarf.”
It begins…
“Why does the ABC hire and promote Muslim women in headscarfs, but not ones with hair free? And why is it exploiting Yasmin Abdel-Magied, who is surely too young for this?”
He suggests that Susan Carland and Yasmin Abdel-Magied are “vocal apologists for Islam and dress as identifiably Muslim, covering their hair in elaborate scarfs and turbans.”
“It seems to me like the ABC is using Carland and Abdel-Magied to proselytise for Islam – and for a conservative version. After all, in my view neither is particularly good as a presenter, yet is has showered both with opportunities.
But is the ABC unfairly exploiting Abdel-Magied to push its agenda? She is only 26. At that age, I’d just worked on a Labor election campaign and was about to start another. I was passionately for legal euthanasia.
Since then, with time, thought, and sometimes hard experience, I’ve changed those sympathies. I’ve grown.
I expect Abdel-Magied will too.
Will she even keep believing in Islam, with its apparent Jew hatred, rants against unbelievers and tales of Mohammed riding a horse to heaven from the top of Temple Mount?
Maybe yes, maybe no. But a woman of only 26 should be free to change.
Abdel-Magied must know that all of this – the money, applause – might go if she renounced her faith or the symbol of her submission.”
Where to begin with that patronising, jealousy-laden, bunch of crap.
How do you know there are no Muslim women with hair free at the ABC?
Perhaps Muslim women have felt it necessary to seek a platform in the media to counter the irrational hatred that is being spread by people like you, Hanson and Lambie – to show that not all Muslims are machete-wielding terrorists and that not all Muslim women are subservient victims of patriarchal abuse.
To trivialise these women, to suggest they have only been employed because of their headgear, is exactly the same as when you suggested that people were given jobs because they were Aboriginal. I hope they are consulting their lawyers.
Susan Carland completed a Bachelor of Arts and Science at Monash University. Her Honours thesis looked at women’s access to the mosque.
Susan teaches gender studies, politics, and sociology at Monash University, with a special focus on Muslim women and Muslims in Australia. She received a scholarship to do her PhD in politics and sociology, looking at the way Western Muslim women fight sexism within their own traditions and communities.
In 2004, she was named Australian Muslim of the Year. Susan is also listed as one of the international ‘Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow’ by the UN Alliance of Civilisations. She is the co-creator of the Victorian Convert Support Service, and has managed the Islamic Council of Victoria’s youth wing, Grassroots.
In 2003, she gave the International Women’s Day address at Parliament House in Victoria. She has also spoken at Chatham House in London, the Muslim Professionals Forum in Malaysia, and has been a panelist for Issues Deliberation Australia, a public policy think-tank.
Yasmin Abdel-Magied attained a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) from the University of Queensland in 2011, receiving First Class Honours. She was a member of the board of Queensland Museum from 2008 – 2012 and is currently an ambassador for the museum. In August 2011, she was appointed to the Council for Multicultural Australia. She was part of the organising committee for the 2014 G20 Summit in Brisbane. In November 2014, she became a board member of ChildFund Australia.
In November 2015, she was appointed to the board of directors of OurWatch, an organisation for the prevention of domestic violence. In October 2016 the ABC program Australia Wide was recommissioned and is now presented by Abdel-Magied. In 2016, she was named an academic fellow of Trinity College in the University of Melbourne. She is currently a member of the board of the Council for Australian-Arab Relations. and a director of Youth Without Borders.
In 2016 the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), sent Abdel-Magied to the Middle East to promote Australia. She visited Riyadh Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi UAE, Dubai UAE, Doha Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Ramallah Palestine, Israel, Cairo Egypt and Sudan.
Abdel-Magied was named as one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence 2012. She was awarded Young Australian of the Year for Queensland in 2015. She was named in the top 100 most influential engineers in Australia by Engineers Australia in 2015.
But maybe she’ll grow up to be a pretentious puppet of the IPA just like you Andrew, a champion of ignorance and bigotry, a conservative pretender and paid mouthpiece for corporate greed and pious hypocrisy.
Somehow I doubt it though, These women have already contributed a great deal more to our country than you ever have or ever will.
