Johno goes to heaven

By 2353NM 

Johno was (as they say in the classics) a good and decent man. When he dies, he goes to heaven, and St Peter shows him around. They go past one room, and Johno asks: ‘Who are all those people in there?’ ‘They are the Methodists,’ says St Peter. They pass another room, and Johno asks the same question. ‘They are the Anglicans,’ says St Peter. As they’re approaching the next room, St Peter says: ‘Take your shoes off and tiptoe by as quietly as you can.’ ‘Why, who’s in there?’ asks Johno. ‘The Catholics,’ says St Peter, ‘and they think that they’re the only ones up here.’.

Yes, it’s basically an old Dave Allen joke about religious difference (and would have been much funnier if you saw him tell it rather than read it). In contrast, Nick Earls recently wrote an article that discussed Australia’s seemingly never-ending preoccupation with ‘religious difference’ in The Guardian that shows wit and humour as well as having a good point. Earls claims:

I arrived in Australia in 1972 at the age of eight in the middle of an apparent Irish joke boom, and spent much of my lunchtimes over the next couple of years being dragged aside and read pages of Irish jokes. As fun goes, it had its limits.

But it wasn’t as bad as being the kid from the Italian family who had his “wog” lunch thrown in the bin most days, only to watch the perpetrators spend $10 in cafes 20 years later for the exact same food – focaccia and prosciutto – with no recollection of what they’d done.

Earls noticed a difference when travelling after the ‘9/11’ attacks in the US when those born in Northern Ireland were no longer ‘randomly selected’ for ‘special clearance procedures’ yet again. He also relates the history of Australia where the first Catholic Priest, a convict, was transported to Australia in 1798, then allowed to conduct masses from 1803 only until there was a rebellion of Irish convicts in 1804. The claim was that the rebellion was plotted during the mass (it would have been in Latin and the guards probably weren’t the smartest people in the room). The next Catholic mass in Australia wasn’t held until 1820.

Earls argues that the current discrimination against Muslims is equally as silly as the many decades of discrimination against the Irish around the world. While some Irish did belong to the IRA and were willing to do anything to ‘further their cause’, there were a hell of a lot of Irish people around the world that really didn’t care that much about the ‘free Ireland’ the IRA proposed. A lot of the Irish weren’t even Catholic! It would be nice to record here that discrimination and profiling by assumed religious characteristics died in the early years of this century when the world finally realised that every person with an Irish name or place of birth wasn’t a religious nutter with a bomb hiding in their luggage, but to believe that would be delusional.

As Earls mentions, early this century the focus switched from some Irish person going to blow you up to some Muslim person going to blow you up. While there have been some horrible atrocities around the world in the past 15 years caused by those claiming to further the Muslim cause (despite the mainstream Muslim religion abhorring violence), let’s look at some facts.

In September 2014, Crikey looked at various facts around terrorism. Between the Sydney Hilton Bombing in 1978 and September 2014, 113 Australians were victims of terrorism. While each life lost is a tragedy, Crikey points out that from 2003 to 2012, there were 2617 homicides, something like 8500 victims of car accidents and 22,800 suicides. The number of terror related deaths in 35 years is even eclipsed by the number of people who died from falling off a ladder (230), electrocution (206) and, surprisingly in a first world country, more died of shingles (228) as well as gastro and diarrhoea (168) in the 10-year period between 2003 and 2012.

So, is terrorism a problem? Of course it is – but is it an issue so all-encompassing that politicians like Pauline Hanson are correct in demanding CCTV cameras be installed in mosques? Of course it isn’t. Going back to numbers again, Hanson claims that she has a right to free speech and while there is no such clause regarding freedom of speech in Australia’s constitution, there is an implied right for anyone in this country to say what they want provided it doesn’t injure the reputation of others. Hanson also claims that she speaks for the majority of ordinary Australians. This too is debatable as her political party received around 500,000 first preference votes from the 16 million or so that were entitled to vote in the 2016 Federal Election. Mathematically, that means that around 15,500,000 Australian voters specifically decided that Hanson did not speak for them.

One of those who determined that Hanson didn’t speak for him is Barnaby Joyce (Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the National Party). Joyce countered Hanson’s suggestion of CCTV being installed in mosques by stating that every religion has ratbags and suggesting that if all Muslims were terrorists, all Catholics were members of the IRA. Joyce is also correct in suggesting that:

… the democratic process which saw Pauline Hanson elected to the Senate should be respected and he did not want to start the new parliament with a “fight”.

“I am happy to have a cogent debate where nobody is insulted but I am happy to argue these things on the facts and on the reality of the nation I live in,” he said.

Last weekend, a teenager shot and killed 10 people in Munich, 27 other people were injured. It appears that the person with the gun had mental issues and thought highly of Anders Behring Breivik who murdered 77 young people on the Norwegian island of Utoya in 2011. Yet the same ABC online news report that reports all this in the first paragraph goes on to identify the perpetrator as a German-Iranian. Since when is the ancestry of a mass murderer relevant to the crime?

Earlier this year, Omar Marteen walked into the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and shot 102 people (49 of whom subsequently died). According to the US authorities, while Marteen acted alone, he had mental health issues and was inspired by radical material he found online. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza killed his mother, then drove to the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot 28 people, including 20 children. Lanza had mental health issues.

All mass murders are horrific, but the ancestry and/or religious beliefs of Lanza were not discussed in the reporting of the events that occurred. See the difference?

Locally, most will remember the siege at the Lindt Café in Sydney which was initially claimed to be a terrorist attack – including this breathless reporting:

At 10.30am, the seriousness of the ISIS threat forced the remaining TV production staff to leave the premises, throwing to the network’s Melbourne news crew, anchored by Nick Etchells and Laurel Irving.

TV executive producer Max Uechtriz tweeted confirmation of the terror scenario, with hostages forced to hold up the sinister black flag of the Islamic terror group.

The reality was Man Haron Monis, who perpetrated the crime, had a long history of borderline criminality and certainly ‘was known to authorities’. And the ISIS flag at the Lindt Café that proved the connection with terrorism – well apparently it wasn’t the ISIS flag and didn’t prove a thing.

Curtis Chang was a NSW Police Service accountant, shot and killed by a teenager while leaving work in Parramatta in October 2015. The claim at the time was the teenager had been ‘radicalised’. Senator-elect Hanson recently cited incidents such as the Lindt Café siege and Chang’s murder as reasons for a Royal Commission into religion on the ABC’s Q & A program telecast on July 18. Chang’s son has written an open letter to Hanson requesting that an entire religion is not blamed for the actions of a 15-year-old boy. From the letter:

As a high school teacher, I have Muslim students and I have met their parents and family. They have the same hopes and dreams of all Australians; to be successful in their lives and enjoy the freedoms we enjoy. I have not changed my hope for them to be successful members of Australian society.

This fearmongering directed at minorities is not a new phenomenon in history. Nor is it new with me personally. When I first arrived to Australia, I remember being a victim of the hateful and fearful attitudes that the One Nation Party promoted. I remember being told I will be sent back to where I came from because I was Asian and, therefore, not Australian. I remember feeling ostracised and isolated from the country and identity with which I had adopted – in harmony with my cultural heritage.

If anyone has the ‘right’ to ‘hate’ in Australia, surely it is Chang – not Hanson.

The Federal Member for Moreton, Graham Perrett recently reported in an opinion piece published by Fairfax:

At Eid Down Under earlier this month I had some halal lamb and cevapi and they tasted exactly like Australia. Despite being raised a Catholic in country Queensland I felt right at home at a Muslim celebration on Brisbane’s southside. It wasn’t a tradition from my childhood or my culture or my religion, but it was enjoyable – and the food was delicious!

Some politicians have mistakenly suggested that, in order to protect “our” culture and “our” way of life, the parliament should curtail the freedom of Australians to practise any religion that is not Christianity. As well as being offensive to around nine out of 20 Australians, such a restriction is contrary to our own Constitution.

And he’s right. Section 116 of Australia’s Constitution allows all those who live here freedom to practice their own religion. As Perrett points out, the Constitution was written by a number of ‘white blokes’. Those ‘white blokes’ apparently could tell the difference between an Irish Catholic and a member of the IRA. It’s a pity that those who attempt to victimise people based on some tenuous link between their appearance or name and a religious group over one hundred years later don’t have the same ability.

What do you think?

How is Australia less safe now than it was 50 years ago?

Have there always been religious ‘nutters’?