Moonbat: Oz Turkish Muslims are different

July, 2007

Australian academic Dr Liza Hopkins finds exactly the wrong time to tell us that Australian Muslims of Turkish descent are a different breed, and need not be feared. You may get a headache from her verbosity ...

Her concern with the media Muslim stereotype:

"... media representations have contributed to the construction of a spurious link between a homogenised Islamic community and a cultural tendency to violence and crime ... Using Islam as a category to describe a singular social group within multicultural society is therefore problematic."

And Australian Turkish Muslims should be exempt from this stereotype because:

"It has been argued that one of the longest-standing Muslim self-definitions is through belonging to a global community of believers. But for members of Australia’s Turkish community ... whose Muslim identity is subordinate to national, cultural and ethnic affiliations - networks of family and friends based around shared language, history, culture and descent override the importance of religion that is attributed to them by outsiders ...

Much of the recent public commentary on the nature of Muslims in Australia is debunked by comments made by young Turkish-Australians. They actively resist being categorised as Muslim-Australians, even while acknowledging their own Muslim beliefs ...

It is clear that for these young people, cultural or ethnic identity is much stronger than religious identity. Although they are articulate about preserving their heritage and language, these traditions are seen to be firmly Turkish, with cultural rather than religious significance.

Perhaps because of Turkey’s fierce historic commitment to national secularism young Turks have no difficulty in separating their religious beliefs or non-beliefs from their Turkish cultural traditions and in seeing the traditions that they value as being Turkish rather than Islamic. It is quite clear that these young people, while acknowledging their Muslim heritage, have no interest in, or commitment to, a larger national, supranational or global community of Muslims.

Research with Turkish Australians has shown that the discourse around Muslim-Australians which constructs a singular, hybrid category on the basis of residence and religion is actively resisted by at least some of those very people to which it has been ascribed."

Dear Liza Hopkins,

All well and good, kudos to young Aussie Turks for having minds of their own. They perhaps don't deserve the stereotype for crime and violence that other Muslim groups have created for them.

However, as Turkey is in the process of throwing out Kemalism, it shows that Oz Turkish Muslims offer us no protection against creeping Islamisation. You have taken a small Muslim sample here in Australia, and extrapolated (I know you like big words) that their descendants will likewise be harmless. If Turkey can teach us anything, it is that moderate Muslims can be the forerunner for radicals, whether they intend it or not.

It is ironic that the moment you attribute Turkey’s "fierce historic commitment to national secularism" to Aussie Turks, is the moment it is being extinguished in Turkey. You failed to explain why this won't be repeated here in Australia.

Grade: F - tried hard, well intended, but misguided, please hand back your PhD after class.

More: Online Opinion, Aus Policy Online

Kemalism: 1881 - 2007, RIP

NY Times, July 20, 2007

... An ad last week ... showed a black ballot box and a woman’s eyes behind the rectangular cut-out, evoking a facial veil. “Are you aware of the danger?” it said. Before the ill-fated presidential election this spring, a television ad flashed the years 1881 and 2007 on a black screen - the year of Ataturk’s birth and the year his secular reforms died ...

For 84 years, modern Turkey has been defined by a holy trinity — the army, the republic and its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Each was linked inextricably to the others and all were beyond reproach.

But a deep transformation is under way in this nation of 73 million, and elections this Sunday may prove a watershed: liberal Turks, once supporters of the ruling secular elite and its main backer, the military, are turning their backs on them and pledging votes to religious politicians as well as a new array of independents.

They say that the rigid rules of the last century, which prohibit women from wearing Muslim head scarves in public buildings and forbid ethnic minorities to express their identities, need to be left behind ...

He and others say the rules served a purpose when Turkey was forging a national identity out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire. But now Turkey has outgrown them.

“In 50 years, people will write that this was the time Turkey started to come to terms with its own people," ...

From its beginnings in the 1940s, a powerful chain of bureaucrats, judges and army generals from the secular upper classes has controlled the most important Turkish affairs ...

But Turkish society has significantly changed in recent decades, with religious Turks gaining wealth and status and moving into public view. Women in head scarves — precisely those whom early Turkish legislation singled out — are in shopping malls, on motor scooters and behind the wheels of cars, and rules against them seem woefully outdated ...

“This narrow shirt of secularism has become a little too tight and choking for Turkish society,” ...

He is referring to Kemalism, the fiercely secular ideology that sought to extinguish religious networks and ultimately religion itself from society.

The state elite “wanted society to fit their theory,” ... “If religion doesn’t disappear, we’ll make it disappear because our theory says so.”

The portion of Turkish society hanging onto the old order is shrinking ... so when more than a million Turks gathered this spring to protest what they said was creeping Islamism, bizarre combinations were on display. People wore masks of Ataturk, who died more than 60 years ago. The music that played was from 1930s. “They have calcified,” said Baskin Oran, an opinionated professor running as an independent candidate in Istanbul.

More: NY Times, Winds of Jihad, Fitzgerald Reply

Bored liberals and frustrated Islamists, a temporary partnership. Look at the language: smug liberal finger-wagging, "tuh tuh", "come come", language. Anti-military, anti-interventionist, pro-multiculti, pro-diversity. Those who resist them are "shrinking, old order, calcified, bizarre combinations". Suicidal liberals masquerading as intellectuals - they are the ones wearing the masks. Same as the West.

Liberal Islam = Turkish Suicide

... “Move away from fragile systems that are easily toppled. Original Democracy, adhered to by millions around the world, is now available in Turkey!”

“We believe there is a hidden group of people in Turkey who are bored by this [Islamophobic] talk,” said Mr. Tumer, fiddling with a green yoyo while sitting at a glass table. “We know you’re not afraid of this scarf. When she takes it off, she still has the same ideas.”

“This paranoia, this tension, for the young generation, it’s just old-fashioned,” he said.

More: YouTube , NY Times

Sadly, it seems Turkey is so bored that it wants to return to sharia. Unfettered democracy and Islam is suicide. Islamophobia is out of fashion.

Squalid Shoebox - new oz blog

There's a new oz blog. Take a look:

http://squalidshoebox.blogspot.com/

It has started a series called Australia Tomorrow - kind of a piss-take view of Muslim issues. Sounds like a good way to educate people, through humour. The Moderate Muslim Trek is funny.

457 visa truck drivers ahead

Australasian Bus News, July 2007

Terrorist Attacks Show Why to Fear Foreign Truckies: Union

Arrests of foreign doctors in Australia over links to Britain’s attempted terrorist attacks are an example of why the 457 visa system shouldn’t be extended to the trucking industry, the union says.

In its continuing campaign against importing foreign drivers to meet the skills shortage, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) says the arrests of foreign-trained doctors practicing in Australia are a reminder that "Australians are at risk".

"The 457 visa contains no adequate background checks," Senior TWU official Mark Crosdale says.

"Imagine the impact of a truck fully loaded with explosives. This visa must be stopped from being extended to truck drivers, before disaster occurs in Australia.

"Australia can’t pretend it’s no longer vulnerable to a similar attack to what’s occurred in London and Glasgow over the past week. The threat is real, and every attempt must be made to thwart a disaster from occurring."

Crosdale says extending 457 visas to road transport "spells disaster for every road user".

"It will bring foreign drivers to our roads with little to no training, and only self-applied background checks," he says.

"This is just another reason the Federal Government should stop the 457 visa from being extended to the transport industry."

ABC News, January, 2007

A 28-year-old Muslim from India has been taken into custody in Rhode Island after a truck driving school became suspicious of his efforts to obtain a license to drive trucks with hazardous material.

Rhode Island State Police said Mohammed Yusef Mullawala came to the United States on a student visa but never attended classes at three separate schools he said he was going to attend.

Instructors at the Nationwide Tractor Trailer Driving School in Smithfield, R.I., became suspicious when Mullawala showed up last November.

"He kept saying he wanted a HAZMAT license, and he wanted it quickly and that he did not want to learn to back the truck up, only to be able to drive it forward," said Darleen Crawford, president of the driving school, who reported her concerns to Highway Watch, a national Homeland Security program for highway safety and anti-terrorism.

Debbie Schlussel, October 2006

Are potential Islamic terrorists trying to get commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) and hazardous materials hauling certificates? You bet, they are. In droves.

... the South Central Career Center Truck Driver Training School in West Plains, Missouri, his school provided answers for the Commercial Driver's License (CDL) Test to Muslim students seeking to fraudulently pass the test and seek CDLs and Hazardous Materials hauling certificates.

A whopping 60% of those taking the CDL test at Proffitt's trucking school were Muslims, who'd traveled from all over the U.S. and the world to take the test specifically at the school. That's because his school enabled Muslims to cheat. Some never even attended classes and can't drive trucks ...

Although the indictment refers to about three dozen test applicants by name, White and May have told investigators that between 200 and 300 students fraudulently got their CDLs through the conspiracy, officials said Thursday.

Of those, 150 to 200 later obtained certification to haul hazardous materials ...

Schlozman said that the awarding of licenses to individuals "from an area as dangerous as Somalia was a matter of particular concern to the community." ...

More: Bus News, ABC News, Debbie Schlussel

UK arrests just give us more to fear

Greg Sheridan, July 2007, the Australian

SENIOR figures in Australia's national security establishment believe the nation is on course to emulate Britain, where there are simply too many Islamic extremists for security services to monitor.

The arrests in Britain at the weekend of people unknown to the intelligence services, among them doctors, illustrates two of the worst fears harboured by Australian authorities. Namely, that there are whole networks of extremists of which the intelligence services are unaware, and that the process of radicalisation is so strong that seemingly well-integrated professionals can be turned into terrorists.

Some of the best minds in Australia's national security establishment believe we may not have the ability to stop such a scenario being transported to our shores.

MI5 director-general Eliza Manningham-Buller said last year the British domestic intelligence agency was following 1600 people of concern and there were 200 groups supporting terrorism and 30 full-blown terrorist plots. On top of that the number of terrorist sympathisers in Britain grew by 80percent last year ...

There is a consensus among security insiders of the imminent danger of radicalism migrating from Pakistan and Lebanon, unchecked by Australia's non-discriminatory immigration program and propelled by the family reunion program.

The grounds on which people can be legally refused entry are quite narrow: health and character checks.

The character check normally consists only of matching names against databases and seeking evidence of criminal convictions.

Association with extremists is not usually a bar to entry ...

Australia's Muslim population stands at more than 340,000, a nearly 70 per cent increase on the figure a decade ago. While all Australian government bodies believe the overwhelming majority are law-abiding citizens, the number associated with practices or groups that have provided recruits for terrorism is growing. And there is no effective government control over the way this number grows.

My thoughts ...

No, the only effective control over the growing number of extremists in Australia is a Muslim Population Policy i.e. the less the better. So, Greg Sheridan, what do you propose we do about it? Your article is only half finished ... meanwhile the clock ticks, the Muslim population is out-breeding us 6 to 2. What is your "effective control over the way this number grows"? We're still waiting ...

Anything less is to sleepwalk down the same road Britain and Europe is on - towards Islamotakeover.

More: the Australian

Is it 'populate and perish' now?

Rosemary Milsom, July 2007, Sydney Morning Herald

Live Earth was one example of how the climate-change crisis is now well and truly on the global agenda, but there's a significant aspect of the issue that needs further exploration: population control.

Traditionally, the spotlight has been on Asia when discussing the notion of limiting how many children people have, but slowly the rest of the world seems to be waking up to the impact we all have on the finite resources available to us.

Last month a paper prepared by Britain's Optimum Population Trust (OPT) said that if couples had two children instead of three, they could cut their family's carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York. Localise the maths and it's a shocking figure.

Professor John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT, said when couples are planning a family they should be encouraged to think about the environmental consequences.

As a general guideline, he said, couples should produce no more than two children.

Here, in Australia, we are being urged to have more children in an effort to reverse our declining birth rate. Hell, the Federal Government even gives us a cash bonus ...

Regardless of its complexity, population control is an issue worth tackling and we should get involved.

I don't think we should allow the debate to be dominated by academics and politicians.

More: SMH