[extropy-chat] Re: riots in france

[Damien Broderick]

At 09:30 AM 11/7/2005 +0800, Jack Parkinson wrote:

>If the environment is not ostile  - the ghettoes disappear. There are no 
>Moslem ghettoes in Australia, or China for that matter - and NOT 
>coincidentally there is a general acceptance and tolerance between 
>Moslem/Christian/Buddhists in these places.

well... from the Australian newspaper recently:

=========


A call to hate and to prayer

Support for holy war is being urged by Muslim preachers spreading their 
message in Australia, reports Richard Kerbaj, who visited mosques and heard 
voices shrieking with angst and passion


04nov05

A VOICE explodes through the speakers at Lakemba's nondescript Haldon 
Street prayer hall in Sydney's southwest during a Friday qutbah (sermon). 
About 400 men - Saudis, Indonesians, Somalis and Lebanese among them - are 
huddled shoulder to shoulder, seated or kneeling on the floor of the hall, 
above a gym. A few stare blankly ahead, others have their eyes shut and 
faces cupped with their palms, almost in a trance-like, meditative state.

It's October 21, the middle of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and Sheik 
Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, who has been living in Australia since the 
mid-1990s, stands on a platform at the front of the room reading his sermon 
in Arabic.

"Ramadan is not a month for indolence," he screams through a lapel 
microphone, drawing on Koranic parables about the importance of 
annihilating al-adou (the enemy) and stressing the Koranic obligation of 
jihad (spiritual struggle or holy war) during the month of fasting. His 
voice can be heard clearly in the car park outside.

"Ramadan is a month for jihad upon oneself and jihad upon the enemy," he 
says, a time when followers must become more disciplined in adhering to the 
message of the Koran, and more willing and prepared to topple the enemy of 
Islam: the West.

Listeners nod approvingly as Zoud praises mujaheddin - guerilla warriors 
engaged in holy war - who are waging bloody battles against Western troops 
across the world, and implores Allah to grant them victory in their fight 
against the enemies of Islam.

"Allah yinsur el-mujaheddin fe-Iraq (God grant victory to the mujaheddin in 
Iraq)," he screams, his voice crackling as he defies his own vocal range. 
He then repeats the message three times, each time screaming it louder and 
with more intensely.

Twice at the end of the 35-minute oration in front of the men, who are 
mostly in their 30s and 40s, the sheik exclaims in a voice filled with 
angst and passion, blame and hate: "Inshallah (God willing) dark days will 
descend upon America soon."

Two Fridays earlier, at a prayer centre at Michael Street in Brunswick, 
Melbourne's Muslim heartland, the man regarded as Australia's most radical 
imam, Sheik Mohammed Omran, stands before his mixed band of followers.

Earlier, the men had left their shoes in the corridor and walked into the 
room. On entering the mussalah, they're greeted by whoever they make eye 
contact with.

"Assalam alaikum" (peace be with you) is acknowledged by the person being 
greeted with "Wa-alaikum assalam" (peace be with you too). An A4-sized 
piece of paper on the wall reminds attendees to switch off their mobile 
phones.

Some kneel and pray, others grab a copy of the Koran off the bookshelf at 
the back of the room, and read it quietly.

Off-duty taxi drivers, suited businessmen on their lunch breaks and 
youngsters wearing baseball caps and tracksuits sit among the traditionally 
clad listeners wearing dishdashas (gowns) and sporting beards. Several 
Western converts, with fair hair and blue eyes stare at Omran, listening 
intently. While the 150 or so men watch the sheik, who stands on an 
elevated podium, hands gripping a railing, delivering a qutbah, women sit 
in a room adjacent, listening through a speaker.

In the week following the second Bali attacks, Omran's Friday sermon, 
conducted in Arabic and English, talks about the fear Westerners have of 
Ramadan, as history has shown an increase in militant insurgencies and 
attacks across the world during that month. "The West know the meaning of 
Ramadan more than we do it seems," says the imam, who migrated from Jordan 
in the 1980s. "They fear the worst: unity. So what are we doing to unite 
and defeat evil?"

He says Islamic unity and victory in the face of the West cannot be 
"stopped by George Bush or Tony Blair or John Howard".

"If you don't unite, your faces will be smeared in dirt," he adds.

Both Zoud's and Omran's prayer groups teach Wahhabism, a fundamentalist 
branch of Islam founded in Saudi Arabia in the 1700s that inspired the 
former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and is preached by the world's most 
notorious terrorist: Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qa'ida.

Yet the voices of such home-based extremists by no means define the 
majority of Islamic messages being preached by Muslim clerics across the 
country.

Sheik Fehmi Naji al-Imam, one of Australia's most prominent Muslim leaders 
and the head of the Preston Mosque, Victoria's largest mosque in 
Melbourne's inner-north, isn't discussing politics during a Friday sermon 
last month. Instead, he is leading a group of more than 50 men through an 
Arabic prayer from the Koran. On completion, he sits at the front of the 
room and faces his followers.

A junior cleric then sits beside Naji al-Imam and discusses the importance 
of praying to God and of not feeling a sense of helplessness or 
hopelessness should one suspect their personal prayer is not being answered.

The cleric says people are often disappointed when their prayers for more 
financial wealth don't come to fruition.

"You might pray for thousands of dollars and feel like your prayers aren't 
being answered," he says in Arabic. "But what you've got to remember is he 
might have saved you from a car accident and [thus] saved you $10,000."

Zoud has formerly been accused of having links to terror suspects and 
recruiting for jihad. And although he has denied such accusations, he 
cannot deny the fact his prayer centre, located in Sydney's Muslim 
heartland, has attracted terror suspects, including Frenchman Willie 
Brigitte, arrested and deported to Paris in 2003 for allegedly plotting a 
bomb attack on Sydney's naval base; and former Qantas baggage handler Bilal 
Khazal, who is facing terrorism-related charges in Australia.

Friday sermons at the Haldon Street and Michael Street prayer centres are 
predominantly geared towards political issues affecting Muslims across the 
world. The US and President George W. Bush figure prominently in Zoud's and 
Omran's sermons.

"Last night, President Bush said that the so-called fanatic Muslims would 
like to build an empire reaching from Indonesia to Spain," Omran said 
during his October 7 sermon. "And he has not said anything as truer or more 
accurate. What is wrong with doing that? ... What are we doing to achieve 
that objective?"

Omran's call to action goes even further during a Friday sermon at Michael 
Street conducted the following week by Harun Abu Talha, news editor of 
Mecca News, published by the Ahlus Sunnah Wal-Jamaah organisation led by 
Omran.

During the predominantly English qutbah, the cleric says: "We should not 
compromise our deen [religion] for the sake of peace." It is a message 
greeted by collective nods from a group of more than 100 men, many of whom 
were present at Omran's sermon the previous Friday.

Abu Talha discusses the injustices and human rights violations taking place 
at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp where "so-called terrorists" are 
detained.

"They lock up these so-called [Muslim] terrorists in subhuman conditions," 
he says. "You wouldn't even keep an animal like that." He urges listeners 
to "raise your voices" against those who "criticise your deen [religion]".

"They criticise and ridicule our religion and have been doing so for a very 
long time."

While Naji al-Imam's service is purely religious, Abu Talha, who is 
believed to be Bosnian, discusses "our brothers and sisters" who are dying 
at the hands of Western troops in Afghanistan and begins to discuss the 
importance of jihad before quipping: "We cannot say too much about 
mujaheddin in this country." The joke elicits sniggers and laughter from 
the group.

Outside Sydney's largest mosque, the Lakemba Mosque in Wangee Road, which 
is known for its moderate preachings, a man in his late 20s is walking to 
his car following the Friday prayer. He opens his car boot and grabs a 
handful of promotional leaflets about Ramadan. Asked about his thoughts on 
extremist Muslims ruining the image of Islam, he says: "You got all kinds 
of Muslim here [in Sydney]. But it's always the few extreme ones who ruin 
it for the majority, brother."

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