Crisis Within a Crisis
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
Much like Covid-19, after 9/11, the virus of fear and hate infected much of the Western world. Unnecessary provocations came into vogue. Attacks and insults centered on faith, mosques, attire, and practices.
For example, wearing of niqab or other face or hair covering in public is prohibited in some parts of Europe including France and Belgium (since 2011), Netherlands (2016), Austria (2017), and Denmark (2018). In 2009, the building of minarets was banned in Switzerland, where Islam is the country’s third-largest religion.
Some proscribed the wearing of hijab in particular places. One egregious example: a woman resting in a beach area in August 2016 in Nice, France, was ordered by police to shed her outer clothes to conform with scantily clothed beachgoers.
It was gratifying to personally witness in July 2015 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, an exhibition on inventions of Islam besieged by curious schoolchildren and their teachers. Slovenia – mother country of Trump’s wife, Melania – has just constructed and opened its first mosque, on February 3, 2020, in its capital.
Nelson Mandela, after his release from prison in 1990 and becoming South Africa’s first black President in 1994, deliberately avoided some steps which would injure the sentiments of Afrikaners. His philosophy was why deprive others of what they hold dear. This lesson was mostly abjured in the West, where mockery under cover of free expression became rampant. Then, the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris on January 7, 2015, happened. The targeted rampage should have been foreseeable.
Distant Australia did not lag behind and joined the jackals. For a country the size of mainland America with a tiny population, its attitude and policies toward refugees and asylum seekers is nothing short of unconscionable. The detention centers at Manus and Nauru, and the horrendous living conditions there, remain an enduring blot. Amnesty International conducted an investigation in Nauru in 2016, and called the center “cruel in the extreme” and proclaimed that “Few other countries go to such lengths to deliberately inflict suffering on people seeking safety and freedom.” Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Refugees and former President of Chile, on September 10, 2018, termed Australia’s offshore centers as “an affront to the protection of human rights.”
The other day I saw a movie, “The True History of the Ned Kelly Gang” on a son of a transported Irish convict who, pushed by insults and humiliations to his family, became a bushranger – an outlaw in American parlance – during 1870’s Australia. If it is taken for fact, it is what occurs when some men are pushed to the brink.
Before the advent of railways and cars, much of the vast Australian outback was explored by Afghan cameleers from the mid-1800’s to the 1930’s. Australia’s great railroad line today from Adelaide to Darwin carries the name “Ghan” after the 19 th century Muslim pioneers.
By law, from 1901, a white Australia exclusivist immigration policy was sustained. Also, Australian elites were over-sycophantic to bigger Western powers, in some cases becoming, in effect, a cat’s paw and even a doormat.
Islamabad-born Usman Khawaja became the first Australian Muslim Test player in 2011. He has a batting average of 40+ in all formats and was the hero of Australia’s historic ODI triumph against India last year when he was named ‘Man of the Series’ even outclassing batting maestro Virat Kohli. In October 2018, he saved Australia from an ignominious defeat against Pakistan by hitting a back-to-the-wall marathon ton in Dubai, which the Guardian called a “masterclass in skill and perseverance.” His central contract has just been arbitrarily terminated. Perhaps, he was one Muslim too many.
Many in Australia feel threatened by Indonesia’s teeming Muslim millions neighboring Western Australia. That fear-mongering has led to hate-mongering against Muslims. It is no coincidence that the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque massacre of March 15, 2019 originated from Australia.
For course correction, Aussies need look no further than New Zealand, where its prime minister Jacinda Ardern gave a masterclass of ennobling statesmanship in the aftermath of the Christchurch carnage.
With few exceptions, Australian politicians have copied discredited American public figures. One exception was Prime Minister Gough Whitlam (1916-2014), whose dismissal in 1975 under dubious circumstances was referenced in the 1985 American movie, “The Falcon and the Snowman.”
Australia is a big country but with a small heart.
Closed mindsets enclose a nation. The niqab, which was mocked is now, in effect, being worn all over the West in the shape of a mask by people afraid of contagion. The cataclysmic events of 2020 necessitate an internal review. Not to do so would be stoking a crisis within a crisis.
