Good Or Shit: Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Muslim?

30 September 2014 | 2:21 pm | Liz Galinovic

Bigot States are built on BS.

“Hey babe,” I texted my friend the other day. “Just wanted to make sure you’re not being vilified.”

It was a joke. My friend is a Muslim.

Well, no, and yes. She’s not a practising Muslim, I don’t even think she believes in God, she’s an Australian woman born to Egyptian migrants who are Muslims. Her parents are religious; they regularly go to the Mosque to pray, her mother wears the hijab, and they’re lovely people. I’ve met them a few times, her mother is a brilliant cook, the three of us went to a beautician together.

Why would anyone go out and spit on someone’s mother?

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” she groaned over Skype. “It’s my parents. Mum wears the hijab,” her Australian accent momentarily shifted as she pronounced ‘hijab’ the Arabic way, just like my Croatian-Australian friend’s voice does when she pronounces ‘Dubrovnik’, and my Vietnamese friend when she pronounces ‘pho’. “Last time all this anti-Muslim shit flared up,” she continued, “when we had the [Cronulla] riots, people spat on her in the street!”

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She sounded surprised. Why would anyone go out and spit on someone’s mother?

I’m going to say something controversial, hang on to your hats, scaredy cats – I’ve never met a cruel, crazy, racist, offensive Muslim ever.

Not in the Middle East, not in London, and not in bloody Australia.

I don’t understand it. When I read the news or listen to politicians, I come away with the impression that Muslims are crazed barbaric psychopaths waging war on the world.

That they’re backward uncivilised lunatics who oppress women and hate Westerners. But the only evidence I’ve seen of this is on television. And I’m talking about everything from the media, to Hollywood. Everywhere we look we see the caricature of the crazy, bloodthirsty Muslim.

No one, none of the leaders tasked with informing us, seems interested in dispelling this stereotype.

Are our leaders simply ignorant racists? Is there something to gain politically from allowing your society to go on thinking they have something to fear?

Is there something to gain politically from allowing your society to go on thinking they have something to fear?

As a teenager growing up in Sydney, like most kids, my friendship groups were multicultural and religiously diverse. This included my Muslim friends. They all had different ethnic backgrounds, followed different kinds of Islam, and to varying degrees, from the bearded and the veiled to the uncovered and the cleanly shorn. Some of them did Ramadan (or at least tried to), some of them didn’t; some of them drank, some of them didn’t; some of the prayed, some of them didn’t. We hung out in homes where women wore veils and in homes where women didn’t.

Wogs, Arabs, Asians, Aboriginals, Skips, Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, blah blah blah, nobody cared what you were.

When I was nineteen I worked full time in a cafe owned by two middle-aged brothers-in-law. One was an Australian-born Lebanese Muslim and the other was a Lebanese migrant. I worked with them for over a year, we didn’t sell bacon, we didn’t serve alcohol, we closed the shop for an hour on Fridays, they went to pray at a nearby prayer room, I had a lunch break.

I got to know their wives and their children, they got to know my friends and my family. We were the same and we were different and we respected each others' differences.

And these two men, when it came to their religion, were different to each other. One of them was prone to giving bear hugs; the other believed you shouldn’t physically touch a woman who wasn’t a family member. And both of them loved to sit down, have a coffee with me, and discuss everything from world history and politics, to my love life.

Just before 6pm, I would finish my shift at the cafe and walk ten metres down the street to do a night shift in a chemist. On my cigarette breaks I went next door to hang out with the Palestinian Muslim man working in the convenience store – Laughmed, we called him, 'cause he was always laughing – and he had different religious beliefs too.

Again, I ask, where are these crazy psychopathic Muslims?

IS. Yes, they’re psychopathic. What they’ve been doing in Iraq and Syria is terrifying. It’s evil. But you can’t hold them up as an example of what it is to be a Muslim. IS spend the majority of their time killing other Muslims. That is who they are most interested in harming because IS believe the majority of Muslims are not like them.

If that's how IS views the majority of Muslims, why wouldn't we?

Rather than screeching about radicalisation, perhaps we could focus on what makes it possible – ignorance, naivety, and powerlessness. You only need to recognise one of those characteristics in a person before you can start manipulating them. The less they know about Islam, the easier it will be to radicalise them.

Maybe we need to redefine masculinity, so boys and men stop using violence as a means to define themselves.

In May last year, two Muslim boys from Birmingham in England started dabbling in radical ideas and then ran off to Syria to link up with a terrorist organisation. One of their mothers was so concerned, she dobbed them into the police. Before they left the country they thought they’d learn something about Islam, so they picked up copies of Islam For Dummies, The Koran For Dummies and Arabic For Dummies. I imagine they read them on the flight over there.

Maybe we need to redefine masculinity, so boys and men stop using violence as a means to define and empower themselves.

Maybe we need work towards a more inclusive society that celebrates diversity and disparages righteous superiority. If we had that, maybe the disenfranchised wouldn’t go looking for something to make themselves feel powerful.

No, I’ve never met a Muslim like what people and the media are constantly telling me I am surrounded by.

“Are you feeling vilified enough to have to go and join ISIS?” I asked my friend, and her face froze.

“I can’t even joke about that. You don’t know who’s listening.”

Frightened. My friend, happily married to an Irish-Kiwi, is now frightened. Frightened for her family and frightened for her newly born part Irish-Kiwi part Egyptian wholly Australian baby.  

Yes, it’s easy to radicalise those who are ignorant, naive, and feel powerlessness.

Out on the streets of Australia, people are brandishing their gun-fingers at Muslims, sending death threats, posting crazed YouTube clips, spray painting declarations of ignorance, and very few of our leaders are speaking out against it. These people are one scary group of radicals. They’re trying to form a certain kind of state.

A Bigot State.

Welcome to Australia, we’re run by BS.