see "Armed gangs on rampage" (Sydney Morning Herald, 12/12/05)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/armed-gangs-on-rampage/2005/12/12/1134236005902.html
and "Australian Intifada?" (IsraelNationalNews.com, 12/12/05)
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=94660
In the past couple of days, there have been riots, violence, vandalism, and generally a condition of mayhem near Cronulla, a suburb south of Sydney, Australia.
Apparently in two days of escalation after the beating of two lifeguards by Lebanese immigrants, locals responded by going after anyone of middle-eastern appearance. Arab immigrants then came out with guns, metal pipes, knives etc., beating people, wrecking cars, threatening rape...all eerily reminiscent of Paris a few weeks ago with the added piece of locals fighting back. Also like Paris, there are rumors of arab perpetrators using text messaging to further the call for violence.
Having lived in Australia, I would not consider most local people racist. However, first and second generation immigrants down under do not tend to be well-integrated. To the extent that they integrate, it is often with other immigrant groups rather than with those Australians of Anglo/Celtic descent. Whether it is their choice or how the country is organized, immigrants end up in their own communities, ghettoized and making it very difficult for Aussies to become familiar and thus comfortable with them, and of course it works the other way around as well.
And not to let the Aussies completely off the hook, there are people there especially in the lower-income suburbs who, just like in similar places in the US or western Europe, are not well educated and might fear those they don't understand or those whom they think might be costing them jobs (although Australia's economy is doing great in recent years.) Despite Prime Minister John Howard's insistence that Australians are not racist, there are anti-muslim feelings in the country after the Bali bombings. And if there were people on the fence about how they felt about muslim immigrants, the immigrants' current behavior is certain to push them firmly into the anti-muslim camp. It will be most difficult for this not to become a vicious cycle, particularly if immigrants who are trying to integrate feel substantial resistance, such as expressed in this article: "Treat us like dogs and we'll bite back" (Sydney Morning Herald, 12/12/05)
Australia does has prior experience with riots, in particular the Redfern riots where Aboriginal people rioted after the death of a local teenager in February 2004. I recommend you look at this site for further information:
"A death in Redfern" (Sydney Morning Herald special web page)
http://www.smh.com.au/specials/redfern/
Muslims must be feeling a general sense of fear these days, not only fear of attack but a more subtle fear that the world dislikes or distrusts them simply because of their religion or background. While that fear unfortunately has truth to it, it is at least as bad that the way much of the world feels about muslims has substantial justification in our own fear of their priorities and their obvious tendency toward indiscriminate and internecine violence.
Australia is a beautiful and mostly peaceful place, a place I'd be happy to live again and to raise our soon-to-be-born child for a few years. They have a fairly large immigrant population and have had anti-new-immigration feelings building for a few years now. I wouldn't say that they are sitting on a powder keg, but once the police get a handle on this violence, John Howard should start a serious education campaign to familiarize Aussies and immigrants with each other. They may never become great friends or highly integrated, but this sort of activity need not happen again.
In any case, Australia provides yet another example of why the US should be very thankful for the relatively peaceful nature (so far) of our muslim immigrants due in no small part to our historical tradition of at least modest integration of immigrant groups into the mainstream population and economy.
[Please also see the follow-up posting (Tuesday, 12/13) for two comments from Australians...it's an interesting local's view of the situation.]
5 comments
This matter has nothing to do with supposed Australian racism and immigrants. It is specifically to do with the racist behaviour of a substantial number of Muslims of mid-eastern background.
Are some (non-Muslim Australians) racist? Sure. In which country of the world is there no one who has racist views? In Australia, they are actually less than in most countries and when they occur are generally matters of views rather than action.
Australia is a multiracial country. A large proportion of Australia's population is overseas born or second generation Australians. They are from all of Europe, Asia, some Africa, some middle East and some South America.
In recent years there have been high levels of immigration from Vietnam, India, China. Check the news. There is no history of clashes with these groups. No riots. They came here and basically bought into being Australians, accepting Australian laws, style of public behaviour, etc.
There was also previously a substantial influx of Christian Lebanese who did likewise.
The big change has been with the arrival of Muslims from the mid-East, some Lebanese, some from other localities.
They have refused to blend in (as they have refused virtually everywhere else they have gone). They have displayed active, overt racism against the mainstream Australian community (while quite happy to take Australia's very generous social welfare payments).
Over a number of years, gangs of young mid-eastern men have terrorised parts of Sydney, attacking young males of other ethnic groups (not all Caucasian) going about their own affairs (usually when the gang members drastically outnumber their victims), abusing and threatening Australian women young and old. They have staged driveby shootings at police stations.
There have been a number of horrific gang rapes of young Australian girls by Muslim youths that have gone through the courts. One clear factor to emerge was that they had targeted these girls precisely because they were European origin, ie these were racist gang rapes.
In the main, police protection has been totally ineffective. Talkback radio here over the last few days has had numerous instances of ordinary people who have been attacked or harassed by these thugs, where the police have refused to do anything.
Why are the police so useless? I do not know for sure. It may have to do with politically correct behaviour, of which we have had a lot in recent years. It may be that because of these PC attitudes we have recruited police who can get degrees, and a lot of young women, so we no longer have a police force whose members are physically strong and imbued with physical courage. And when it comes to a direct confrontation with a number of violent young males, that is what is needed. It may also be because the Labour party (which is similar to US Democrats) depends on these mid-Eastern enclaves for votes.
The net result was that after some lifeguards were beaten by mid-Eastern youths, a lot of people in the area concerned said "enough is enough, we want our lives back" and demonstrated for it. In the demonstration a few people of mid-Eastern background were assaulted. A drop in the ocean compared to the prior assaults by mid-Eastern youths on other members of the Australian community.
Gangs of these same mid-Eastern youths have then rioted and assaulted other people, and destroyed property. Well they do the latter two things all the time, just not in a mass group.
Our mass media, politicans and police are all a-twitter, trying to claim an equivalence between these two events (the Muslim youths come with guns, steel bars and baseball bats, the ordinary Australians just bring themselves), totally ignoring all the one-way, racist violence by these Muslim thugs that this group of "leaders" has tolerated for years (since it did not affect them).
But the event has connected huge numbers of ordinary Australians who previously were suffering individually, with no public voice.
Yes, there is racism here, but it is one way. If these mid-Eastern Muslims (and we have Muslims from other countries, such as Indonesia, who do not behave in the same way) choose to become part of the community, the same as every other race that has come to Australia, there will be no problem. As long as they do not, they create a problem of ongoing violence."
We have the same problem with muslim ass holes in Sweden to. They should stay in their own country.
Ola Svensson. Sweden.
While I agree that true racism is self-evident, it is critical to recognize that commenting, or even generalizing, about a group or religion is not necessarily racist. If a religion or group, like Islam or the KKK, teaches violence as an inherent part of being a member of the group, it is not racist to make that information more clear to the public.
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