"Living in a multicultural society means respectful coexistence with people from diverse cultural, religious and ethnic groups."

It works both ways!

The Elephant in the room, is that certain imigrants would not allow their children to have relationships with the mostly caucasian australians. This still exist today.

Back to the riots/protest, the mother who took a photo of her child holding up the sign saying that certain people should be 'beheaded'.

She claimed to be university educated and did not know what the word 'behead' meant.

It is not hard to imagine what would happen if I walked around with sign saying "All ...... should be beheaded!"

I doubt that I would not live very long without police protection.

Since when has Australia even been multicultural? Looks like there's one culture here "and if you don't like it you can eff off back to where you came from". Great article, hope the rednecks read it.

If talking about the riots might be termed infeartainment then trying to explain them away as the isolated, out of character actions of a few, might properly be termed befooltainment --or just plain dumb.


The starting point with anti-racist groups/campaigns is that racism is some peculiar WASP disease (they classify anyone with light skin as WASP even if they haven’t got a micron of Anglo-Saxon ancestry) and the only way to overcome it is to castigate & reeducate those dastardly "redneck" wasps.

In an earlier age the people behind such groups/campaigns might have set out to save our souls.In the current age, they are more likely to front non-profit organizations which (usually, with a level of govt funding) strive to save us from racism.

Now, to correct a few errors in the article:
1) It isn’t true that the recent riot was the first sign of trouble(s) arising out of our multicultural program. Just ask some of the residents of the Southern/Western Suburbs of Sydney, or better still, ask Mohamad Tabbaa who on a parallel thread tells us:
<<Leaders on all sides have been articulately playing down the genuine tensions and anxieties which exist between different communities in an attempt to maintain an image of social cohesion and harmony. This has not worked>>

2) Our values are NOT the big draw card they are made out to be. And parroting off a few lines on some DIAC quiz does not indicate that the immigrant knows or accepts “our values”

3) People of diverse origins, beliefs & wants living together is properly termed liberalism (or marriage). Multiculturalism on the other hand is where those differences are accentuated and brownie points (and often jobs) are allocated on the basis of ethnicity.

It's not enough for Muslim leaders to condemn violence. They must state unambiguously that they accept the values underpinning Australia's democratic institutions. That is, they must declare their support for an elected government; for the rule of law enacted by that government; for equality of all before the law; for freedom of speech; for freedom of religion; and for freedom of association.

Victoria's Education Reform Act 2006 requires all schools operating in Victoria to promote these values. It's perhaps time for the Commonwealth and the other states and territories to do something similar.

It might also be time for Muslim leaders to take some action to remedy the dysfunctional Muslim youth culture prevailing in Western Sydney, from where many of the violent protesters originated.

Until someone has gone themselves and found out what the Muslim, for example, community IS actually doing to sustain within it's own numbers the values that contribute to the kind of society most of us want, you're are simply assuming the media's portrayal of what's going on is 'the truth'. An assumption unlikely to be true.

I've seen footage of white Australians, angry, loud, abusive, pushing and shoving, insulting, making racist and offensive statements with twisted faces and spit flying from their lips outside refugee centres. Does that mean we are all like that? No.

Does it say anything at all about white Australians in general? No, well, maybe it says we tolerate extremes views among our own numbers even if they make us uncomfortable or sad and don't reflect our overall view of things.

Hey, maybe the Islamic Australian community is the same as the white Australian community?

Mikel Azure.

The Australian's value statement means zit if your belief system allows you to lie for the greater cause. It does not help when secular values with no moral basis allows you to do the same thing.

So a faction within the Islamic community riot and its the fault of the rest of Australia for complaining about this?

Now granted the violence may be due to a small faction within the muslim community, but what other community wants to hit out at American interests in Australia over an offensive video posted online which has nothing to do with the American government, let alone us? Why did the other factions allow themselves to be associated in any way with the loonies that caused the trouble?

We are not having trouble with any other sector of the community, at least not at the moment, so this also has nothing whatever to do with multiculturalism.

If the Islamic community wants to peacefully protest that's fine (if still puzzling) - no-one would have said anything - but if that community wants to avoid difficult people asking questions and sneering, it should make an effort to keep the dangerous element in check, or at least be seen to be doing so.

@ Mikel Azure
<<I've seen footage of white Australians, angry, loud, abusive, pushing and shoving, insulting, making racist and offensive statements with twisted faces and spit flying from their lips outside refugee centres…Does it say anything at all about white Australians in general?>>

Mikel if you saw behavior of the type outlined it was likely to have been coming from groups who term themselves: “refugee activists/advocates”.
And fear not --they only represent themselves .

[Deleted for abuse.]

camile,
Looks like you are part of a cheer squad for the author. You would probably call me a redneck but surprize, surprize, I agree with you. We are not, and never have been, a multicultural society, we have been a multiracial society since 1788 and it is expected that all people here respect our laws and social standards above all else. Ethnicity has nothing to do with this.

The problem here is that muslims will not compromise to adapt to our society and never have done since large numbers immigrated in 1976. Those rioters now are 2nd or 3rd generation who still hold their religion above our laws.

Notice the author uses 'racist' and other terms such as 'white community' in her rhetoric, as you do with the 'redneck' term.

There certainly was a backlash fron 'non muslim' people to the riots which is very different to the 'white community'.

It is a cultural issue, not a racial matter.

Being critical of ones conduct, religion or culture is NOT racist.

Agree with the Author!
Perhaps we should also oblige our journalists/publishers to sign the statement of Australian values. Lets face it, being born here doesn't necessarily mean actually sharing them?
That said, I think we should publish a few more offensive articles denigrating stone age/medieval belief systems, to bait the extremists, to once again riot?
Or engage in antisocial electronically traceable activity!
This way we can Identify and deport/offer them a one way ticket, back to where such extreme views are still tolerated!
We do need to ensure that in allowing others to settle, that they simply no longer create ghettoes, or maintain a self imposed isolation, that then breeds suspicion and or anxiety. Our children need to be allowed to mix and socialize!
Nor can we ever tolerate a view, that women are just meat that was put there to be used or abused by blokes!
We Aussies may not be so-called cultured gentlemen, with our football, meat pies, kangaroos, rusty utes, and bugger rorfs!
But we don't go out of our way to deliberately devalue the other half.
In fact, it may be argued we Anzacs, involved ourselves in wars far from our borders, in the belief this was keeping our Ladies, families, friends and neighbours, free and safe from harm?
In fact, we have spent enough lives in this endeavour, not to have to tolerate importing the very harm/counter culture absurdities, we were trying to protect them from?
The press needs to go back to simply reporting the facts, rather than inflammatory opinion pieces?
If they want to get into politics, then let them join a political party, or nominate!
There is a place for opinion, or endless patently partisan poison peddling, but it is hardly on the front page, under a blatantly mendacious headline banner?
Rhrosty.

What a patronising article; people who are concerned about Islamic extremism are merely not too bright victims of "infeartainment"; how Finkelsteinesque!

The author adopts a moral superiority to harangue the populace about mutual obligations; how ironic; Islam is already pushing hard to introduce a 'moderate' form of sharia:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/muslims-use-multiculturalism-to-push-for-sharia/story-fn59niix-1226057100331

And this is deplorable:

"the use of infeartainment is a much greater threat to a sense of community and mutual respect and social stability than violent behaviour by small groups of people whether Muslim, Christian or otherwise"

So, talking about Islam extremism is a bigger threat than Islamic extremism itself?!

And note the inclusion of christians in the list of violent people; this is a disgraceful attempt at equivalence; when have we seen a horde of rioting nuns taking over the inner city!

Banjo, notice how White people definitely exist if they're being set up a sStrawmen but they don't exist if they assert their own ethnic or racial identity?
The way Anti Racists use the word "White" is different to the way we Whites use it, in their hands it's more of a class distinction or an in group/out group identifier, the bad Whites are "Rednecks" the supposedly good Whites are people like the author. This is how they can get away with making factually incorrect statements and generalisations about White people, it's the same as using the word "Muslim", it's descriptive of a class of person which is a workaround in order to avoid discussing White people in racial terms. The observation that anti Racism is just a code word for anti White is perhaps somewhat redundant in this case since the Anti White sentiments are not encoded at all they're explicit.
The question I'd put to the anti Racists is why shouldn't ethnic White people be in charge of this country and be the arbiters of what's acceptable and what isn't under multiculturalism, which is after all a wholly European concept?

sorry, forgot to add,
If there are negative outcomes with regard to multiculturalism in it's present form then the fault lies with the people who are overseeing it, the anti Racists in other words. Maybe Anti Racism and the fact that it's just a code for anti White is the core problem, did the author consider that White people might feel as though they're excluded from multiculturalism due to the fact that the way it's presented to us is as some form of punishment for being born of a certain ethnic group?

Senior Victorian has summed it up very well. Mohamad Tabbaa's answer to my question regarding just WHY the Sydney fracas happened indicates that he thinks that perceived injustices overseas justifies such behaviour. ( The links he provided were helpful)

Since 1945 migrants from several hundred different areas of the world have found sanctuary here and adopted Australian ways without the need to claim "global" citizenship. Most seem very glad to leave the chaos of a woeful existence behind. I am glad that everyone from a rubbish country is not out on the streets rioting.

At least Mohamad is promoting some worthwhile discussion which I fear is beyond the Muslim clerics.

"At least Mohamad is promoting some worthwhile discussion"

Unfortunately he is not contributing to it; at his post EmperorJulian sums it up when he says:

"there can be no reasoned argument against the very right to reasoned argument,"

The US video, cartoons and any other scabrous comment about islam are just pretexts and irrelevancies; islam wants NO criticism, however well reasoned or justified.

It astounds me that that basic fact and ingredient of this 'debate' is not more widely recognised; certainly it is not recognised by the MSM, which becomes collectively stupidier by the day, and it is ignored by our craven political leaders.

Tabbaa will not respond because, presumably, he realises that his position is untenable; the exigencies of islam are such that reasoned debate is impossible because islam will not entertain any suggestion that it is not perfect.

In such circumstances there is no possible 'discussion'; and there never was.

This author, like the authors of other articles on this same issue, restricts her observations to the Australian context, thereby purposely failing to evaluate the significance of our modest disruptive experience within the broader, world context, in terms of motivations and underlying intolerance and flawed principles. Should our reporters and commentators similarly apply a 'blinkered' approach to their assessments of our 'experience'? I think not.

Our tolerant and welcoming Aussie approach to multiculturalism may largely account for the modesty of the protests in our midst, but what is alarming nonetheless is that the thinking behind these protests is aligned with the thinking and motivations behind the mass protests abroad, and thus represents a sinister and simmering disquiet which is alien to our social fabric.

In Libya the US embassy was attacked and several of the mission murdered, including the ambassador, even though the US had recently played a key part in enabling the popular revolution in Libya to succeed in ousting Gaddafi and achieving democratic governance. Such an amazing display of gratitude for those US efforts - I don't think so! No, this leopard has some truly indelible 'spots'.

Pakistan is supposedly an ally in the war on terror, yet it has been the scene of the greatest of disturbances and the greatest condemnation of the US - although the US itself had nothing whatsoever to do with the production of the offending video. Such 'friends' need to be kept very close indeed!

There is a sickness afoot, perhaps engineered from decades and centuries of underhanded dealings and experiences, but this sickness is pervasive and without any easy remedy, though re-mediated it must be if there is to be any hope of a secure, peaceful and harmonious future for humanity on this finite and ever-shrinking globe.

Make light of our Australian experience at your peril, for our borders are porous and our bosom welcoming. A concerted discourse must be held, and an extensive reformation pursued, globally and on all sides, lest the cancer of irrational intolerance and suspicion consume us all with fear, hate and revulsion.

It's interesting how the issue can be turned around. It's a completely rational reaction for Australians to object to violence and signs saying 'behead those who insult the prophet.' Somehow, it has now become about those who object to such vulgarity!

Most of the issues with the article have been taken up well by other posters, therefore I'll just comment on this statement:

"Infeartainment often takes the form of easily understood stories expressed in opposites as good and evil which encourages people to think in terms of us and them."

It is impossible to break free of this form. People always judge things in terms of good and bad (not good and evil, that sounds like 'infeartainment'). Humans could not conduct their day to day affairs without judging certain phenomena as either good or bad. Moreover, the categories of 'us and them' cannot be escaped. Every one associates with a group of some description, this group can only exist in contrast to other groups. Nothing exists in-itself. This philosophical conundrum goes back to at least Plato, who tried to 'correct' this problem by devising the 'theory of forms.' Nonetheless, my point is that we associate with groups that we feel we belong, and not with groups that we feel we don't belong. Islam does it, Australians do it, Japanese do it, Africans do it etc etc etc. This is the ontological problem of the 'equality' and 'egalitarian' brigade; they want to eradicate judgements of good and bad and us and them, but cannot but fall into these types of categorizations themselves.

What seems to me to be the real problem the article is attempting to articulate, is that white people aren't allowed to form groups and make judgements on other groups, especially if they're not made up of white people. Yet, it's perfectly acceptable for Islam to form groups and make judgements on who is good and bad and turn it into an 'us and them,' as it is for Priscilla Brice-Weller and the All Together Now group.

Banjo,
>> We are not, and never have been, a multicultural society, we have been a multiracial society since 1788 and it is expected that all people here respect our laws and social standards above all else. Ethnicity has nothing to do with this. <<

You are right to distinguish between “multicultural” and “multiracial”, however I think one should also distinguish between “multiethnic” and “multicultural”, although this distinction is sometimes fuzzy and to much extent depends on the role of religious traditions that shape “cultures” more than “ethnic” groups or nations. Since 1945 or so, Australia has been getting more and more multiethnic, with immigrants coming from a variety of “continental” nations or ethnic groups. No major problems with this. Problems arose only after immigrants came with different “cultures” based on different religious traditions, (Actually only one, which in its aggressive missionary zeal is not unlike Western Christianity’s just a few centuries ago).

Melbourne (where I lived most of my life) has about the same percentage of people of Greek descent as Cologne (where I live now) has of Turkish descent. I can assure you that the Turks in Cologne are much more visible than the Greeks are/were in Melbourne.

By “visible” I don’t mean unfriendliness, just isolation, living in “parallel societies” as Germans call it. Of course, not all of them. However, there is one paradox: children and grandchildren of the original immigrants, who - in distinction to their grandparents - speak perfect German that I can only envy - sometimes “carry” their ethnic (and religious, thus cultural) identity much more visibly, than their parents and grandparents who although living in their often isolated neighborhoods remain glad to have settled here. Of course, not all, there are many who keep on proclaiming (e.g. on TV) that they are “integrated”. And of course, this problem is much more benign that the parallel problem with Muslims in Britain or France.

Hear Hear Priscilla

Imajulianutter,
So nothing is even slightly wrong with this picture?
http://www.alltogethernow.org.au/about/our-people
Ok then, if not for the fundamental Racism of Anti Racism itself it could be dismissed as a fancy of silly White women.
Liberalism didn't defeat it's modernist opponents it absorbed them and retained their most potent characteristics, so Racism is a part of the decaying system in which a group like All Together Now operates. Racism in this Anti Racist form isn't post modern it's wholly modern and largely unreformed, (they just don't shoot or sterilise people so much anymore) the fact that it imagines an anti Racist man in an Anti Racist world should have given it away.
George has it right in his post, race is no longer a valid political theory, but ethnicity is real and different ethnic groups exist in different realities within the matrix of a civilisation, that's the key concept here, we no longer live in Nations and we have to imagine ourselves now as part of a civilisation. We can decide here and now that the present system is not just dying but dead, that it's history of nations, races and classes is no longer worthy of recognition and propose an alternative, otherwise we'll just go on forever as we are.
I would really like to stop talking about race and culture altogether and begin talking about an Oceanic or south Pacific civilisation but as long as we have the threat Anti Racism that's impossible and people like me have to make plans for defensive White ethnostates just in case.

Jay, I'm not sure what you mean, but it reads as an over analysis.

This is not rocket science. The issue here is a system based on individual rights and the systemic forms which flow from that: equality before the law, due process, political enfranchisement, seperation of the public and private domains and the right and capacity to be informed as opposed to being constrained by revealed truth.

Islam is opposed to this; Tabbaa has stated this; yet we have this nicompoop writing specious gibberish about "respectful coexistence with people from diverse cultural, religious and ethnic groups."

The system of liberal individuality has nothing to do with "respectful coexistence"; in fact it is based on just the opposite; you don't coexist with something which is threatening your individual rights; which is what islam is doing.

It astounds me that women, in particular, should directly support an ideology which is fundamentally misogynistic; I don't know how logic can be so twisted as to argue in favour of islamic values when those values are implacably based on a profound oppression of women.

I am increasingly pessimisstic about the ability of the West to deal with islam when so many of the West's 'intelligentsia' and policy makers patently have no understanding of what they are dealing with.

Cohenite,
I beg your pardon, that post is more a digression it's only context is as a reaction to the praise for All Together Now, it's astonishing to me too that a woman, a homosexual or a Liberal would support a version of Anti Racism which attempts to "appease" Islam or simply appropriate "Muslims" as a victim group to further a separate agenda.

Priscilla Brice-Weller--<This view is connected to racism because intolerance of religion often implies intolerance of culture or ethnicity, an obvious example being the genocide of Jews during World War II.>

It is the religions that start the Ethnic(tribal)division, in the first place. The Jews are a prime example of a religion refusing to marry anyone outside of the Jewish religion and so causing the division Of Germany into two tribes.

This proved disastrous when the Great Depression, Financial meltdown hit Germany harder than any other country in the world. When are the academics,Universitys and Historians going to get this right?

The refusing to marry outside of the religion, is racism(dressed up as lamb,religion). After all the waging of a Holy war means you can attack another culture or ethnic group and the murder is Holy.
Baa! Baa!Baa! Poor little Religious Wolf, I mean Sheep.