The Immigration Minister Peter Dutton sure has a sense of
humour. According to a recent report form the ABC[1]
his department is considering enhanced refugee assessment and the monitoring of
migrants after they're granted citizenship. Is this a response to recent terror
attacks in Beirut, Paris and Jakarta? While Australian security and
intelligence agencies have done their utmost to prevent similar attacks in
Australia, the death of Curtis Cheng at the hand of a radicalized Sydney
teenager Farhad Jabar shows just how much more work need to be done. How exactly
does Minister Dutton decide who to monitor? The failure of the Arab Spring had
led to the collapse of Libya and Syria. The pace of events is such that the
world has been caught flat-footed and not ready for the barbarity of Daesh
(ISIS). Our understanding of the world has been turned on its head. Farhad
Jabar is of Iraqi Kurd descent, the very group of people who are the victims of
Daesh (ISIS). Logically Farhad Jabar should not be your typical Daesh follower.
Furthermore the very notions of enhanced citizenship tests invoke memories of
the White Australia policy. The monitoring of new Australian citizens has
questionable value. Rather than integrating these new Australians such
monitoring could alienate them and push them into the hands of terror groups.
In order to prevent radicalization, we need to know what attracts
people like Farhad Jabar to Daesh. In the report on the 2015 anti-Charlie-Hebdo
protest (Lakemba, Sydney): SBS highlighted the organiser’s (Hizb ut-Tahrir)
attack on Freedom. Sofyan Badar (Hizb ut-Tahrir’s spokesman)[2]
said:
“Freedom is the smokescreen with which Western politicians
and media conceal the underlying issues.
“In reality free speech is one of the many political tools
that are used to maintain dominance over the Muslims.”
I suggest that free speech is not the main issue. Rather Badar’s
central accusation is that Christians and Jews have compromised their faith. Badar
said:
“Unlike Christianity and Judahism, which has given into the
secular worldview, Islam and Muslims have refused to accept this worldview.”
Badar wants to argue that only Muslims are righteous in
God’s eyes. Badar is right about the West being secular but he is dead wrong
about our sense of righteousness. Yes the West is secular but our
Judeo-Christian heritage so permeate our history that even the most ardent of
Western atheists find themselves regularly exercising Judeo-Christian
righteousness.
In what ways does the Judeo-Christian culture manifest
itself in the secular West? I can think of at least two. Firstly it is inherent
in the Australian values of “a fair go” and “mateship” and secondly even in the
way we swear.
In the 2005 Boyer lecturer, former bishop of Sydney Dr Peter
Jensen lamented how the four highly educated authors of the book “Imagining
Australia: Ideas for the Future” did not even know standard Bible quotes. They
wrote: 'The modern fair go demands that we should do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves'. Ironically the
words 'do unto others' comes from the King James Version of the Bible. In the
program Doctor Who, the Doctor uses a perception filter to enable him to stand
in the midst of his enemies and yet not be noticed. The aliens just do not
perceive his presence. In the same way Jesus permeates our society but we are
not aware of him and we do not know him. The many fake Jesus: From David Koresh[3]
to Alan John Miller and Mary Suzanne Luck[4]
just reinforce our lack of knowledge about the real Jesus.
In “What is swearing?”[5]
Annelise Parsons listed many kinds of swearing such as abusive swearing,
cursing, profanity, swearing for emphasis, blasphemy, euphemistic swearing and
so on. Parsons said what is acceptable can change over time and can vary across
cultures. In Australia we use “Jesus” as a swear word. Whereas in Cantonese,
“go trip over in the street and die” (literal English translation) is,
strangely, a swear phrase. But seriously, I have never heard any Buddhist using
“Budda” to swear so why do we say OMG or “Jesus” when we swear? Could it be
that the Jesus-perception filter is working so well that we no longer recognise
the 10 commandments? Yet its unacceptability is so ingrain into our culture
that many of us still have unease when “Jesus” is uttered with disdain – even
when we are not church goers.
But even if we accept the pervasiveness of Jesus in our
culture, how does that help us to stop the radicalization of young people like
Farhad Jabar? Rather than asking for an immediate solution perhaps we need to
look at the bigger picture. Right from the start of British colonisation of
Australia we have inflicted alcohol and disease on our Aboriginal. In recent
times, we have seen the rampant rise of not only alcohol consumption but also
alcohol related violence. If the loss of culture can wreck such devastation on
our Aboriginal think what it can do to us. Think what it can do to new refugee
families. Could this loss of culture also be the cause of corruption and abuse
with even the Church itself?
In a public interviewed the author Tim Keller argued that
prophetic individuals like Martin Luther King Junior, when facing racial
oppression, did not abandon their faith. Instead, Keller suggested that like
the Old Testament prophets and Jesus, King’s answer was to call on Christians
to return to their Christian roots. Similarly men like John Wesley, in the face
of moral degradation, returned to Christ. His action further encouraged William
Wilberforce to end the slave trade.
Rather than shallow and short term actions to counter
radicalization, is it time we look deeper into the Australian culture and ask
whether it is time to turn back to our Christian roots? And in this way we can
give meaning to young people like Farhad Jabar.
[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-04/leaked-document-outlines-changes-to-migration/7140952
[2] 'Je
suis Muslim': 800 at Lakemba protest - http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/01/23/hundreds-pro-islam-rally-sydney
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Koresh
[4] http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/jesus-and-mary-cult-followers-buy-up-land-around-kingaroy/story-e6freoof-1226055912664
[5] https://www.afes.org.au/article/what-swearing
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