 |
| Australian media considers the issue of Islamic immigration |
The editor of the The Australian on 18th October 2009 in its editorial "Balancing security with compassion”:
We have a proud tradition of welcoming refugees who have in turn strengthened the civic and economic fabric of the nation. Tens of thousands fled here from the Great Irish Famine in the late 1840s, including thousands of orphans. The 35,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution who arrived from the 1930s onwards, and their children, have made vast contributions to Australian business and intellectual life. So have many others, including more than 100,000 Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians who arrived in the 1970s and 80s.
Indeed. Little to argue with there. As the Australian government says:
Since 1945, around 6.9 million people have come to Australia as new settlers. Their contribution to Australian society, culture and prosperity has been an important factor in shaping our nation.[2]
Sure. But is there a catch here? And if so, what?
The catch is the belief that the past will be replicated in the future. That if some of something is good, then even more of something must be better. There’s a trust -- or perhaps it's a desperate hope -- that it will be. But will it? The catch of course, is in the types of immigrants and refugees that one allows into one’s country.
In Europe and the UK, the large number of Muslim immigrants in recent years has got to the stage where it’s past the euphemism of a “challenge” and is openly talked of as a “problem”. Rather than assimilating or even just integrating into society, they have been dis-assimilating in recent years (Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Christopher Caldwell, Doubleday, 2009, p 133).
Rather than marrying more into the local population, Muslim populations in Europe are increasingly marrying in their home countries. For example, the Turkish population in Germany has been there for 50 years, yet fully 90% of Germans of Turkish descent marry back in Turkey (ibid p 225). This is a mark of a group that has no intent to become part of its host country. This trend is accompanied by an increase in the Islamic piety of succeeding generations, and hence of hewing to classic Islam, promoting Sharia law and pressing for the spread of Islam throughout the world. All these trends are inimical to the values of the west. They are inimical to tolerance, free speech, equal rights for women, minorities, gays, and we “infidelds”.
What is happening in Australia in recent years has been a massive increase in the proportion of Muslim arrivals. Monash figures: 12% of arrivals from 2000 to 2002 were Muslim [1]. Immigration department figures: 12.5% for the same period [2]. Then the figures jumped: 80% of immigrants from Iraq and 92% of all arrivals were Muslims from June 2008 to June 2009. That’s right: 92% of our immigrants in the year to June 2009were Muslims.
This is happening with zero debate in the Australian media. And yet, it is very consequential, for the values and attitudes of many of those coming from those Muslim countries are entirely antithetical to the values of a liberal democracy like Australia. To repeat: there is zero debate. [ADDED: this is not the case with the Irish and Jewish refugees mentioned above, in the Australian editorial].
I wrote a letter to The Australian, in response to their editorial “Balancing security with compassion”.
There is little chance they will run it, as it’s too politically incorrect. Too much against the current narrative (all immigration is good). I wonder when -- or even if -- we will wake up to admit that we are making a problem, not just a “challenge”, for ourselves and for our children and grandchildren.
My Letter:
Why should we be non-discriminatory in our immigration policy? (“Balancing security with compassion”, 17-18/10) Surely we don’t allow immigration by those hewing to racist, intolerant or supremacist ideologies. Would we allow into Australia members of neo-Nazi parties, the Ku Klux clan or the White Aryan Resistance?
Why then do we allow unchecked immigration for those hewing to the Islamic ideology? In the UK and Europe, majorities or large minorities of Muslims, in poll after poll, express support for the supremacy of Islam over the west and for the implementation of Sharia law with its draconian punishments of women, homosexuals and social drinkers. (Not to mention preferential killing of we “infidels”)
What is there to suggest Muslim attitudes in Australia would be any different, apart from wishful thinking and a misguided sense of our “compassion”? Our children will not thank us, when Sharia becomes law of the land.
Yours, etc... PF
================================================
References:
- People and Place, Katherine Betts, Monash University Press, 2002
- Key Facts in immigration, Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship
- Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Christopher Caldwell, July 28, 2009
