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December 14, 2005
Australia: Were Four Churches Attacked By Muslims?
The recent riots in Sydney, which exploded on Sunday on Cronulla beach after two female life guards had been attacked by a Lebanese Muslim gang in the previous week, have continued.
The riots are being called in most of the world's press "race riots", but on the Sydney Morning Herald, a blogger said that the riots had become a clash of cultures. Andrew West withdrew his posting after it provoked racist and anti-racist accusations, but the Australian reprinted it. He had written:
Which brings us to this extremely prickly issue of radical Islam . . . Some strains of Islam do, indeed, sanction attitudes and behaviour that are not simply patriarchal but repressive. When groups of young Muslim men stalk the beaches of Sydney making sexually threatening comments against women in bathing costumes, as they indisputably do; and when they believe they act with the license of a sheik who claims that such women are responsible for their own sexual violation, is their religion, at least in part, to blame?Now the situation has changed dramatically, with four churches being attacked. The Australian states that since these attacks, Arab Christian and Arab Muslims have asked for a curfew for all Lebanese youths this weekend. It has been suggested that Lebanese youths should not go out after 9pm on Friday and Saturday.
At a Uniting church in Auburn, a suburb of Sydney, early on Wednesday 14th, a community hall was burned entirely. In another incident on Monday, carol singers had been spat on and cars were hit with gunfire at St Joseph the Worker Primary School, states News.com.au.
According to CathNews, the incident at the carol service led to Cardinal George Pell asking gangs of Middle Eastern descent not to target Christmas celebrations."I am deeply concerned about the targeting of Christmas celebrations at schools for students as young as five years old," he said.
On Tuesday night, in Macquarie fields in the far southwest of Sydney, molotov cocktails were thrown at an Anglican church.
Police have said that the attack on the hall happened in an attempt to torch the Harold Wood Auburn Uniting Church next door. The St Thomas' Anglican Church, whose congregation is mainly Chinese, which also lies in Auburn, had its front windows smashed.
The Age stated that Jim Mein, Synod Moderator of the Uniting Church, claims the mainly Tongan congregation are "bewildered" by the arson attack. Radio Australia reports that James Latu of the Tongan Conference of Uniting Churches in Australia, said the hall was next door to a Muslim school (the al-Faisal College). He affirms that the two groups had always had a good relationship.
The Sydney Morning Herald states that police will now be paying "special attention" to religious institutions in Sydney.
Amjad Ali Mehboob of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils said worshippers at Omar Mosque in Auburn would hold a solidarity meeting at the Uniting Church after Friday prayers.
Hundreds of police were touring the suburbs in the south and west last night. News.com.au states that hundreds of police will be watching houses of worship.The text messages which helped to coordinate the arrival of non-Muslims en masse to Cronulla Beach on Sunday, have now started to appear beyond the state of New South Wales. Text messages urging people to commit copycat unrest have appeared in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. The Courier Mail states that similar text messages have been circulating in New Zealand, though police believe some of these may be hoaxes. The Age mentions that one author of such text had been traced and spoken to. Many of those circulating the text messages urging "cracking skulls" turned out to be teenagers aged 15 to 16, bored with nothing to do.
The attacks on churches have changed the dynamics of the current situation, and now it can be more hard to dismiss the current problems as merely "gang-fights" or "race-riots". It appears that there are people who are genuinely trying to invoke the "clash of civilisations". The age-old battle of faiths, believed to be laid to rest in the past of the West, is now being summoned into the present.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 14, 2005 6:54 PM
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