Western Resistance

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August 8, 2006

Australia: Ban On Islamist Books Is Challenged

In May we described how the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions ruled that books which had been found in Islamic bookstores in the Lakemba and Auburn suburbs of Sydney last year did not incite violence.

The AFP found that the terms of neither the Commonwealth Criminal Code nor the New South Wales Crime Act 1900 had been breached by the books, even though some seemed to openly advocate violent jihad.

One of these books, called Defence of the Muslim Lands had on its back cover an endorsement from Osama bin Laden, and advocated that a person should be "wiring up one's body" with explosives, for the purpose of "martyrdom or self-sacrifice operations".

Another book, called The Criminal West, claimed that it was a matter of shame to be called an Australian, and said Western culture is a culture of wolves, injustice and racism. The author is an "Australian" Muslim called Omar Hassan, who also claims that Australian police are rapists and attackers of young boys, and says there is a campaign to turn Muslims into drug addicts.

A book entitled The Ideological Attack stated that Jews, Christians and atheists were mounting a barbaric onslaught against Muslims.

An audio tape which was found on sale, called Da'wah in the West includes a speech by Ali al-Tamimi. This character was jailed for life in the US last year for soliciting others to wage war.

The Islamic Bookstore, based in Lakemba, refused to rule out stocking more of these books for sale.

Then, on July 11, 2006, we reported that, notwithstanding the views of the AFP and DPP, the Classification Review Board had decided that two of these tomes did advocate armed jihad, and were refused classification. Which means that they can no longer be sold anywhere in Australia, and they cannot be imported into the country.

The two books which were banned were Defence of the Muslim Lands and Join the Caravan, both written by Sheik Abdullah Azzam. Azzam is said to be a mentor to Osama bin Laden. The attorney general, Philip Ruddock, had gone to the Classification Review Board (CRB) after the AFP and DPP rulings.

The CRB said in its censorship ruling that Defence of the Muslim Lands "promotes and incites in matters of crime, specifically terrorism acts, including the plan, action and execution of martyrdom operations....The book is specific and explicit in its support for and encouragement of suicide bombing, including details for undertaking such crimes."

It described Join the Caravan as having "the objective purpose of promoting and inciting acts of terrorism against disbelievers and is a real and genuine call to specific action by Muslims to fight for Allah and engage in acts of violence."

Now, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, a challenge is being mounted to the ban on these two books, from the News South Wales Council of Civil Liberties (NSWCCL).

The NSWCCL is going to take the issue to the Federal Court, claiming that the decision is unconstitutional. It states that banning of these terror-advocating tomes will put the nation on a "slippery slope" to unjustified censorship.

There a touch of irony here, as Maureen Shelley, chair of the Classification Review Board (CRB) had consulted the Australian "Mufti" Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilaly and also the NSW Council for Civil Liberties before passing its decision to have the books banned. The consultation with Hilaly had happened before it was revealed on July 15 that Hilali had been preaching anti-semitic rants in his mosque in Lakemba, Sydney, saying that the Holocaust had been a "lie".

The fact that in February 2004 the Mufti had called for a jihad against Israel, and considering the views expressed on the NSWCCL website makes me think that Maureen Shelley was advised by Hilali and NSWCCL to allow all of the books to be on sale, and had stuck to some sense of moral principle by banning the two most extreme texts.

The Sydney Morning Herald states that Cameron Murphy, the president of NSWCCL has said: "We think Australia has a strong and robust democracy, and in a strong and robust democracy there should be a degree of tolerance that can accept material as unpleasant as this."

The NSWCCL website has some gems of absurdity, but its version of how the books were examined is this: "Already, the Attorney-General is using his power under the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 to intervene in censorship matters. On 5 June 2006, the Attorney-General applied to the Classification Review Board to reconsider eight Islamic texts and one film. The film was a speech by a lecturer at an American University and has since been passed by the Board.

The texts had been reviewed by the Board on several occasions before the Attorney-General's intervention, in addition to prior reviews by the Classification Board, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and the Australian Federal Police. The texts were not considered to be a threat to Australian society or a contravention of the recent sedition legislation by any of these bodies. The AFP determined that the material in question is "descriptive, rather than inciting any type of violence"(iii). Nevertheless, the Attorney-General applied for the review of the eight books."

The NSWCCL had vehemently opposed the Australian Terror Laws at the end of last year, before they were introduced. They opposed Control Orders and Detention Orders, claiming they were alien to Australia's democracy. So is the threat from religious terrorists, against whom the terror legislation was devised.

But on a downloadable pdf document, dated 16 June 2006, and written by Steven Blanks, the secretary of NSWCCL, can be found the following, referring to the desires of bodies within Australian officialdom to ban the books mentioned above:
"Further marginalization of the Islamic Community

The Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 instructs the board to consider "the persons or class of persons to or amongst whom it is published or is intended or likely to be published." All of the material in question is directed at the marginalised Islamic community. The NSWCCL believes that perfectly lawful statements, including statements that glorify suicide bombers or offensive statements by Muslim leaders who are critical of the Western way of life, will further marginalise this community and have a chilling and contrary effect on freedom of expression within it. The NSWCCL believes that censuring the material in question will only prevent free and open discussion that can most effectively undermine politically unpopular views that seek to undermine the traditional liberal principles of Australian society."

These "liberals" at NSWCCL appear to defend Australia's values, by supporting those who would violently destroy those values, given half a chance. NSWCCL seem like turkeys, who want it to be Thanksgiving every day.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 8, 2006 8:34 PM

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