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On December 16 2014 20:15 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 19:55 zeo wrote:
I don't understand the point of that hashtag. Someone who is unstable enough to attack a middle-eastern looking person because of this siege would be just as ready to attack a muslim for no reason. But I guess common sense was never the stronger side of the PC crowd.
Meanwhile the Taliban stormed a school in Pakistan and killed 84 children. This world... Well a Muslim woman (the hijab usually gives them away) who has to walk home from a bus stop alone would probably appreciate if there was at least someone there who would call the police if she was attacked. Not to mention people who would retaliate against random Muslims are cowards and the more people they think might not just turn a blind eye the less likely they are to try something. Also if you see some of the rhetoric flying around it comes as quite a comfort to know that you have lots of allies in your community. But yeah if you want to just call it 'PC peoples lack of common sense" I don't think you'll be surprising anyone.
I would just like to see the statistics behind the claims that crimes against muslims increase after these events. Also, what would be the ratio of hate crimes committed by non-muslims against muslims in comparison to muslim crimes against non-muslims.
If someone could dig up the statistics that would be great.
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On December 16 2014 20:19 Silvanel wrote:
He sounds like a nutjob yeah. But he got the idea (i assume) from news coverages about ISIS, Boko Haram and such. Some other idealogy might also sent him off? Probably.Still he subscribed to radical Islam like many others do (althpough for different reasons).
If he said he played GTA last month and loved it then he went on a car stealing gun-shooting rampage would you give GTA the same credit you are giving ISIS?
Not to mention ISIS isn't even taking credit for this guy (at least not yet), that's how ridiculous of a notion it is. They heard about his past and were like "...Ermmm I think we'll just let the Western Media and random people give us the credit and we will just not say anything so we can get the credit without taking responsibility for what a jackass this idiot was"
Finally, we could probably stop pretending this is about religion (for those in power) and acknowledge it's really about power. It's not like these jerks on top actually adhere to the bullshit they preach. They just use religion and fear to manipulate regular people into thinking all of their problems are because of the West instead of the guys living in the palaces and to secure their hold on power.
I would just like to see the statistics behind the claims that crimes against muslims increase after these events.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/up9pxlw.gif)
Source
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Northern Ireland22211 Posts
On December 16 2014 19:55 zeo wrote:
I don't understand the point of that hashtag. Someone who is unstable enough to attack a middle-eastern looking person because of this siege would be just as ready to attack a muslim for no reason. But I guess common sense was never the stronger side of the PC crowd.
Meanwhile the Taliban stormed a school in Pakistan and killed 84 children. This world...
safety in numbers, community showing solidarity etc...
i would disagree that a person who would attack an arab-looking person because of this is necessarily unstable. these kind of things provoke knee-jerk responses from people
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Yeah, its about power. Religion is just excuse and catalyst. So? Communism was also about power with equality being an excuse same with nasizm (race purity and fighting communism as excuse). That doesnt make it right does it? Excuse or not people are suffering
And GTA argument? Please. How many people does GTA enthusiasts kill annually? Compare it to Islam enthusiasts.
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On December 16 2014 19:21 PineapplePizza wrote:
I don't understand the obsession over 'preventing white racist backlash'. The media isn't here to tell us how to think, it's here to tell us what's happening; why can't it do that instead of preaching about tolerance? If Aussies have a hooligan problem, shouldn't it deal with the hooligans, instead of hoping nobody kicks their nests?
I'd much prefer the media put things in perspective and promote tolerance than have them whip the mob into a frenzy like certain US outlets. Aus has its share of redneck bogans and you can't real 'deal' with them. Best bet it to not give them a reason to be more dumb and aggressive than they already are.
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Well this was their first attack like this on the mainland as far as I know, so you will have to wait. I think it was at least in part a reaction to what happened in the US so I would expect to see a much less sharp increase (The US had no such #)
What are you getting at with the anti-christian crime curiosity?
On December 16 2014 20:59 Silvanel wrote:
Yeah, its about power. Religion is just excuse and catalyst. So? Communism was also about power with equality being an excuse same with nasizm (race purity and fighting communism as excuse). That doesnt make it right does it? Excuse or not people are suffering
And GTA argument? Please. How many people does GTA enthusiasts kill annually? Compare it to Islam enthusiasts.
I think you are missing the point. He wasn't a 'enthusiast' he was just some guy who glommed onto ISIS after being rejected by every local Muslim community (because he was sick). Kinda like those kids that go join ISIS and a few months later wish they could come back home and charge their iPod.
They aren't a bunch of 'radical Islam enthusiasts' they are just dumb kids looking for something to belong to or whatever.
Pretty much the same with this guy.
If this guys beliefs line up so well with ISIS why do you think they haven't already taken credit or given him any?
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I'm not talking about big attacks. I'm talking about hate crimes between religious groups, is it really more dangerous to be a muslim out on the streets at night or a christian? (in Australia)
Is that hashtag warranted?
edit: I don't think these people have any kind of realistic grasp on the problems of their community, yet jump at the chance to show everybody how much they 'care'.
Just look at who started the whole hashtag:
http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/
Its just a series of rants about how much she hates white people, her entire life revolves around imagining new ways of how she was oppressed today.
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http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/145500/muslim-woman-thrown-off-moving-train-in-australia
Islam doesn't have a monopoly on crazy. A few incidents like this happened after anti-terrorism raids and Abbot rhetoric earlier in the year. I expect an increase in such hate crimes and it'll be moderate muslims who suffer.
On December 16 2014 21:50 zeo wrote:
I'm not talking about big attacks. I'm talking about hate crimes between religious groups, is it really more dangerous to be a muslim out on the streets at night or a christian?
Is that hashtag warranted?
It's more symbolic than effective but it'd definitely be more dangerous being out at night if you look middle eastern, especially after the siege.
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What a world we live in. Crazy Muslim guy takes hostages and shoots them while demanding Isis flag but he's not a terrorist because other Muslims don't like him and Isis ignored him. Is this really your argument or am i still half asleep? Kids join Isis only because they want to "belong or whatever?" Unbelievable..
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On December 16 2014 21:50 zeo wrote:
I'm not talking about big attacks. I'm talking about hate crimes between religious groups, is it really more dangerous to be a muslim out on the streets at night or a christian?
Is that hashtag warranted?
It's because in countries where big attacks have happened anti-muslim attacks dramatically increase. Australia wants to show that they can do better than that.
Unfortunately for the people it doesn't seem like they even keep good statistics on that stuff. But I did some research and anti-english-speaking-white-christian crime is definitely not a problem in Australia. Unless you're talking about other whites threatening whites for supporting anti-racism groups or standing up for Aboriginal rights. So the reported 'Anti-Christian' crime is whites attacking Christians for being anti-racism. White english speaking Christians didn't have any noted reports of crimes perpetrated against them for being such (other than the ones I mentioned)
Starting to make me think the hashtag will just mean they will get beat up together.
14x higher rate of incarceration of Aboriginal people is not a good sign of how things go the other way though.
26% (7,863) of prisoners were Aboriginal, which shows an imprisonment rate 14 times higher than the non Aboriginal community.
Source
I don't know about you but I had no idea how different Australia is from the US. (Besides the dark skinned/non-English speaking part) I always thought we had more in common.
Kinda surprised to find out that racial inequity is as bad as my superficial research has shown. (seems a lot worse than the US actually). Leads me to believe it's primarily white english speaking Aussies here that were saying race relations aren't that bad.
This is the closest thing to a "statistic" on the issues that I could find: (Skip to the bottom if you want to see the "statistics".. They are from 1991 so maybe things are significantly different but I doubt it if the prison statistic is from 2010).
This sounds like some 50's ish from America.
1-6 of 18:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/48OUi71.jpg)
https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/NIRV.pdf
http://www.police.act.gov.au/en/Search.aspx?searchTerm=hate crime
If an Aussie could help us out that would be awesome.
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On December 16 2014 19:41 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 19:06 paralleluniverse wrote:On December 16 2014 18:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 16 2014 18:28 paralleluniverse wrote:Let me add some concluding thoughts in addition to my remarks yesterday on this horrific act of terror. The death of two hostages is tragic, and for me at least, unexpected. It's still not clearly known what instigated the shoot out and police storming the building. The news coverage of this incident was also steeped in political correctness, with reporters from several news agencies, including the ABC (Australian, not American) and BBC continually referring to the Islamic flag used as "a black flag with Arabic writing". It's OK to say that this was a religiously motivated act, because that's exactly what it was, as Man Haron Monis made a point of showing this off by using the flag and claiming support for ISIS. This political correctness was also aided by the police attempting to shut down this discussion, with mixed success, by quashing reports of Monis' demands. It isn't bigotry or Islamophobia to say that this was a terrorist act motivated by Monis' Islamic faith, as most terrorist acts are, and it's not the same as saying all Muslims are partly responsible. The massive illridewithyou hastag was a somewhat positive outcome as targeting Muslims over this incident is wrong and misguided, particularly since most Muslims in Western countries don't condone this. But it was also hypocritical that some people were seemingly more concerned with the hypothetical and non-existent anti-Muslim backlash than the safety of the hostages. If only the Muslim world would show as much tolerance for gays, cartoonists, blasphemers, atheists, women, and Quran burners as #illridewithyou has shown to them. Lastly, while much attention has been given to Monis' history of law-breaking, it is more concerning that Monis was previously convicted for writing offensive and insulting letters to the families of deceased Australian soldiers. While I haven't read the letter (if one finds them, I'd like to see), news reports have not described them as containing true threats, merely that they are offensive and threatening. In the US, the First Amendment protects the Westboro Baptist Church from picketing the funeral of dead soldiers with messages of hate, and rightly so. Together with the Abbott government's failure to repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (for US readers, what happened is exactly equivalent to if the journalists who claimed Elizabeth Warren abused her Native American heritage for advantage were found guilty of an offense) earlier this year, this is even more proof of Australia's outrageous apathy and intolerance towards free speech. It's a disgrace. We seem to live in a post-terrorism world, in the sense that the reactions to terrorist events are now formulaic and predictable, with blind progressives rallying against tolerance, accusing people of Islamophobia and claiming no connection to religion, while a small group of extreme right-wingers attacking Muslims and Islam, and a small group of atheists and liberals who are realists about the important and self-proclaimed role of religious faith in motivating these acts of terror and whose nuance is not so easy captured in a short soundbite. As much as you might want this to be about his "faith" it just doesn't really fit his history. Devoutly religious people aren't usually habitual offenders who switch (got kicked out really) denominations (were talking basically switching sides in a war) a month before they commit their final act of devotion to their brand new religion. He used ISIS to get attention he wasn't getting doing all the other crazy stunts he was doing. ISIS is happy to take credit for any violent act against the west (yet THEY haven't even tried to claim any credit for the acts of this lone gunman). Calling this moron a terrorist inspired by ISIS is helping their cause far more than it is hurting it. Your concerns about the "PC" nature of the coverage are disturbing. You are basically suggesting you wanted the media to do exactly what this jackass and ISIS wanted them to do? This (based off of what we know so far) resembles a mentally unwell person who happen to pretend to be Muslim far more than some devout Muslim who was either turned or radicalized by ISIS. If you are going to take his word on his 'faith' don't stop there, go ahead and swallow all the other BS he is spewing. It was a lone wolf attack. So he wasn't a member of ISIS, but he clearly subscribed to their ideology. For like a month... Before that he was practicing "black magic" and other crap. If you really think he was such a subscriber to their ideology you probably believe that he was a "cleric" too... The guy was rejected by the Australian Muslim communities, Sunni and Shia. Basically everyone who interacted with him before this said that he was strange or seemed mentally unwell. We going to blame GTA when some maniac says it inspired him to go on a rampage... Or will we just blame it on a mentally unwell person who was looking for an excuse/more attention...? There have been attacks around the world with real/significant connections to terrorist organizations, this was not one of them (based off of what is currently known).
Nothing you try to draw a parallel with Islam is going to have the same allure of martyrdom and paradise, well at least not GTA...
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On December 16 2014 23:44 ShadeR wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 19:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 16 2014 19:06 paralleluniverse wrote:On December 16 2014 18:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 16 2014 18:28 paralleluniverse wrote:Let me add some concluding thoughts in addition to my remarks yesterday on this horrific act of terror. The death of two hostages is tragic, and for me at least, unexpected. It's still not clearly known what instigated the shoot out and police storming the building. The news coverage of this incident was also steeped in political correctness, with reporters from several news agencies, including the ABC (Australian, not American) and BBC continually referring to the Islamic flag used as "a black flag with Arabic writing". It's OK to say that this was a religiously motivated act, because that's exactly what it was, as Man Haron Monis made a point of showing this off by using the flag and claiming support for ISIS. This political correctness was also aided by the police attempting to shut down this discussion, with mixed success, by quashing reports of Monis' demands. It isn't bigotry or Islamophobia to say that this was a terrorist act motivated by Monis' Islamic faith, as most terrorist acts are, and it's not the same as saying all Muslims are partly responsible. The massive illridewithyou hastag was a somewhat positive outcome as targeting Muslims over this incident is wrong and misguided, particularly since most Muslims in Western countries don't condone this. But it was also hypocritical that some people were seemingly more concerned with the hypothetical and non-existent anti-Muslim backlash than the safety of the hostages. If only the Muslim world would show as much tolerance for gays, cartoonists, blasphemers, atheists, women, and Quran burners as #illridewithyou has shown to them. Lastly, while much attention has been given to Monis' history of law-breaking, it is more concerning that Monis was previously convicted for writing offensive and insulting letters to the families of deceased Australian soldiers. While I haven't read the letter (if one finds them, I'd like to see), news reports have not described them as containing true threats, merely that they are offensive and threatening. In the US, the First Amendment protects the Westboro Baptist Church from picketing the funeral of dead soldiers with messages of hate, and rightly so. Together with the Abbott government's failure to repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (for US readers, what happened is exactly equivalent to if the journalists who claimed Elizabeth Warren abused her Native American heritage for advantage were found guilty of an offense) earlier this year, this is even more proof of Australia's outrageous apathy and intolerance towards free speech. It's a disgrace. We seem to live in a post-terrorism world, in the sense that the reactions to terrorist events are now formulaic and predictable, with blind progressives rallying against tolerance, accusing people of Islamophobia and claiming no connection to religion, while a small group of extreme right-wingers attacking Muslims and Islam, and a small group of atheists and liberals who are realists about the important and self-proclaimed role of religious faith in motivating these acts of terror and whose nuance is not so easy captured in a short soundbite. As much as you might want this to be about his "faith" it just doesn't really fit his history. Devoutly religious people aren't usually habitual offenders who switch (got kicked out really) denominations (were talking basically switching sides in a war) a month before they commit their final act of devotion to their brand new religion. He used ISIS to get attention he wasn't getting doing all the other crazy stunts he was doing. ISIS is happy to take credit for any violent act against the west (yet THEY haven't even tried to claim any credit for the acts of this lone gunman). Calling this moron a terrorist inspired by ISIS is helping their cause far more than it is hurting it. Your concerns about the "PC" nature of the coverage are disturbing. You are basically suggesting you wanted the media to do exactly what this jackass and ISIS wanted them to do? This (based off of what we know so far) resembles a mentally unwell person who happen to pretend to be Muslim far more than some devout Muslim who was either turned or radicalized by ISIS. If you are going to take his word on his 'faith' don't stop there, go ahead and swallow all the other BS he is spewing. It was a lone wolf attack. So he wasn't a member of ISIS, but he clearly subscribed to their ideology. For like a month... Before that he was practicing "black magic" and other crap. If you really think he was such a subscriber to their ideology you probably believe that he was a "cleric" too... The guy was rejected by the Australian Muslim communities, Sunni and Shia. Basically everyone who interacted with him before this said that he was strange or seemed mentally unwell. We going to blame GTA when some maniac says it inspired him to go on a rampage... Or will we just blame it on a mentally unwell person who was looking for an excuse/more attention...? There have been attacks around the world with real/significant connections to terrorist organizations, this was not one of them (based off of what is currently known). Nothing you try to draw a parallel with Islam is going to have the same allure of martyrdom and paradise, well at least not GTA...
Who's saying anything about the 'allure'?
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Me because I'm not willing to write off islamic ideology as a motivator.
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On December 17 2014 00:38 ShadeR wrote:
Me because I'm not willing to write off islamic ideology as a motivator.
I'm sure there were lots of motivations, his treatment in prison was probably a much bigger one than his makeshift faith for why he was acting out. ISIS type propaganda is obviously what gave him the idea of how to do it and get the massive attention he was obviously seeking. Yet so many are upset or bothered by the fact that the media didn't make this guy sound like some hero for ISIS.
If he was just some crazy guy holding hostages the news wouldn't of left Australia except for a quick blurb on Fox News about how if the store had a guard with a gun or the patrons had guns none of this would of happened.
By leeching onto ISIS (which by all accounts so far had no interest in him despite him reaching out to them) he became an international story. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy barely knew anything about ISIS or the specifics of their beliefs. I mean he didn't even have the sense to get the right flag ahead of time.
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oh boy, another muslim attack. Wouldnt be suprised to see the white knights jump in and defend it.
User was warned for this post
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On December 16 2014 22:51 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 21:50 zeo wrote:
I'm not talking about big attacks. I'm talking about hate crimes between religious groups, is it really more dangerous to be a muslim out on the streets at night or a christian?
Is that hashtag warranted? It's because in countries where big attacks have happened anti-muslim attacks dramatically increase. Australia wants to show that they can do better than that. Unfortunately for the people it doesn't seem like they even keep good statistics on that stuff. But I did some research and anti-english-speaking-white-christian crime is definitely not a problem in Australia. Unless you're talking about other whites threatening whites for supporting anti-racism groups or standing up for Aboriginal rights. So the reported 'Anti-Christian' crime is whites attacking Christians for being anti-racism. White english speaking Christians didn't have any noted reports of crimes perpetrated against them for being such (other than the ones I mentioned) Starting to make me think the hashtag will just mean they will get beat up together. 14x higher rate of incarceration of Aboriginal people is not a good sign of how things go the other way though. Show nested quote +26% (7,863) of prisoners were Aboriginal, which shows an imprisonment rate 14 times higher than the non Aboriginal community. SourceI don't know about you but I had no idea how different Australia is from the US. (Besides the dark skinned/non-English speaking part) I always thought we had more in common. Kinda surprised to find out that racial inequity is as bad as my superficial research has shown. (seems a lot worse than the US actually). Leads me to believe it's primarily white english speaking Aussies here that were saying race relations aren't that bad. This is the closest thing to a "statistic" on the issues that I could find: (Skip to the bottom if you want to see the "statistics".. They are from 1991 so maybe things are significantly different but I doubt it if the prison statistic is from 2010). This sounds like some 50's ish from America. 1-6 of 18: + Show Spoiler +https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/NIRV.pdfhttp://www.police.act.gov.au/en/Search.aspx?searchTerm=hate crimeIf an Aussie could help us out that would be awesome.
Our police definitely don't keep statistics on racial profiles of victims. That's actually highlighted in the report you linked:
Most importantly, the police in Australia, unlike in some overseas jurisdictions, do not maintain statistics of crimes in which race may be a significant factor. In 1990 the United States enacted legislation to facilitate the collection of data on the extent of racist attacks or 'hate crimes'. The Inquiry is of the view that recording of statistics should be undertaken in this country to enable the extent of the problem to be more accurately under-stood.
As far as I can tell, that recommendation was ignored, which makes all of this very hard.
The most recent thing I've found is a report on violence against international university students from 2011
http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/5/C/2/{5C2C2F3E-584B-498E-A694-A25FC8FC7C86}caisa.pdf
Discussion is a few pages starting p166. It is hampered by, again, the fact that we don't do a good job of keeping these kinds of statistics. In the end, they found that international students don't have significantly higher rates of crime against them than the general population, with the (somewhat random, to me) exception of Indian students in specific circumstances.
On the other hand, it's worth noting that the majority of international students will be in the large cities, which are already multicultural. Racism is classically more of an issue in rural areas, or at least outlying suburbs of the cities, where these students won't live because there aren't universities there. How representative those stats are for the wider community, I can't really say.
Regarding the aboriginal incarceration rates, that's - to me - a slightly different issue. I'm hesitant to go into it because it's really complex and sensitive and I'm guaranteed to misrepresent something, but as a whole we have a very poor record regarding treatment of aboriginal people. I would like to think that the major state abuses (things like forcibly removing children into white foster care) are a thing of the embarassingly recent past, but there are still serious problems on a societal level.
It's not so much random harassment on buses as systemic problems with communities. A lot of aboriginal people live in very remote communities a long way from major cities, largely by choice, and those communities have massive unemployment rates, huge issues with alcoholism, youth violence etc etc. You basically just have a whole lot of young men with very little to do because they're in the middle of nowhere, coupled to an absolute ton of cultural/societal complexity. As a result they get rotated in and out of jail at absurd rates.
I think it's fair to say that those rates indicate there is a major problem, but it's specific and I'm not sure it applies to eg. muslims in the major cities.
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On December 17 2014 08:19 Belisarius wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 22:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 16 2014 21:50 zeo wrote:
I'm not talking about big attacks. I'm talking about hate crimes between religious groups, is it really more dangerous to be a muslim out on the streets at night or a christian?
Is that hashtag warranted? It's because in countries where big attacks have happened anti-muslim attacks dramatically increase. Australia wants to show that they can do better than that. Unfortunately for the people it doesn't seem like they even keep good statistics on that stuff. But I did some research and anti-english-speaking-white-christian crime is definitely not a problem in Australia. Unless you're talking about other whites threatening whites for supporting anti-racism groups or standing up for Aboriginal rights. So the reported 'Anti-Christian' crime is whites attacking Christians for being anti-racism. White english speaking Christians didn't have any noted reports of crimes perpetrated against them for being such (other than the ones I mentioned) Starting to make me think the hashtag will just mean they will get beat up together. 14x higher rate of incarceration of Aboriginal people is not a good sign of how things go the other way though. 26% (7,863) of prisoners were Aboriginal, which shows an imprisonment rate 14 times higher than the non Aboriginal community. SourceI don't know about you but I had no idea how different Australia is from the US. (Besides the dark skinned/non-English speaking part) I always thought we had more in common. Kinda surprised to find out that racial inequity is as bad as my superficial research has shown. (seems a lot worse than the US actually). Leads me to believe it's primarily white english speaking Aussies here that were saying race relations aren't that bad. This is the closest thing to a "statistic" on the issues that I could find: (Skip to the bottom if you want to see the "statistics".. They are from 1991 so maybe things are significantly different but I doubt it if the prison statistic is from 2010). This sounds like some 50's ish from America. 1-6 of 18: + Show Spoiler +https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/NIRV.pdfhttp://www.police.act.gov.au/en/Search.aspx?searchTerm=hate crimeIf an Aussie could help us out that would be awesome. Our police definitely don't keep statistics on racial profiles of victims. That's actually highlighted in the report you linked: Show nested quote +Most importantly, the police in Australia, unlike in some overseas jurisdictions, do not maintain statistics of crimes in which race may be a significant factor. In 1990 the United States enacted legislation to facilitate the collection of data on the extent of racist attacks or 'hate crimes'. The Inquiry is of the view that recording of statistics should be undertaken in this country to enable the extent of the problem to be more accurately under-stood. As far as I can tell, that recommendation was ignored, which makes all of this very hard. The most recent thing I've found is a report on violence against international university students from 2011 http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/5/C/2/{5C2C2F3E-584B-498E-A694-A25FC8FC7C86}caisa.pdfDiscussion is a few pages starting p166. It is hampered by, again, the fact that we don't do a good job of keeping these kinds of statistics. In the end, they found that international students don't have significantly higher rates of crime against them than the general population, with the (somewhat random, to me) exception of Indian students in specific circumstances. On the other hand, it's worth noting that the majority of international students will be in the large cities, which are already multicultural. Racism is classically more of an issue in rural areas, or at least outlying suburbs of the cities, where these students won't live because there aren't universities there. How representative those stats are for the wider community, I can't really say. Regarding the aboriginal incarceration rates, that's - to me - a slightly different issue. I'm hesitant to go into it because it's really complex and sensitive and I'm guaranteed to misrepresent something, but as a whole we have a very poor record regarding treatment of aboriginal people. I would like to think that the major state abuses (things like forcibly removing children into white foster care) are a thing of the embarassingly recent past, but there are still serious problems on a societal level. It's not so much random harassment on buses as systemic problems with communities. A lot of aboriginal people live in very remote communities a long way from major cities, largely by choice, and those communities have massive unemployment rates, huge issues with alcoholism, youth violence etc etc. You basically just have a whole lot of young men with very little to do because they're in the middle of nowhere, coupled to an absolute ton of cultural/societal complexity. As a result they get rotated in and out of jail at absurd rates. I think it's fair to say that those rates indicate there is a major problem, but it's specific and I'm not sure it applies to eg. muslims in the major cities.
From an outside perspective it looks pretty bad.
Ms Kay says she has been the target of direct threats and she's now collecting evidence from other women who say they too have been the victims of verbal and, in some cases, physical attacks. “I spoke to a woman yesterday,” says Ms Kay, “who had her hijab removed in the middle of a shopping centre. She found a man standing there staring at her and telling her that she was a f***ing terrorist and needed to leave the country.”
Many Muslim women, say Ms Kay and other community members, are fearful of going out and many won’t venture far beyond their homes.
Ahmed Kilani, editor of website muslimvillage.com, says some are now questioning whether Australia is still a safe and tolerant society. “My own mother rang me yesterday,” Mr Kilani told SBS, “with concern about what’s going, she said, ‘I don’t feel safe and secure.’ She made the comment to me that despite living here for 40 years which is a lot longer than she lived in Egypt. She said perhaps I need to consider moving back there and questioned whether I should go and get myself a dual citizenship in case things get really bad
Source
Lawyer Mariam Veiszadeh from the Islamophobia Register told reporters that in recent days a pig's head had been impaled on a cross, mosques vandalized and threatening messages spray-painted on property and cars.
"A number of women, particularly in hijab, and children have been verbally abused and threatened," she said.
"In one case a western Sydney mother and her baby were spat on and her pram kicked.
Source
This was before the Sydney Siege. No offense, but race and cultural relations sound pretty bad, even in major cities. I imagine white english speaking Aussies can get around just fine without thinking there is much racism or the like going on because none of it is directed at them or their family/close friends.
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It certainly could be.
I can really only speak anecdotally from my own experience or that of people I know. Obviously, I'm anglo-Australian, so it won't be directed at me. None of my friends from other backgrounds have complained about it, but I also only know a couple of muslims who I feel would mention it to me. I also live and work within 10 minutes of the city centre, at a university with a huge internatonal student body, so I really can't speak even for suburbs further out without extrapolating.
It's worth noting that that stuff is hot news at the moment and is also anecdotal, so could be localised or isolated. It also could be systemic, and the fact that it's happening at all is certainly not good.
If you look at something like http://www.islamophobiawatch.co.uk/category/anti-muslim-violence/ (reputable source, I know, but they're real news stories being reposted), there are similar incidents in Vienna, Seattle and various places in the UK.
Since we've established that Australian police don't keep statistics on whether crimes are racially motivated, it's hard to judge objectively whether Australia is particularly bad or just has the same number of idiots as anywhere else. Neither would surprise me.
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EPT
