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Australian Muslims Condemn
Terror, Anti-Islam Hysteria
SYDNEY, September 11, 2005 – Australian Muslims condemned today, terrorist attacks against civilians and pledged loyalty to the country, while accusing new anti-terror measures of fueling anti-Muslim hysteria.
"These were warriors from an Islamic background that hijacked Islam," Keysar Trad, the president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, told the National Security and Harmony Summit in Sydney University, reported Agence France Presse (AFP).
"They hijacked our lifestyle and our freedoms. And the spin machine of Western governments is exploiting these hijackers of Islam, these murderers."
Australian Muslim leaders gathering for the meeting observed a minute of silence to remember the victims of 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, which claimed almost 3,000 lives.
Muslims, estimated at 300,000, make up just 1.5 percent of Australia's population of 20 million.
The summiteers underlined the need to draw a clear line between law-abiding Muslims and those who take law into their own hands in violation of the tenets of Islam.
"I'm not a scary person and my children are not scary people. We have just the same aims and hopes and ambitions as everybody else," Trad said.
Ali Roude, Vice-president of the New South Wales Islamic Council, echoed a similar position. "They are not us, nor will they ever be," he was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press (AAP). "Free nations must defend themselves and our mosques must pray for peace. Anything less is un-Islamic and un-Australian."
Anti-Muslim Hysteria: The Muslim leaders, meanwhile, criticized the new anti-terror measures, saying they fuel anti-Muslim hysteria. "If (Prime Minister) John Howard gets his way with these diversionary laws ... we will not be able to criticize, we will not be allowed to dissent," Trad told the summit. "We will be tagged and monitored and maybe, eventually, interned - that is if we don't speak up and dissent now and try and do something about the predicament that we are in."
Howard announced Thursday, September 8, new anti-terror laws under which suspects could be fitted with tracking devices and holding people for up to 14 days without charge. The Australian Premier has defended his government's right to send spies into mosques and Islamic schools under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
Australian Federal Justice Minister Chris Ellison has proposed amending laws to enable security authorities to prosecute imams involved in religious preaching and writing "inciting violence".
Australian Muslims maintain that such security measures create a climate of fear and apprehension among the Muslim minority in the country. (News Agencies)
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