In Australia, More "Progressive" Flirtation With Islamic Misogyny

The St James Ethics Centre in Sydney, a non-religious body established in 1989, describes itself as

"a unique centre for applied ethics, the only one its kind globally" ....Working both in Australia and abroad for over twenty years, we’re an independent not-for-profit organisation that provides an open forum for the promotion and exploration of ethical questions. We provide practical support to individuals and organisations to help them to deal with the complex ethical questions that are part of everyday life....

Our Purpose

To serve as a catalyst and enabler for society to think, debate and act in good conscience, particularly in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Our Vision

A better world where people have the capacity to do the right thing.

Our Mission

To encourage and assist individuals and organisations to include the ethical dimension of their daily lives."

It also notes that it has

"worked to take ethical concepts into the wider community, by encouraging a healthy public debate through our events including the celebrated Intelligence Squared (IQ2) live debate series and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, held annually in partnership with the Sydney Opera House".

And what did it schedule for inclusion in the "Festival of Dangerous Ideas" this year?

Why, an address by Sydney-based Islamic extremist Uthman Badar, from the Caliphate-pursuing Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation, on the monstrous topic "Honour Killings are morally justified".

To quote Sydney journalist Miranda Devine:

 "If anything gives Islam a bad name in Australia, it’s extremist outfits like Hizb ut-Tahrir, which wants to use the upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas to justify honour killings.

Uthman Badar, the group’s spokesman, was invited to the prestigious Sydney Opera House event in August to deliver a speech titled: “Honour killings are morally justified.”

Seriously. Murdering women is not a dangerous idea – it’s a crime....

There simply is no justification for the murder of women by relatives who feel she has dishonoured the family, by, say, being raped.

Some ideas in the world really are dangerous, and you only have to look at the horrors unfolding in Syria and Iraq to know that radical Islam is as bad as they come.

But to Festival organizers, it was all a game. By inviting Hizb Ut Tahrir to join the rest of the luvvies on stage they made Islamist extremism fashionable.

We have trouble enough on that score.

Take jihad, which has become so cool in Australia that we are the leading supplier, per capita, of Western fighters in Syria and now Iraq.

You can hear Australian accents on recruitment videos posted online by the brutal ISIS terrorist group, which has recently moved from the war in Syria to Iraq where it now controls large parts of the country....

The 150 Australian jihadists who have joined ISIS and other terrorist groups are a disproportionate number, compared to an estimated 50 from the US, and 400 from the UK, out of 1000 from all Europe....

One reason ISIS has been successful here is that it is a Sunni group, one of the two main branches of Islam. Sydney has the largest population of Lebanese Sunnis outside of Lebanon, a product of immigration in the 1970s and 1980s during that country’s civil war.

But it is the Australian-born children and grandchildren of those migrants, who don’t speak Arabic and have never read the Koran, who have been recruited to jihad across the world...."

From (Sydney) Daily Telegraph (see link in text)

Having gone into more detail on the phenomenon of Australian jihadism, she asks pertinently:

"But what hope is there when Sydney’s fashionable left-wing establishment fetes extremism, as if it is just another dinner party conversation starter."

As she states:

After pressure from the NSW government, the Opera House last night cancelled the speech, claiming “a line has been crossed”.'

Indeed, as shown at right, in an extract from the Daily Telegraph, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and her Opposition counterpart Tanya Plibersek spoke out in condemnation of the  topic.

Still, we are all entitled to ask, along with Ms Devine:

"But why did it [the Sydney Opera House] and Festival partner, the St James Ethics Centre, offer a platform to Islamist extremists at all?"

So, Melbourne's Temple Beth Israel, is not the only "progressive" Australian institution this month prepared blithely to have Islamic misogyny expressed on its premises.

What a sad reflection on those who should be upholding enlightened values and championing women's rights.

Read more here (Andrew Bolt's terrific column; h/t Marvin) and here