In Australia, Muslims Eye Senate Seats

The cartoon below, screenshot by Reader P soon after it appeared on Sunday (heaven knows how many "Likes" it may have by now) has no direct connection to the subject of this post, but I thought I'd display it in order to show the depths of depravity to which some people can sink following the atrocities in Paris.

An obscenity posted on Facebook

The founder of a so-called Australian Muslim Party, with its sights set on winning seats in the Senate, admits that his party's launch could have been better timed.  But after some hesitation he decided to go ahead anyway.

Whether the party will actually get off the ground, so to speak, is another matter, but the founder seems confident it will.

Here's a video (on the left-leaning The Age newspaper, no friend to Israel), in which the founder explains his motive and in which he makes a brief and possibly telling reference to "Palestine".

More in The Guardian.

It was surprising to see, on the Channel Ten News this evening, the urbane Dr Jamal Rifi, Sydney-based leader of and spokesman for the Muslim community, approve this divisive initiative.  If I heard him correctly, he said something along the lines of "It's acceptable; forming political parties is what we do in Muslim countries so why not here?"

Recently The Australian newspaper quoted Dr Rifi as saying that he and the Muslim community are "elated" at Malcolm Turnbull replacing Tony Abbott as prime minister, because Abbott's tough language had offended and alienated Muslims and played into radical hands.  Dr Rifi cited, inter alia, Abbott's decision to admit 12,000 refugees from Syria, but with priority given to Christians, as well as his frequent description of Islamic State as a "death cult" and use of the term "Team Australia," terms that Turnbull has evaded.

Staying with a Muslim theme, Robert Cerantonio is an Aussie of Irish/Italian Catholic heritage who dropped his baptismal name in favour of Musa following his conversion (I'm sorry, "reversion") to the Religion of Peace©

 Earlier this year the Sydney Morning Herald carried a lengthy article about him here

It seemed to present Mr Cerantonio as a bit of a buffoon, despite the authorities taking his Islamic radicalism far more seriously.

Also taking him seriously is American Graeme Wood, who in the course of a long article published last March entitled "What ISIS Really Wants," recalls his meeting with Mr Cerantonio in November last year, having been advised that he is .

'one of the two most important “new spiritual authorities” guiding foreigners to join the Islamic State...'

In an interview with Cerantonio in a multicultural neighbourhood of Melbourne where

 'young Arabs walking around in the Salafi uniform of scraggly beard, long shirt, and trousers ending halfway down the calves' 

Wood learned that Cerantonio

'hates seeing the violence, even though supporters of the Islamic State are required to endorse it. (He speaks out, controversially among jihadists, against suicide bombing, on the grounds that God forbids suicide; he differs from the Islamic State on a few other points as well.) ...

He continues:

Last June, Cerantonio and his wife tried to emigrate—he wouldn’t say to where (“It’s illegal to go to Syria,” he said cagily)—but they were caught en route, in the Philippines, and he was deported back to Australia for overstaying his visa. Australia has criminalized attempts to join or travel to the Islamic State, and has confiscated Cerantonio’s passport... If Cerantonio were caught facilitating the movement of individuals to the Islamic State, he would be imprisoned. So far, though, he is free—a technically unaffiliated ideologue who nonetheless speaks with what other jihadists have taken to be a reliable voice on matters of the Islamic State’s doctrine.

To learn what more Cerantonio said, and the rest of Graeme Wood's article, go to this link


Incidentally, regarding Muslims and their attitude to the Paris atrocities, a thought-provoking piece by a British Muslim here