2 days Ago By Th Herald's View
The fading divide between religion and politics in Australia’s outer suburbs is a new, confusing and corrosive development in Australian politics. Politicians courting the votes of Muslim communities in Sydney and Melbourne have encountered a bewildering range of responses, including threats of violence, as identity-based tribalism invaded the opening days of the election campaign with an attack on both Labor and Coalition stances on the Israel-Hamas conflict. Dr Jamal Rifi.
Credit: Janie Barrett On Sunday in western Sydney, activist group Stand4Palestine called for followers marking the end of Ramadan to monitor mosques and places of worship for local MPs and to disrupt public appearances . When Labor’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and Education Minister Jason Clare did not attend the mosques on Monday, as expected to mark the celebration, the group boasted online. “Just like cockroaches – when you shine the light on them, they run away!” they wrote in an Instagram post.
Jamal Rifi, AM, a GP and community leader, told the Herald that elder members of Sydney’s Muslim community had remained silent as “militant” groups such as Stand4Palestine preached divisive messages and used “bullying” tactics. “They are promoting mob mentality and want to dictate to the community which way to vote,” he said. “Of all the people to attack, they choose [Burke], who has agitated the most for the Palestinian cause, all to prove a point in the least strategic, most short-sighted way.
” But the political pressure group tactics were not confined to Labor. On Monday, the Coalition’s shadow minister for multicultural affairs, Jason Wood, was heckled out of a mosque in the outer Melbourne suburb of Dandenong while pledging $6.5 million to upgrade its facilities, after worshippers became furious their Eid celebrations were being politicised.
Footage showed the MP being escorted out amid the commotion. On Facebook, Stand4Palestine congratulated the Melbourne protesters. “Liberal MPs thought they could come to our community and bribe us into voting for Peter Dutton.
Shoutout to our Afghan brothers and those who took a noble stance.” The backlash came a day after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton visited a mosque in the outer Sydney suburb of Leppington, where he pledged $25,000 for CCTV cameras. As the barriers between politics and religion disappear the world has experienced a traditionalist backlash, including Make America Great Again nostalgia, a renewed populist right in Europe and the erosion of US abortion rights.
We have had a taste of the conflation of the Israel-Hamas conflict with the federal election. This is a secular and pluralistic newspaper, but we acknowledge and deeply respect religions and the role faith plays in the lives of so many people in Australia and throughout the world. But the intrusion into the political sphere by identity-based tribalism is to be resisted.
Empires and nations used to go to war under religious banners, but mixing religion and politics became unthinkable. With good reason. Politics should be based on commonly accepted rights, not on beliefs on how life should be lived.
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