Rita Panahi, a pop-up journalist that magically appeared in the news scene recently made an article titled “Islam, you have a very serious problem“. Her facebook name is “Miss Judgement” and indeed she is an opinionated woman and proud. Yet as the famous saying goes and pardon my French here- “Opinions are like arse holes- everybody has one“.
Our Friend “Miss Judgement” claims herself to be a writer for the Daily Telegraph. Yes, the Rupert Murdoch run newspaper who’s CEO recently claimed that all Muslims should be responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, whether they were peaceful or not. That’d be as ridiculous as me claiming Rita Panahi is responsible and must apologize for her CEO’s ridiculous tweets including the fact that during the Sydney Siege Attack, instead of praying for the victims and wishing them safety and security he boasted about how “The…
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you said it... 
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/islam-you-have-a-very-serious-problem/story-fni0cwl5-1227178806993?nk=76f16d841401896fac083a3db149c85d
“The time for weasel words and treading on eggshells is over.” – Rita Pahani.
It’s time? Where has Rita been for the past 15 years? Wherever she may have been, she clearly hasn’t been reading her own boss’s newspapers.
Her opinion piece, which is neither revealing nor insightful, can be partially summed up by the following paragraph, outlining her prescription for required remedial action:
“We must stop pretending these incidents have nothing to do with Islam. They quite clearly have everything to do with extremist Islam and the sooner we admit this truth the better we can work to protect our people and values from this scourge.” – Pahani.
Is the problem Islam or ‘extremist Islam’? Within her piece, Pahani adopts both positions. In this confusing, contradictory way, Pahani appears to actually want to blame Islam (the religion in general), but still leave herself an out if potentially challenged on that assertion.
But either way, Pahani doesn’t explain how ‘admitting this truth’ (whichever particular truth she means) will help to protect Australians from the likes of the Paris murderers. Instead she offers the George W. Bush hypothesis on terrorism, which holds that every violent act against ‘the west’ is motivated only by a hatred of our freedom, and that historical and current foreign policies are apparently a complete irrelevance.
Unlike the Bush doctrine though, Pahani abandons any pretense of diplomacy, and expands upon the reason for terrorist hate of our freedom, concluding an unexplained link back to Islam itself. Does duplicitous or unjust foreign policy also have a serious problem? Apparently not for Pahani, who won’t hear a word of it.
And that appears to be the other motivation for her writing. Not just to denounce radical Islam or even Islam itself, but to lambast any and all who dare apportion any skerrick of blame upon actions taken by the governments of western democracies, or those who engage in any introspection of possible causes (by ‘us’) and effects (upon ‘them’). In Pahani’s embrace of the us and them narrative, we (westerners) are only ever hated for what we are, never for what we do.
“We in the West must stop blaming ourselves for these acts of brutality. There are those among us, the so-called “progressives”, who seek to explain the behaviour of terrorists by pointing the finger at the victims.
According to these enlightened souls, homegrown terrorism is our fault.” – Pahani.
Of course ultimately, the only persons to blame for terrorist acts are the terrorists who perpetrate them. But Pahani, like many of her fellow conservative commentators, presents an argument that all terrorist actions involving persons self identifying as Muslims, have, do and will always occur regardless of our actions, and for no reason other than indoctrinated religious fervour, and cultural ‘otherness’.
“It’s a mistake to presume that all Islamic people want us to change our ways or laws to better fit the values of their homeland. But there is undoubtedly a minority of troublemakers who seek to change our free societies into the type of place they fled from…” – Pahani.
But (from reading this absurd commentary), according to Pahani it’s apparently not a mistake to conflate ‘Islamic people’ (presumably including Australian Muslims) with foreigners of a ‘different’ homeland, and to infer that Muslim values are necessarily ‘different’ to Australian ones – even if not every Muslim is actively seeking to change our constitution.
In the end, Pahani never quite explicates her position, and I’m not really sure what she’s advocating. Islam is the problem? Islam has a problem? Australia has a problem (Islam)? Muslims and their culture are incompatible with Australia and therefore are a problem? Tony Abbott should solve some problems and stop “tiptoeing around issues involving cultural or religious sensitivities”, ban the burka and repeal 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act? Where’s she going with this? Wherever it is, I’ll bet it’s nowhere original.
IT’s the same tactic used by Bolt, Jones, and all the hate mongering columnists. They don’t say what should be done. They exist to incite hatred towards the group. Once that rage, that hate is goal-less, they can claim no responsibility for what should be done.
For example, if this columnist should declare a small legislative change, such as banning the burqa or repealing 18c, this would be seen as minor compared to the crisis she is exaggerating (I mean, read this sentence out to yourself: “There are terrorists who will never be peaceful with us, cannot be negotiated with, and only want to kill us all….and to stop them we need to be allowed to intentionally offend them”-doesn’t work, does it?). Alternatively she could go extreme and call for all Muslims to be arrested, deported, or killed, which is a goal that would be reflective of the threat she id describing (“There are people who want to kill us, so we need to kill them first”) – but of course, that would have her charged for inciting violence, and also would turn people off (While racism and fear of Muslims exists in Australia, most people do not want to think of themselves as racist, or approve of laws that would directly target one group).
So instead, we have just general rage mongering-saying “This group is a threat, and this group needs to sort them out, and because they won’t, something should be done” – but not going into detail.
Apologies – clearly I’m dyslexic; her name is Panahi not Pahani.
Anyone have any REAL solutions instead of just vitriol? This subject of Us and Them has been bandied back and forth for a few years now. People are frightened by what they don’t understand. I have certainly had my share of being ‘one eyed’ through fear. The facts are that young Australian Muslims are going to Syria to fight. The public see what happens over there and they are suspicious and afraid. Of their neighbours? I can predict a few responses about just cause, because of our troops are in their lands. I get it. I’m not here to argue that, because I have no say in it. What can bridge the gap for Muslims and non Muslims to live peaceably together here along with the other many different cultures? What went so horribly wrong? What is the solution? Sarcasm will be dealt with by, ‘this will be my first and last post’ Trying to bridge a gap here.
Well, it depends on “where”the problem is to be solved. In terms of Australia, what we see among young Muslim men are the same risk factors that we see among all angry young men-no opportunities, no plan for the future, anger that they do not receive what they are entitled to.
Some of those angry men join bikie gangs. Some join neo-Nazi groups. Some just go out and beat people up at night. Some join gangs. And some join or are inspired by terror groups.
What works on a local level is what has worked before. Strict punishment of those involved in terror, or attempting to join terror groups, combined with pre-existing programs to turn people away from extremist and hate groups, with the earlier the aim, the better.
Why is it oblivious to these two-bit commentators, I am talking especially of the foreign conservatives, who cannot see that their argument can be easily applied to themselves?
Of course they would come up with some non-sequitur as to why they have some special reasoning as to why they should not be clumped in the same negative stereotype of others from their race.
Foreign born conservatives, that should say.