Syrian refugee crisis: This is about humanity, not religion
Updated
The fact that the Government would pause in light of such a visceral tragedy to suggest that Australia should prioritise Christian refugees from Syria speaks volumes, writes Sarah Malik.
It was the picture that shocked the world.
A little boy lies face down on the beach. His still, lifeless body caressed gently by waves. His sandals are still strapped to his little feet. In his neat red shirt and little blue shorts, he could be sleeping or resting.
A Turkish police officer stands to one side, his shoulders hunched as if in prayer.
The discovery of Aylan Kurdi's body on a Turkish beach last week cut a searing image in the conscience of the world. It tore through the ballast of politics, rhetoric and racialisation that continues to obscure one of the great humanitarian crises of modern times.
The little boy who perished along with his brother Galip and mother Rihan, one of 12 Syrian asylum seekers trying to reach Greece when their boat sank, represents the many thousands seeking safety and asylum as their country is torn apart by war and conflict.
The picture of the doll-like three-year-old on the beach has galvanised public opinion around the world, forcing even the Australian Government to outline its commitment to Syrian refugees. But the racialisation continues, with Barnaby Joyce calling for Syrian Christians to be prioritised in any asylum intake, a motion that has been echoed by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Australia was recently criticised in the New York Times for a military response to asylum seekers which is shrouded in secrecy. This has been combined with bizarre border security campaigns including the farcical 'Operation Fortitude', a proposal quickly scuttled after widespread ridicule.
The campaign purporting to subject Melbourne residents to random visa checks underscores a Government that will take advantage of any opportunity to represent itself as the strongman protecting us from the 'illegal' hordes threatening to destabilise Australia.
The fact that the Government would pause in light of such a visceral tragedy, blasted into public consciousness in such horrific fashion, to make a subtle distinction on the kinds of Syrian asylum seekers it would be willing to consider is callous.
It speaks to the depths it will go to in order to stoke fears of the brown Muslim hordes threatening our pristine white borders.
It doesn't take much to read between the lines of random visa checks and the prioritisation of Christians. People like us only, please.
The image of Aylan underscores the vulnerability of those fleeing, their powerlessness in the face of a political and military machinery that punishes and paints them as threats. It is a powerful image that threatens the curtain of abstraction, silence and othering that has come to characterise the rhetoric around refugees.
This otherising of refugees, the destruction of their humanity, allows travesties such as our detention regime, regularly exposed as rife with reports of sexual assault, violence, suicide and depression to continue with impunity.
When it becomes a crime for employees to talk publicly about what happens in detention centres with the passing of the Border Force Act, when refugees live in fear of speaking to journalists, with access a constant issue, the result is an abstraction. It is an easy to demonise an abstraction.
Aylan's picture has blazed onto the soul of the nation the reality of the human. This child's death must inspire us to look beyond categories of race and religion and towards a common humanity.
The most powerful threat to an abstraction is the power of the singular. A child just like yours, with blue shorts and sandals.
As Persian poet Rumi said:
Not a Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen, Not any religion... first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.
Sarah Malik is Sydney-based journalist and writer. You can follow her on Twitter @sarahbmalik or her website sarahbmalik.com.
Topics: refugees, unrest-conflict-and-war, islam, christianity
First posted
Comments (269)
Comments for this story are closed.
Himself:
07 Sep 2015 4:31:13pm
So Sarah ,
You have underlined how this government has failed on all fronts with the refugee ,asylum seeker problems , let's say I fully agree with all that you have written , what's your solution ? How many refugees should we take ? , how do we stop the people smugglers , how do we protect our borders from those we DONT want here , I read nothing . How do we help our own needy who are starving on the streets and there are plenty , what do we do about our homeless ? , are these poor Syrians , in more need than our own .?
A problem for the world , pointing the finger at one person or party is not fixing it is it?
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John51:
07 Sep 2015 4:56:26pm
Himself, what a sad argument. The only group of people in this country who have a real right to that argument are the Aboriginal people of this country, yet I see few if any of them running that argument.
Every group of people who came to settle in this country ran the same argument. The Aboriginal people had the same argument about boat people coming here when the British sent out their convicts. The Convicts has the same argument about the free settlers from Britain and elsewhere who came out here after them.
Than we had the British settlers having the same argument about non-British settlers coming out here followed on by every ethnic group that has come to settle in this country. We took in great lot of refugees from Britain and War torn Europe after World War 11. And than we opened our arms to refugees from Vietnam after the Vietnam war, or at least some of us did.
Sadly for some we have now become a country that prefers to be mean and nasty to refugess seeking to come here. Unless they are of Aboriginal decent they were allowed to come here, many being decendants of people coming as refugees from past wars, many being decendents of economic refugees from Britain, Europe and other countries.
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Himself:
07 Sep 2015 5:30:51pm
John , what a sad argument ??? , you say , I in fact am asking the author some very valid questions ,now I ask you the same , answer my questions please , don't tell me what I should do or should do according to you , because that's no argument is it , it do what I say .
Again don't point the finger , give me solutions , my position is well known has never changed on asylum seekers slash refugees
And to add a something John , I in fact wasn't born in Australia and was subjected to the usual stuff when I arrived here as 14 year old , and It was soon realised this stuff being thrown at me was basically good natured as it still is , so keep your supposedly mean and nasty Australians in the cupboard mate , it might be there in the small minority but not most of us.
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bobtonnor:
07 Sep 2015 5:56:00pm
take 30,000 a year and then when any turn up on boats or planes, evaluate quickly and either accept or return...there you go problem solved..how hard was that?
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Aussie Sutra:
07 Sep 2015 6:18:16pm
And when a million turn up?
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the yank:
07 Sep 2015 9:50:01pm
Do the same.
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sleepykarly:
08 Sep 2015 8:47:01am
Aussie Sutra,
If a million turn up, we should find out who is the logistical genius who manages that miracle of logistics and get him to run our public transport systems. It just ain't possible without the resources of a rather large nation-state behind it.
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 6:29:32pm
I guess it will help the employment problem having a horde of people trying to determine status for people who routinely "lose" any papers as to who they are. Doesn't help the budget bottom line though. Then we can throw in a whole bunch of lawyers to support these people who don't qualify but are happy to make themselves rich doing so.
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havasay:
08 Sep 2015 3:40:03pm
Bev they dont 'lose' their papers and im sick to the back teeth with this ignorant claim
What do you suppose they do ? Try to avoid the ISIS and Allied bombing while they pop down to the local Syria Post office to collect their passport and 'conveniently lose' it on route out of a country that is being bombed back to the stone age ? What part of 'their country is no longer functioning' dont people understand ????
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 4:33:55pm
The problem with your line of questioning, havasay, is that it conflicts with the known facts. A virtual sea of "lost" documentation is being found in the wake of "migrants" in Europe.
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chalkie:
07 Sep 2015 9:03:33pm
If Senator Leyonhjelm is correct, and if each 5000 additional refugees costs $1 billion, then 30 000 will cost a lazy $6b.
Leyonhjelm argues this should come from the foreign aid budget - it is for foreigners, after all - but this number would wipe it out completely.
"just take more" is another of the simple, obvious and wrong solutions that cause other problems.
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sleepykarly:
08 Sep 2015 8:51:25am
chalkie,
It only costs that much because this government likes to spend up big to keep everything offshore and top secret. Do the sums! That's $200,000 per head!
It could be done for less than a tenth of that amount if asylum-seekers were processed on shore, and even less if in the meantime they were provided with meaningful employment that unionists would prefer not to do themselves. There are any number of jobs in the bush that need to be done but we don't have the money or the unskilled bodies to do them; and that's not counting the skilled ones that could help administer such projects.
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chalkie:
08 Sep 2015 10:29:26am
sleepykarly,
I think the cost calculation is nett costs over the next few years: welfare, support, schooling and health for what are often endemically unemployed groups, averaged out as group.
Unlike economic migrants who have skills and health, deeply traumatised people are going to be costly basket cases for life - and this cost needs to be noted in any discussion of huge increases in refugee intakes.
Offshore processing is just another, on-top, cost to this, not instead of this cost.
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lazarus:
08 Sep 2015 9:51:36am
Chalkie, it may cost $6 bil if you house them on Manus and Nauru, otherwise it will be very much cheaper.
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the yank:
08 Sep 2015 4:26:45pm
From 1820 to 1930 25 million Europeans immigrated to the USA. they just got on boats and came.
It was this boom in migration that helped provide the USA with the skills to make it into the powerhouse it has become.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 11:54:55am
Your "solution" is no solution at all, bobtonnor. Most source countries, with the exception of countries like Sri Lanka, do not accept the return of rejected asylum applicants.
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Econ:
07 Sep 2015 6:34:12pm
Himself .... you still have to answer the question "How cruel are we prepared to be to achieve our aim"
Would we stop at locking them up indefinitely or turning them around, or would we go further with live ammunition.
We do have a prime minister who does not have any limitations with a mind that changes at every turn.
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Himself:
07 Sep 2015 8:07:57pm
econ
I was unaware that I needed to answer your questions , usually I afford those who ask with answers , maybe the comments were closed or the moderator does not show my response with our last conversation.
So the first question , is no we don't lock them up indefinitely , and we don't,
Second question , turning them around is a better solution than the prior effort of open borders , drownings and funding the disgusting people smugglers.
Third question , live ammunition is a good solution for the people smugglers , however you don't mean that do you ? You are implying that anyone including me who might not agree with your views some how advocate murder , which is an awful lot of political bias for your side mate and could be almost bordering on hysterical .
As far as our prime minister and his performance is simply a personnel thing and opinion.
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RMD:
07 Sep 2015 10:47:44pm
We are not scared of them drowning or otherwise dying en route.
We are scared of them arriving.
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John51:
07 Sep 2015 8:03:27pm
If we go down the path that some start the argument off with that there are millions of refugees and it is out of our capacity to take them all we do is create an excuse to do nothing. If we go down the Abbott LNP path has of demonising asylum seekers we also create our own excuse of doing nothing as Abbott has done. So the first step is to ignore these lazy excuses although they could be called very much worse than that.
At the end of World War 11 Australia had a debt well in excess of a 120% of GDP yet Australia created one of the largest immigration phases of its history. We should also note that a substantial percentage of those immigrants were the refugees of Europe many of them coming from countries that we had just been at war with. So we should not allow the arguement of our current debt, about a fifth of debt to GDP of that period, or the fact that these are refugees that we are talking about as an excuse to do nothing.
If we put aside all of those excuses that are too often used than we can actually look at what is truely possible for us to do as to number of refugees that we could take in. Abbott says no increase in our current numbers of overall refugee intake. Labor has made aone off proposal of 10,000 refugees, while the Greens have proposed 20,000 increase to our refugee intake. Going on the history of this country when we have taken in substantial numbers of refugees after particular I can't see why we can't at aminimum take in at least the 20,000 that the Greens proposed.
Of course that is only part of the picture as it is also very much about the support we give to the countries around Syria who have had the greatest influx of refugees. If they aren't getting the support they need is it any wonder these refugees look to further afield for a better life for them and their family.
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Trev:
08 Sep 2015 10:11:40am
John 51, at the end of the war we accepted like minded people, not ones who view our lifestyles as evil and wish to apply their brand of lifestyle upon us.
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John51:
08 Sep 2015 4:31:29pm
Trev, like minded people. Do you have any idea about the Second World War. As I have already said we were willing to take in people who we had just fought a very brutal war against with somewhere between 50 to 70 million people killed.
The Second World War and the slaughter of people puts the Middle East and ISIS in the pale in comparison. Yet people who were at war with each other and I don't just mean Australian's and those who fought on the Axis side. I also mean that many of the refugees from Europe had been at war with and victims of each other and now they found themselves living and working with each other in Australia.
As with those post Word War 11 refugees thos refugees who would like to come here now are simply looking for a new and better life from the violence that they have experienced.
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Roger:
08 Sep 2015 10:11:25am
A picture of the dead body of a little boy whose family were seeking safety - except they we not. They had lived in safety for 3 years in Turkey. He died because his father wanted better dental treatment. When will the media stop trying to brainwash us?
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mack:
08 Sep 2015 11:25:16am
The family supposedly did live in Turkey for three years. It turns out that they were Syrian Kurds.
Now we are told that the UNHCR - for reasons known only to themselves - will not process Kurds in Turkey. Then we are told that while Turkey is a UN Refugee Convention signatory, it has chosen not to ratify the associated "protocols".
This means that Turkey will resettle refugees from Europe, but will not resettle refugees from the Middle East (or anywhere else).
Finally, we are told that Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries on the planet, has taken precisely zero refugees from Syria - something to do with Syrians being majority Shia Muslims, and Saudis being majority Sunni Muslims.
So the UN refugee system is broken, local countries offer protection but not resettlement (or in the case of the Saudis, neither), and yet this UN turkey argues that it's our problem?
A silly question: what happened to the wave of sympathy offered by the chattering classes on The Drum to the Rohinyas a few short weeks ago?
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 4:35:50pm
The answer is quite straightforward, mack: Rohinyas are no longer the cause de jour for those wanting to display their supposed moral superiority.
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John:
07 Sep 2015 10:55:50pm
Rubbish John51, we have every right to protect ourselves currently regardless of your protestations of what our ancestors did.
The facts are that most Australians are very wary of Muslims as a whole, not individually though. Individually they are people the same as everyone else, but as a group, they have proven time and again to be problematic simply because of their religious doctrine.
Your argument in relation to Aboriginals is also logically flawed in respect to them having come here themselves.
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lazarus:
08 Sep 2015 9:57:46am
John, for John51's argument to be logically flawed the aborigines would have had to displace someone themselves, who would that have been?
We have had Muslims in Australia for 200 years, remember The Ghan, and we are still surviving with their presence. You can't protect yourself from your own stupidity.
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John:
08 Sep 2015 11:37:31am
No Lazarus, the premise of his argument was not that people were displaced, but that we all immigrated here, and the only people who should have cause to be upset would be the Aboriginals. I was correctly pointing out that the Aboriginals are not part of the woodwork so to speak as they came here just like everyone else did.
Now you move onto the topic of Muslims and just as you incorrectly assessed the part about Aboriginals you either expertly miss the point, or are trying to surreptitiously re-frame the argument to suit your purpose. The point is not about how long Muslims have been here, but the percentage in relation to total population, this is clearly stated in my previous post.
You can show no examples of where Muslim populations in countries have increased and that there have not been problems as they try to progressively impose their thinking and their ways.
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lazarus:
08 Sep 2015 2:10:20pm
Show me the facts and figures, Muslim migration has been on the increase since the 1970's yet they don't seem to be over-represented in crime figures. White people still commit most of the crime and are the largest numbers in jail.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 4:48:41pm
If we were to accept your line of arguing then there is no problem at all with the rate of Indigenous incarceration, lazarus, as "White people still commit most of the crime and are the largest numbers in jail." The question is whether a given demographic has a higher level of representation in prison than they do in the wider community. In New South Wales, the Australian state with the highest number of Muslim residents, 9% of prisoners are Muslim even though only 3% of New South Welshmen in general are, an imprisonment rate three times higher than their general presence in that state's community. That rate pales in comparison to some other jurisdictions, such as France. Muslims make up 70% of the French prison population, but only 8% of the general population, an imprisonment rate almost 9 times higher than their general presence in the French community.
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John51:
08 Sep 2015 4:37:05pm
John, what rubbish. Go and have a look at the statistics of violence in this country. Little of it comes from those of muslim background. I very much doubt that from a percentage wise no more violence in this country is accorded to those of muslim background to any other religious or ethnic background.
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earl:
08 Sep 2015 1:14:08pm
The simplest solution is to provide very limited welfare for refugees - ie. limited to 3 months. Let them work for their keep. Unfortunately the unions would not allow this to happen. If unskilled labor enters the country this would drive wages down, i.e. they'd take all the cleaning, fruit picking and menial jobs. By cutting off welfare, the community costs are actually minimal and we can accommodate a million of them if needed. The main costs to refugees is in welfare. Cut that out and the problem is solved.
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 3:18:29pm
"The main costs to refugees is in welfare. Cut that out and the problem is solved."
Only if you want to be simplistic about it.
The impact of people who need support not getting it can be significantly greater than just giving them the support in the first place.
What do hungry, sick, penniless, jobless or homeless people do when they can't access food, medical care, employment or housing ? They rarely just go away and die - they usually resort to crime and other desperate and non-legitimate means to survive. And while I'm not quoting a specific statistic here - it is usually the case that a dollar spent in preventing someone from resorting to crime (and other abuses of the system) saves at least ten dollars in dealing with it when they do.
Think of welfare as a cost saving measure - it diverts people from more expensive behaviour and it stimulates economic activity.
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earl:
08 Sep 2015 4:48:54pm
Why do people always say that crime is the last resort?
Do we have such low opinion of human pride and dignity that if we had to we would just steal? That is the mindset that we are all forced by circumstances to be failures rather than having the strength to be dignified. If people are desperate most decent people would do whatever work was available rather than resort to crime. Your view of welfare as a means of crime prevention is a way of saying people have given away their responsibility to society and can claim whatever they do is because of other's fault in not looking after them. I say that this is just lazy stereotyping. By far the majority of true refugees would be willing to clean toilets, move rubbish and do the most menial task you can imagine for a living if they had to rather than resort to crime.
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TombeiTheMist:
08 Sep 2015 10:54:13am
Having been around the planet a bit lately the perception of govt here is not a good look. A right wing govt big on secets, uniformed squads of military like operational units protecting our borders, mean spirited and unAustralian according to many. Right wing Australia? Come on Aussie come on.
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Dazza:
08 Sep 2015 11:43:30am
Q1 - we should take as many as we can based upon our capacity to house and care for.
Q2 - we charge people smugglers with people smuggling by engaging with the countries the smugglers reside in.
Q3 - we arrest those who arrive without lawful authority (we are not currently being invaded by another nation)
Q4 - our needy are helped by improving our domestic response to the homeless.
Q5 - yes, many Syrians are in far more need than our own. Unless of course I missed the reports of Australian cities being bombed, men being beheaded and women being sold enmasse as sex slaves.
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Q...:
08 Sep 2015 3:40:15pm
@Himself,
Why does Sarah have to write an article addressing what you want? It may be vital that solutions are proffered but it's also important to critique such plans.
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iain russell:
07 Sep 2015 4:32:07pm
I am sorry but it is entirely reasonable. Muslims would surely be happier in a caring, sharing Islamic environment, such as the ISIS controlled ME. Christians are welcome here with open arms, as they won't be slaughtered, raped and tortured as they would be in the aforesaid ISIS controlled ME. What's hard to understand about that? Fraser left an indelible scar on the Australian psyche with his open arms to Lebanese Muslim 'refugees' in the mid 70s. We suffer the consequences to this minute. Never again.
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Trevor M:
07 Sep 2015 4:49:59pm
Firstly, not all Muslims are alike, and being Muslim is no guarantee of meeting with the approval of ISIS.
Second, many Lebanese are Christian rather than Muslim. Christians make up about 40% of the Lebanese population, and I seem to recall seeing that Christians were even more common amongst those who came to Australia.
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John:
07 Sep 2015 11:05:05pm
Trevor, no not all Muslims are alike, but this is a very weak argument because we are not talking about the individual, but the group as a whole. It is easy to point out individuals who are lovely people, and even fanatics when on their own in a social situation can be great people.
The issue is how are they as a whole, and as a whole, the evidence is there for you to see. The greater the percentage of the population that they become the greater the problems we can expect to experience.
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Fidanza:
08 Sep 2015 11:20:25am
"no not all Muslims are alike, but this is a very weak argument because we are not talking about the individual, but the group as a whole"
John, as a whole the 500,000 Muslims in Australia are law-abiding, peaceful, loyal, industrious and friendly. It is easy to point out individuals who are bad people, but as a whole the Muslim community consists of good people. Far more Muslims migrate to Australia as "skilled migrants" than as refugees.
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BGGC:
08 Sep 2015 4:14:07pm
True, however the number of Australian Muslims who have gone to join ISIS to hack peoples heads off, rape them and burn them alive is from memory more than any other western country, if not right up there near the top.
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al:
08 Sep 2015 8:20:07am
The experience of Europe in assimilating Muslim migrants has been a failure. We too have had problems with those who have sought our protection ( re: those on terrorist charges who were refugees to our country).
It would be prudent to only accept those from Christian minorities...at least they will be unlikely to turn on us in the future.
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pragmatist2014:
08 Sep 2015 5:30:34pm
Better still, only accept athiests and there will be no prejudices and sectarian trouble as 'most' of the athiests I know tend to also be humanists and have a great respect for people as human beings.
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Snufkin:
08 Sep 2015 9:08:08am
Good point Trevor. My sister had a Lebanese christian boy friend some years ago. His family were all very impressive - hard workers, high achievers.
I think Syrian refugees whether muslims or christians, would similarly be an overall benefit to our country.
There is however a valid argument that we should try to take those likely to be most at risk.
I am unsure of what humanitarian contribution nearby muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia are making to this crisis. Are the Saudis taking in asylum seekers? If so, is there any religious discrimination in their intake?
As far as I know and I could of course be mistaken, Saudi citizenship is reserved for muslims, (possibly) only sunni ones?
Are the Saudis helping financially, using their considerable, reliably replenished store of petro-dollars?
Have a good one.
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Yet Another Heretic:
07 Sep 2015 4:54:10pm
"Christians are welcome here with open arms, as they won't be slaughtered, raped and tortured as they would be in the aforesaid ISIS controlled ME"
Of course christians will not be raped or tortured here.
Unless, they are children in a "christian" institution, such as a church, or, a "christian" school.
Then, they are prey.
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 5:53:03pm
I would suggest there are far more children suffering abuse (non sexual 85% of total) up to and including murder by being returned to dysfunctional mothers by child "protection" authorities. It dwarfs the number sexually abused.
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 3:31:07pm
Yeah but those dysfunctional mothers have not set themselves up as God's agents on earth and opened up child care institutions.
Yes, we have a problem with parents who have kids but are ill equipped to raise them - but that's a totally different kettle of fish to a church taking kids voluntarily then systematically abusing them and covering it up for decades.
The church does not get to reduce the magnitude of it's crime by comparing themselves to hopeless parents caught in a cycle of disadvantage.
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Batsnest:
07 Sep 2015 5:59:43pm
That is low. Will Christians fleeing the middle East be subject to the abuse they suffer now, in Australia? I mean really?
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 6:14:17pm
The real aim here is to attack Christians what happens to children is just a leverage point.
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whohasthefish:
07 Sep 2015 11:06:39pm
Whilst I don't condone the attack on Christians here Bev, I don't support your attacks on Muslims either.
The real question here is "Are some refugee's somehow better that others?"
The poem by Rumi as quoted in the article is so self evident in its simplicity it is hard to ignore.
"Not a Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen, Not any religion... first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being."
I am not sure what the rest of those on this blog saw in that terrible photograph but I saw a lifeless little boy, I didn't see a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, I saw a beautiful little boy, the same age, the same size and the same innocence as my 3 year old Grandson. Our response should have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with humanity.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 12:00:50pm
The statistics are clear, whohasthefish, and they show that some refugees are better that others. Compare, for example, the workplace participation rates of Ethiopian and Afghan refugees in Australia.
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 3:42:28pm
Perhaps but to say 'no' to an individual only because of the behavioural traits of an arbitrarily constructed group of which they are statistically a member is the very definition of unfair discrimination.
So, there may be members of statistically "bad" refugee groups who would make excellent refugees, and using profling to rule them out is not fair. We need a way to filter the good from the bad refugees that doesn't involve profiling them.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 4:23:26pm
At some point you are going to have to "profile" some groups, sean. Afghan refugees have a 9% employment rate and an almost 95% welfare dependency rate. At some point you have to draw a line and say "No more".
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antman:
07 Sep 2015 5:34:44pm
I don't particularly want any more Christians here either. It seems that right-wing Christians in the Government are responsible for its most distasteful and regressive policies.
Perhaps it's time we prioritised those who don't bring any baggage or prejudice rooted in centuries old supernatural dogma.
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 6:17:00pm
I would suggest Islam still rooted in the 7th century is far less acceptable than a Christianity which have moved on from the 7th century.
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lazarus:
08 Sep 2015 10:04:56am
Tell that to gays in Uganda, they have some wonderful Christians there acting like they are firmly rooted in the 1st century. Or those wonderful Serb Orthodox Christians who killed 8000 unarmed Muslims, very 21st century.
People may use religion as a fig leaf but it is their willingness to do anything however revolting to get and keep power that is the root cause of most of the world's problems.
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Gulab:
08 Sep 2015 1:06:04pm
Yep. In my observations and experience, as a rule of thumb, culture comes before religion regardless of religious orientation.
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Batsnest:
07 Sep 2015 6:27:28pm
Who would that be Antman?
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chalkie:
07 Sep 2015 9:22:41pm
It is ironic that the Greens are most in favour of allowing into Australia thousands more of those who hate most of the Green's social agenda: gender equality, secularism and gay rights, let alone abortion or euthenasia. Pew international has some chilling survey findings about how Middle East Muslims view pretty much the entire Green platform
Are they treading a fine ideological line, or just plain stupid?
Also, apparently population places no pressure on the environment either. All of the Green's values are disposable in their headlong rush for millions more non-Europeans.
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whohasthefish:
07 Sep 2015 11:22:33pm
You have no idea or understanding as to the personal beliefs of these people "chalkie" and you have no idea or understanding of the Greens either. These people are not the stereotypical murderous fundamentalists of your imaginings or else they would be fighting for either ISIS or Assad but instead the vast majority are just ordinary peace loving folks who are looking for a compassionate and safe haven for the time being until they can return to their loved homeland. They are a very diverse lot of farmers, grocers, shop keepers, carpenters, electricians, doctors, public servants, inventors etc... they are just ordinary people requiring help.
Every time you look at your iPhone mate, get it into your head that Steve Jobs was a Syrian Migrants son. You really do have no idea do you? These are people, not religious emblems.
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chalkie:
08 Sep 2015 10:49:44am
Sigh, red-faced blustering simply cannot make awkward reality disappear. It is not my personal beliefs that inform my views, rather evidence.
Here's a few bits of reality: Pew does international surveys into a lot of things, including Muslim attitudes towards a range of social and religious views. Using pretty reasonable survey sample sizes, they form overviews of general attitudes. And the findings are quite simply hostile to the Green agenda.
Alas, Syria is not surveyed, but a pretty good gist might come from neighbors Iraq and Jordan which have:
- big support for sharia law (91% and 71%)
- women should be forced to wear a veil (55% each)
- a woman should always obey her husband (92 and 80%)
- a woman should have the right to divorce her husband (just 14 and 22%)
- alcohol is morally wrong (86 and 82%)
- honour killings of women are never justified for just 22 and 34% of respondents
- stoning for adultery is a winner with 58% and 67% thinking its right
- and for leaving Islam (ie freedom of religion) 42 and 82% think death is the just punishment.
Given these huge numbers, it is just idiotic to think that ONLY those refugees that do not think in this way have left for Europe.
Now, by all means offer better indications of a nation's views but do at least try to go beyond 'I reckons' in important things like opening our borders.
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Keith Lethbridge Snr:
08 Sep 2015 12:34:25pm
G'day Chalkie.
As you say old fella, that really is a bit of a worry.
Even so, & even though I reckon Australia is already over-populated (living in ecological deficit) I would still happily welcome every Muslim who arrives here under the approval of our elected government. What I won't happily accept are self-selected immigrants, whether Muslim, Christian, atheist or anything else. (Was there ever a welcomed invasion?)
A wise man once said: "We will decide who comes to this country & under what circumstances."
Regards,
Cobber
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 4:15:34pm
Chalkie,
These stats worry me too. Not sure I have an answer, but I'm fairly sure I don't like an answer that involves treating the few that don't want Sharia law etc etc in the same way as the ones that do.
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DangerMouse:
08 Sep 2015 10:43:55am
chalkie, the greens and those like them are simply useful idiots who will be turned on at the drop of a hat by those they support.
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 3:56:04pm
That might suit your prejudice, DM, to characterise the Greens and their supporters that way but that's all it is - cuddling up to your prejudice because it's nice to believe you're right and your intellectual opponents are idiots.
I'm a Green supporter and I'm fairly confident that while I'm no genius, I'm not an idiot either. And looking around at Stephen De Natali and Adam Bandt and other key Greens, I don't think they are idiots either. I disagree with Tony Abbot and his crew on most things, but I don't think they're idiots either.
In fact the only people I really doubt on that front are the ones who simply cannot imagine that someone can fundamentally disagree with them and their world view and yet NOT be mentally deficient in some way. That's the kind of thinking that makes me wonder about who's an idiot and who's not.
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 4:12:00pm
"All of the Green's values are disposable in their headlong rush for millions more non-Europeans"
"Are they treading a fine ideological line, or just plain stupid?"
You assume too much.
1. The Greens are prepared to help people in need who don't agree with their principles. They are not blind, they just prioritise immediate urgent need and don't believe that only those who agree with them deserve help
2. Population pressure is not affected by accepting refugees. The people already exist, they are not created upon entering Australia. Australia's population pressure is an issure though, however the Greens (again) prioritise immediate urgent need ahead of addressing population pressure. There are other ways to deal with population, so it's not like we can't accept more people AND address population pressure.
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John:
07 Sep 2015 11:05:54pm
It would be lovely if we could order only atheists, but i don't think you are going to achieve that.
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NewSpeaker:
07 Sep 2015 6:07:16pm
If you think 'Muslims'* would prefer to live under ISIS then you don't know any Muslims.
*Muslims being a term to describe a diverse range of beliefs held a diverse number of people.
More to the point, they've clearly decided theu don't want to live under ISIS that's why they've left their towns and homes.
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Rocket:
08 Sep 2015 10:22:40am
Agree Iain , western liberal secular democracy and Islam simply dont work together - no ones fault , just a fact
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ateday:
07 Sep 2015 4:32:39pm
Sorry Sarah, it is sadly about overpopulation.
Pure and simple.
A problem with no apparent solution.
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silver fox:
07 Sep 2015 5:57:03pm
Dead right ateday: population
Whether its Sudanese, Rohingans, Sri Lankans and others, they all have many equivalent stories of a drowned toddler.
The latest story has got traction in the media, but there have been thousands and millions are coming.
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ateday:
07 Sep 2015 6:08:52pm
It is a plague of humanity.
And of great proportions.
And will get greater.
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Aussie Sutra:
07 Sep 2015 6:20:44pm
Exactly right. It's tragic. But we cannot fix it. We can contribute to helping provide safe haven for those displaced people by contributing money towards refugee camps. Destroying our own society is not an option, as Merkel has made it in Germany. I would like to be assured though, that no Australian is homeless before we start providing homes for the rest of the world.
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 6:32:21pm
As over population spirals out of control exponentially this is the beginning of the food wars, the living space laws and the resource wars. Expect worse.
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salvarsan:
07 Sep 2015 8:20:29pm
Right on, Bev. So many people cannot see it.
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ateday:
07 Sep 2015 8:30:10pm
Makes me glad I do not have children or grandchildren.
What future would they have?
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Erick Quang:
07 Sep 2015 9:14:40pm
According to certain prophecies the third world war will sort that problem out. After that China and the US will run the world as it should be run.
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 4:24:16pm
Maybe Bev, but rich countries almost without exception have no (internal) population control issues - most are either neutral or in population decline. The reasons are many and subject to debate, but most agree that there seems to be a strong correlation between people becoming rich and educated and not having many kids.
So if we make everyone rich (rich = Australian working class equivalent) and educated, we fix population pressure. Again, there's a range of pressures that affect our ability to pull the third world up to where we live, it's not one thing - but the Catholic Church is not helping in any way, by imposing harmful religious dogma on people - like anti-contraception.
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Keith Lethbridge Snr:
08 Sep 2015 12:46:55pm
G'day Ateday.
Wise words old fella. Perpetual growth is not sustainable.
And yet, Population is not even an agenda item. The UN would do well to recommend a Population Policy from every country, but it prefers to ignore the issue.
However, when you suggest that the problem is without solution, I disagree. It's simply a political matter that we have the ability to correct just as soon as we have the will. No shootings are required, only the will to move towards a better future for all.
Meanwhile, the example Australia should set is to have our own Population Policy, to accept only the same number of immigrants as emigrants from the previous year, to stop bribing people to breed faster & to reward those who keep their numbers within Policy recommendations. Let other countries do whatever they wish, but let it be known that if over-population causes them problems, we will not be mopping up their excesses. Go forth & stabilise!
Regards,
Cobber
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 4:32:06pm
I agree there Cobber, but one of the BIG obstacles is that our goverments (all of them) are addicted to growth - they just will not agree in any way that a sustain model can work - they say that if we don't grow we get left behind. That's economic growth they're talking about but they link it so strongly to population growth that there's no difference.
I think it's crap - it's been shown to be untrue, but at the same time constant growth does yield better economic numbers than a model based on sustainability. We'd be fine without constant growth but not as fine as with it. Of course that's only looking at the economic numbers, which is what government do - it doesn't look at the impact on people of overcrowding.
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Tory Boy:
08 Sep 2015 1:52:07pm
There are plenty of solutions to the population problem; stop IVF, stop immigration, stop expanding our cities, stop overseas aid, education, education, education.
What is lacking is someone with the will and foresight to stop humanity falling over the edge of the cliff.
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Mike (the other one):
08 Sep 2015 2:56:15pm
An earthly Amen to both the above comments.
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Puddleduck:
07 Sep 2015 4:40:52pm
Of course it makes sense. Islam as an ideology hasn't integrated successfully into Australia. And ISIS has been saying they're sending militants in with the refugees. Why take that risk?
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Desert Woman:
07 Sep 2015 6:11:51pm
Puddleduck, Islam hasn't integrated successfully into Australia? We have had Islam, that is the people who believe in it (note the difference?), for generations now since the first Afghani camel drivers came here.
Many of the people walking around in your suburb would be believers in Islam but you would never know it, particularly if they are male. They look and sound just like every other Aussie.
As for your comment about ISIS sending in militants disguised as refugees, you don't seem to have much faith in our magnificent Border Force.
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Lee:
07 Sep 2015 8:03:45pm
Desert Woman.
On January 1, 1915 two Broken Hill men, both former camel drivers, armed themselves with rifles, an homemade flag bearing Islamic insignia and a large supply of ammunition and launched a surprise attack on the Picnic Train about 3 kilometres outside Broken Hill.
The train carried about 1200 Broken Hill residents to Silverton where a picnic to celebrate the new year was to take place.
The two Muslim men, Gool Mohamed originally a Pashtun tribesman from Afghanistan and Mullah Abdullah from what is known today as Pakistan, decided to wage jihad against Australian infidels after Australia and the Ottoman Empire officially joined the opposite sides in the WWI.
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Dove:
08 Sep 2015 6:48:17am
Just to keep you up to speed, on the 25th April 1915, thousands of heavily armed Australian troops landed in Turkey with the express purpose of killing as many Turks as they could and taking over the country. It was called the First World War
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Trev:
08 Sep 2015 10:21:03am
Exactly, it was a war. It may be difficult for you to comprehend but in a war that was not started by our side, people are killed and it is usually good for the home team that they are not ours.
The islamists decided to spring a gutless attack on unarmed civilians, Sound familiar, dove?
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dman:
08 Sep 2015 12:57:06pm
blaah, sorry Dove, my reply was meant to be for Desert Woman.
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Keith Lethbridge Snr:
08 Sep 2015 1:02:19pm
G'day Lee.
In my humble opinion, it's not really important whether people are Muslim, atheist, Christian or anything else. However, it's very important that, as a country, we stabilise human population within the limits of our natural resources. At the moment, I believe we are at least 8 million too many & rely on non-renewable wheeling & dealing to keep ourselves going.
When the land comes under stress, humans come under stress, & then they break into warring factions. If we desire a multi-cultural, harmonious democracy, continual growth of population is a definite threat. (Ask the koalas.) Of course, I could be wrong. It's just an opinion.
Regards,
Cobber
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Lee:
07 Sep 2015 6:59:28pm
It's inevitable that there will be future murderous radicals amongst these waves entering Europe. Can anyone dispute that?
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Heligoland:
07 Sep 2015 8:12:42pm
It is possible, though not certain; experience tells that it is more likely to be their children, or anyone's children. Stopping these refugees will not stop or even reduce the likelihood of terrorism, and would you send away hundreds of thousands for fear that a dozen might try to harm us?
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Lee:
07 Sep 2015 8:37:16pm
'would you send away hundreds of thousands for fear that a dozen might try to harm us?'
No, but it must be understood that this is the reality faced by the West who has already accepted millions and is being asked to do more. The West is being asked to throw open it's doors to waves of unidentified foreigners. Many are genuine, but many are dubious and will live out the rest of their lives in the West as parasitic malcontents. The West has a duty of care to its citizens too.
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TC:
08 Sep 2015 12:29:33pm
Anyone's children? Really?
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Tory Boy:
08 Sep 2015 1:54:03pm
Given that ISIS have made it perfectly clear that they intend to use this crisis to send their holy warriors into European nations I'd say it 100% a dead cert.
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Heligoland:
07 Sep 2015 8:12:49pm
It is possible, though not certain; experience tells that it is more likely to be their children, or anyone's children. Stopping these refugees will not stop or even reduce the likelihood of terrorism, and would you send away hundreds of thousands for fear that a dozen might try to harm us?
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Erick Quang:
07 Sep 2015 9:18:30pm
Australia does not owe these refugees a living. They are an extravagance we can no longer afford.
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ateday:
08 Sep 2015 8:40:49am
The world owes nobody a living.
Refugees or not.
You are the master of your own destiny.
Full stop.
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Joel:
08 Sep 2015 10:44:24am
During WWII, German refugees who fled to France, for example, were POWs effectively. They were treated fairly, but they weren't housed i the community and were returned as soon as the war ended.
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Nathan:
08 Sep 2015 8:22:47am
Isis has told us already in February this was going to happen. A wave of 500000 muslims sent to undermine western society. An isis spokesperson said happily yesterday that over 4 thousand terrorists are now in Europe ready to committ violent acts of jihad against non muslims.
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al:
08 Sep 2015 10:17:05am
...and the lefty luvvies fail to see this, or, choose to ignore it as an inconvenient fact.
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Keith Lethbridge Snr:
08 Sep 2015 12:51:06pm
G'day Al.
Some people will rejoice & blame us for some historical blunder, real or imagined.
Regards,
Cobber
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sean:
08 Sep 2015 4:49:51pm
... Or maybe they'll say they accept the additional risk posed because of the numbers of people in desperate need. They may say they are not prepared to become like ISIS in order to protect themselves from ISIS.
Every decision comes with risk. 2 Iraq wars, an Afghanistan war, a Syrian war, Lybia and so on - these activities can be argued to have contributed far more to the rise of radical Islam than accepting refugees - but we did them anyway and continue to do them.
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Peter Schmidt:
07 Sep 2015 4:44:11pm
The US support for the insurgency in Syria is not only a violation of international law but it has made the Syrian Civil War much more bloody and protracted then it would otherwise have been. Insurgencies don't normally drag on for years without the support of outside powers. ISIS, by far the most powerful of the insurgent groups is now an international menace.
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Desert Woman:
07 Sep 2015 4:45:15pm
Thanks Sarah. It take s a lot today to cut through the dehumanizing effects of constantly being bombarded by abstractions and of course, our simultaneous war against them. I have lost count of how many wars we are now fighting against abstract nouns, the war on drugs, the war on terror etc but we never stop to think of what all this is doing to our common humanity.
I would argue that it is one of the factors that is making modern life more fractious and hazardous that it ever was before. It has given rise to a generation that seriously seems to believe that if you click friend, you actually have one. And if you quote some old rubbish about the mess in the ME being the fault of those fleeing it, that is the truth.
Thank goodness we have not all been brainwashed by the seductions of abstraction and can still respond as humans. I believe we can still all regain our full humanity but we are going to have to fight for it.
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DangerMouse:
08 Sep 2015 10:50:55am
while you play with puppies and unicorns best get out of the way and let real people deal with the real world.
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bide and fecht:
08 Sep 2015 12:23:51pm
Real people......people like you? You're not real, you don't even consider refugees real....they're a means to achieve your end, the creation of Border Force and every other bully boy or girl that wants to push and pull people around and belittle others who don't measure up (but I really mean down) to your level...
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Zing:
07 Sep 2015 4:45:33pm
Catholics are being persecuted in Syria.
Refugee rights are only provided to people under threat of persecution. Ergo, picking out the Catholics means you're more likely to get a person who is fleeing from an actual threat to their life - and not just fleeing war or poverty in general.
That is all the Government meant. But as usual, it's been blown out of proportion by the leftie media. Just like a simple operation with Victoria Police was blown out into "brown shirts marching down the street and randomly searching people".
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Fred1:
07 Sep 2015 5:00:35pm
Zing this is about right. The Syrians are most at risk from IS as are the Christians and Shia.
Therefore they should be given priority for resettlement
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Hereandnow:
07 Sep 2015 6:52:20pm
If Muslims are suffering in Muslim lands, then God help the Christians there!
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otto von bismarck:
07 Sep 2015 5:41:02pm
Zing
with all due respect to your personal conservatism, you have it wrong on a couple of points.
Operation Fortitude was not blown out of the water by a leftie media beat-up, it was wrecked by Border Force's own declaration that they would be stopping people, checking papers, and visa-overstayers "would have nowhere to hide". Random stop-and-search is illegal in Australia, is more typical of ultra-conservative governments and repugnant to most Australians - as the flash-demonstration in Melbourne showed.
What the government meant has been said again and again by the PM and a variety of ministers. The PM himself - "a very sad, poignant image of children tragically dead at sea in illegal migration .. we have stopped that in Australia because we have stopped the illegal boats." That's not a humanitarian position, it's simply recitation of something the PM wants Australians to believe because he's got very little else going for him and his standing with the electorate is in free-fall.
As to the issue of Christians being given first dibs, it does make some purely pragmatic sense. I guess it also offends the egalitarian soul of some folk, and I believe in their right to say so. This is an opinion page, after all.
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 6:21:44pm
"Random stop-and-search is illegal in Australia"
No it is not. Police can stop you and ask for your name and address without stating a reason. They can also pull you over and search your car and do so mostly if the car has young people in it.
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otto von bismarck:
07 Sep 2015 10:48:15pm
Thanks for pointing out the exception to my generalisation. I am aware of the kind of thing you speak of, but I sort of hoped readers would understand I meant stop-and-search of the Gestapo kind. You know - the sort that can land you in prison or deported if you don't have the right travel-passes and permissions. But thanks anyhow.
:-)
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Mitor the Bold:
07 Sep 2015 6:36:21pm
"But as usual, it's been blown out of proportion by the leftie media"
I've never heard Twitter called that before - or perhaps to you these days 'leftie' is synonymous with 'democratic'. Life would be so much easier is Abbott suspended democracy as an emergency measure so he could put his radical program in place, don't you think? He's been softening us up for it - budget emergency, border emergency, citizenship emergency and now religious emergency. I personally think he's experiencing a competence emergency for the last two years and we're all beginning to suffer a social emergency as a result.
Anyone who doesn't swear allegiance to IS or Assad is being persecuted in Syria - it has little to do with being Christian. As long as Catholics convert they're OK, in that sense they're the same as everyone else.
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Zing:
08 Sep 2015 11:15:05am
"I've never heard Twitter called that before"
That's because I was referring to people - not a website.
"Life would be so much easier is Abbott suspended democracy as an emergency measure so he could put his radical program in place, don't you think?"
You're a working example of what I discussed, Mitor. You heard of reds under the beds? Well, it looks like you're afraid of brown shirts in your closet.
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raymond:
07 Sep 2015 4:52:01pm
Tony Abbott should be very careful about letting more of these people into Australia. We already have serious violent crime problems in our western suburbs.
Australians have to be protected surely, finally.
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Desert Woman:
07 Sep 2015 5:21:38pm
Raymond, you are blaming 'these people' - whoever they are - for violent crime in Western suburbs? Surely you are just confirming Sarah Maliks' observations about abstractions and dehumanizing as I think any appraisal of crime statistics would show a range of Aussies of all colours and creeds.
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whogoesthere:
07 Sep 2015 5:57:46pm
sometimes we have to generalise or else talking about anything is impossible.
I would say that, generally, Muslims from non Western countries are more socially conservative than say people (including Muslims) from Western countries.
As a socially progressive person, bringing in large numbers of people who probably are not, is a concern for me. To ignore this seems silly to me.
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sinic:
08 Sep 2015 9:24:26am
It has been pointed out, ad infinitum, that the introduction of a large community of people with views that differ substantially from those of the existing population leads to polarization of a society. Sweden is experiencing this at present, with the most popular political party now being a rightist anti-immigration party. The county also now has a large, largely unemployed and illiterate-in-Swedish Muslim underclass. As a result Sweden, a formerly content, progressive and united country, faces a very uncomfortable future. Strangely the favoured policies of progressives can lead to the opposite society to that they prefer.
There is a critical load of immigrants that a country can manage, dependent on numbers and cultural difference. Exceeding this is a recipe for disaster. Thus we could safely accept more refugees if we select those who best fit our existing society. We have always done this with other prospective immigrants.
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Charles:
08 Sep 2015 4:28:06pm
I wonder about this whole concept of trying merge cultures in a short span of time. If done gradually it would probably work out fine. But what I suspect now, is that there is some kind of social engineering involved with the end game being a social stalemate that 'invites' State intervention to quell the riot so to say.
In other words, by diluting any one culture in a society through immigration, the State effectively rules by dividing and conquering. With a population in no real agreement on a range of diverse issues, the State just does what it wants as soon as law and order break down.
Short story: State rules, OK?
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 6:23:11pm
I suggest you appraise yourself of the police and court stats.
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Andy B:
07 Sep 2015 11:11:41pm
your comments are inflammatory and lack any evidence of being remotely true. Ignorance can also be scary too.
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Trev:
08 Sep 2015 5:21:19pm
Check out the official stats for muslim participation in gangs of all colours. We are suck with our home bred scumbags but do we need to import more?
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Hereandnow:
07 Sep 2015 8:08:08pm
Desert Woman. What are your thoughts on the growing no go areas in European cities that have opened their arms to Muslim refugees. This is no alarmist shrill. These zones are growing in numbers and are dangerous for police, let alone the non Muslim natives of those countries. Sweden, for example, has over 50 of these zones now.
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lostatsea:
08 Sep 2015 4:33:45pm
hereandnow, you are right, no go zones in sweden. i can hardly believe it. not only that but according to swedenreport org, there is sharia zones and sharia police. police just do not enter some ghettos there any longer
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Alternatvue:
07 Sep 2015 4:55:25pm
We should not let the small-mindedness of the Government define Australia and Australians.
Nor the small-mindedness of the Opposition.
I do hope we are much finer people than they think of us as.
There is a displaced persons tragedy affecting people in their tens of millions around the world. Effects collateral to climate change and the playing out of political economic tensions could see that become hundreds of millions. The global response will define humanity for centuries. We may well be called upon to play a disproportionate part. We need to get our heads amd hearts into gear.
As a first step, could Australia not set itself as Jordan's helpmeet?
This small country is lifting far beyond its weight. We could do a great deal to lighten their burden and extend the comfort they are able to extend in the Middle East
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tc21:
07 Sep 2015 5:45:14pm
But they bring Islam with them and Australians do not want it.
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GrumpiSkeptic:
07 Sep 2015 5:08:12pm
Isn't it strange that we, the Christian (supposedly) nations, thought it was about time that those miserable Islamic nations needed a good dose of the values we hold dear. So we actively undermined the foundations of those nations.
Yes, those nations are rather distasteful to us in terms of human rights and all things we took for granted. But that was how "ORDER" was established in those nations. Brutality was actually the medicine needed to keep the nasty elements in those nations in check. Wow ! Not good enough for us. So we interfered, invaded, and just about anything to smash up the systems.
So what do we get ? Nothing much in terms of stability, peace and human rights, except tens of millions of refugees ! Alas, now these refugees are not good enough to seek refuge because they are not Christians?
Interesting enough that Germany and Austria, the two nations that played a big part in persecution of Jews, are doing the heaviest lifting to solve the crisis. That speaks a lot about a lesson being learned.
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 5:57:35pm
For how long?
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GrumpiSkeptic:
07 Sep 2015 6:33:35pm
800,000 and counting, is a lot longer than the grudging 10,000, "preferably" Christians, we offered?
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Bev:
07 Sep 2015 8:18:05pm
Hot off the presses. Already Europe is having doubts.
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Trev:
08 Sep 2015 5:23:56pm
"Yes, those nations are rather distasteful to us in terms of human rights and all things we took for granted."
"Rather distasteful", you have to be kidding, right?
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gbagdona:
07 Sep 2015 5:14:02pm
I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but what made this mass of people all of a sudden start this exodus? This is not refugees fleeing war but an invasion! These so-called refugees are not being checked for weapons, or explosives, where they came from, their affiliations. How many so-called islamist martyrs have infiltrated within this mass of people? Why are they so dead set against registering? Because they may be found out. That's why most have destroyed their passports.
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Aussie Sutra:
07 Sep 2015 6:23:47pm
It is an invasion. I am terrified for Europe and very grateful that a Liberal government in Australia had the guts to stop the invasion about to happen to us. And I say that having never voted Liberal in my life.
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Nathan:
08 Sep 2015 8:31:50am
Intelligence reports in February showed this is a planned isis attack on europe. They promised flotillas of muslims 500000 strong with trained terrorists amongst them. It is an invasion and they are not redugees. I believe at least the abc are calling them asylum seekers which they are.
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DangerMouse:
08 Sep 2015 10:56:09am
Europe was already struggling with integration, struggling economy and rent seekers. this is the straw that will break the camel's back. Europe as we understand it and know it is finished, sadly.
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Sinic:
08 Sep 2015 11:36:21am
The Schengen area (excluding Switzerland) is stuffed. Beggars are everywhere, even rural areas of Sweden, and social cohesion is breaking down. It is early days yet, but we progressives seem to have dug our own graves. A generous social security system cannot co-exist with open borders. Britain and Australia will be social security havens in the future, weirdly protected by conservative governments!
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Martin:
07 Sep 2015 5:38:49pm
Our refugee intake is some 13,000. Normal immigration is some 200,000-300,000.
Why not just cut the normal intake by 200,000 and allow refugees in instead?
Its highly likely many pf the refugees are as skilled as the people we currently bring in- and they have a greater need.
Whats so special about the people in the existing immigration program?
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cynicAL:
07 Sep 2015 6:11:30pm
what a great idea. I am fed up of all this rhetoric about Australia taking in high per population refugees - it is a lie and I would rather see places available to grow our population taken by people who really need a new home, and safety rather economic migrants. our country as it is now is so multicultural and until recently was very tolerant, indeed in many ways, embracing, of new cultures that it is time to do it again. let's bring in the 200,000 refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever they are fleeing from war and persecution, lets bring in a mix of religions, a mix of families and individuals, a mix of ages, genders, skills from among the refugees. Why are we not simply going to those massive refugee camps in Turkey and Syria and interviewing our prospective migrants (200 000-300 000) from there instead of the usual England, Europe, USA, NZ etc? Maybe hold back 20,000 spots for family reconciliations (some of which may well be refugees too)
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chalkie:
07 Sep 2015 9:36:08pm
Sure - and welcome to the Islamic Republic of Australia in a single generation.
Australia has 300 000 births per year, and to suggest Australia should add 300 000 Muslims a year is perhaps the more loony of the many cultural and social suicides proffered by well-meaning people who have little experience of the many nasty ones that came from the religions and cultures that wrecked the home countries of these millions of refugees.
I suspect that a good measure of the reluctance to support refugees is the well-grounded fear that so many of our fellow Australians are twits who would exchange a moment's warm inner glow for national destruction if given even a small chance.
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A Former Lefty:
07 Sep 2015 10:43:00pm
Not sure how you are going to take in a balance of genders or ages from those "fleeing" Syria, since it would appear that fighting age men outnumber women and children by at least 10 to 1. But just like with the boat arrival being mostly young males, the left didnt give one damn about gender or age balance then. And they wont now either!
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Conrad:
07 Sep 2015 6:34:26pm
Our immigration rate is about 200,000 pa too many quite frankly
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mike j:
08 Sep 2015 4:33:58pm
Not if you're of the certain generation (which shall remain nameless) that exploited our lands, shortchanged their children, spent all their savings, and now wants a broader tax base to support their own pensions.
They don't care about the future of Australia and never have.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 12:14:55pm
I cannot believe that I have to keep pointing this out. Martin, most immigrants to Australia are skilled immigrants who are specifically selected because they have skills Australian needs. They are not taken in the hopes that they have those skills, they are individually selected because of those skills. Why would we accept others in their place, people who have not demonstrated specific skills Australia needs? Your "facts" are not even facts. Immigration to Australia is about 180,000 per year, not 200,000 to 300,000.
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Wtf:
08 Sep 2015 12:42:36pm
The existing skilled migrants want to partake in a capitalist society with law and order. They do not want to undermine its values or impose their undemocratic legal systems on us. It is no coincidence the Western Nations progressed socially and economically over hundreds of years whereas those stuck in the 7th century continue to impose most of the human misery on the planet.
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Tory Boy:
08 Sep 2015 1:57:31pm
I'd say cut all immigration down to 20,000. We are full, our environment cannot handle current population levels never mind increasing it year on year.
As for what so special about normal immigrants, education and an ability to feed themselves rather than drain already stressed government resources for one.
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JMJ:
07 Sep 2015 5:45:57pm
Sarah, reports indicate that since October last year some 906 Muslim refugees & only 28 Christians out of the 700,000 fleeing persecution have been granted US visas. Why discriminate?
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Dove:
07 Sep 2015 7:54:45pm
That's an incorrect piece of rubbish doing the rounds in the pro-Christian, anti-Muslim media in the USA. It's been repeated in Christian Today, Jihad Watch and Sharia Unveiled. The fact is that Christians make up 61% of visas. Muslims, 10%. And that's from the State Department. Remember, everyone else has Google too
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Lee:
07 Sep 2015 8:47:25pm
Where have you been Dove. When was the last time you saw the plights of Christians in the ME aired in the mainstream US media? Obama doesn't give a hoot!
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Hereandnow:
07 Sep 2015 8:52:22pm
You're right, Dove, everyone else has Google too. How about you use it and learn just how anti Christian the US media is. I note the broadcasters you cite are not mainstream.
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mike j:
08 Sep 2015 4:37:11pm
61% of protection visas, or all visas?
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John:
07 Sep 2015 6:04:46pm
This article is WRONG. The little boy had been living in Turkey for a couple of years and his dad even worked in the building industry. He wasn't fleeing persecution or war, he was leaving a safe country where his family could earn a living...Sadly his dad decided to go to Europe for free medical care and that's the real tragedy, he didn't need to die
....
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ateday:
07 Sep 2015 8:33:44pm
Obviously the dad had enough to be able to return without problems.
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ateday:
07 Sep 2015 8:34:19pm
Nobody NEEDS to die.
Nobody NEEDS to be born either.
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Sam :
08 Sep 2015 12:16:54pm
Refugees in Turkey or Pakistan don't have the right to hold jobs, vote or apply for citizenship. Many work illegally but they are faced with harsh conditions. Officially those refugees are only in those safe haven countries until they can return to their own. Some Afghan refugees have been in Turkey for 30 years, some were born there and are still not entitled to citizenship. Many have waited in 'ques' to be resettled only to die there because they can't even get maternal health care. I'd flee too. So would most people given the chance. I'd even recommend that they flee.
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areyouserious:
07 Sep 2015 6:06:24pm
The west cheered the Arab Spring. They supported the fall of the leaders of Libya, Iraq and Syria. They supported democracy at any cost. That cost has been the downfall of civil society and the emergence of ISIS.
Europe is now experiencing an invasion of refugees and economic migrants. It is an invasion of people who have passed safe havens and have demanded the right to pass through countries unquestioned and have demanded allowance to go where they want.
Many are trying to compare this to WW2. It is not comparable. In that war it was the young, the women, the elderly and the infirm that were seeking refuge in the first place it was available. The fit men stayed and fought for their countries or helped the safe passage of others to safety.
I say yes to increasing the overall intake. I say yes to taking those who are in the refugee camps in their first safe haven. I also say yes to women, children, fathers of those families, elderly, and the infirm.
I found it disturbing watching fit men rushing past women with children and the elderly to get onto trains and buses to their country of choice. Where is their humanity?
I am not a supporter of TA and I believe we should increase our intake of genuine refugees. I do, however, believe that we should be taking care about who we take. I do not, however, believe that we should pick and choose on the basis of religion.
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rastos:
07 Sep 2015 6:08:46pm
I hope our bombs are just as discriminatory. Are they marked Only for ISIS.
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Mitor the Bold:
07 Sep 2015 6:13:02pm
But what is the long-term solution? Military action? That's worked really well elsewhere, hasn't it? Isn't the current mess with IS a direct result of the Iraq war?
I wonder if it might be worth NATO reconsidering colonisation as a legitimate foreign policy. The only way some places will remain stable is through the kind of secular governance that is entirely absent from the countries that are donating so many refugees to the world. Democracy doesn't work in places where the populations are so ill-educated and so befuddled with religion that they immediately vote for a corrupt theocracy (see Egypt).
Would we be more prepared to support a military incursion into Iraq and Syria if the endgame were colonisation, the instillation of secular rule, secular education and secular institutions paid for by the exploitation of resources? Without something along these lines who do we really think will be running Syria and Iraq in 10-years time? If not IS then something very much like it.
As for Christians vs Muslims there really isn't much to choose between them. Don't be fooled into thinking that Christians in the ME and Africa are 'one of us' - these are the kinds of Christians who throw homosexuals off carpark roofs. Ignorance and religion is a deadly mix no matter the religion - Christians take their holy book as seriously as Muslims when it tells them that women are chattel, homosexuals are an abomination and democratic rule is a heresy against god's law.
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whogoesthere:
07 Sep 2015 10:09:10pm
You know your last para is an excellent argument for why we should take no refugees.
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Mitor the Bold:
08 Sep 2015 9:00:15am
I agree, so what do we do as humans? Fix the now, or try to guess the then and fix that? I wish I knew.
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Dove:
08 Sep 2015 9:27:34am
The idea is to take the persecuted, not the persecutors
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RMW:
08 Sep 2015 2:51:44pm
Who exactly are the persecuted? Shia Muslims that are also hated by Islamic State? But aren't some of the Shias just as militant as well?
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Aussie Sutra:
07 Sep 2015 6:17:01pm
Australia should take no more muslims, whether under the refugee programme or the immigration programme. Enough is enough.
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Hereandnow:
07 Sep 2015 6:33:11pm
So what if some attention is given to Christian refugees for a change. They're hardly likely to be protected in a Muslim nation, are they? And, you must admit Sarah, they are far less likely to be radicalised and turn on the their host.
By complaining about the attention Christians are finally getting you are the one guilty of 'racialisation'.
I am yet to hear you express any concern for the plight of Christians in Muslim lands - it would be refreshing to! I strongly doubt this post will get up, but if it does, that is my challenge to you.
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Oh Lordy:
07 Sep 2015 9:23:32pm
Or concern for the plight of Jews...or Yazidis.....or Druze...or Zoroastrians...
In fact, come to think of it....anyone who has not submitted to the one, true faith!!
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Sam :
08 Sep 2015 12:19:40pm
Hahah I'd love to see how the Australian Christians react when they realize that most of the Christians in the middle east practice their religion very differently to your western roman Catholics ect. Won't they be outraged when they realize that a lot of Christian women from the middle east choose to wear veils.
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MA:
08 Sep 2015 4:23:10pm
Not really, most Christians are reasonably accepting. If we put up with gays wearing pink leotards or 'frocking up' then I am sure we will put up with a veil!
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Lee:
07 Sep 2015 6:50:18pm
Malik: "...that the Government would...make a subtle distinction on the kinds of Syrian asylum seekers it would be willing to consider is callous.
It speaks to the depths it will go to in order to stoke fears of the brown Muslim hordes threatening our pristine white borders."
What an offensive slander. You claim the Government will bring in *Syrian* asylum seekers (just not of the ideology you want), and then claim this is to "stoke fear of the brown". Makes no sense. Apologise now.
Muslims aren't a race. Christians aren't a race. Syrians *are* a race. Syrians are the people to be brought in.
The Government has correctly determined non-Muslim Syrians are the most under threat, the most discriminated against, and the most unlikely to ever be able to return to Syria.
It speaks volumes that you show no regard for the special abuse and threats non-Muslims suffer in Muslim countries like Syria. Take off the blinders.
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Mitor the Bold:
07 Sep 2015 9:22:08pm
The problem is religion, not Islam. The mere fact that someone might be persecuted depending on which unsupported superstition their parents raised them in should show us all that religion is an idea whose time has long since passed. The people fleeing terror in Syria all fear for their lives, whether they're atheist, muslim or christian, otherwise they'd be staying put.
BTW Syrians are not a 'race', they are a nationality. 'Syrian' is not a biological taxonomy. Syrians are racially indistinguishable from Iranian or Lebanese people, for example.
'Race' more often than not refers to culture, given that it has very little support at the genetic level, and therefore religion is as convincing as nationality or skin colour as a means of differentiating 'races'.
So, what you're really saying is that you regard muslims as having an inferior claim to sanctuary because you're not actually a muslim yourself. Go on, be honest.
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MA:
08 Sep 2015 3:15:31pm
"The problem is religion, not Islam. The mere fact that someone might be persecuted depending on which unsupported superstition their parents raised them in should show us all that religion is an idea whose time has long since passed."
As opposed to atheistic states conduct like Soviet Union, China etc. Some of the biggest calls to assist are from religions calling in their followers to help.
On one hand you claim all people are the same yet distinguish the religious as a kind of evil. Get over it, if you have an issue with religion then that's fine but trying to lump them all as the problem is dishonest and pathetic in the same way as would be lumping all Germans as Nazis, even despite them being the most accepting at the moment.
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Lee:
08 Sep 2015 12:47:14pm
@Mitor you disregard the special threats and discrimination suffered by non-Muslims in Islamic countries. You see, we must give precedence to those most in danger, and those most unlikely to ever be able to go home.
Btw, the Syrians are of a race - primarily Arab. So bringing in Christians will mean bringing in Arabs. So Malik's claim about it being racist against "brown" people to bring in Christians is demonstrably false.
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Hereandnow:
07 Sep 2015 6:54:37pm
The title of your article quite sententiously states:
'Syrian refugee crisis: This is about humanity, not religion'
Your blatant pro-Muslim bias, however, completely contradicts that!
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mike j:
08 Sep 2015 4:45:12pm
Of course it does.
She writes an article supporting 'her people', even as she criticises the rest of Australia for favouring 'people like us only, please'.
It would be nice to read an occasional article at The Drum that doesn't completely contradict itself.
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PseudoPuritan:
07 Sep 2015 7:04:58pm
"It speaks to the depths it will go to in order to stoke fears of the brown Muslim hordes threatening our pristine white borders. "
You can criticise and condemn reasonable calls for national self-defence as bigotry, hatred and intolerance (which they are not), just remember Australia is the envy of the world and people from all the world want to live here. It is one of the greatest responsibilities we will ever have to future generations to keep Australia as is or improved. We cannot just give it away to people with alien cultures on a whim because it makes us feel good.
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KK:
07 Sep 2015 8:00:54pm
How history repeats itself. Hordes of young men with no IDs demanding entry to a country after bypassing other safe places.
Sounds a lot like our situation before Abbott.
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stund:
07 Sep 2015 8:08:49pm
No Sarah, you are wrong, it is ALL about religion.
It's all about Islamic religion and the attendant rape, murder, child marriages and wedding consummations of little children, ilsam fuelled religious bigotry, people being slaughtered all over the world in the name of islam. It's about supporters of that faith being part of a political ideology, masquerading under a thin veil of religion, that openly declares the decimation of Western civilised democracy and installing sharia law (their words, not mine). We are daily reminded of the lengths so called 'extremists' will go to in order to achieve those ends.
I'm amazed it took the image of that little drowned boy to bring you to write your piece. Any thoughts on the 130 odd school children slaughtered at school IN THE NAME OF ISLAM? Sarah, what about the death, suffering, grief, murder, rape, torture and all manner of barbaric religion fuelled acts perpetrated on non-muslims every day of the week.
By the dictates of which religion do you think the militia are forcing refugees from their homelands?
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Conspiracy Realist:
07 Sep 2015 8:13:00pm
The Syrians and other displaced people would rather live in their homes in their towns and villages in peace. They are displaced because of a cynical conflict that has largely been fuelled by western powers and their minions in an attempt to unseat the non compliant, socialist government who had the temerity to favour Russia over the murderous west. The surge in refugees desperately fleeing coincides with the Nato countries decision to bomb. Innocent civilians have already died as a result of this so called 'humanitarian' campaign. If the US, France , the UK, Turkey, The House of Saud and Israel stopped their aggression towards the Syrian government by cynically funding and arming the insurgents this war would end in a month. ISIS/ DAESH cannot survive in a vacuum. We have a moral humanitarian duty to help the desperate people fleeing conflicts that through our governments action and silence, we are now complicit
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Closet Romantic:
08 Sep 2015 5:26:31pm
Love your post
It felt like a breath of fresh air ...Syria did have problems but the influence of foreign interests changed those problems from discontent and unrest to a full blown hell.
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WP:
07 Sep 2015 8:41:58pm
Any response must put emotion to one side, and be completely rational, and calculated.
There are currently almost 5 Million displaced by Isis alone.
If every country in the OECD were to take them, each country would need to take almost 150,000 people.
Considering many of the 34 countries in the OECD will not take any at all, and many of those countries are not al that ell off, and many are actually trying to excape from Mexico to the USA, the numbers of countries are going to be considerably less than 34 countries.
So the number needs to be much more than 150,000 per participating country.
How many should Australia take? and should we permanently re settle them or just house until the danger passes, if it does?
And how do we chose which we should take?
OR do we contribute aid, food , infrastructure support etc to allow them to stay in the bordering countries until they can go home?
Do we provide military support to push ISIS out of these areas, so they can return in safety?
And what about the refugees from Africa, and all the other middle east countries?
For all the criticism I hear of our government, I am yet to see a single suggestion that even remotely acknowledges the size of the problem. Taking 20,000 refugees to settle in Australia as the Greens suggests would be so small a contribution, as to be completely insignificant. It completely fails to understand the extent of the problem.
The only solutions I can see is to provide assistance to make there homeland safe, and assist rebuilding that country.
And how do we know that if we help these people, that they don't then take revenge or become the perpetrators in the future.
But that sounds like colonialism, or an occupation.
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Shocked Again:
07 Sep 2015 9:21:11pm
It is a fair thing to do. We know that Christians, yazidis and other minority groups will not be able to return to ME. They have been displaced and harmed more than other groups. Muslim Middle East countries will, with few exceptions, not take them. It is the right thing for us to prioritise those who have no alternative.
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barbara page:
07 Sep 2015 9:42:18pm
The child who drowned near Bodrum in Turkey had been living in Turkey with his family for 3 years. The family were safe there. His father wanted "a better life" in a more affluent society and in the pursuit of that ambition risked the lives of his family to people smugglers who overloaded the boat. The father must bear some responsibility for that tragedy.
The groups most at risk from ISIL in the ME are Christians, Yazidis, Shias and Kurds so it makes sense to prioritize our refugee intake accordingly.
The ME is in meltdown as the result of sectarian violence and the root cause is Islam. A 13 year old boy in Hungary allegedly asked the West to "fix" Syria so he could return. I am sure any effort the West made to that end would result in blame being apportioned and I'm not confident they can fix it, given the cause. There are currently 12,000,000 displaced people in Syria.
The problem is that Islam does not believe in a separation between church and state; you can't have Islam without Sharia law. Western democracies are ruled by secular law so will not deliver Sharia law.
There have been enormous problems in The Netherlands, Denmark, France and the UK with Muslim immigrants living in parallel societies within these countries. The secular laws of western democracies have often not been respected by these groups.
Look at what has happened in Turkey recently. It was a secular democracy for almost 100 years. They voted in an Islamic political party 10 years ago. In the last 2 years the rule of law and the democracy has been effectively dismantled.
I don't believe there should be a knee jerk reaction to this crisis. We will have to live with the consequences of any action for a very long time.
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TC:
08 Sep 2015 1:00:56pm
Well reasoned argument Barbara. Will the compassionistas listen? No, they are driven by emotion only. We have to stay firm.
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Sinic:
08 Sep 2015 3:52:49pm
Arguing about the facts of the individual drowned child makes little difference. I understand for example the family had applied through a Canadian relative for refugee admission to Canada but this had been denied. None of the immigrants that are the subject of these discussions has as a proximal departure point a location where they were in fear of harm. They have all reached safety in regard to threats to their life. Looked at from that perspective they have ceased to be refugees and have become economic migrants. The issue is one of permanent resettlement of millions of people who seek better lives - better in any sense. I cannot see that fleeing starvation or epidemic brings us less moral obligation than fleeing war or political persecution. Obviously their cause is just, likewise it is reasonable for us to try to maintain our society the way we like it.
Otherwise your arguments are well put. We are at severe risk of allowing the lifeboats to be swamped, particularly if we divide and polarize our own societies by introducing significant populations with a fixed antipathy to our core values. In the future people may well start fleeing Germany, just as significant numbers of Turks are now departing the increasingly theocratic Turkey.
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purgatory:
07 Sep 2015 9:53:36pm
The Government had already prioritized Christians (Yazidi's) over other groups fleeing ISIS.
Abbott is using the image of the dead child to re-state his mantras -'stop the boats', 'stop the illegal boatpeople', 'stop the evil people smugglers' and then he declares 'now we've stopped them (boats/asylum seekers), we can choose who we take'. This is just restating the Howard dog whistle xenophobia, and displaying the Christian Abbott's 'generosity of spirit' in adding 'Christians only'.
Ruddick (children overboard dog whistle early2000's), and Senator Llyonhelm? joined in, with the possible radicalization of refugees (dog whistle-a threat to us all), that we don't have the infrastructure and it would cost too much with the debt and deficit disaster. Tony Abbott further chimed in with ' we don't want a detention centre led economy'.
Whatever happened to the Good Samaritan? Do we have to have a commission of enquiry to see if each and every refugee will 'kowtow' to Abbott's religion and culture first?
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 12:22:15pm
Have you read the parable of the Good Samaritan, purgatory? The Good Samaritan tended to the injured man's wounds and then paid for him to be taken care of until he had recovered. He did not let the man move into his home and paid for him for the rest of his life.
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Justaguy:
07 Sep 2015 10:01:04pm
Stop the Syrian civil war by stopping the support of the questionable Syrian opposite groups and promptly initiating proper military actions to take on ISIL are the only way to solve the refugee crisis. Mass intake of Muslim refugees to the west will no doubt create a lot of problems in the future.
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John of the Gardens:
07 Sep 2015 10:43:31pm
Of course we must respond to crises like the current one in Syria. Yes, our overall refugee intake this year needs to rise to take this into account. Others countries need to do their bit as well including wealthy neighbours of Syria. Amnesty International says that neither Saudi Arabia or any wealthy oil producing countries in the Persian Gulf area have taken a single Syrian refugee. So much for Arab solidarity! Then again, it shouldn't be a surprise as they have never done anything for Palestinian refugees either. In the long term we have to hope that some kind of 'acceptable' dictatorship emerges to 'unify' Syria. Unfortunately Arabs are bad at government. They only have internal peace when a strong man or clique that shows some degree of benevolence tells them what to do.
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Codger:
07 Sep 2015 11:23:20pm
So, should we gauge how much misery these people are enduring according to which irrational superstitious belief they adhere to? Are their children also instantly branded with the stigma attached to the parents?
An appalling meanness of spirit is emerging in this discussion.
We are all human beings. There is not more than one iota of difference. Next thing we will reject people with pointy ears.
Now is the time for Tony Abbott to trot out his "whatever it takes" mantra.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 12:24:07pm
You may not believe that religion matters, Codger, but ISIS certainly does. That is why they are specifically targeting Christians. We should be taking those specifically targeted.
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Andy B:
07 Sep 2015 11:38:07pm
Serious amount of Islamaphobia going down on this comments page. It is a shame that we cant see all people as humans. I guess the fear of the unknown is a powerful thing. There are comments here saying we will become a muslim country and lose our identity and so on and so on. I think that says more about our society if that was to happen than an influx of refugees. Is our culture that week? Even if it was 100000 I'm thinking that would be absorbed within our current population fairly easily with little impact on the "Aussie way of life". What exactly is it that people are fearful of? And please dont come out with "we'll be living under Sharia Law" like those 14 Bendigo anti mosque crusaders (population of Bendigo 100000+). Because anyone with the slightest idea of how this country's constitution and legal system works would know that is utter nonsense.
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carlos:
07 Sep 2015 11:39:32pm
It is Christians that are being persecuted the most with whole communities having been brutally murdered. Yet, by and large the world has ignored their plight. The vast majority of Refugees we and the world have received are Muslim. Maybe the Minister is aware of something that we are not. perhaps if the Minister had expressed a view that we should take in more Female refugees and less male, his suggestion would have been more acceptable to some, including Ms Malik.
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Bob:
07 Sep 2015 11:41:25pm
You know what would be a better idea? Actually solving this countries existing problems first. Instead of just chucking on thousands of more problems to solve. I'm sorry, but the harsh reality is not everyone in the world gets to live peacefully and not everyone can be saved. It's funny how everyone just wants to portray themselves as a great person by being positive yet they fail to see all the negative aspects. It's funny how the government is so scared of being called "racist" by people who don't even understand the meaning to the word racist, for simply saying no. It's funny how everyone would rather lend a helping hand to other countries people, but won't help a fellow Australian. Let's just destroy some more countries, then we can all flee to another country and destroy that one too.
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gusferg:
08 Sep 2015 4:33:33am
What a crass journalist! This crisis has been going on for years and the emotive press, incl. this journalist , are now full of horror and righteousness after one horrible picture of a little boy. Thousands have died making the med crossings over the last TWO years and hardly a peep from thr handwringers. Hundreds of kids died crossing the Timor Sea and hardly any noise from the same miserables. Does the press need a line up of bodies on the beach to work up a popular head of steam? Dreadful article ..
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New World:
08 Sep 2015 5:31:25am
Sarah
You describe a picture of a dead boy to draw emotional response, so others will join the chant "take more refugees".
The budget 2013 we were told we have a budget emergency, and so unemployed people under the age of 30 will not get the dole for 6 months of the year.
Now we have a new way of giving out dole payments call a basic card, where there is little cash for the unemployed. The dole money is distributed from the bank.
We took in Kosovo refugees and they said we were a primitive country, they said they were better off in a tent on a mountain side.
Taking refugees, paint the picture the adults over 35 will not get work, on the dole till 70. The children will not go to our $100 000.00 cost course Universities. A good number of the children will be our long term unemployed.
Are you really doing them a favour to bring them to a dead end for their future. Many in war torn countries who remain there do better at picking up pieces and growing old in familiar surroundings and culture. The people who immigrate seem to be worse off from moving from their home lands.
Bringing people to Australia does need cost consideration, with regard weekly support, housing support. Investors try to look at investment from a cold hard look rather than an emotive perspective. Our rich do not want to part with their money, the poor do not have much. the refugees will not have much, the same as our poor.
Do you really want to push poverty onto people who are doing ok in safe havens, who have a chance to rebuild their life in a place they know well, and with family they know well? War will pass, and they can end up going home, to a place they know.
Aid sent to refugee camps would be better money spent on refugees
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Ducktagnan:
08 Sep 2015 5:59:25am
No Sarah, this is all about religion, specifically Islam, and Islamic migration by whatever means.
Strange that Muslims hate us western infidels, yet the targets of all Islamic migration are those developed Christian countries of the west.
Get your atlas and check out where all of the worlds' trouble spots are, and then identify them as Islamic or not. Then identify where they're all headed, along with their medieval ways of life. The radicals are even trying to obliterate all evidence of mankind's achievements prior to the arrival of "the prophet" in the 8th century, including Christianity.
Bought your copy of the Koran yet ? You and your children/grandchildren will need it sooner than you think.
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Alpo:
08 Sep 2015 7:35:07am
The target of Jewish refugees pre- and post-WWII were also Christian countries, and the Jews (for very long historical reasons) also had serious reasons to "hate" Christians. So no, this is not about religion and it's not even about "Islam"! there are very many peaceful Islamic countries in the world (that racist and Islamophobic stormtroopers tend to ignore), and those who are in troubles are simply former colonies of European powers that have been messed up by colonial intervention past and current (see Iraq as a textbook case).
Life is always more complex than you imagine.... that's why unsophisticated Western right-wingers always get their policies wrong!
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Harvey Wireman:
08 Sep 2015 6:32:30am
Stop using the dead baby to push this useless and false narrative. Nobody, other than self-destructing bleeding hearts wants these people. Borders, Language culture.
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memo:
08 Sep 2015 6:34:42am
Our governments should be helping these people to remain in their own countries. Helping to fix their own governments, not bringing the problems to our own countries.
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Heretix The Gall:
08 Sep 2015 6:49:57am
It is amazing how everyone sems to have expediently forgotten the starving children in Africa and India, who should, with their families, have as much right to emigrate, as refugees, as better off people in countries like syria.
But, this is australia, and, as with eurpoe, blacks and people who are otherwise poor or otherwise not having pale or white skins, simply do not count.
After all, this is australia, where schoolgirls can get dragged out of classrooms and imprisoned, because the stormtroopers do not like the colour of their skin, and, in australia, females are not supposed to be able to complete secondary education, anyway - the job of females, according to the parliament and its religious extremist mates, is to breed for the fatherland.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 12:29:29pm
Why would advanced societies allow the movement of vast numbers of unskilled and uneducated people (those most likely to be the poor of the world) into their countries, Heretix? Doing so may have a positive outcome for those coming, but would be appalling bad for those in the destination societies.
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New World:
08 Sep 2015 7:09:22am
Sarah
You could ask the Government to set up a bank account, which people can put as much money into it as they want. The money is spent bringing refugees into Australia and some money is allocated for their keep for two years. Once all the money is allocated we do not take in any more refugees. This way people can vote with their money for a project on refugees.
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Christine:
08 Sep 2015 7:49:21am
Take in as many as possible is the answer. There will be heavy reprimands for Australia down the line for both left winged and right winged if we fail to do so immediately.
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al:
08 Sep 2015 10:28:47am
"as many as possible"
How many?
What will this cost be to us, when we are already struggling with stretched social services and a ballooning welfare bill.
At what cost to our future, when we will have more people here who hate our way of life. Islam is a "sleeper" in Australia, waiting to expand it's influence.
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Christine:
08 Sep 2015 2:22:30pm
Exceed the current refugee quota by up to 100%.
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sinic:
08 Sep 2015 5:12:40pm
Doubling our current refugee quota would amount to taking a bucketload from a reservoir filling at a rate of thousands of cubic metres a day. Unlike the end of WW2 there are not a finite number of displaced persons at present, but an open-ended production process of displaced persons. Taking refugees settles individual problems (and inevitably favours one refugee over another), but is no answer to the ongoing problem. Settle 26 000 refugees in Australia every year (as you propose) and in a decades time there will still be effectively the same number of refugees worldwide as if we settled 13 000 or 52 000.
At the same time our social security system would collapse, as is occurring in Europe at present.
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gary:
08 Sep 2015 7:55:13am
Time to accept reality and recognise that Muslims should live in Muslim countries. The problems these people are fleeing are due to multiculturalism, and these problems shouldn't be imported to Australia. Further, a strategy to allow Muslims in Australia to be reunited with their ancestral homelands is needed to ensure everyone's long term benefit.
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Christine:
08 Sep 2015 9:42:02am
I am Christian and I support Christian ideologies. People should NOT be discriminated on the grounds of their religion. After all what is a religion except that it is just an idea at most. If it doesn't promote peace and harmony, your religion is bull dust. I think there is a genuine need to let Syrian refugees in on this occasion. At least they shouldn't be not let in on the grounds of their religion alone.
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Nathan:
08 Sep 2015 8:15:07am
Wrong. Fact is this is a wave of asylum seekers bypassing safe countries to nation shop as they wish. Everyone saying they are from syria when the evidence is there are pakisatnis, eritreans and many other nationalities whose counties are not at war. Propagandarists peddlinng falsehoods does nothing to help the real refugees in camps in syria, turkey and elsewhere in the mid east.
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Aussie Sutra:
08 Sep 2015 8:42:00am
Sarah Malik has an agenda to fill up Australia with as many muslims as we can fit per square meter. Never mind the destruction of our lives, of our culture, of our communities, of our economy, of our environment, of our right for women to live life unraped and for men to live life unbeheaded.
I do not want any Syrians coming to Australia and resent that any are included in the intake of refugees which should be about bringing in refugees who have been waiting patiently in refugee camps for years.
Let's contribute money according personal ability, not from the government coffers, to a proper UN effort to set up a refugee camp in or near to Syria, to provide refuge to those Syrians who need it, until they can safely return to their homes.
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tony:
08 Sep 2015 9:45:46am
Couldn't agree more. What hope is there when dopes like NSW premier Baird want to bring in unlimited numbers of centrelink-seekers, while aussie pensioners are living on 50 dollars a week after paying rents in sydney.
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lazarus:
08 Sep 2015 2:29:54pm
Yes tony, they all want to come to Australia so they can live on $500pf. Pensioners get much more, up to $1000 pf if they are single and renting. The minimum wage is around $1300 pf and you have to pay tax on it, who gets the raw deal?
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Rae:
08 Sep 2015 3:36:06pm
Not if you worked here for 40 to 50 years and saved for retirement. You get nothing then.
I've just found out I'm paying for some stupid label on muslim foods and object to that. Their churchmen should do that for free if it is so important.
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James:
08 Sep 2015 9:29:43am
To you the image of a drowned toddler is a symbol of all that's wrong with the Coalition's border policies. To the Coalition, that same image is an equally powerful symbol of all that was wrong with Labor's and the Greens' border policies.
That poor boy's family was not fleeing from war or persecution. They were already safe in Turkey before the father made a decision that led to the death of his wife and children.
Sorry, am I being too logical? Is your main point that in the face of a heart-wrenching image of tragedy we should abandon logic?
Australia is a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention. That Convention specifically says we should give preference to individuals who have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their membership of a minority group.
That description in the Convention does not fit everyone fleeing from the crossfire of a war zone. It does fit Syrian Christians, who are doomed in the new landscape of fundamentalist religious hatred in Syria.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 12:33:24pm
The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees does not state that we should give preference to individuals who have a well-founded fear of persecution, James, the Convention ONLY applies to those people.
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tony:
08 Sep 2015 9:35:31am
Unbelievable and disgusting that people are still using the photo of the little boy to elicit support for 'refugees'. Its well known now that the boy and his parents were not refugees fleeing persecution, they were in fact economic refugees jumping on the bandwagon, along with so many others. And if the author believes that christians are not the most persecuted minority in this mess, he need not be taken seriously.
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Coogara:
08 Sep 2015 9:58:57am
A refugee as defined under the International Refugee Convention is someone who has a justified fear of persecution because of religion or ethnicity. It is therefore entirely justified that in assigning any refugee places we give greatest priority to those who have a high probability of being killed for their religion or ethnicity in returning to their homeland. This would strongly suggest Christians and other minorities in the middle east are those who qualify not people from mainstream religions and ethnicities.
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Dove:
08 Sep 2015 11:59:37am
The 1951 Refugee Convention says that a refugee is someone who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."
So you got it half right
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MA:
08 Sep 2015 10:11:50am
No matter what the government does, people like the author will never be happy.
And yes we should give priority to Christians first as not only do they align with our culture (wether you are atheist, Muslim or anything we are a Christian culture) but they are the ones who are persecuted the most.
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Dove:
08 Sep 2015 10:14:39am
You can't tell a Muslim apart from a someone of any other religion. You can't tell a Muslim from an atheist either. It's a religion that has followers from every race and every culture. Islam is an evangelic faith which means anyone can join and which is why Arabs are a minority in the world's Muslims.
In Australia, Muslims command troops in our military, they sit in parliaments, host TV shows, win beauty pageants, play professional sport and shop at the same places you do. They drive the same types of cars and wear the same clothes. Most Muslim women in Australia don't wear any kind of head covering, because their culture never did, because they left that behind when they moved here, because no-one makes them and because they just don't want to. Unless you see a Muslim praying they are indistinguishable from anyone else. And not all Muslims are practicing and adherent.
Is Australia pivots its refugee intake to Syria then we should be taking a fixed number of people for a fixed period of time. I've never had an issue with TPVs and when it comes to maritime arrivals I've never had an issue with offshore processing. If we take Syrians, we can screen, kick them out at any time and at the end of the agreed term we can keep them for a bit more, send them home or settle them here. The choice is ours. We should be evaluating people on need alone- their need
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Coogara:
08 Sep 2015 12:12:02pm
Dove: Surely the key requirement is satisfying the definition of a refugee under the International Refugee Convention. Clearly the minorities rather than the majorities satisfy that requirement.
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Pete:
08 Sep 2015 3:33:21pm
Dove,
From my observations and experiences I agree with pretty much everything in your post.
(Im no expert, but have worked in 15 different countries over the past 35 years, some "Islamic" and observing people and learning about their cultures is a bit of a hobby/ interest of mine)
But the tag racist is often used against any-one who speaks out against, or even mentions they have concerns about Islam.
Given the diversity of Muslims as you have explained, then its wrong to use the Racist Tag on any-one who has an opposing opinion or concerns. as Muslims are clearly no more a race of people than any other religion.
Bigot, Xenophobe, Bogan? maybe but not racist!
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GMGM:
08 Sep 2015 10:34:02am
Tying to separate religion from this issue is dishonest.
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Tieran:
08 Sep 2015 10:35:46am
Excellently written piece Sarah ... sad to see the ALP's not condeming such an inhuman policy
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never63or64:
08 Sep 2015 10:46:07am
Keeping the best bits of the world for Christians
is unchristian behaviour (reference - numerous - the bible)
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Stone Motherless Last:
08 Sep 2015 10:54:07am
Sarah, there needs to be some balance here. I agree that in an ideal world all refugees should be subject the same criteria regardless of their faith.
However, the practical world, if you can't accept everybody, what parameters do you use to discriminate between the accepted and the refused ?
One parameter might be as follows: Christian Syrians and Iraqis have been persecuted purely on the basis of their religion. It is likely that ISIS and similar will continue to persecute Christians into the long term therefore Christians are at additional risk and need to be given special consideration. There is no need to stop at Christians - Hazara, Kurds and other groups may also be at additional risk and therefore should be given special consideration.
This is not an attempt to stop "brown Muslim hordes threatening our pristine white borders" (presumably the Christians are brown too).
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firthy:
08 Sep 2015 10:57:03am
I can understand why people instantly respond to comments like those made by Joyce like this. The initial thought is to say something like this - a refugee is a refugee no matter their religion. But consider the issue a bit further and it becomes murkier. It is a fact that this country has had problems, and will continue to do so, with radicalised Muslims. The numbers are small but the potential for harm is great. When presented with an option of who you would take as a refugee do you take: A - people from a group that are not at risk of radicalisation in this country (i.e. Syrian Christians); or B - people that are at risk even though that risk is hard to measure (i.e. Syrian Muslims). Personally I would choose A as I'm risk adverse. How would one front up to a commission like the commission on the Martin Place siege and explain yourself if someone from group B commits a terrorist act? That risk is low but I'm not sure one could say it is negligible. In fact I don't know how one could ever accurately determine the risk.
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Reinhard:
08 Sep 2015 11:11:11am
These is a humanitarian crisis involving real human beings and to divide them into categories by religion is just another form of dehumanisation.
This is yet another example of the constant xenophobic, anti-islamic dog whistling from this govt playing to its base. It started almost the day Abbott took office when he put a military man in charge of border protection and every aspect of border protection became a military operation with a corresponding shroud of secrecy.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 12:36:29pm
ISIS is dividing human beings into categories by religion in order to exterminate them, Reinhard. Why should we not take those they target the most?
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Reinhard:
08 Sep 2015 2:02:47pm
Yes indeed, why should we try to be better than them?
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 2:18:35pm
We are better than them, Reinhard. They wish to exterminate these minority groups and we wish to save them.
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Reinhard:
08 Sep 2015 4:37:54pm
Are you seriously suggesting that we would be saving Syrian christians from ISIS..?
Anyone we take in will come from camps outside ISIS control in Turkey, Jordon or Lebanon.
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562cja:
08 Sep 2015 11:44:34am
All phobias aside lets be logical about who we let into our country. For centuries religion has played a big part in extremism in middle eastern countries whether we like it or not. Most wars are fought on religion. If we increase intakes to whatever volume, we do need to be cautious about who we take. We have enough issues with young Australian men & women trying to participate with ISIS in this very war. I am all for Christian women & children being the first choice. What guarantees do we have that young men of radical beliefs will not be among the thousands we let into this country. Radical Muslim has declared a world wide gihad.
Shutting the gate after the horse has bolted is way too late. Man Monis was allowed in. That's fact not fiction. How many more of his ilk, or worse, could arrive amongst the thousands we allow in, if we don't make a conscious choice. Sound callous & maybe I'm Zenophobic. I'd prefer to be labelled that than open the floodgates & then in the coming years regret that we weren't more cautious. We can be both humanitarian & cautious.
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Orion:
08 Sep 2015 11:51:06am
This is a mass migration event.
We have seen them before throughout history, the barbarian invasion which destroyed the Roman Empire was one of many. This one is a mass migration of overwhelmingly young men from northern Africa and the Middle East into the most affluent countries of Europe. A kind of reverse of European migration into the "new world" including Australia from the late 18th century to the early 20th.
This mass migration is being driven by overpopulation and militant Islam. If we don't keep right out of it we will be destroyed just as Europe as we know it is already being destroyed.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 11:53:03am
Christians and Yazidis are specifically being targeted for extermination in Syria and Iraq. Why should we not prioritise taking them?
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inner westie:
08 Sep 2015 12:42:14pm
There are millions more refugees and migrants than places available for relocation to first world nations. In light of this I see no problem with Australia giving preference to minority groups that present a lower risk of damaging our nation's social cohesion. Images of drowned children evoke emotional responses however it is essential for the well being of the country that any acceptance of refugees is conducted in a controlled manner.
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Go Girl:
08 Sep 2015 12:51:36pm
Some time ago I made the decision to describe myself as an anti-theist. The timbre and tone of some of the comments I have read here confirm my beliefs that religion is a divisive and dangerous thing when it used to categorise and discriminate against PEOPLE - not Muslims, Christians, Kurds, Druzes or whatever. I have never felt as disheartened as I do right now when I see people ignoring the human question and focusing only on the question of the religion of these people who are fleeing death (remember the"Death Cult"?). When I saw the numbers out on the street over the weekend supporting the call for a more humane and compassionate approach and even politicians such as Mike Baird backing that call, I was, for a brief moment, hopeful that Australia had matured. Some of the comments I have read here put paid to that faint hope. That our Government is perpetuating this with considering that only Christians refugees should be brought to Australia dismays me and goes against all the principles of non-discrimination.
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eleanor wills:
08 Sep 2015 1:05:13pm
I was unfortunately born to Christian fundamentalist parents and forced to live in a cult for twenty one years. For those of you who want to argue that this present refugee crisis is about humanity not religion let me say that I think you are deluded. Religion is perhaps one of the greatest scourges on humanity. We don't want more of it here. Abbott's Christian refugees only policy is deeply flawed. We need to protect our human rights and one of the best ways is to steer clear of religious dictates.
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Napoleon42:
08 Sep 2015 1:06:52pm
Abbott and his party can stand before the electorate and say that they are doing the right thing. I should like to know if, as Christians they claim they are, they can look up to God and say that they are doing the right thing. The role and mission of a great leader is to guide the nation. After the dismantlement of apartheid Mandela asked the blacks of South Africa to forgive the whites and seek reconciliation; and they listened to him because he was morally right although at the time the blacks did not believe it was politically right. Abbott has denied his Christian beliefs and the values of a great country because he is a political animal above all else.
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reaver:
08 Sep 2015 1:34:57pm
I do not care if Abbott can justify his actions to his god, Napoleon42, because his god did not elect him. He was elected by the Australian people and answers to the Australian people.
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Erika:
08 Sep 2015 1:09:10pm
Is it Christian to discriminate in favour of Christians?
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Oh Lordy:
08 Sep 2015 3:30:41pm
Who cares?
You're living in a secular country, Erika. I, like the majority of Australians, couldn't car less what 'Christians' think...or Jews, Hindus or Scientologists for that matter.
If evidence indicates that one religious group is more persecuted than another and/or will assimilate better into this society......then Australia is perfectly within it's rights to discriminate on the basis of the evidence.
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Mike (the other one):
08 Sep 2015 1:24:19pm
Does this come as any great surprise that yet another Arab/ Muslim/ Australian is lobbying, no, demanding that Australia pump more resources into Arab/ Muslim self made destabilising racial(ised), religious(ised), and cultural(ised) problems?
I wonder how many other children died through misadventure around the planet on the same day due to their parent's making a bad decision or inattention as little Aylan Kurdi did.
Yet another media driven circus.
It's becoming crystal clear that the only way to address the problems in the Middle East is to not take anybody at all, period, thereby forcing them to address their infectious, virus like problems of overpopulation, religion and culture.
And I for one would be happy if we (Australians) kept a million miles away from their affairs.
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lazarus:
08 Sep 2015 3:55:17pm
It is clear the only way to address the problem of the Middle East is for the west and mainly the USA to stop interfering and propping up undesirables like the Saudi and other Gulf State royal families and the current Egyptian Government to start with.
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Christian:
08 Sep 2015 1:27:46pm
This humanity crisis in Syria and Iraq is caused and fueled by the Islam religion which is a fact shining like the sun only not seen by the blind. It is our utmost priority and responsibility to save our Christian fellows who are enduring the most severe persecution since the early A.D. of the Roman Empire. May God open those eyes who can distinguish between right and evil and fall his scourge on those who started this cruelty.
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Fred1:
08 Sep 2015 1:34:59pm
The tenor of this article is a little silly really. Surely we should be taking as refugees those individuals or families who have the greatest real rear of persecution, not just anyone who puts his hand up. In other words less we are going to have an open doors policy we should prioritise.
We have always done this in the past taking those with the best claim to enter Australia. Perhaps existing family here and so on.
Unfortunately we have become distracted with the self select aspect of the boat arrival issue.
So who has the best call here? A Sunni family who can adapt to living in an area controlled by IS or a Christian family who can ever expect to be accepted in their new society? A Shia who can seek refuge with co religionists in Iran?
Now Christians are being massively persecuted throughout the Middle East surely they have the greatest call on resettlement.
I have lived in a country where Muslims were at times viciously treated by the majority at a village level. In case of migration from this country I would expect them to receive priory acceptance. But not from Syria!
So I support TA's decision here.
I should also add that dropping bombs can only continue the misery and sooner or later we are all going to have to sit down with IS and arrange for Western reconstruction aid to flow so that those who remain do not follow the rest on a clearly dangerous path to Europe.
Yes I said we will have to learn to deal with IS as the de facto government unpalatable is it seems for the sake of all.
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John:
08 Sep 2015 1:37:56pm
It is a pity that rich Gulf states are doing nothing.
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DistantQ:
08 Sep 2015 1:43:59pm
Of course this is about religion. I have nothing against any particular religion but some are simply incompatible with others. Kosher is different to Halal which is different to "I Couldn't Give A S...."
I am in a mixed race marriage (a very happy one) so nobody can accuse me of being a racist.
If the majority of Syrian refugees are Muslim, why doesn't Qatar, KSA, Kuwait, Yemem, Libya, Morocco, Iran, Pakistan or Egypt take at least some of them?
I also object to the governments leaning towards Christian Syrians. In many Middle Eastern Muslim countries, it is much more dangerous to be an Atheist than a Christian.
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Mike (the other one):
08 Sep 2015 2:09:10pm
Does this come as any great surprise that yet another Arab/ Muslim/ Australian is lobbying, no, demanding that Australia pump more resources into Arab/ Muslim self made destabilising racial(ised), religious(ised), and cultural(ised) problems?
I wonder how many other children died through misadventure around the planet on the same day due to their parent's making a bad decision or inattention as little Aylan Kurdi did.
Yet another media driven circus.
It's becoming crystal clear that the only way to address the problems in the Middle East is to not take anybody at all, period, thereby forcing them to address their infectious, virus like problems of overpopulation, religion and culture.
And I for one would be happy if we (Australians) kept a million miles away from their affairs.
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DistantQ:
08 Sep 2015 2:26:33pm
Right on. I am surprised the ABC published your post. If things continue the way they are, eventually the entire world will be the third world.
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Pete:
08 Sep 2015 5:25:26pm
Mike,
Im in agreement with most of your post except the last bit.
in the case of Syria and western Iraq, there are minorities that have lived there for 1000's of years, but its likely they will suffer genocide or not be able to return if they manage to escape.
Yazidi's , Druze, Coptics and other non Muslims or Christians.
These people need help and if no-one helps, their cultures could disappear completely.
The Shia's have more options with neighbouring countries and the Kurds are taking ground militarily (very bravely and at a huge cost) so they may end up in a better situation in the end.
But support from Australia for these high risk minorities as the Govt is planning certainly has my support. And I wouldn't put a number on it, I would take every-one that we can genuinely save from Genocide.
But that puts me at odds with the Author Sarah Malik that considers me Racist for focussing on the real people at Risk rather than opening the door to her Muslim Brothers, who as you have pointed out, are the main perpetrators that have caused this mess!
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Christine:
08 Sep 2015 2:28:10pm
"Not a Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen, Not any religion... first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being."
Beautiful! How true it is that in real truth lies real beauty...
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steve3:
08 Sep 2015 2:30:36pm
Yes take Christians before Muslims because the Christians are facing genocide in Syria.
When the Christian Serbs in the 1990s where committing genocide on the Muslims of Bosnia in the Balkan Wars I was in favour of accepting Muslim refugees over Christian Serbian refugees.
So you see Sarah Malik you are utterly and totally wrong.
It IS about religion and always will be.
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Christine:
08 Sep 2015 2:32:09pm
It's an ENERGENCY. The costs can wait. Does anyone ever have an emergency when they just expect to get through it and not make too much of a profit in the process?
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mack:
08 Sep 2015 3:54:46pm
In an emergency costs usually do wait.
But guess what? After the emergency is over everyone goes home.
Is that what you are proposing here?
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Christine:
08 Sep 2015 5:24:09pm
No, fancy that you can even imagine I am proposing such a thing. When they become citizens, they are free to do as they please and that includes go home. But no I am not suggesting the kind of "sending them home" that you are proposing. I think it's a ridiculous idea.
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Christine:
08 Sep 2015 2:33:26pm
"Not a Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen, Not any religion... first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being."
And a beating heart too would be nice!
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RMW:
08 Sep 2015 2:55:57pm
Dear Sarah Malik,
Of course we should be aware of the religious background of potential refugees, not the least because the Islamic State folks have boasted of infiltrating their operatives into Europe by posing as refugees (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32770390). I assume you do care about security and safety concerns? Or would you rather risk jihad warfare breaking out in Europe and elsewhere?
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Daisy Cutter:
08 Sep 2015 3:23:52pm
Sadly, many of the comments today predictably reveal precisely why the Abbott government keeps cynically running a hard line on national security, border protection and asylum seekers. I find it shameful to think we can't, as a nation, cast aside our ignorance and accept more people who genuinely need our support and protection. In my view, Australians have increasingly displayed a dangerously passive acceptance of nationalistic rhetoric, far beyond that of the "patriot". So as soon as global events (be they political, military, economic etc.) are a perceived threat to our nation many clamour to keep out the influence of foreign "hordes" lest they destroy our culture (whatever that is). I don't hear or read of too many (any) blustering, true-blue Aussies volunteering to sign up, pull on the boots and ship out to the Middle East to fight IS man to man. No takers? It's these situations that make cowards of us all, if we think we can in good conscience pick and choose which elements of humanity we like best, and intellectually discard the rest because "they're not like us".
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Christine:
08 Sep 2015 5:33:58pm
It's one thing to be protective of ourselves, it's quite another to be mean. The Abbott government is unfortunately just plain mean and heartless. The damage he and his colleagues are doing to Australia's reputation is going to bite us in the bum in the future not even that far down the line. Unfortunately, all and everyone here and not just liberal party voters are going to suffer from it.
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Ben Nallay:
08 Sep 2015 3:27:35pm
What about maximise the quota and issue lottery tickets to everyone with whatever odds based on the ratio of capacity to demand, and then let God decide who gets in and who doesn't?
Then we can say that we were not biased towards nor against our global kin. Ask not how human look they to you but how human behave you to them.
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thistle :
08 Sep 2015 3:50:50pm
No one is saying we have "pristine white borders", except Sarah Malik.
What we don't need is what Merkel is doing to Germany.
There are many homeless people, mentally ill, in Australia; no one holds candlelight vigils for them.
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RMW:
08 Sep 2015 3:53:41pm
Dear Sarah Malik,
Regarding that drowned boy, isn't the most immediate responsible party the transporters/criminal traffickers who are moving these refugees around? Shouldn't you be questioning them rather that refugee and border control policies?
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VetTeacher:
08 Sep 2015 4:02:37pm
Of all the people who are posting comments on the rights and wrongs of seeking "asylum" I wonder how many have actually seen their neighbours killed or the family down the street made homeless by a bomb( shell) which landed in "the wrong place. Never having been in that situation myself I wonder how I would react to it. I suspect that if I had a family being anywhere but "home" would seem like a very good idea.
Some people need to be reminded that Australia, Canada, South Africa and many other places which did not suffer the devastation of WW2 were the places of choice for millions of people displaced from their homes in the 1940s and 1950s.
Some people commenting on the "selfishness" of the current population of would-be migrants who choose Australia as a place they would like to call home were themselves the children of people unfortunate enough to be tangled up in post-war Europe and the UK.
Bombing a country into ruins tends to make people keen to settle somewhere else which is safe. Polish Jews fleeing their country in 1939 and going to France , Holland and Belgium found out to their cost you sometimes need to put more than one border between yourself and those who would do you harm.
I do not advocate uncontrolled access to this country but it is far too easy to label a person an "economic migrant" rather than deal with the emergency which faces most of these people.
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Makka:
08 Sep 2015 4:05:00pm
Reality does suck. It blows away all preconceived ideas and positions with it's raw imposition. I would bet that most people commenting here in favour of taking in more moslems have never lived in the ME. Let me say to those people, until you do you know nothing whatsoever about Islam and moslems. Nothing.
Islam is a cult that at it's core espouses conquest, submission and violence. Forget 'religion' , violence, particularly towrd women, is what Islam preaches and defends. That is the reality. And any fool who wants to invite more of that mindset onto our shores is in fact betraying the nation, pure and simple.
No amount of goodwill, kindness or compassion will change the mindset of moslems towards their creed. When required, moslems will submit to the demands made apon them by their violent faith.
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john:
08 Sep 2015 4:28:55pm
Yes you are all right,we need to help, we are all for repatriating the christian refugees, the arab countries should take a stand on their Muslim brothers.
Any comments from Australians?
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Ben Nallay:
08 Sep 2015 4:56:13pm
"Any comments from Australians?"
Prisoner exchange anyone?
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mike j:
08 Sep 2015 4:30:36pm
"It doesn't take much to read between the lines of random visa checks and the prioritisation of Christians. People like us only, please."
Sarah Malik writes articles in support of 'people like her'.
Criticises Australia for preferring 'people like us'.
Fundamental failure to understand her own hypocrisy, much less intergroup bias.
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Jan McT:
08 Sep 2015 4:33:21pm
There have been thousands of christians who have been killed in the middle east since ISIS started their reign of terror, not to mention that the mass slaughter of christians in the middle east has been ongoing since the 7th century. Don't forget that Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria were entirely christian nations once and their christian populations are now down to single digits. Reporting of these deaths are largely ignored by the media. Sarah, haven't you heard about the most recent crucifixions and beheadings of christians in Syria?
Refugees who will be killed because they are christians should be rescued first! Economic refugees can wait.
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LiberalAtheist:
08 Sep 2015 5:29:02pm
Imagine Australia was being invaded by an army of religious warriors, raping, pillaging and killing their way across the country .
How many able bodied Aussie men & women do you think would flee, to try to build a life in another country, while men of other nations fought in their stead? I know I wouldn't.
I'd like to think the vast majority of Australians would also stand and fight the invader. Huge numbers would be volunteering to join the armed services. Even if it was just to assist in a defensive action while our families moved to safer territory. Or to fight a guerrilla campaign, like the resistance in occupied Europe during WWII.
I can't understand why these fleeing Syrian men, and most of them are young men, aren't staying to defend their country. Even if they have to flee with their families to Turkey or a nearby safer country, why not organise there, ask for arms and training, and go back to Syria to fight for their country? Rather they seem to just want to get as far away as possible, leaving their homeland to whoever wants it more. What good are they doing their country in Germany, without their wives or families?
This is not about escaping a war zone, it is about deserting their country in its hour of need, deserting their families to whatever fate has in store for them, and seeking out a European country with the most generous handouts.
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