A case of the Ramadan blues

11 July 2014

Well folks, it’s that time of year again. The time when your Muslim work colleagues probably aren’t inviting you out for a coffee or lunch. When they’re yawning incessantly for much of the day and not just for having stayed up late to watch the World Cup. And when they either leave early or scoffing down dates and water just as the sun goes down.

We’re in Ramadan. For me, this month couldn’t have come any sooner. It’s a time of relief, a time when you can add more spiritual currency to your otherwise dwindling heavenly bank account. It’s also a time when you’re supposed to be nicer than you normally are, not just at times when people are nice to you.

In recent times my mob hasn’t received much niceness from certain quarters. Some of the nasties have been inspired by hysteria related to a proposal to build a mosque in Bendigo. What really shocked me about the project wasn’t so much the opposition. Heck, we’re used to such antics by now.

No, what really amazed me is that all fund raising was done locally. Unlike mosques built yesteryear, this project didn’t involve a delegation heading off to Saudi Arabia and prostrating before a prince for oil money in return for naming the place His Eminence Abdul Garbage bin al-Recycled Mosque.

In fact, the only people relying on outside funds were the anti-mosque brigade. The self-styled Restore Australia is based on the Sunshine Coast, and one of its leaders told the Bendigo Advertiser that the group shares its ideology with the rather violent far-Right English Defence League (EDL). An anti-mosque 'jihad'. How nice.

I’m not quite sure what Bendigo’s largely university-based Muslim community did to deserve so much vitriol. And in this World Cup season, I’m also not sure what Muslims across Australia did to deserve the own-goal kicked very deftly kicked by the fringe group calling itself Hizb-ut-Tahrir (or 'Party of Liberation').

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is an annual event co-hosted by the St James Ethics Centre and the Sydney Opera House. For years, FODI had been wanting to find someone silly enough to argue the case for honour killings, a rather gruesome form of domestic violence often associated with people associated with violent jihad (no, not the Gold Coast mob referred to above).

In previous years, FODI managed to get Keysar Trad, prominent self-appointed spokesman for all things Islamic in Australia, to spruik

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A case of the Ramadan blues

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