Columnist Andrew Bolt asks “who’s kidding who?” in this piece from Australia’s Herald Sun:
In February Treasurer Peter Costello was monstered for saying Muslims shouldn’t come to Australia unless they accepted basic Australian values.
And he listed them: democracy, the freedoms of a secular state, and “loyalty first — loyalty to Australia”.
For this he was called a Muslim-basher by most of our leading Muslim groups…
Last Saturday a small Muslim group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, held a public meeting at the Bankstown Town Hall to discuss whether Australia’s Muslims really should subscribe to those values Costello mentioned.
The answer was: No. No to democracy, a secular society and Australia first.
For instance, Usman Badar, president of the University of NSW Muslim Students Association, told the 300 or so people that “Western values are not worthy of human subscription”.
Take democracy: “Democracy sounds nice enough, (but) not to a Muslim . . . Sovereignty is for none but Allah.” And “Allah did not say . . . whatever the people want, we’ll have this.”
As for a secular society, “it relegates Allah to the margins of public life and places human beings above him. This, to put it blatantly, is as blasphemous as it gets”.
Nor was any overriding loyalty to Australia possible. “The overriding commitment of a Muslim is to Allah, and Allah alone.”…