Damian Doyle has always struck me as a strange individual, so sanctimonious and so judgemental of yours truly and so full of condescension for anyone who does not hold beliefs concurrent  with his own. He is an avid consumer of what I call “disaster porn” and if there is some natural disaster in the third world he is onto it like a flash tweeting about it or decrying the tardy response of the west to said disasters. Anyway  our Damian has written a rather wordy piece about the way that Islam is perceived in this country and in it he sneers at  any and all criticism of that faith.

During the question and answer session it became clear that many members of the audience were genuinely curious about Islam. Having heard so many terrible things about the religion – not just at the forum but elsewhere too – they wanted to understand its core teachings and central texts. One woman commented she had attempted to read the Qur’an but found it unintelligible and confusing. That’s a pretty normal response as it’s a very different book to, say, the New Testament. “So where can we learn more about Islam?”

The response at that forum, naturally enough under the circumstances, was not all that helpful. The conveners were unanimous in their advice, “There’s an excellent website called Jihad Watch, which is run by an organisation that we’re linked with. Its main author, Robert Spencer, has also written a lot of books that are essential reading”.

Of course, you don’t need to attend a meeting of the Q Society, a fringe group fighting the good fight against the ‘Islamisation of Australia’ and the implementation of sharia law in our school tuckshops, to meet people who see Islam as a baffling unknown. Through conversations in pubs and coffee shops, by reading letters in tabloid newspapers and on blogs, or by listening to commentary on television or radio, it’s easy to see that Islam is a poorly understood religion in Australia.

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Notice the way that Doyle frames his barely concealed contempt for anyone who is critical of Islam? The reference to Tuck-shops is clearly an allusion   to the cruelty concerns of the issue of the conversion of institutional food sources to halal even when only a very tiny number of the consumers are Muslim. It seems to me that Doyle is suggesting that only very favourable discussion of Islam should ever be listened to and considered and that anything that is at all critical of Islam is haram.

  Please dear readers go to his piece and you will find a great example of quisling rhetoric in full flight, an essay that even tries to play down the significance of Female Genital Mutilation Note his choice of words to describe the practice:

A sad example of this is the issue of female genital cutting. The attendees at the Q Society forum would have been left with the impression that female genital cutting is an Islamic practice as an example of the religion’s repression and abuse of women. By contrast, the conference attendees heard an account of a pre-Islamic cultural practice being eliminated from a community as a result of a local imam’s leadership during the 1950s.

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Yes Damian we have all heard  that line and although it may be true in the most pedantic sense for every Muslim society that abhors and rejects the practice there are many others who are at best indifferent to the vile practice..

It seems to me that for Damian   dreams about is an uncritical acceptance of Islam   and the practice of the faith, both here and elsewhere in the world, and a substantive deference to the sensitivities of those who follow that faith. Thus he wants no criticism of the hot heads who call for the beheading of  unbelievers   and he wants to see nothing but positive  PR for the faith within the Australian community.:

And so I’ve decided to start small. To think about the things I can influence, rather than those I can’t. People will decide for themselves what to believe about Islam and its role in society, both in Australia and globally. Some will continue to reach out to sources of information that, in my view, are toxic and uninformed. I need to remember that a simple thing I can do is to let them know there are other sources, that those sources can be trusted, and that obtaining information from a range of sources is the best way to become informed.

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The trouble with this exercise in parsimony, as readers of this blog will know, is that Damian  considers any sort of criticism of Islam at all is an example of “bigotry” and I can’t help thinking that the only thing that is preventing Damian from going the whole hog to making the declaration ” There is no god but Allah and Mohamed is his prophet” must be  Mr Doyle’s love of beer.

Cheers Comrades

click to read Damian’s tweets

Related articles

• Ha Ha Islamophobia (iainhall.wordpress.com)
• Opinion: Stop calling criticism of Islam ‘Islamophobia’ (iranaware.com)
• Islam’s Rise and the West’s Denial (creepingsharia.wordpress.com)
• Guess how many Islamic terror attacks since 9/11 (counterjihadreport.com)
• Islam’s Rise and the West’s Denial (iranaware.com)