OPINION
Once again, we have a government pandering to religious minorities in a transparently mercenary attempt to stitch up a powerful voting bloc.
No, I’m not talking about so-called “theocons” and conservative Christians. Despite the left’s obessive gibbering about Scott Morrison’s and Tony Abbott’s religious faiths, “theocons” have never really been a thing in Australia. Certainly not since the Catholic division of the Labor Party split over the party’s support for Communism in the 1950s.
No, what I’m talking about is the weird spectacle of the socialist Albanese government shamelessly pandering to the most mediaevally conservative, violently repressive religion in the world.
Labor has been urged to introduce “diversity quotas” for under-represented communities in “select public roles” and overhaul the national curriculum so students learn more about other cultures as part of a sweeping review into Australian multiculturalism.
Because “diversity quotas” have worked so well, everywhere else they’ve been tried.
But, once again, the left is peddling capital-M Multiculturalism: the conceit that all cultures are equally valuable, with the sole exception of Western culture. Worse, Western nations have no right to expect that invaders, oops, “immigrants”, adapt one whit to the culture of the nation that so generously allowed them to move in from whatever third-world shithole they fled.
And when Labor says “other cultures”, they really mean one culture only.
Submissions on the government’s “multicultural framework review” will close on October 13, one day before the voice referendum, with the nation’s peak Islamic community organisation arguing that family traditions and Islamic family practices “find little acknowledgment in the nation’s legal structures.”
Aaaand, there it is.
Labor is pandering to the most aggressively monocultural ideology on the face of the planet, in the name of “multiculturalism”.
And it’s all purely out of cheap political selfishness.
Labor’s electoral heartland is Western Sydney. While the rest of the country might swing back and forth, the sprawl of electoral seats in densely-populated Western Sydney remains solidly, rusted-on Labor.
Guess where Australia’s Islamic population is also concentrated most densely?
The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils urged the government to incorporate new provisions within existing legal frameworks “to recognise and respect religious practices, particularly in the areas of family law and inheritance law”.
In other words, sharia law.
“The absence of formal recognition for Islamic family traditions in law, or policy, has inadvertently pushed some within the community to seek unofficial agreements to preserve their traditions,” it said.
They’re talking about the child brides and polygamous marriages, conducted illegally by Imams in Muslim communities. And tacitly condoned by bureaucracies like Centrelink, who know perfectly well what’s going on when three women from Lakemba, including a 14-year-old, claim family benefits, all naming the same bloke as the father and husband. But, instead of reporting it to the police as they should, they turn a blind eye and rubber-stamp the bennies.
Ah, the vibrant tapestry of Multiculturalism.
“There exists a gap between the ideal of integration and the pressures many Muslim Australians feel to assimilate. Bridging this gap requires proactive efforts from all sections of society, including policy frameworks that support and encourage genuine integration,” it said.
The Australian
“Genuine integration” is assimilation, you virtue-signalling loon.
But, ask yourself: just how “diverse” are Muslim countries?
As Mark Steyn has said, you can have pluralistic, multicultural, tolerant societies, or you can have Islam. You can’t have both.