Posted on 12/15/2014 1:52:16 PM PST by mykroar
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Religious leaders and ordinary Australians sought to defuse communal tensions on Monday, after a siege at a Sydney cafe by a gunman who forced hostages to display an Islamic flag raised fears of a backlash against the country's Muslim minority.
Within hours of the attack on the Lindt cafe in the centre of the city, a Muslim group reported that women wearing the hijab had been spat on and the right-wing Australian Defence League called on followers to protest at two major mosques.
The protests did not materialise and little is known about the true motives of the gunman.
But in the harbourside city, home to half of Australia's 500,000 Muslims, police moved on a man shouting anti-Islamic abuse at the scene of the ongoing siege.
The man strode up to a police cordon and shouted: "Someone is going to die here because of Islam! There is no such thing as moderate Islam. Wake up and smell the coffee."
He was confronted by another man who shouted back: "Muslims are welcome here." Police urged the first man to leave, to a mix of catcalls and claps of support.
The siege coincides with growing concerns in Australia about the dangers posed by Islamist militants, with the country's security agency raising its national terrorism public alert to "high" in September.
The same month, anti-terrorism police said they had thwarted an imminent threat to behead a random member of the public and days later, a teenager in the city of Melbourne was shot dead after attacking two anti-terrorism officers with a knife.
'Shock and horror'
New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said he was working closely with community groups and there would be an increased police presence in the city to "ensure that everyone is kept safe".
The Australian National Imams Council, together with the Grand Mufti of Australia, issued a statement saying it "condemns this criminal act unequivocally".
An umbrella organisation encompassing all of the major Muslim groups in the country called for calm and expressed "utter shock and horror".
The group stressed that the black and white flag, displayed by tense hostages in the window of the cafe and juxtaposed against the "Merry Christmas" sign stencilled beneath it, was a statement of faith, not politics.
"We remind everyone that the Arabic inscription on the black flag is not representative of a political statement, but reaffirms a testimony of faith that has been misappropriated by misguided individuals that represent nobody but themselves," the group said in a statement.
News of the hostage drama flashed around Sydney shortly after most of the city had begun the working day, shattering what should have been a quiet Monday in the sunny Australian commercial capital just over a week before Christmas.
Samier Dandan, a spokesman for the Imams Council, said the group had already received reports of women wearing the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, being spat on and harassed.
"We are sending out the message to our community to be vigilant about where they are going because we don't want any incidents to fuel the fire," Dandan said.
Those reports bore out concerns of locals like Mohamad Hasan, a computer engineer who emigrated to Australia from Jordan 20 years ago, who said he was deeply worried that Muslims like his wife could be attacked simply for wearing traditional clothing.
"I am worried because maybe I don't look like a Muslim, but my wife like, (is) wearing a head scarf, so she might be affected by this," Hasan said, speaking a few metres from the scene of the hostage crisis.
"Some stupid people ... think 'this is a Muslim, we should get revenge (on) everyone looking like a Muslim'."
But many Australians took to social media to express their support for Muslims.
The Twitter hash tag "#illridewithyou", expressing support for Muslims who felt vulnerable on public transport in the wake of the siege, attracted tens of thousands of messages of supporters within a few hours.
“The tons of Backlash Palaver has the goal of guilting whites”
That is so true. The Australians just suffered a murderous assault on their culture. The normal human impulse is to act protectively, and this protective impulse is itself preemptively demonized in order to stop it. If the Australians are as brainwashed and “whupped” to the degree Americans are, no lawmaker will stand up to offer any action. Accusations of racism are so much worse than murder, rape, enslavement, etc.
Muslim protection/pressure groups play the media like a fiddle.
CAIR has boilerplate column-inches reserved for fake apoligies for the day a US city goes up in smoke in the name of the prophet. Take it to the bank,
Taqqiya
I believe Australia is capable of applying a little more scrutiny to those who apply to immigrate there, when compared to the US and Europe. And the Grand Mufti knows it.
There should be a backlash that drives Mulims out of Australia. We should be celebrating the backlash. Reuters is so upset because the radical Muslims are being exposed for what they are.
This is what happens when Western countries let their guard down, in the interest of “PEACE”. And the fear that they’ll be accused of “MUSLIM BASHING”. If you will all notice, no one in the Muslim community said anything about the intentions of this “MUSLIM MARTYR” for the faith. Yep, this is what this COWARD will be regarded in the Muslim communities world wide. You just wait and see.
My perception is changing. Initially I viewed a muslim women wearing a hijab as someone innocently following her religion.
More and more I am beginning to see a muslim women wearing a hijab as a gang member wearing their "colors".
All Muslim is radical.
Kick their bacon-hating heinnies back to the ME.
Of course, Oz only has 23M people.
So it IS about Islam, right?
>>> vocal moderate Muslims
I saw this quoted recently, with regard to that:
A radical Muslim is one who wants to behead you;
A moderate Muslim is one who wants a radical Muslim to behead you.
The only occupations preferred by muzzies here is either taxi driver (with right of refusal to fares with dogs or transporting alcoholic beverages) or halal butcher (with right to sneak halal slaughtered meat into school cafeterias).
Moderate Muslims are just too lazy to do what Radical Muslims do.
Personally, I'd love to see these crybabies given something to cry about.
We can only hope there is a backlash somewhere over the Islamunists.
I was in line at Whole Foods and had to listen to this middle aged couple go on and on about how wonderful their trip to Turkey had been and how wonderful the muslims are and that they don’t understand the bigotry etc etc. I muttered, “too bad they keep blowing people up.” Oh my goodness. They started screaming at me and talking about how evil Christians are for bombing abortion clinics. It was amazing. I said something about not a moral equivalent to have one abortion clinic shooting verses all the bombings and killings of the muslims. Fortunately they left.
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