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Anti-Secularism Muslims Told to Leave Australia
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"If you want a country which has Shari`ah law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," Costello said.
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SYDNEY,
August 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A day after
a special meeting between Australian Prime Minister John Howard and
Muslim leaders, Muslims who do not respect secularism and law were
told Wednesday, August 24, to leave the country.
"If
those are not your values, if you want a country which has Shari`ah
law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you,"
Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, said on
national television.
He
was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying that there are no
two laws governing people in Australia.
"I'd
be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws
governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the
Islamic law, that that is false," he stressed.
"If
you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy,
and would prefer Shari`ah law and have the opportunity to go to
another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better
option," Costello, a conservative Catholic, added.
Costello
has been Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party since 1994, and Treasurer
in the Australian government since 1996.
Education
Minister Brendan Nelson further told reporters that Muslims who did
not want to accept local values should "clear off".
"Basically,
people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to live
by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically
clear off," he said.
Eavesdropping
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Howard said mosques and Islamic schools will be closely monitored.
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The
remarks came one day after Muslim leaders pledged to defend the
country against "terrorism," disowned Osama bin Laden and
accepted differences with the government over the Iraq invasion in
their meeting with Howard.
The
prime minister called the meeting in the wake of last month's London
bombings by British-born Muslims, amid fears that Australia could be
the target of a similar attack by disaffected members of its Muslim
minority.
"The
purpose of the meeting was to identify ways of preventing the
emergence of any terrorist behavior in this country," Howard told
commercial radio Wednesday.
"You
won't change the minds of people who are hardened fanatics and
hardened extremists. You have to identify them and take measures to
ensure that they don't become a problem."
Asked
if he was prepared to "get inside" mosques and schools to
ensure there was no support for terrorism, Howard said: "Yes, to
the extent necessary".
Australia
is also contemplating tougher anti-terror legislation, which will be
debated next month at a meeting between Howard and leaders of state
governments, according to AFP.
The
Affinity Intercultural Foundation (AIF), an Islamic youth organisation
that was not invited to Tuesday’s meeting, said 80 percent of Aussie
Muslims were not represented.
It
told national radio that it will organize a meeting for Muslims in
September to try to highlight how mainstream Muslims have become
victims of prejudice and bias.
AIF
director Mehmet Saral said Muslims were feeling more victimized than
at any other time in their history of living in Australia.
Some
300,000 Muslims make up just 1.5 percent of Australia's population of
20 million.
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