Enclave ?

The Western Australian newspaper staff is very clever at inventing trouble against and about the Muslim community out of nothing. Even as a journalist I have to admit that! Many of our Imams, leaders and ordinary Muslims have fallen victim to the West Australian’s anti-Muslim attitude over the last few years.

During the Howard government the media played many tricks to encourage misunderstanding and rejection of Australian Muslims. This seems to have abated somewhat since the election of the Rudd government but the media never seems to lose a chance to spin a story against Muslims.

The project publicised by Imam Abdul Jalil Ahmed and his colleagues from ICWA gave the media a wonderful opportunity to make another scandal out of nothing. To make matters worse they go on to quote Imam Abdul Jalil saying that apartheid worked well and people may be offended by smells of exotic food. The funny side of the story is that this so-called enclave will be approximately 20 flats with an “activity room” not big enough for more than 60 people. What a silly story the West Australian chooses to focus on!

During my last three months of marketing in the Perth metropolitan area for Crescent Times, I was amazed at the wide distribution of Muslim people throughour Perth. From Joondalup to Armadale, Rockingham to Toodyay - in almost every suburb. Hamdulilah that we do not have the Lakemba culture or attitude in Perth as they have in Sydney. So what enclave is the West Australian talking about? What a silly childish article dear respected staff of the West!!

It may be a better idea if ICWA chooses to focus on people in need, to provide accommodation for new comers, people with disabilities, or our fragile elders. Such an idea would meet the needs of our community better and would certainly be much better from the point of view of publicity for the Muslim community rather than focusing on ordinary Muslims clinging together for “religious” reasons. The proposed housing for 20 families won’t account for more than 1 in 5000 Muslims, the rest of us will just have to continue to inflict our exotic cooking smells on our non Muslim neighbours.

Nonetheless, we defend all our Imams and community leaders without restriction. However, Crescent Times team would prefer if media matters could be discussed with someone with experience before going public, to avoid such incidents in future. The media are still chasing after mistakes made by Muslims in their naïve understanding of how the media works in this country when it comes to deal ing with minorities, Muslim or Islamic issues.

Be blessed our ICWA people! We stand with you regardless of what kind of trap you fell into! Do not talk to them any more! Is that among your choices?

Wasalam alaykom,

The editor in chief