Since the brutal murder of police worker Curtis Cheng in Parramatta last week by a schoolboy believed to have been influenced by extremists, columnist Andrew Bolt has been alleging a conspiracy between politicians and police. On 5 October he wrote: “They treat us like fools. Police and politicians are telling untruths about what inspired Farhad Jabar to kill.”
Bolt will likely be thrilled that far-right politician Geert Wilders will be soon arriving in Australia. It isn’t Wilders’ first visit. Some three years ago at a Melbourne press conference, Wilders provided his solution to the terrorist problem: “I call on all the Muslims of the world to leave Islam for Christianity or atheism or whatever they want. This will be good for them and also for our free society”.
A free society, as far as Wilders is concerned, is an Islam-free society. A Muslim-free society. If only Ed Husic, Bianca Elmir, Waleed Aly, Nazeem Hussain, Sabrina Houssami, Cory Paterson and Captain Mona Shindy would just walk toward the exit of the single “Islam” hall and out the revolving door, all our problems with violent extremism would just disappear.
There was some doubt about whether Wilders would make it to Australia to launch our latest anti-Islam party, The Australian Liberty Alliance. Heck, we could do with another one after the electoral and other successes of Reclaim Australia, Rise Up Australia, Christian Democrats, Pauline Hanson, etc.
The Immigration Minister has the ultimate discretion over whether someone can enter the country on a speaking tour. In recent time we’ve seen Chris Brown refused a visa over his history of domestic violence. We’ve seen anti-abortion campaigner Troy Newman expelled. The logic of ministerial discretion is as clear as mud.
Be that as it may, I’m happy Geert Wilders has been granted a visa. Wilders wants to launch an anti-Islam party which has already been registered by the Australian Electoral Commission. No doubt Wilders will repeat his call for me and 500,000 other Australians to stop ticking the Muslim box on our census forms.
Wilders will probably try to incite some kind of nasty Muslim reaction to his words. But Muslims in this part of the planet hardly batted an eyelid over the Danish Cartoons, the (German) Pope’s speech or the various tours of Wilders’ former colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
The great thing about all these anti-Islam speakers – Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Raphael Israeli, Brigitte Gabriel – is that they have little influence except on the margins. The most they can hope for is the ears of a few backbenchers.
Wilders doesn’t like Muslims, but he also doesn’t like multiculturalism, cultural relativism, refugees, etc. Heck, haters are always going to hate. Wilders holds little electoral clout back home. In the last EU elections, his party lost two seats and has been reduced to a mere three seats out of 26 Dutch representatives. The poor chap needs all the friends he can get. I say let him in. But if he incites violence or hatred, boot him out.
Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author working on a PhD on counter terrorism at Deakin University.
