|
||||||||
  |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Australian row over Islamic dress
By Grant Holloway
SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- An unseemly row has broken out in Australia over the right of Muslim women to wear their all-encompassing chadors and hijabs following a terror alert earlier this week. A right-wing Christian politician in the News South Wales state parliament, the Reverend Fred Nile, has called for the flowing robes and veils to be banned in public places, saying they could be used to conceal bombs. Nile, who frequently makes headlines in NSW for his far-right wing views, told television viewers only Muslim extremists wore the chador and cited the recent terror-siege on a theater in Moscow as proof that the clothing should be banned. During that attack, female Chechen rebels had hidden explosives underneath their flowing robes. The Australian government on Tuesday warned it had received "credible information" of a possible terrorist attack in Australia in the coming months believed to be linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Nile said bin Laden was manipulating Muslims who wore the chador to commit terrorist acts and that "normal" Muslim women did not wear the robes. The call has been widely condemned by a broad spectrum of Australian politicians and social leaders, but Australian Prime Minister John Howard added fuel to the fire by failing to completely rule out the proposal. While not agreeing with Nile, Howard said he personally did not know enough about the tenets of Islam to make a judgment about the proposal. Howard did stress, however, that it was important that Muslim women feel free to practise their religion and that Muslims in Australia should not feel they are being singled out for attention. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer dismissed the suggestion Friday saying if Australian banned chadors in public then it would also have to ban raincoats. "I suppose people could hide all sorts of equipment in all sorts of clothing," Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "You could hide things under a raincoat I suppose. I don't think we're going to ban raincoats." Reassurance soughtMuslims make up about 1 percent of Australia's population of 20 million and are concentrated in urban areas such as Sydney's Lakemba district. Keyser Trad from the Australian Lebanese Muslim Association told CNN Friday that comments such as Nile's were making Muslim women more fearful of going out in public, where they were already being subject to harassment. "This is one of the dangers of such an extreme comment by a political leader," Trad said. He said the government was not doing enough to reassure Australians that Muslims were peace-loving people. Elements of anti-Muslim sentiment has been growing in Australia following the terrorist bombing of two nightclubs in Bali on October 12 in which more than 180 people were killed. Around 90 Australians were killed in the blasts which the Australian, and other western governments, believes were the work of an al Qaeda-linked Muslim extremist group called Jemaah Islamiyah.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
