My letter to John Howard regarding his comments about Muslim community

Dear Prime Minister
Though I was not surprised by your cheap comments about Australian Muslims, I was deeply disgusted by them. For the leader of this nation to insist on playing the race card, despite the deep damage already done to the image of Australia globally and the deep division in the society which culminated in the shocking disgraceful Cronulla riots is something that makes every one of us ashamed that you are the PM of our nation.

You are very clearly lacking any vision and humanity in dealing with these issues in such hard times. On the one hand, you are stressing that there is a minority of Muslims who are praising extremism (even with no proof of this), but on the other hand you are generalizing our failure (as a community) to “become easily absorbed by the Australian mainstream”.

Until now, I cannot understand how we can become “mainstream”. Do we need to change the color of our skin? Or do we need to cut out tongues, as we cannot speak English like you? Do we need as a community to start playing cricket, drink beer, change our names to Anglo names and eat ham, to become mainstream?

To the best of my knowledge, the Australian Jews, Hindus and some other evangelists are not eating ham, and cannot speak English fluently as you (although admittedly some Indians may play cricket!). So how did you consider them to be “easily absorbed by mainstream” but failed to consider us?

Please Mr Howard, we need strong leadership in these dark ages you brought us into by your xenophobic ideas. We need you to be good example, and not the “devil’s advocate”.
Remember Mr Howard that all the world is watching us!

Jamal Daoud
Punchbowl, NSW