Our reply to Greens Islamophobic remarks attacking Mulsim community

We cannot believe that amid election campaign, any political party active member (and candidate for several times) can come up with the crap included in Marlene reply. I deeply believe that it is not her words, but were dictated to her by the Greens hierarchy.

In the reply, the most disgusting parts are the parts that refer to the Muslim community as the root of all problems of this nation. She described the Muslim community as naïve, uneducated, regressive and need to be taught how to live in this country.

Any reply to Marlene disgusting words would need several separate articles (and we will do), but here we would mention only few facts to “educate” Marlene and her “progressive” Greens party about the issues mentioned in her reply:

1- The Muslim community is very diverse community. Any generalisation is something not only naïve, but regressive and show islamophobic ideas and suggestions.

2- The Muslim community is one of the most progressive communities in this country. We need to mention here that very few Muslims are voting for the openly regressive political parties (Liberals, One Nation, Family First, Christian Democrats,…). This is even before the Liberals started the attack on the Muslim community after 11 September 2001.

3- The Muslim community played significant role in the rise of the Greens to play role in the Australian politics and to come out from the wilderness of Tasmanian forests.

In regard to the other misleading information disseminated by Marlene, we can mention:

1- As Marlene said, we need to judge politicians by their record, and not by the policy of their party on the official websites. On this regard we can safely assume that the Greens politicians have the worst record on achievements or on sticking to policies, worse than any other politician in this country.

2- The official policy of the regressive Liberals is the same as the Greens: to establish Palestinian viable state on the territories occupied 1967. The same policy they share with Australian Labor party. And we can go even further. It is the same policy of Kadima Zionist party. But what the Greens have achieved or how much their politicians sticked to these policy is the important issue.

3- The Greens record of opposing Zionist state of Israel is the worst in Australian politics. The Greens party is the only mainstream political party that:

- Failed to send any solidarity mission to Middle East, especially Palestine.

- Has the largest Zionist representation in its parliamentary teams and hierarchies.

- Failed even to properly condemn the aggressions committed by Israel in the last decade. Their media releases in this regard is the shortest that always equalise of responsibility of “acts of violence” between the aggressor and the victims (and we need to see if Marlene has some media releases that prove the opposite).

- Has no Muslim, Palestinian or Multicultural elements in the parliamentary teams or hierarchies.

In regard to preferences, Marlene is telling us that if the local group decided to preference One Nation (and the Greens did such deals before), so it would be acceptable? What a total crap. This would lead us to another more serious question: how can voters trust such party that can change its course from far left to far right to the centre, by decisions of few members? Would not these members and local groups be disciplined if they go stray and creep to the far right?

Let me tell Marlene and her hierarchy: before you ask the Muslim community to vote as whole community only the Greens (and this incident never happened in any society around the world), The Muslim community needs to ask few questions:

1- What did the community get from the Greens in return of its loyalty in the last decade?

2- How can the whole community trust such party that has no track history of supporting the issues important for the community? Not only this, but the party is not guaranteeing that it would honour its commitments and policies, because few local members have decided to take the party to the far right?

I would add another vital question: on which basis Marlene and the Greens are asking the Muslim community to vote only for them? What shared ideologies both have? On the opposite. The Muslim community, which is a very progressive community with deep conservative social values and ideologies, can be expected to share no one single values with the Greens which has “total liberal” social agendas. The total liberal values of promoting prostitution, abortion, homosexuality, drug abuse … are opposed by almost every Muslim community member, regardless of his/her commitment to the religion itself.

The Greens should have showed more respect to a community that showed high degree of political pragmatism to vote for ideological opponents. The Greens think that the Muslim community who was under constant attack for the last decade, has no other options but to vote for the Greens to punish Labor. The Greens is very short-sighted to realise that a big community like Muslims, have a lot of options. We tried to send the Greens such message in the last few years. But their blind approach to simple pragmatic dealings, is preventing them to see the whole picture.

And it is our job to show them again in this election that marginalised communities have a lot of options: not only either vote for Labor or the Greens.