Back in May of this year, it was decided by Council that there was not to be any Islamic school built in Camden on “planning and development grounds”. Others said this was bullshit: the rejection of the proposal was to appease the racist and xenophobic sentiments that were running high and out of control at the time. Religious intolerance was blatantly feverish. Who can forget the gutless, lowly act of putting the heads of two pigs on stakes on the site of the proposed Islamic school in November last year? Who can forget the pin-up girl of racism and bigotry, Kate McCulloch and her horrid statements such as, “We don’t want [Muslims] not only here, we don’t want them in Australia. They’re an oppressive society, they’re a dictatorship… The ones that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don’t want to accept our way of life.”

Religious intolerance is well and alive… well, unless there are plans for a Catholic school to be built in the same area.

The same dickhead who objected to the Islamic school, the president of the Camden/Macarthur Residents’ Group, Emil Sremchevich, has not seen the Development Application for the Catholic proposal yet. However, he reckons they’ve “ticked all the right boxes” and that “Catholics are part of our community so we should be supporting it on this basis alone. We have to welcome them. To become part of a community, you need to live in the community. You can’t just turn up.”

You can’t just turn up? Then, Mr Sremchevich, go back to wherever you came from! You weren’t invited either. No one ever gets an invite. We all just turn up, one time or another.

The Quranic Society correctly pointed out that Mr Sremchevich’s comments are racist. How did he respond to that? Very, very poorly. Who the fuck made him the president of the Camden/Macarthur Residents’ Group?! The guy is absolutely hopeless!

This is how he responded: “Why is that racist? Why is it discriminatory? It’s very simple: people like some things but don’t like other things. Some of us like blondes, some of us like brunettes. Some of us like Fords, some of us like Holdens. Why is it xenophobic just because I want to make a choice? If I want to like some people and not like other people, that’s the nature of the beast.”

My reaction, upon reading his feeble rationalisaton, was one of utter disbelief. People, it seems, are nothing more important than a mere car model or a hair colour.

And it’s not xenophobia but a choice for this wanker? Wrong. There are no choices in liking some people and not others. Singling out one group of people for condemnation based on religion is xenophobia, not a choice. Xenophobia being the fear of the “alien” or foreigner. Many Catholics in Australia are foreigners, come to think of it.

What a fucking idiot.