grodscorp@grods.comIslam: NIMBY
 | Posted by The Editor on Wednesday 28 May 2008, 5:21 pm Categories: Bogans, Politics, Religion Tags: Tags: Camden, Islam, NIMBY, ReligiousIntolerance |
I was going to say that the uproar over a rejected Islamic school in Sydney was unAustralian, but I’m beginning to think that — sadly — it is Australian.
The Camden Council has voted unanimously to oppose a proposal to build an Islamic school on the outskirts of the town, south-west of Sydney.
[...]
In a unanimous decision the council voted in favour of a recommendation of council staff who overwhelmingly rejected the proposal on planning and development grounds.
I will make no comment about the council’s decision to overturn the application on planning grounds because I have no knowledge about the proposed development, the area in question, or any other contextual circumstances, but I think the residents’ campaign and reaction to the decision based on religious intolerance, fear, xenophobia and insularity is shameful.
Let me just say, however, that I understand and accept that some people are uncomfortable with Islam and feel threatened by its growing presence in areas that have long been very white and very Christian. And who can blame them with Islam’s name being sullied by a tiny majority of Muslims around the world plus an over-zealous media who treat the religion and its followers with suspicion? But there is still no excuse for the kind of shit we saw in Camden last night.
It’s religious intolerance, pure and simple. And it has no place in the Australia that those same people claim to represent and protect.
“Our grandfathers fought and died for this suburb“
In covering last night’s council meeting the media has focussed mainly on residents who didn’t even try to conceal their hatred and fear of Islam, like Kate McCulloch (above).
We don’t want them 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.
But other residents attempted to sound reasonable by making token referrals to planning concepts, only to fail a little more miserably at reasonable as each new clunking sentence came out of their mouths.
CAMDEN RESIDENT 4: We don’t need the traffic, environmental damage and everything else that goes with it.
REPORTER: To what extent was it because it was an Islamic school that was being….
CAMDEN RESIDENT 4: It’s got nothing to do with Islamic, if it was a Catholic school, Buddhist, whatever, it’s not an appropriate area for a 1200 student school.
There’s a school East, North, West all around here, don’t need anther 1200 kids school and the opinion that my kids can go there? My kids can’t read Islamic, how are they going to go to that school?
“My kids can’t read Islamic”? If this issue wasn’t so serious that would easily be GrodsCorp’s quote of the week. Oh, and by the way, Camden Resident 4, would you oppose a Jewish school if your kids couldn’t read Jewish?
At least we now have two place names to use when we want to discuss ugly Australian intolerance, and bigotry seems to be fond of alliteration: Cronulla and Camden. A shameful day for Australia.
GrodsThink Ep.29 (26/8/08)
