A generation ago, irresponsible pundits inflamed anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment, claiming that the election of then Senator John F Kennedy to the presidency would put the White House under the control of Rome. Today, where Muslims are concerned, it seems there's no claim too absurd, no charge too baseless to command the full attention of certain public officials and even the investigatory powers of Congress. Representative Peter King should know better.

We can expect a litany of ominous claims about Muslims during House homeland security Committee hearings on domestic Islamic radicalisation scheduled for this week. Representative King (Republican, New York) chairs that committee and has singled out Muslims as the source of potential terrorism on our shores. We were most recently exposed to a sustained public airing of wild-eyed Islamophobic storylines during the controversy over a proposed Islamic centre for lower Manhattan. Seemingly moderate American Muslims were said to be secretly plotting to replace the US constitution with Sharia law. Civil rights organisations were portrayed as front organisations for violent foreign "jihadi" groups. Islam was revealed to be an inherently violent, even terroristic religion. Such slanders and conspiracy theories demonise Muslims and Islam. They would be laughable were they not so ubiquitous, and therefore dangerous.

Hysterical Islamophobic rhetoric casts suspicion on all Muslims and amounts to fearmongering, plain and simple. It deserves to be condemned, not dignified with congressional hearings. Unfortunately, Representative King has invited witnesses with records of making outrageous claims about Muslims, such as Walid Shoebat. Shoebat asserts that "Islam is of Satan".

The anti-Muslim Fearmongering We Can't See

closer to home .....

An anti-Islamic group's opposition to a weekly Muslim prayer session being held in Melbourne's inner suburbs has been condemned by a civil liberties organisation, Liberty Victoria.

Q Society opposes what it calls the "Islamisation of Australia", saying accommodating Islamic custom and law threatens Australia's basic freedoms. It has started a petition against a planning amendment at Melbourne's Port Phillip Council that would formalise an existing weekly hour-long prayer session at a St Kilda community house.

Muslims have been praying at the weekly Friday session for years.

Liberty Victoria president Spencer Zifcak said Q Society's campaign "bears all the hallmarks of a deliberate attempt to deny to one religion the freedom of religious belief accorded to every other religion".

With a large Jewish community living in the St Kilda area, Professor Zifcak said Jewish groups in the area had welcomed the planning application but Q Society was arguing that allowing more Muslims to pray in the community house "would be contrary to social cohesion in the area where people of the Christian and Jewish faiths are in a majority".

Prof Zifcak said the Islamic prayer group had been meeting without incident or concern for years.

A spokesperson for the Q Society has described it as "a group of individuals from varying backgrounds, of different cultural and religious persuasions who are committed to safeguard and promote Australia's free, open and democratic society".

Indicative of the Q Society's politics was their response to the proposal (later adopted) that Marrickville Council in New South Wales should join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. The Q Society organised a petition claiming that the councillors responsible for this initiative had "formally aligned their municipality with terrorist organisations seeking to overthrow the State of Israel" and were "supporting the worldview of totalitarian Islam.

closer to home .....

A row has broken out in a Jewish-dominated area of Melbourne over a Muslim prayer group that meets in a council-owned hall.

The St Kilda Islamic Society has held Friday prayers at the facility for years, but the council now wants to change the venue's permit to formalise the arrangement. That council decision has given opponents of the prayer group the opportunity to get vocal.

The prayer group started in 2008 with a group of Melbourne taxi drivers who were looking for a place to worship. They began meeting at the Alma Road Community House in Melbourne's inner south-east, an area recognised as a Jewish enclave and does not have a local mosque.

These days about 35 men attend Friday prayers, including Qaiser Mohammed. "They think that we are going to occupy this place. We are here for one hour [a week], just for the Friday prayer," he said.

Port Phillip Council, which owns the hall, is seeking to change the facility's planning permit to allow bigger groups to congregate. This has focused attention on the venue's existing uses, and suddenly a practice that has been happening quietly for years is now a matter of public debate.

Vickie Janson is from the Q Society, which is dedicated to fighting what it calls the "Islamisation of Australia". She says the group behind the Friday prayers are "doctrinally aligned" with extremists. "I am against Sharia law in Australia. People have come here to embrace our freedoms, embrace the equality. Let's not go down the track of Britain that has now set up 85 tribunals that act as Sharia courts," she said.

Q Society is distributing petitions warning of unrest if the prayer group is allowed to continue.

"It is well documented that in many parts of the Islamic world, Friday prayers are noted for escalating violent outbursts towards non-Muslims. The gathering of a large group of Muslims in East St Kilda will likely strike terror into the hearts of local residents," she said. "There is a lot of Jewish people in the area. We know if we look around the world with these more extreme groups, anti-semitism is a problem."

Mr Mohammed rejects claims his prayer group increases violence or in some way is anti-semitic. He said the group does not want to introduce Sharia law and thinks those objecting to the prayers must be misinformed. "They are linking us to the terrorist group. I saw their petition. It is completely wrong," he said.

Victorian State Labor MP Martin Foley says the situation is being blown out of proportion. "The dog whistling that we have seen in Canberra in recent times has encouraged this kind of behaviour, and this group (Q Society) has just sought to whip up fear and pander to the worst elements of our community [and] should pull their head in," he said. 

Islamophobia Watch