http://www.hoax-slayer.com/howard-muslim-speech.shtml
Commentary:
According to this email forward, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard informed Muslims living in Australia in no uncertain terms that they should leave the country if they wished to live under Islamic Sharia law. The message claims that the then Australian government was intent on targeting Muslim radicals "in a bid to head off potential terror attacks". The email also quotes a no-holds-barred diatribe about immigration supposedly delivered by John Howard. The message suggests that political leaders in Canada and the United States would do well to follow the lead of the Australian Prime Minister with regard to immigration policy.
However, although the message does contain elements of truth, it is in fact highly misleading and inaccurate. At the outset, it should be noted that the message is now quite outdated. Versions of the email began circulating back in 2005. Since then, there has been a change of government in Australia. The Howard Government was resoundingly defeated in November 2007 and the current Australian Prime Minister is Labor's Kevin Rudd. However, the message contains no date and some non-Australian recipients may therefore wrongly assume that it refers to current events rather than events that occurred several years ago in a somewhat different political climate.
The first part of the message suggests that Prime Minister Howard told Muslims who wished to live under Islamic Sharia law that they should get out of Australia. This is partly true in the sense that a high profile Australian political leader did make comments suggesting that Islamic extremists who desired to turn Australia into an Islamic state should leave and that Howard condoned such strongly worded rhetoric. However, it was in fact then Federal Treasurer Peter Costello who actually uttered the comments. A November 2005
article in the Herald Sun notes:
ISLAMIC extremists wanting to enforce fundamentalist law should get out of Australia, federal Treasurer Peter Costello said yesterday.
In a significant hardening of the Government's rhetoric, Mr Costello declared Australia would never be turned into an Islamic state.
"There are Islamic states around the world that practise sharia law," he said. "And if that is your object, you may well be much more at home in such a country than trying to turn Australia into one of those countries, because it is not going to happen."
Then Federal Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson was also
quoted in the media as stating that "those who do not accept and teach Australian values should 'clear off'".
The message also claims that John Howard had given government support to spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. This element of the message is true. An August 2005
article in The Age notes:
Mosques and Islamic schools will be targeted by intelligence agencies as the federal government tries to stamp out homegrown terrorism and extremists.
Prime Minister John Howard said on top of trying to promote Australian values in Islamic schools, the government would monitor what was said in certain schools and mosques to ensure they did not foster terrorism.
Asked whether he was prepared to "get inside" mosques and schools to ensure there was no support for terrorism, Mr Howard was blunt.
"Yes, to the extent necessary," Mr Howard told Southern Cross radio.
Mr Howard qualified the above stance by making clear that his government was not trying to interfere with religious freedoms but only gather intelligence on potential religious or material support for terrorist activities within the Australian Islamic community:
"I have no desire and nor is it the government's intention to interfere in any way with the freedom or practice of religion.
"We have a right to know whether there is, within any section of the Islamic community, a preaching of the virtues of terrorism, whether any comfort or harbour is given to terrorism within that community."
The next part of the message transcribes what is claimed to be a speech delivered by John Howard detailing his views on immigration. The piece calls on immigrants to learn English, adapt to Australian values and lifestyle and pointedly reminds them that they always have the right to leave if they are unhappy in their adopted country.
However, the quoted words were not made by John Howard and were circulating in various forms years before he supposedly uttered them. In fact, the words were originally
intended for an American audience and were part of a
longer piece penned by Barry Loudermilk, a US Air Force veteran and columnist for a local newspaper in the American state of Georgia. Loudermilk wrote the article as a means of expressing his personal views on patriotism and immigration in post-9/11 America.
The article struck a chord with many readers in the US and elsewhere and it soon spread far and wide via email and other means. At some point, versions adapted to Australia, the UK, and elsewhere began circulating. Finally, the Australianized version of Loudermilk's article was falsely attributed to John Howard and tacked on to the original, more accurate, variant of the above email forward (quoted below):
Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.
A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia and her Queen at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his Ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.
Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state, and its laws were made by parliament.
"If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television.
"I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia: one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that is false. If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country, which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said.
Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other country.
Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should "clear off. Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and who don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then, they can basically clear off," he said.
Thus, while the more lengthy version of message that includes Loudermilk's article is still partially factual, it is nonetheless outdated, contains inaccurate information and may perpetrate a quite misleading understanding of Australia's policies on immigration in general and Muslims in particular. Taken out of context, and with the falsely attributed Loudermilk article thrown into the mix, this email may give the impression that Australia is intolerant of migrants, especially those of the Muslim faith. This is not the case. One of Australia's great strengths is its rich cultural diversity and it welcomes migrants from all parts of the world and with many and varied systems of belief.
Sending on factually dubious information such as this is unlikely to be helpful and may even add to the cultural divisions and misunderstandings that plague our strife-torn world.
