The past few weeks have been hard ones for Australians, not least for Australian Muslims. Various alleged plots by Islamic State supporters to slaughter Australians has Islam in the news. Even as I write, five out of ten of the “most popular” articles on The Australian’s website are about Islamic jihad and national security.
What are ordinary Australians to make of conspiracy theories aired by Muslims on the ABC’s Q & A program, implying that recent police raids were staged as a cynical act to manipulate public opinion? Are Muslims being unfairly victimised by all these security measures?
How are we to evaluate Senator Jacqui Lambie’s claim that sharia law “obviously involves terrorism”? Or the Prime Minister’s decision to mobilise Australian troops against the Islamic State?
What about the Islamic State’s grandiose claim that “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women.” Or Mr Abbott’s declaration that the balance between freedom and security needs to be adjusted in favour of greater security and less freedom?
Earlier this month, an 18-year-old Melbourne man, Numan Haider, was shot dead by police after he stabbed two officers outside a suburban police station. At the time of writing, news was breaking that authorities believed he intended to behead a police officer and post the photos online.
Prison officers in Goulburn jail have struggled to contain the worst riot in ten years, during which rampaging prisoners were heard to be crying “Allahu Akbar.”
A Christian woman who works in a church close by an Islamic centre has asked her employer to install security measures to protect her and others at the church. Someone else, a convert from Islam to Christianity, reports that his personal sense of being under threat has risen, because he feels that people he knew from his earlier life as a radical Muslim are more likely to be activated to violence after the successes of the Islamic State and their global call to arms. Are such responses reasonable? Or are they Islamophobic?
Many young Muslims have been using the hashtag #NotInMyName on social media. Many are insisting that IS does not speak for them: as Anne Aly put it “This isn’t in my name, this isn’t what Islam is about, I am against it and they don’t have my allegiance, they don’t have my support.” How then can we know the truth about Islam?
What is a Christian response to all this? How can we find our way through these crises: does protecting national security mean we risk losing some part of our soul? A truly Christian response to the multi-faceted challenge of “Muslims behaving badly” must embrace both truth and love in equal measure. Read more
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