15,000
Australians embrace Islam in Qld – Fact or Fiction?
By B.
Kisan
2005/09/05
Recently
I came across an article
titled “Australians Increasingly Embracing Islam” forwarded in a yahoogroup
(1) from islam-online.net
a website based in
Qatar
run by the Muslim brotherhood’s Dr Yusuf Qaradawi. This website is ranked as
the 596th most popular in the world by alexa.com
which makes it very highly read.
According
to this article “Like Boswood more than 15,000 Australians in
Queensland
have embraced Islam since 9/11, according to the ABC.”
Living
in
Queensland
and knowing this to be beyond credence I looked into this further. This was
also due to the fact that having read just a dozen or so islam-online.net
articles I know them to be highly inaccurate and dubious (2).
The
article quotes ABC as the source of this information. I looked up the ABC
article which turned out to be a Stateline interview which says:
“KIRSTIN
MURRAY
: In recent years,
Queensland
's Islamic community has more than doubled and now boasts more than 15 thousand
followers. But it's not only migrants who are swelling the population much of
Imam Uzair Akbar's work is in conversions. He says 'September 11' is responsible
for the rise in the religions' popularity.”
So
in fact according to the ABC the total number of Muslims in
Queensland
is supposed to be around 15,000 and these are not only migrants (ie. The vast
majority are) but includes some conversions (an example of one individual is
given in the Stateline article).
Australia
has over 100,000 new migrants every year, in fact 127,000
in 2004 and reflecting the fact that these migrants come from all over the
world quite a few are Muslims. Thus
Queensland
’s Muslim population has grown substantially in line with this immigration
mirroring the trend in other Western countries with large numbers of immigrants.
So the islam-online.net article is completely inaccurate in making the claim
that “15,000 Australians in
Queensland
have embraced Islam since 9/11”.
Since
publishing this article this “fact” is being forwarded and read around world
as a validation of Islam following the normal argumentum ad populum proof of
Islam. Ie: So many people believe it and it is the fastest growing religion,
ergo it must be true.
Islam
is certainly drawing some converts, the majority of these being people marrying
Muslims and being pressured to convert just as anyone marrying a Catholic was
compelled to become a Catholic before this was liberalized by the Church. Such
liberalization has yet to occur in Islam (3). This is in fact the largest source
of conversions as I can attest from having met or known around 10 people who
converted for this reason, one of them being my Aunt who converted when she
married an Indonesian man and used to get around in hijab around the time of
Khomenei and who gave me two cousins with Arabic names (all of them since became
Christians).
A prominent example is Jemima Goldsmith who when she married former
Cricketing hero and international playboy turned born again Muslim Imran Khan she
wrote a letter that was posted in hundreds of Islamic websites. In it she
claimed “Contrary to current opinion, my decision to convert to Islam was
entirely my own choice and in no way hurried.” We can however understand this
as merely rhetoric. She also continued “as for the clothes I will be wearing,
I find the traditional shalwar kameez (tunic and trousers) worn by most
Pakistani women far more elegant and feminine than anything in my wardrobe.”
Times have changed and she’s back in far less
elegant clothing
since.
Actually,
the type of article like this one about the supposed conversion of 15,000
Australians to Islam since 9/11 in one state sustain the blind faith of
adherents in Islam. Look so many others are joining Islam, so it must be true.
This is of such psychological use that such articles are conjured up based on
lies and distortions and credulously consumed by the faithful.
(1)
This
is a message forwarded by a Muslim going by the alias of Solano forwarding
an article posted by another Muslim going by the alias “Abu Nabhan” or
Brother Nabhan which was posted to a yahoogroup called [email protected]
which is a holocaust denial website run by white supremacists specializing in
Jew hatred / conspiracy theories and frequented mainly by white supremacists and
Muslims both sharing Jew hatred as the binding element. The original message was
this
(2)
After the Godhra train burning incident
islam-online reported that the attackers of the Sabarmati Express were Hindu
dhobis (washermen) and not Muslims as was being reported universally by other
media: click
here
Quote:
NEW DELHI
, Feb. 28 (IslamOnline) - New evidence says that Muslims were not involved in
yesterday's train attack. Rather, the attackers were Hindu people from the
washermen (dhobi) community whose women were mistreated by the so-called
"volunteers". The media kept claiming that the attackers were
"Muslims".
(3) Islam-online
apart from “news” stories also runs a fatwa section which states the
following in one fatwa:
A Muslim woman should
know that Allah has really honored her and made it easy for her by not allowing
her to marry a non-Muslim man.
According to the Qur'an, the husband is the head of the household and his wife
should obey him. Allah does not put the Muslim woman in a position that a
non-Muslim becomes her head in her own private life. Allah has spared her to
suffer from being under the authority of a non-Muslim husband.
Please abandon the idea of marrying a non-Muslim, unless he truly accepts Islam.
If you marry a non-Muslim, this will be a major sin. You will be living in sin
and your relationship with that non-Muslim will be illegitimate in the eyes of
Allah. May Allah protect you from all sins, Amen.”
http://www.islamonline.net/
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