Christian Porter’s bill set to walk a fine line

While freedom of speech should always be protected, it’s essential that the religious discrimination bill drafted by the Attorney-General doesn’t legitimise unacceptable religious practices such as underage marriage, writes Caroline Marcus.

The horror case of a western Sydney schoolgirl shipped off to Lebanon for an arranged marriage with her cousin, only to be raped by her uncle, encapsulates perfectly why we need to tread extremely carefully with religious discrimination laws.

As revealed in this newspaper, the 15-year-old Muslim girl was banished to the Middle East by her parents last year because they believed she was no longer “pure” after being raped by her neighbour — a crime they blamed on their daughter.

“It was ridiculously important to her family and her culture that she was not ‘pure’ as they put it,” Detective Senior Constable Tara Chapman from the NSW Police Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad said.

“Her dad said to her, you can’t get married in Australia because you are not a virgin so we are going to send you overseas.”

It’s a testament to the young girl’s own extraordinary courage and the diligence of NSW and federal police that the teen was able to be extracted from the nightmare she eventually found herself in: after refusing to marry her cousin, her uncle repeatedly drugged and raped his own niece.

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Of course, it’s not only in Islam that child marriages take place. It can happen in Hinduism and even Catholicism.

Approximately one in five girls around the world are said to wed before the age of 18. Picture: supplied

According to Girls Not Brides — a global partnership committed to ending child marriage — one in five girls around the world are said to wed before the age of 18.

And let’s drop the euphemism here: child marriage is essentially child rape.

We have now seen enough disturbing instances in Australia to warrant genuine concern that any religious discrimination bill does not endorse what must continue to be a highly illegal faith-based practice.

Earlier this year, data obtained by Seven News under Freedom of Information laws revealed Australian Federal Police had investigated 171 cases of forced child marriages in the two years since January 2017, with victims as young as six.

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In 2017, a Burmese asylum seeker in his thirties was sentenced to 12 months behind bars for marrying a 14-year-old bride in an Islamic wedding in Melbourne.

Two years before that, a 27-year-old Lebanese man was handed a maximum 10-year term after marrying a 12-year-old in a backyard Islamic ceremony.

The girl ended up falling pregnant and miscarrying.

The groom was originally charged with 25 counts of sexual intercourse with an underage child, but pleaded guilty to one count of persistent sexual abuse of a child.

The Downing Centre District Court heard the man believed a Muslim girl could marry once she reached puberty.

Attorney-General Christian Porter has a tough job ahead of him if he wants to try and keep everyone happy. Picture: Tracey Nearmy/Getty

Judge Deborah Sweeney disagreed, saying neither the man’s “cultural or religious beliefs excuse his offence.”

But what would happen if these offenders were able to exploit any new legal loophole and argue in court that their religious freedoms were being impinged on?

Don’t get me wrong, I happen to think we do need to boost legal protections for the religious, particularly in the wake of the Israel Folau case.

Simply put, no one should lose their livelihood for expressing their religious beliefs, as long as they are not inciting violence against another group.

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But it’s imperative that any religious discrimination bill, currently being drafted by Attorney-General Christian Porter, does not in any way legitimise plainly unacceptable religious and cultural practices such as underage marriage, female genital mutilation or polygamy.

It’s not often I quote Pauline Hanson, but the One Nation leader is dead right when she warned on her Facebook page last week that such a bill could be “used by radical Islamic extremists as a shield to protect the worst aspects of their political ideology.”

The practice of children being allowed to marry adults cannot be tolerated in Australia. Picture: Claire Graham Photography

The other worry with this bill is that it would create quasi-blasphemy laws in the country, which would make it illegal to criticise, insult or mock a religion.

Imagine — even the hilarious Book of Mormon could be black-listed here.

If you want to know what blasphemy laws really look like, turn to Pakistan, where Christian woman Asia Bibi spent eight years on death row for allegedly insulting the prophet Mohammed, after drinking from the same cup as some fellow farm labourers who were Muslim.

The mother of two was eventually freed after her case sparked a global outcry and is now safely in Canada.

Or consider neighbouring Indonesia, where a 52-year-old Catholic woman believed to be suffering from schizophrenia is now facing charges under the country’s harsh blasphemy laws after she walked into a mosque looking for her husband with her pet dog, an animal many Muslims consider to be unclean.

Last year, a 44-year-old Buddhist woman became one of the country’s most high-profile blasphemy convictions when she was sentenced to 18 months’ jail for the crime of mentioning to a neighbour that the call to prayer from a nearby mosque sounded a little louder recently.

In a pluralistic, democratic country like Australia, we must be able to speak freely about religion, just as the religious should be free to quote their holy books without fear of persecution.

Caroline Marcus is a senior reporter at Sky News. @carolinemarcus