Rita Panahi: Anthony Mundine’s views in line with what many Muslims in West think
THAT Anthony Mundine is a raging homophobe should surprise nobody. But while we might laugh at his puritanical views, it would be foolish to dismiss him as some wild outlier, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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THAT Anthony Mundine is a raging homophobe should surprise nobody; what’s in question is whether his views are shared by a significant percentage of the Muslim population.
The boxer’s comments after fleeing the set of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! were typical Mundine: divisive, ill-considered and with alarming Islamist overtones.
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“If we were to live in a society, just like in Aboriginal culture, that homosexuality is forbidden and you do it and the consequences are capital punishment or death, you think you are going to do it? Or think twice about doing it?” he said.
Yes, Anthony, I’m sure the prospect of being murdered would focus anybody’s mind but being gay is hardly a choice and, even if it were, to suggest it should be punishable by death seems a little extreme to us sane folk.
Whether it is Australia Day, Jeff Horn’s supposed white privilege, women’s attire or terrorism, Mundine can be relied upon to say something that will require an apology at a later date.
Who can forget the devout Muslim’s appalling comments after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“They call it an act of terrorism, but if you can understand religion, and our way of life, it’s not about terrorism. It’s about fighting for God’s law, and America’s brought it upon themselves,” Mundine said a few weeks after almost 3000 innocent people were killed by Islamist terrorists.
He eventually expressed remorse for those comments but it took more than a decade and an upcoming US fight for an apology to happen. During his jungle sojourn, Mundine also caused controversy by expressing his support for modesty culture that requires women to cover up so men don’t lust after them.
“You want to protect your women,” Mundine said. “You don’t want other men having prerogative thoughts about your girl or your daughter. She can wear a dress … not a short skirt, not above the knees.”
It’s a little rich for a man who reportedly has seven children to four different partners to lecture women about how they dress lest they inspire “prerogative thoughts”.
I think he meant “prurient thoughts” but who can be sure?
But while we might laugh at Mundine’s puritanical views, it would be foolish to dismiss him as some wild outlier. What he said is in line with what many Muslims in the West think about the LGBTQI community.
In the UK, Channel 4 commissioned an extensive survey to understand British Muslim attitudes to a range of sociopolitical issues, including gender and homosexuality.
The 2016 survey was carried out by ICM and it revealed that 52 per cent of British Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal, compared with 5 per cent among the wider population.
Indeed, only 18 per cent of Muslims surveyed said homosexuality should be legal in Britain and 47 per cent did not believe that it was acceptable for a school teacher to be homosexual.
One in three believed that it was acceptable for a man to have more than one wife and 39 per cent said that “wives should always obey their husbands”.
Another survey carried out in 2009 showed even more worrying results with British Muslims displaying “zero tolerance” for the gay community. Not one of the 500 British Muslims interviewed by Gallup believed homosexual acts were morally acceptable.
In Australia, the No vote in the same-sex marriage survey was strongest in electorates with the highest concentration of Muslim voters. Twelve of the 17 electorates that voted no were in western Sydney, including Blaxland, where 74 per cent voted no, and Watson, where 70 per cent were against same-sex marriage.
Indeed, seven of the electorates with the highest proportion of No votes were in western Sydney. Yet, there hasn’t been much hand-wringing from the usual hand-wringers.
You can be sure it would be different if it were country electorates held by the Coalition that were opposed to same-sex marriage rather than safe Labor seats with ethnically diverse constituents.
Of course, being against same-sex marriage doesn’t necessarily mean you are hostile to homosexuals. But one only has to only look at the treatment of the gays in the Muslim world to understand the discrimination and danger they face.
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There are devout Christians and Catholics who are also against same-sex marriage but to compare that opposition to the Muslim world’s attitudes to homosexuality is to deny the reality that there are 10 Muslim-majority countries where being gay can result in a death sentence.
Even in relatively moderate Indonesia, there is increasing persecution of the LGBTQI community, particularly in the Aceh province.
There are worrying signs that the rest of the country may follow Aceh. Government officials and religious leaders are pushing to make gay and premarital sex an offence that carries a jail term.
Those who champion LGBTQI rights and open borders need to accept the reality that deeply intolerant views of homosexuality are being imported into the West.
It’s bad enough that the regressive Left ignores the plight of homosexuals in the Muslim world but its deliberate blindness to what is happening in its own backyard is pure cowardice.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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