Rita Panahi: Sharia law has no place in Australia

CLAIMS that sharia law empowers women are ludicrous and taxpayers’ money shouldn’t be spent promoting that position, writes Rita Panahi.

I AM accustomed to being hectored by Islamists, frightbats, anti-vaccination fruitcakes and an assortment of social justice warriors — aka government-funded Twitter trolls.

But last week, I had the surreal experience of being scolded by an ABC host for not being sufficiently supportive of an Islamic activist advocating for sharia law.

ABC radio drive host Rafael Epstein had the gall to admonish me, a migrant who escaped a country under Islamic law, for not supporting an advocate of Islamic law.

It’s akin to a freed slave being criticised for a fear of slavery and reluctance to support slavery advocates.

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Can you imagine the indignation from feminists if a privileged, white, private school-educated, heterosexual, conservative male was castigating an immigrant woman of colour about how their experience and opinions “distort the debate”?

Epstein is all of the above except he is a typical ABC Leftist and so his behaviour is excused and even applauded by those who most enthusiastically embrace identity politics.

Ignore the utterly false fantasies proffered by activists like Yassmin Abdel-Magied about Islam being a feminist faith that empowers women. The reality is that around the world, sharia law is abhorrent and anti-women whether practised in its harshest forms in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar or in its mildest forms as seen in sharia courts in the UK.

There is no place for it in Australia and anyone who openly advocates for it is not a moderate in any meaningful sense of the word. And yet our taxpayer-funded broadcaster gives a platform to those pushing sharia as some “kind” and “merciful” belief system that is just misunderstood by ignorant Westerners and Islamophobes. Last year, a video went viral of British Islamic reformer Maajid Nawaz — precisely the type of Muslim we should be listening to — being utterly dumbfounded by another favourite ABC hijabi.

A bemused Nawaz was berated on the ABC program, The Drum, by Sarah Saleh, who calls herself a “human rights advocate”, for the crime of championing secularism and fighting against theocracy and Islamism.

Those who push theocracy and/or sharia are poor representatives of the many Muslims in Australia who simply want to live in peace without turning their new country into a version of the dysfunctional homeland they fled.

But if you listen to the posturing fools at the ABC, anyone who questions the nonsense spouted by sharia fans is a bigoted bully.

My Twitter tiff with Epstein started with his blind defence of a sharia advocate who he called a “moderate Muslim”.

I advised Epstein that moderate Muslims are not typically fans of sharia law. To which he responded that Abdel-Magied “is the sort of Muslim voice that deserves more support not less. but (sic) I’m sure you’ll continue to distort the debate”.

Distort the debate? With indisputable facts and my own experience? Really, Raf?

And, how much more support does one sharia fan girl need?

Abdel-Magied already has multiple platforms on the public broadcaster to push her agenda — plus the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade paid for her to go on an international book tour to some of the most repressive Islamic regimes around the world.

BUT according to Epstein, we mustn’t question her absurd assertions, including her claim that it was Europeans who turned Islam from a progressive female friendly religion to one that systematically subjugates women.

The truth is that the regions where Islamic law is most intolerant and discriminatory toward women were not colonised by the British and Dutch.

To try to blame the evils of honour killings, FGM, child marriages, forced marriages, forced veiling and a plethora of other ills on Western imperialism is stupid.

When Epstein was taken to task by other Twitter users for his unquestioning support of a sharia advocate, he doubled down with rhetoric that exposed an ignorance that was breathtaking.

No amount of world-class obfuscation could mask Epstein’s lack of knowledge of sharia law, both theological and practical.

ABC radio host Rafael Epstein

He claimed people were being “deliberately simplistic” in saying there was one version of sharia, that shared by Islamic State.

The evils perpetrated against women, children, homosexuals, nonbelievers and many other minorities in the name of sharia are not limited to the backward savagery of IS.

There are 10 countries, some of them sitting on the United Nations Human Rights Commission, where homosexuality can be punishable by death.

These aren’t terrorists throwing allegedly gay men off buildings; they are governments of Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and Yemen.

Some have penal codes that stipulate prison or flogging for “immoral” acts such as homosexuality, sorcery or sex outside of marriage but under sharia law practised in some regions, those found guilty can be sentenced to death. It is under sharia law that women are stoned to death for adultery and apostates are killed. Even in its softest forms, sharia or Islamic law is anti-women as we’ve seen in the UK’s sharia councils.

It’s with good reasons that the European Court of Human Rights has twice ruled sharia “incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy”, finding it “difficult to declare one’s respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia”.

That’s because under sharia law, men and women are not treated equally, nor are Muslims and non-Muslims.

Any belief system that defines apostasy as a crime is not fit for consideration in a civilised nation and taxpayer dollars should never again be wasted on its advocates.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist