Jamila Rizvi: Five facts to fight Sonia Kruger’s fear of Muslims

WHEN Sonia Kruger said we should stop Muslim immigration, she did so because she’s scared. Jamila Rizvi has other fears.

OPINION

SONIA Kruger is scared.

The co-host of Channel 9’s Today Extra said that she would like to see the immigration of Muslim people to Australia “stopped now”.

Why? Because Kruger wants “to feel safe”.

Kruger has subsequently stood by her comments on Twitter, writing “as a mother, I believe it’s vital in a democratic society to be able to discuss these issues without automatically being labelled racist”.

I’m also a mother and like Sonia Kruger, I’m scared of lots of things.

On holiday with my family, I’m scared the engines of the plane will cut out and we’ll all fall out of the sky.

Alone in the house at night, I’m sometimes scared a burglar will break in to steal my little boy out of his cot.

When there’s a spider in the bathroom, I’m scared that it will run up my leg, eat me and my son will grow up without his mother.

My fears are irrational. They have no basis in probability or reality. They’re ignorant and, yes, a little bit stupid (especially the spider one).

Yet being scared in these situations seems perfectly real and reasonable to me at the time. The only way to dissuade me from my fears is to bombard me with facts. My husband, seated beside me on the plane, will launch into his now-standard speech about turbulence being normal, more people dying on the roads than in the air and the physics of flight.

Facts are marvellous and powerful things, especially in the face of ignorance.

The look on David Campbell’s face says it all. Picture: Today

So let’s try some now, shall we? For the benefit of Sonia Kruger, Andrew Bolt and anyone else who — in the wake of the terror attack in Nice, France — is falling victim to irrational fear and thinks banning Muslim immigration will somehow make them safer.

FACT #1: MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA IS NOT A NEW PHENOMENON

Muslims have been migrating to Australia for at least as long as Christian Europeans. In fact, contact between Muslim fishermen from Indonesia and Australia’s Indigenous people predates the First Fleet. In the 1800s Afghan camel drivers made Australia their home, assisting with the transportation of food, water and other goods across the country.

Afghan Muslim cameleers made a huge contribution to Australia in the 19th Century, opening up the dry centre of our country. Picture: Circa 1912

FACT #2: MORE MUSLIM MIGRATION TO A COUNTRY DOESN’T EQUAL MORE TERROR

Bolt argues that France experiences more terror attacks because it is home to more Muslim migrants. This is simple arithmetic, he claims. Except any Year 8 mathematics student can tell you that correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation and that one example doesn’t prove a rule.

Let’s set that aside though and do the maths. The Muslim population in Germany is actually similar in numerical size to that of France. And Russia’s total Muslim population is close to triple. Neither countries have experienced large scale terror attacks recently.

But Bolt doesn’t use these examples because they don’t serve to support his case.

FACT #3: THERE IS ENTRENCHED DISADVANTAGE AMONGST THE FRENCH MUSLIM POPULATION

There are a host of factors — other than high levels of migration — that security policy commentators have argued are fuelling higher rates of extremist Islamic terror in France. For example, the French Government’s history of appalling treatment of its former colonies, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Libya over many centuries.

Muslims are socially ostracised and systemically discriminated against in France — essentially treated as an underclass society.

Estimates suggest French Muslims are twice as likely to live below the poverty line, three times as likely to be unemployed and make up more than 70 per cent of the nation’s prison population. These are prime conditions for religious radicalisation to occur.

A Muslim holds a placard reading ‘Terrorism is not Islam. Islam is like this flower. Terrorism has no religion’ during a gathering at Le Carillon restaurant, one of the site of the attacks in Paris. Picture: Dominique Faget

FACT #4: A MUSLIM IMMIGRATION BAN WOULD MAKE ALL OF US LESS SAFE

Banning Muslim immigration to Australia would give Islamic State a powerful propaganda and recruitment tool. It would give credence to the extremists’ agenda of creating a battle between Islam and the west. It would be playing directly into the hands of those who use the Islamic faith as a perverted excuse to claim power through violence.

A ban would put Australia on the global map as anti-Muslim, arguably increasing our desirability as an object of terror.

FACT #5: MUSLIM AUSTRALIANS FEEL UNSAFE TOO

Terror attacks carried out in the name of Islam have killed more Muslims around the world, than people of any other religion. Fear of harm or death as the result of these horrific acts is actually more rational on the part of Muslims than anyone else.

Muslim Australians face the additional fear of violence in the aftermath of extremist attacks carried out in the name — but most certainly not the spirit — of their religion. They become scapegoats for the very people who are corrupting their faith for evil.

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There are more things I am scared of but — unlike the plane and the spiders and the baby-stealing burglar — these are more rational fears.

I am scared that those who peddle hate and fear will convince more Australians that a “Muslim ban” is worth having. I am scared my son might face bigotry and intolerance in the future, simply because he bears an Arabic name and is the descendant of Muslim migrants. I fear that Australia will lose her identity as a welcoming, multicultural nation that is made stronger, not weaker, through immigration. I fear for the many benefits we will miss out on if we become closed, and scared, and small.

I console myself by remembering that bigotry isn’t how we’re born, it’s how we’re made to be. This means we can unlearn as well as learn it.

And that’s a fact.

Jamila Rizvi is a writer, presenter and news.com.au columnist. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.