Sheik al HIlaly and Pru Goward

While it is legal in Australia to abuse the elderly and disabled of any age or sex -- Such actions are protected by a web of IR laws, odd quirks of the definition of civil law because of the timidity to define such actions as crimes, and social prejudices. -- the abuse of women has become a cause celebre.

Sheik Hilaly has opened the debate across the nation by his comments earlier this week:

The Sheik alluded to rapes in 2000 in which four women were separately gang-raped by young Muslim men, including Bilal Skaf, who received a 55-year jail sentence, later reduced.

He said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and inappropriate clothes, "and then you get a judge without mercy (rahma) and gives you 65 years", The Australian reported.

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat," the sheik asked.

"The uncovered meat is the problem."

"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (head scarf), no problem would have occurred."

Without putting the belief in free speech aside, this was at best an unfortunate choice of words for the 'Mufti of Australia.'

Before leaping onto the wave of condemnation, the Sheik must realize he just assigned the behaviour of those men to the moral level of undomesticated animals. Even a house cat learns not steal meat off a table. Perhaps we should give him credit where it is due.

Pru Goward has no right to demand his deportation. The Sheik is a citizen of Australia. He has every right to speak within a place of worship the tenets of his faith. Ms Goward is only illustrating again why she was a poor choice to for the post of Sexual Discrimination Commissioner.

This is just bandwagon racism, and we should expect better from any national leader.
Anyone who has attended church in the last 50-60 years has heard the same or worse in sermons in any number of denominations. No, it's not well said. Blaming the victim for rape is idiotic.

But wanting to deport a religious leader for emphatically stating a position on morality is, from a national leader, even less. Freedom is not something that you have when it's convenient. It's something you believe in and defend no matter how someone abuses it. Otherwise, it's not freedom. It's a lie.

Ms Goward seems to have taken her commission to fill Australia with as much sexual discrimination as possible; along with a fair amount of racial and ethnic discrimination and slurs. What sane government would make this prejudiced woman Sexual Discrimination Commissioner? -- And people wonder why there are so few political jokes in Australia. It's simple: It would be hard to beat the government for making a joke of itself.

And then, who has not thought that dressing children in sexy clothes is improper?
Sexy clothes turn both men and women's heads in public. It's a matter of taste to be sexy, not just skin.
Is there a limit to what has to be 'cute'?

The Sheik speaks out at a very unstable time in western history, about a volatile subject: rape.

On page 8 of the Insight sections (The Age, today), Elizabeth G from Ferntree Gully course called, "Crime and Gender" - part of her law degree,

"It taught me that most people in Australia agree with you about rape. Even 'free' Western democracies blame the victims for the attacks. This is evident in the statistics (only one in 10 rapes are reported, only 2 percent of reported rapes result in conviction). .."

This factoid has been bandied about for years. When I first heard it in the 1970s, it was one in three rapes were reported; then one in four. Like most gossip, the story only got better. One in five, and now it's one in ten.
When and where do people use their heads and question such figures?

A little critical thinking is necessary to be a lawyer, Ms G. Did you happen to check some of the supporting statistics?
From the Australian Institute of Criminology report, figures provided by an arguably biased source - the Australian Women's Safety Survey - all sexual assaults in the last 12 months total 142,900.
If only one in 10 were reported, then that would mean 1,429,000 rapes occurred in Australia in the last 12 months alone - which would be more than the total of all sexual assaults reported in the last 20 years: 774,100 (and these figures count multiple rape as a single instance.)

Extrapolating, it would mean that 7,741,000 rapes were committed in Australia over the past 20 years.
Considering quickly the fact that the population only reached 20 million last year, with an almost perfect split of males and females (.95 to 1.05), it would be possible to conclude that nearly every woman in Australia has been raped (-- unless they are tucked inside a room and only go out in a hajib ..?)
When will reason (critical thinking or common sense?) be realized?

Training
The most striking fact is that Ms G is a lawyer in training. She is dependent on her teachers to convey facts responsibly to her to fulfill her future duties as an officer of the court. Her duty will be to aid the court in obtaining a fair unbiased judgment. How can she possibly do that?
The answer is she can't. She has been trained to fear, gossip and prejudice. She will stand before the bar and act on the information she has been given to the best of her ability. Reading the rest of her comments, she has been given "statistics" to support her fear and prejudice.

Which is the greater crime?
For a man to speak inside his place of worship about the beliefs of his religion?
Or for someone who must act professionally to defend equality before the law and free speech to be trained to prejudice?

The Mufti's remarks incite fear, and from that perhaps violence, hatred, and greater prejudice from all sides. Ms G's comments accomplish the same thing. The differing quality may be whether one or the other is accountable to their own beliefs.
The Mufti's immoderate words encourage women to dress modestly, according to the traditions of the religion they choose to follow. He has also encouraged women to take advantage of education and other advantages of a free society.

Ms G will step forward into Australian society armed with statistics from one-sided studies like the "Controlling behaviours of male partners", -- with no equivalent study for the controlling behaviours of female partners. From her description of the 'Crime and Gender' course, she has already found her cause.
Will the prejudice she has been taught serve the same role as religion for the Mufti? Will it define a financially successful career? There is no question such a career path exists.
Why should anyone expect her to find the moral courage to seek reality when prejudice offers such a profitable future?
After all, justice is in the eyes of a patronized magistrate...