The ABC is fully funded by the Australian taxpayers yet all too often shows itself to be anti-Australian in its reporting. Time for the government to introduce some major reforms over at our ABC so that it may once again support the people who pay its way. #auspol #BSWNBPM #ABC -I DO a daily show with Steve Price on Sydney’s 2GB, which ABC presenters sneer is a “shock jock” station demonising Muslims. But which outlet truly demonises — 2GB or the ABC? Which most menaces our safety — not least of Muslim Australians? Let me contrast. Almost every night for the past couple of weeks I have been rung on air by Muslim listeners. With only one or two exceptions they have backed my complaints about Muslim “leaders” who refuse to fight extremism or speak with forked tongues. They share my concern about their us-and-them rhetoric, their sometimes open endorsement of terrorist groups and their toxic mantra of victimhood that seems to license a hatred of Australia. Some examples? For years Australia’s Grand Mufti was Sheik Taj El-Din Hilaly, who called suicide bombers “heroes”, hailed the September 11 terrorist attacks as “God’s work against oppressors”, praised the Hezbollah terrorist group as “a model for all the mujahideen” and led protesters in Sydney shouting “Down, down Israel”. Or take influential Sheik Abu Ayyman, also known as Sheik Omran, who leads the Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’ah Association of Australia and last week visited the family of Numan Haider, shot dead as he stabbed two anti-terrorism police. Ayyman once defended the slain head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, as “a good man in some ways”, saying “I dispute any evil action linked to bin Laden”. He added: “ I don’t believe that even September 11 from the beginning, I (don’t) believe it (was) done by any Muslim at all.” Ayyman even said it was the duty of Muslims to fight coalition forces — which included Australians — in Iraq. Even the present Mufti, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, met leaders of the Hamas terrorist group, praised Hamas-controlled Gaza as “the land of jihad” and warned that Australia’s “oppression” of Afghanistan could make Muslim Australian “emotions start to move and react”. Such leaders have made Muslims seem almost uniformly threatening, and given jihadists reason to think their cause is just — even if Hilaly, Ayyman and Mohamed disapprove of their tactics. On 2GB and in this newspaper, I and colleagues have demanded Muslim Australians get better leadership, and have had some success. Mohamed last week gave a stirring condemnation of the Islamic State, Ayyman visited the two policemen stabbed by Haider and more moderate leaders have stepped forward. In contrast, the ABC even now presents extremists as mainstream, as if all Australian Muslims seethe with resentment and hate. On Saturday, for instance, the ABC’s AM promoted the speaking tour of British Muslim convert Yvonne Ridley, describing her merely as a journalist mysteriously “labelled a firebrand radical”. The ABC left it to Ridley to explain: “Some male journalists in Australia decide to call me firebrand because I wear a scarf.” Completely false. Ridley is called a firebrand because she has praised suicide bombers as “martyrs”, and called even the Chechen terrorist behind the Beslan school massacre a “shaheed” or martyr. She’s damned Israel as a “vile little state” that had to be destroyed, and said Israeli children murdered by jihadists weren’t “innocents” but future soldiers. US President Barack Obama was “an out-of-control psychopathic killer” and Australia one of the “most shocking” countries for its supposed hatred of Muslims. Why is the ABC promoting Ridley at this dangerous time? Why present her as unfairly maligned instead of rightly criticised? This is not unusual for the ABC. Last week it invited two Muslim rabble-rousers on to a panel discussing Islam, and let them rant as they falsely suggested the Abbott Government was deliberately spreading hatred of Muslims and had arranged police raids on Muslim homes for political advantage. One even claimed jihadists had “legitimate” reasons to hate Australia. It is lethally irresponsible for the ABC to pump out lunatic propaganda that could incite Muslim extremists and demonise the moderates. It is hard to believe the country’s biggest media empire could be so reckless. Yet the ABC does it repeatedly. Last month 7.30 let Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan criticise Israel without revealing this seemingly reasonable man had claimed the “Jewish mentality ... has become addicted to the killing of women and children”, and “the Jews used to slaughter Christians in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos”. Why this validation of extremists? I suspect the ABC Left sees Islamist grievances as a vehicle for its own ideological hatreds — of the West, capitalism, Israel and freedom. But the times have changed. The dangers are too great. We cannot afford any more these shock jocks of the ABC, these inciters of hate.- dailytelegraph.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt-finding-race-hate-is-as-easy-as-abc/story-fnj45fva-1227073157467
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 19:35:59 +0000
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