Two Muslim nurses make comments on social media platform Chatroulette. Carefully coordinated responses from the media and politicians, from no less than the PM down, recast those comments as a preeminent existential threat.
The absurdity of the response, and the double standards it entrenches, invokes a joint response from the Muslim community expressing these very things.
The response from both the media and politicians was to shout down the message, deride its audacity to introduce rationality in an age of manufactured hysteria, and cast aspersions over the entirety of the community by bringing out the ‘extremist’ card.
Anything but addressing the actual grievances of Muslims, here or abroad.
The media has even gone to the extent of vilifying Muslim organisations for associating with each other, attempting to stoke divisions within our community. If we haven’t been accused of ‘extremism’, then we are all now guilty by association. How dare we engage Muslims the government and media have already ex-communicated from the Muslim fold. How dare we take positions not approved by the new high priests of Islamic normativity.
But the offense does not stop there. The infantilisation of the Muslim community, by insisting we all sing from one hymn sheet, defies the multiplicity of views and experiences found within the Muslim community, as is found in every society. The fact this needs to be asserted is offensive in and of itself.
The Muslim community is vibrant and passionate, the views of its members hotly contested, all drawing on a rich Islamic tradition. Engagement is not endorsement. Engagement is contestation. The more we have of it, the better we all are because of it.
Media Office
Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia
18th Feb 2025
