Comments that can kill

Recently, John Howard and Peter Costello have made comments about the need for Muslims to learn the English Language and to learn the Australian culture. While Howard and Costello were making the comments and reaffirming them, many people, including muslim leaders, where warning about the risk of attacks against the muslim community.

A few days later, we hear about a targeted vandalism of the cars of the ICV ex-president and his wife [ref]. The ICV indicated that they have received the highest number of hate mail since the Sydney riots incident.

The issue here is not about learning English at all. Also, no body in their right mind would suggest that someone should live in a country oblivious to what is going on around him/her. The arguement that Muslims have about the comments made by John Howard are:

1- John Howard is singling out muslims for a not-so-clear agenda. I would like you to go to Springvale or Footscray in Melbourne and see if people speak english...No they speak all sorts of other Asian languages. Jews give their sermons in Hebrew etc Why single out Muslims??? The issue of english education is a national educational issue.

2- What drives the comments?? They seem to come out of the blue every now and then when it is politically convenient to do so.

3- Muslims fear that such comments only serve to fuel more cases of violence against Muslims. They happen daily and they don't get reported on main stream media. No body cares about violence to 1.5% of the population. John Howard surely does not either, given his comments.

4- Muslims who don't speak English fall in the same catagory as Chinese, Vietnamese, Africans etc etc who don't. Let us focus on solutions rather than problems. I expect a prime minister to come out with solutions in the form of policy. For example, if the Government decided to make it a condition of PR or citizen status to pass an English exam, no one would say a boo. We would support it.

Stay tuned for more consequnces of the Howard comments...