It illustrates that neither public nor private funding for academic research comes without strings attached.

there are legitimate questions for O’Connor to answer.

However, I don’t believe there’s any evidence other than assertion for this statement of yours:

However, versions of them that promote persecution should have no role in funding any part of our public sphere.

Since the funding is from the Saudi government which is not identical with a “version” of Islam and despite “culture war watch”’s apparent belief that you need a PhD or whatever to comment on what the IRU is actually doing, I think Andrew Bartlett is a trustworthy chap and I’m happy to take his word. If you look up stories in our local rag, the Courier-Mail, you’ll find the Commissioner of Police and a lot of other people testifying to the positive nature of what they’re up to.

I did indicate in the comments on the second thread that I’ve got some sympathy with Antonio’s argument that research centres should stick to research but after all the Howard government funded this one for the purpose it’s fulfilling.

I hope that clarifies things!

“Is that what you’re trying to achieve?”

Absolutely not, as you must heed that my points only referred to extreme fundamentalism, not religions in general. I have no problem with either Christianity or Islam as practised by their thinking, tolerant, ‘ordinary Joes’. However, versions of them that promote persecution should have no role in funding any part of our public sphere.

#26 Kim

I did read your posts, and that’s what I inferred from them. Can you explain how they should be interpreted differently? Thanks.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23637358-5013404,00.html

The fact that people might raise concerns (with which I disagree) with the University doesn’t represent a “secret plan”. What were they meant to do? Take out an ad in the Daily Terror or put it on a billboard?

It does raise some interesting issues - viz. the difference between teaching Islamic studies in the context of the academy - in this instance from a literary/culture studies point of view - and the authoritative teaching of Islamic faith, which is not what universities should be about.

Here it’s worth making two points:

(a) What is the justification for the Australian Catholic University and Notre Dame receiving government funds, and what of the remaining Schools of Theology or Divinity in or associated with public universities which have not been secularised into departments of religious studies? One can easily imagine the same conflicts between cultural scholarship and religious “truth” arising;

(b) The same culture warriors who’d usually be decrying a university course taught from a gender perspective find themselves on the other side because of Teh Evil Interfering Imams. A delicious irony.

“Amen” to that:

Gore Vidal on Lateline the other night got me thinkin’ of this society he is an honorary member of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Secular_Society

(The National Secular Society is a British campaigning organisation which promotes secularism, the separation of Church and State, to make society fair for everyone, whatever their belief or lack of one. It holds that no-one should gain advantage or disadvantage because of religion. It was founded by Charles Bradlaugh in 1866. The society is a member organisation of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and endorses the Amsterdam Declaration 2002.)

Probably a “bit” extreme…but worth thinking about. Quite a list of members…you can check them out if you’re not too freaked out about using “problematic” ole Wikipedia. I’m just an intellectual runt so i don’t worry about it.

Interesting info Irfan.

I ask this seriously as it goes to the essence of your argument that the funding source isn’t relevant.

But I haven’t made that argument, Ross. I’d invite you to read my two previous posts and the discussion there.

Let’s compare the amount of involvement and influence of these religious groups on a consistent basis:

Christian people, as a part of our democratic society, as they are entitled to do, enjoy a very high level of access and representation from our political leaders. This is as it should be in a pluralistic society. I have no particular issue with this, but just observe that Christian leaders of various groups have regular high-level access to our political leaders, often behind closed doors, and other times through lobbyists, registered or otherwise. Leaders of Christian churches regularly call on political leaders - publicly and privately - to enact various laws or policies. This is part of the messy democracy we live in. But heaven help an Imam who attempts the same thing.

While Christians of varying levels of observance are (generously) maybe 50% of our population - that is, fifty times more than the proportion of Muslims in Australia - yet Christian charity groups and schools obtain thousands of times more funding, and enjoy hundreds of times more influence than one would expect if their proportion were applied - what’s that word, Ross? - “consistently”.

So Ross, if you were being consistent, you should be thousands of times more concerned about the amount of money that goes to fund Brethren or Catch the Fire or other such evangelical ministries, than you are with the comparatively paltry amount that goes to Muslim groups, which is a tiny fraction per-capita of what Christians receive. And yet, we hear constantly from opponents of multiculturalism that there is an ‘ethnic industry’ which helps itself to an out-size proportion of the pot. One only needs to think about the size and scale of the ‘Christian industry’ to understand how offensive, and how inaccurate, such canards are.

This situation pertains even though some Christian groups have historically been associated with causing quite shocking levels of civil disturbance and persecution in our society, as the sectarian conflicts of last century entail. Guess what? They’ve cleaned up their act, and so despite their historical associations with such damaging activities, Christians today are given - what’s that term, Ross? - “the benefit of the doubt”.

Whereas in Australia we have a single criminal gang of extremist Muslims on trial for terrorism, one soft-headed fellow named Jack deciding to throw in his lot with terrorists, and another soft-headed fellow named David who went overseas to do the same thing. And yet every Australian Muslim today seems tarred with collective responsibility for the actions of these renegades. Should I be holding all the Catholics in my family responsible for the atrocities of the IRA, in order to be, you know, “consistent”?

So it’s quite consistent for the ‘progressive left’ to be more concerned with large-scale, high-level, often closed-door and unaccountable meetings between Christian leaders and our politicians, and to have proportionately less concern about low-scale, public, accountable and transparent funding in a single regional university. I repeat: all citizens in this society are entitled to be represented by their political leaders: Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists - all of us. But if there is any “inconsistency” going on, Ross, then by any objective measure it is the inconsistent amount of influence that Christians enjoy, relative to their proportion of the population. That’s all.

If I have any clear understanding of the ‘progressive left’ position on this, then that will have to do by way of explanation.

GIRU is a postgraduate research institute. It is not a madressa in the traditional sense. Students do not receive ijaza to teach in a classical discipline of Islamic science. Rather, they receive a postgraduate qualification (a masters or PhD), something totally different to traditional qualifications.

I’m not sure how many undergraduate students mention me in their essays, though I have been interviewed by undergrad students studying politics, mass communications, journalism and sociology. I also notice that an article in a 1997 edition of the academic journal “Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East” (published by Duke University Press) cites some of my stuff.

Apart from that, I’ve co-convened workshops on Muslim communities and cultures for Legal Aid NSW and for the Australian Homeland Security Research Centre. The students in the AHSRC workshops were largely public servants and law enforcement officials (and no doubt a few spooks).

But it’s true. I don’t have any formal qualifications in Islamic sciences.. To that extent, I’m not necessarily qualified to write about GIRU. Although one thing I can guarantee is that I’ve never received money from Saudi royalty, nor have they invested in any of my commercial projects.

Based on historical incidents, it seems that when humans are confronted with a religion they neither understand nor support, their responses typically fall within one of the following categories, which I shall list from what I regard as the least to most enlightened scenarios:

1) Extermination
2) Repression
3) Forced Conversion
4) Ghettoisation
5) Avoidance/Mutual Antipathy
6) Unforced Conversion
7) Secularisation/Modernisation
8. Open Engagement

Now, 1-4 we can ignore - the less said about them the better.

If I were trying to go for scenario (8), I think that starting up a publicly-funded, transparent, publicly-accountable institute with published results and open to scrutiny would be a good mechanism for doing so.

If I were trying to promote scenario (5), I think that every time Muslims put their heads up, I would declare it to be evidence that they’re up to no good. I would then splash my suspicions all over the front page of the newspaper and continue to stoke a climate of mutual mistrust until everybody concluded that it’s just too hard and gave up. Then we could carry on in a little splintered divided society, which I could then parade as evidence that they won’t integrate. Ross, Culture War Watch, is this what you’re trying to achieve?

At any rate, it seems some instances of scenarios (6) and (7) are likely to result from exercises like this. As societies merge and combine, there is a little re-shuffling of some individuals. Some may be attracted to join the Muslim fold of their own free-will. Some devout Muslims will adopt a more secular attitude to life. Most will continue to live as do Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and even atheists - broadly in conformity with modern secular society. Ross, Culture War Watch, if you’re anxious about that prospect, then maybe you’re not actually as comfortable with a ‘tolerant pluralistic’ society as you profess to be.

Well said Andrew B.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23633125-12377,00.html
http://www.fijitimes.com/

I’m sure that is true of any profession but none of them ever seem to be thrown around as often or with as much nastiness as the Social worker joke.

But its a long time since Ian O’Connor practiced social work, and even longer for me. The notion that one’s academic qualification is the be all and end all of one’s expertise is a fairly lame assertion in any case, given the context, but I guess it Culture War logic we’re talking about here.

I have also had a fair bit of experience seeing the work that the Islamic Research Unit at Griffith Uni has done, as well as some of the other things which some of the people involved in it have done around Brisbane and elsewhere over recent years.

I notice despite a series of outrageous insinuations and slurs against the Unit and its director Mohamad Abdallah stretching out now over a week and half of major articles, The Australian has paid almost no attention at all to the work which the Unit and Dr Abdallah have done, instead just continuing to infer that they are stalking horses for violent extremism, mostly by virtue of one donation.

As I’ve said before, it is valid to look at the donation to see whether or not there is any evidence of it having a negative impact on the activities of the Unit, but there is no evidence at all of that that I know of (and I presume if there was The Australian would have put it across their front page at least 3 times by now).

And if they are genunine in their concern that it can compromise the work of a University to accept donations from foreign governments or bodies linked to them, then they should be examining the many other donations made from other foreign governments and government backed corporations - some from countries with human rights records not much better than Saudi Arabia.

Muslims in Australia are consistently being used as target practice when another attack in the Culture Wars is being launched, and the sort of hugely overblown scare campaigns which result have the effect of making opportunities to building better understand of Islam and connection with Muslims a lot more difficult. If I had an agenda of increasing Muslim extremism and alienation from the wider society, these sorts of repeated grossly unfair attacks would be precisely the strategy I’d use.

Maybe a little Jihad okay. Thats just normal blowback.

Over at Media Bistro’s fishbowlDC blog Patrick W. Gavin was on hand to live-blog an appearance by News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch who visited Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall to talk about the shape of today’s media landscape. As reported by Gavin, Murdoch had some interesting things to say. Among his comments was that we shouldn’t have any fear that the media is becoming less free and…. oh, yeah… he claimed that CNN has “always been extremely liberal.” (Gosh, who knew?)
(Rupert Murdoch: CNN Is ‘Extremely Liberal,’ Free Press Not Threatened
By Warner Todd Huston | April 4, 2008)

Yep, CNN is extremely Liberal…liberally spreading the corporate word…not to mention the ads of those nasty Saudi & United Emirate types…;)…& stuff like “Obama can’t bowl”.