This essay is part of a weekly feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.
Much was made in the national and international media and in the blogosphere about the shameful, counterproductive riots in France's suburbs last month. Fair-minded essays and reports pointed out the poor treatment of Arabs by native Frenchmen, how many people have their job applications summarily rejected simply because of their Arab surname or family name and the failure of Arab immigrants to integrate into French society, a failure for which both Arabs and native French share blame. The violence was not helped by the reckless, inflammatory remarks by France's interior minister, the sleazy and ambitious Nicolas Sarkozy.
Banalyses blamed the rioting on various factors depending on the political biases of the writer. Alleged causes included: the inherent violence of Muslims, the inherent disregard for the law of Arabs, France's allegedly socialist economic system and France's opposition to the aggression in Iraq (ie: their 'appeasement' of extremism).
Fox News [sic] even referred to the violence as 'Muslim riots,' even Islam had nothing to do with it. It was about as disingenuous as if one had referred to the 1992 violence in Los Angeles as "Christian riots."
Given the massive media attention on the violence in France, it makes you wonder when and if the press will notice the rioting going on in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.
There is one big difference between the violence in France and the violence in Australia: the rioting in Sydney has been directed AGAINST Arabs and Arab owned businesses... as well as people wrongly assumed to be Arab.
The premier of New South Wales, the state in which Australia's largest city is located, says violence over the weekend in Sydney's south was the ugly face of racism, with the State Government confirming that so-called "white supremacists" were involved in the riots, reports the Australian Broadcast Corporation.
The initial anti-Arab violence not surprisingly provoked counter-rioting by Middle Eastern mobs.
Much like in France, some Australians will surely deny that social conditions and attitudes are unfavorable toward those of Arab descent, but such a willfully blind approach will not help address underlying social tensions.
Update: I have this extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist acquaintance who rationalizes the Australian riots in such breathtaking terms.
The loss of the Christian faith is the center of the downfall of culture in Europe and Australia. No longer are children brought up with Christian morality, no longer are they taught right and wrong from a scriptural perspective. Instead they are taught that right and wrong changes over time and really it's all up to you and your "heart" anyway. This post-Christian thinking makes it ok to attack Muslims just for the fun of it. The people involved in these riots have no idea that what they're doing is wrong, rather they think it is quite right. Why, they believe in their hearts that attacking innocent people without justification is ok. Thus is life in a post-Christian society. In a Christian society, those wrongdoers would in the very least understand that what they are doing is evil and there will and should be punishment for it.
It's hard to know where to begin with such self-delusional insanity..
We all know how stable and peaceful Europe was from the Middle Ages until the mid-1940s back when Christianity was the undisputed power of the continent. The continent is much worse off now with its peaceful democracies and well-fed people. Oh the horror!
In the past, it was INCONCEIVABLE that people attack Muslims in, I don't know, a Crusade-like manner. It didn't used to be ok to attack innocent people without justification: back then, you needed the decency to invent a justification like them being Jewish or Protestant or witches. In a Christian society, like America, wrongdoers at the very least understand that what they are doing is evil and that there will and should be punishment. Maybe this is why so many Americans have changed their minds about the Iraq aggression.
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