DISRESPECT FOR MARRIAGE LAWS

Last week, according to reports, a 35 year old Pakistani-born man was arrested in Parramatta for officiating at the Newcastle wedding of a 26 year old Lebanese man to a 12 year old  girl. The detectives who arrested the man apparently said that the iman was “no longer part of the mosque” that he had been involved with since 2009.

I would not wish to draw unwarranted conclusions about Muslims in Australia from this news report (I certainly am not privy to all the necessary facts) but I think I can detect the smell of audacity here.

I cannot believe that anyone could imagine it was OK to officiate a wedding involving a child bride anywhere on Australan soil. Ignorance cannot possibly be an excuse. We are left with two possibilities. Either the people concerned are simply thumbing the nose (in total disrespect) at Australian laws and values, or they somehow feel that people will respect their culture enough to turn a blind eye.

But enough clichés. It must be assumed, in any case, that they placed obligation to Islam ahead of obligation to life and citizenship in Australia.

So am I, and many others like me, wrong to fear the potential islamisation of our nation? Even apart from the fact that Islam misrepresents the Jesus that Christians love and worship,  it contradicts the values of decent Australians in countless ways.

Multiculturalism argues that we can find room for these people in our society, and that we can make some allowances for their particular cultural and religious requirements. I strongly suggest that this argument is flawed.

If we allow Muslim men to marry young girls (more than just one if they so desire) and if we allow Sharia banking, Muslim courts to rule on issues involving Muslims, public toilets and facilities to be Muslim approved, and food to be halal, the supposedly minor accommodations in the name of multiculturalism will, by stealth, completely transform our nation.

Muslims will get everything they want and the rest of the nation will just have to “get over it.”

The audacity here lies in the expectation (by some Muslims at least) that they should be allowed to fully live out their faith in Australia. It is, I’m afraid, an audacity that comes from a supremacist view that will remain largely unspoken, lest too many Australians begin to speak out against Islamic progress here.