Town moves against Islamic school

Town moves against Islamic school

By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney


With its lace curtain bungalows and steepled Anglican church, the once tranquil town of Camden in New South Wales seems the most improbable of settings for a row that combines race and religion.

Proud of its rich history, the town promotes itself as "the birthplace of the nation's wealth", for it was here, in the early 19th Century, that the sheep and dairy industries first began to flourish.

Now the town, which lies on south-west fringes of Sydney, is confronting a very 21st Century issue: the proposal to construct an Islamic school for some 1,200 Muslim pupils.
Behind the proposal is the Sydney-based Quranic Society, which has purchased 15 acres of land on the fringes of town, and produced detailed plans and designs.

None of them reference any obvious Islamic influences. Functional and non-descript, the two-storey school could easily be a light industrial development.

Camden council is currently deciding whether to grant planning permission and allow the controversial development to go ahead.

'Wrecking Australia'

At the council's headquarters, 12 bulging ring-binders hold more than 3,200 submissions from the public. Only 100 are in favour of the development.

The council will deliver its verdict either later this month or early next.

This is not a nationalistic issue, it's not a religious issue, it's a planning issue, and it will be addressed on those merits

Chris Patterson,
Camden mayor

Twice the town has managed to rebuff the fast food giant McDonald's. Now it has mobilised to block the construction of the Islamic school.

Back in November, more than 1,000 local people took part in a public meeting. Many participants expressed themselves with little regard for political correctness.
"This has to be one of the nicest places in New South Wales," said one woman, who has lived in Camden for the past nine years.

"Everywhere is being destroyed. Why don't we tell the truth. They're wrecking Australia. They're taking us over," she said.

"Why hasn't anyone got any guts? They've got terrorists amongst 'em... They want to be here so they can go and hide in all the farm houses... This town has every nationality... but Muslims do not fit in this town. We are Aussies, OK."

Some of the loudest cheers of the night greeted a speech from a local man in his late 70s.

"Can I just say this without being racist or political?" he said. "In 1983, in the streets of London a parade by Muslims chanted incessantly 'If we can take London, we can take the world'. Don't let them take Camden."

Some speakers focused solely on the environmental impact of locating an urban-scale school in such a bucolic setting; and, in particular, on the traffic congestion it would bring.
One speaker implored the crowd to stick to planning issues, and not let the campaign be contaminated by racism or xenophobia.

When the chair of the meeting invited anyone in favour of the development to speak up, no one stepped forward.
Camden does not harbour a large Muslim community - census figures suggest about 150 families.

Most of the pupils at the proposed school would therefore be bussed in from Sydney, a journey that takes about an hour each way.

'Planning issue'

Andrew Wynnet of the Camden/Macarthur Residents' Group showed me the site of the proposed school, and focused on its unsuitability and undesirability.

"When you have no Muslims living in Camden, why have a
Muslim school here?" he asked.

He was also concerned about its long-term, demographic impact.

"The character of the town will change. When you have a large facility like this, the parents will follow. That amount of parents will change the character of the town."

"If you introduce 1,500 Muslim people to the town they'd be a majority. And that's not what this town is about."
Bravely, given that local council elections are due later in the year, Mayor Chris Patterson has adopted a neutral stance.

Presumably, it would have been more politically expedient to veer towards populism.

"This is not a nationalistic issue, it's not a religious issue, it's a planning issue, and it will be addressed on those merits," he says.

Determined that the planning process should be allowed to play out, Mr Patterson does not want to prejudge it.

Acrimonious

Many locals fear that the campaign is being hijacked by right-wing, nationalist groups with their own agendas.
The Australia First organisation has been advertising for members in Camden, and says it plans to field a candidate in September's local elections.

Pauline Hanson, the former leader of the One Nation Party, has also paid a visit to the town, though the local paper, the Camden Advertiser, reported that she mistakenly thought the proposal was for a mosque rather than a school.

The increasingly acrimonious and race-charged debate has also crossed into mainstream politics.

Camden is part of a Liberal-held parliamentary constituency which was high on Labor's target list at last November's federal election.

Campaigning in nearby Campbeltown, the then opposition leader Kevin Rudd said that the local infrastructure could not support such a large school, and that he therefore opposed it on "planning grounds".

The Quranic Society has kept a low public profile and was not available for comment.

But its position has been that Australian parents have the right to educate Australian children wherever they wish, regardless of race or religion. If the council rejects its planning application, it could appeal to the Land and Environment Court.

Camden residents will not give up easily.

"This town has fought all sorts of developments," Andrew Wynnet. "It will take on all-comers regardless of religion."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7416145.stm

Published: 2008/05/26 00:21:53 GMT

© BBC MMVIII
_________________
"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." -General George S. Patton

Psalm 82-8: Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You inherit all the nations.

Australian Muslim group says school refusal is 'racist'

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5igN0BG2YKzvoxkRMYbJ9H1-pynWg

Australian Muslim group says school refusal is 'racist'

4 hours ago

SYDNEY (AFP) — An Australian Muslim group charged Wednesday that a Sydney council's refusal to allow an Islamic school to be set up in its area was a "victory for racism".

Camden Council, on Sydney's south-western outskirts, unanimously rejected the application for a 1,200-pupil school on Tuesday night, prompting cheers from hundreds of residents who attended the meeting to oppose the plan.
While the council said the decision was based on planning issues, the proposal sparked ugly protests, including two pigs' heads impaled on spikes at the school site last November with an Australian flag draped between them.
Muslim community organisation Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations (FAIR) said it did not accept the council's explanation.

"Planning grounds is only a smokescreen for the real issues which were related to community tensions and potential social upheavals if the school was approved," executive director Kuranda Seyit said.

"I see this as a victory for racism."


Resident Kate McCulloch, who attended Tuesday night's meeting in a wide-brimmed bush hat wrapped with an Australian flag, said Muslims were not welcome in the semi-rural area.

"We just don't want Muslim people in Camden," she told reporters after the meeting.

"We don't want them not only here, we don't want them in Australia. They're an oppressive society, they're a dictatorship."

Australia has more than 340,000 Muslims, according to the latest 2006 survey, with many concentrated in Australia's largest cities Sydney and Melbourne.

One male resident expressed concerns Muslims would take over the area if the school was approved.

"My kids can't read Islamic, how are they going to go to that school, it's all crap," the man told ABC radio.
"The next thing there'll be a mosque, then there'll be the little town that comes with it. It's not appropriate for the area at all and common sense has prevailed."
The school's backer, the Quranic Society, has said it will appeal the council's decision in the courts.

It has previously denied any links to extremism, saying it wants to provide children in Sydney's growing Muslim community a good education and religious instruction.
In 2005, anti-Muslim sentiment boiled over into riots on the Sydney beach suburb of Cronulla, where rioters targeted people of Middle Eastern appearance.

And in 2004, a severed pig's head was impaled in front of a Muslim prayer centre in Sydney's northwest.
_________________
"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." -General George S. Patton

Psalm 82-8: Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You inherit all the nations.

Spurned Islamic school sponsors resort to blackmail

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/021227.php

May 30, 2008

Australia: Spurned Islamic school sponsors resort to blackmail: Give us our school, or "You may have some very extreme imams or religious teachers getting through to the children."

And therein lies an inadvertent admission of the presence and number of "very extreme imams or religious teachers" in Australia. Whoops.

An update on this story. "Islamic school imbroglio takes new turn in Australia," by Neena Bhandari for New Kerala:
A new dimension has been added to the ongoing furore over the rejection of a plan to build an Islamic school on Sydney's south-western fringes by some muslims warning that it would lead to extremist Islamic teaching.
Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ikebal Patel told the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) that Islamic schools monitored by the State Government should be encouraged "or else Muslim children will be given their religious education in backyards and garages by... teachers whose credentials no one could vet. You may have some very extreme imams or religious teachers getting through to the children."

Meanwhile, the developers of the A$19 million 1,200-student school, the Quranic Society, will be appealing to the Land and Environment Court against Camden Council's rejection of its proposal on planning, which includes increased traffic and lack of public transport, and environmental grounds.

"We have complied with the law, we have done everything right, we hired master planners. There was no reason for it to be rejected. Even the council could not say what was wrong with the plan," Quranic Society board member Fouad Chami told The Australian.

When asked if he believed the decision was racist, Chami told Channel Ten: "Of course, there is no reason to say no if you're complying 100 per cent with the rules.''

Five years ago, the Baulkham Hills Shire Council in Sydney's north had rejected a businessman's plans for building a Muslim prayer hall on the grounds that it did not fit with community characteristics. The decision was overturned by the Land and Environment Court.

The project's consultant, former Mayor of Sydney and lawyer, Jeremy Bingham told the SMH from London: "There's a vocal group of local residents who are very opposed to this school because of the religious beliefs of the Australian citizens who want to establish the school. That's not the Australian way and it's not the Australian law."

The Quranic Society has said the school - for primary and secondary students on a 15-acre block - would cater to both Muslim and non-Muslim children and would follow the New South Wales State curriculum.

The unanimous decision by the Camden Council is being seen as motivated by prejudice and fuelled by racial and religious passion.

"[The decision] is hysteria based on fear and misunderstanding. If it was a Catholic, Anglican or Jewish school there would be no objection," Bingham told SMH.

[...]

Camden is a historic town, located less than an hour's drive from the Sydney Central Business District, and is the birthplace of the Australian wool, wheat and wine industries. It has a semi-rural feel with sandstone buildings and jacaranda trees. According to census figures, it has about 150 Muslim families.

"Camden is only the latest venue in a list of planning setbacks for mosques, Islamic centres and schools, all denied on planning grounds. This is despite the fact that almost half of Australia's Muslim population lives in Sydney," writes Laura Beth Bugg, a postgraduate student researching multiculturalism and urban planning in the faculty of architecture at the University of Sydney, in the SMH....

It bears repeating that Camden is on the outer edges of the Sydney metropolitan area, and, as noted above, only has 150 Muslim families.
_________________
"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." -General George S. Patton

Psalm 82-8: Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You inherit all the nations.