MUSLIM issues are at a flashpoint in the community and ordinary people’s concerns about sharia law and burqas must be heard, a federal MP says.
Rowan Ramsey
Liberal Rowan Ramsey said about 80 per cent of submissions to a federal inquiry into multiculturalism were antagonistic to Muslims.
Liberal Rowan Ramsey said about 80 per cent of submissions to a federal inquiry into multiculturalism were antagonistic to Muslims.
“There is a considerable level of anxiety, mistrust, expressed in that 80 per cent that are at least wary about Muslim culture,” he said today.
“We can’t just sort of whitewash it out of the findings, we have to acknowledge that and we also have to acknowledge that it is a significant issue in the community.”
Mr Ramsey is a member of Parliament’s joint standing committee on migration, which has received more than 400 submissions to its multicultural inquiry.
The South Australian MP said that there was a constituency that was genuinely concerned about calls for the introduction of limited sharia law in Australia and about issues such as burqas and the treatment of women in Islam.
“There is a strong body of opinion out there in the wider Australian community that we’ve got our laws and you can like it or lump it,” he said.
Mr Ramsey said the committee’s final report needed to address the concerns and come up with ways to defuse community tension.
The sharia law issue was discussed at a recent public hearing in Canberra.
Muhammad Sahu Khan, from the Bluestar Intercultural Centre, said that when people spoke about sharia law they
thought of the worst.
“They think of bringing in a law here that women have to have the burqa. They think if anybody commits a theft we will chop off their hand,” he said.
“They think of all the extreme views of the practices of particular countries.”
Mr Sahu Khan said that Muslims didn’t want to replace Australian law with sharia, but wanted a fair go in cases such as a person dying without a will.
“The distribution under the Australian law would be that all children would get equal shares, whereas under sharia law there is a certain proportion which is quite different from equal,” he said.