A first of a kind lexicon in Australia is going to guide politicians, police and public servants on how to speak about Islam and terrorism without implicating the peaceful religion, in a bid to defuse growing anti-Muslim sentiments in the country.
“Talk about ‘violent extremists’, because that’s what they are, or name the group,” Hass Dellal, head of the Australian Multicultural Foundation (AMF), told The Age on Monday, July 20.
The book, A Lexicon on Terror, is sponsored by Dellal’s Foundation and the Victoria State Police.
It is to be published and distributed among Victoria officials and politicians by the end of the year, Stephen Fontana, Assistant Commissioner and Head of Counter Terrorism Coordination and Emergency Management for the Victoria Police said.
He added that even before its release, the book is becoming so popular that it became a national project.
In the book, politicians are told there are terms to be avoided while talking about terror, including “Islamic terrorism”, “Islamo-fascists” and “moderate Muslims”.
Other terms are “Middle Eastern appearance”, which suggests that ethnicity and physical appearance can be linked to terrorism.
But the number one term officials are going to be asked to ovoid is “war on terror”, Dellal says, as many Muslims interpret it as a war on Islam.
Australia is not the first country to adopt the linguistic approach to disassociate Islam from terrorism.
In 2006, Austria, the then holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, drafted a document of vocabulary on Islam as part of efforts to issue the first public communication lexicon aimed at avoiding stigmatizing terminology in dealing with the other.
The document ruled out “Islamic terrorism,” because it brackets Islam with terrorism.
The British Foreign Office has told UK diplomats and spokespeople around the world to stop using the “war on terror” phrase to “avoid reinforcing and giving succor to the terrorists’ narrative” by using language that could be counter-productive.
Even in the US, origin of the controversial “war on terror” term, the former George W. Bush administration produced last year a lexicon of phrases and terms to be used by diplomats and other officials to avoid any link between Islam and terrorism.
Needed
Sponsors of the book affirm that its idea came after repeated calls from within the Aussie society.
Many were concerned with the wholesale branding of Islam with violence and terrorism, says Dellal.
“Muslims and non-Muslims alike have told us they don’t want a new wave of political correctness but they want a more careful use of language.”
Fontana, the police official, affirmed that the main goal from the guidebook will be to reduce the sense of alienation among Australian Muslims, especially the young ones.
“A comment we think is harmless, some communities read as an attack,” he said.
Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, Australian Muslims have been haunted with suspicion and have had their patriotism questioned.
Muslims, who make up 1.5 percent of Australia’s 20-million population, have also taken the brunt of tightened anti-terror laws in the country.
A recent governmental report revealed that Muslims are facing deep-seated Islamophobia and race-based treatment like never before.
A 2007 poll taken by the Issues Deliberation Australia (IDA) think-tank found that Australians basically see Islam as a threat to the Australian way of life.
Dellal hopes that the lexicon will help easing some of the Aussie Muslims woes.
“It’s hard to change language, but if we start with politicians and leaders it may filter down,” he said.
“We need to change not just language but attitudes.”
–Agencies