Not coincidentally, given that at least one Australian politician has publicly criticised aspects of Islam, we instantly encounter articles representing Muslims as victims.

Here, in  The Australian, is Sally Neighbour reporting - quite uncritically, as far as I can see - Muslim claims of victimhood, rejection, alienation, etc.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/our-high-profile-muslim-minority/story-e6frg6z6-1226007821201

'Our high-profile Muslim minority'.

'The furious debate over the pros and cons of multiculturalism features a recurring theme.

'Immigration MInister Chris Bowen alluded to it in his speech to the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night when he noted it has become fashionable to blame multiculturalism for terrorism.

This is fudging.  Let's be precise.  Let's say, instead: "more and more people are beginning to realize that the admission of large numbers of Muslims into non-Muslim countries makes it possible for Muslims to plot and/ or carry out acts of jihad warfare against non-Muslims within those countries" - CM.

'Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt underscored it by citing as evidence of the policy's failure the federal government's refusal in the 1980s to deport Muslim cleric Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali.

That is, 'Sheikh Catmeat', he who compared un-Islamically dressed non-Muslim Australian girls to meat left out in the garden for  the cats (Muslim rapists) to eat.  - CM.

'Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi summed it up in a nutshell, opining on his website: "Across the world there have been new waves of immigrants who have decided that their greatest allegiance is to the religious and political ideology of Islam rather than to their adopted land. This is the multiculturalism that an increasing number of leaders are prepared to declare has failed".

'In short, according to the popular narrative, the problem with multiculturalism is Muslims.

You obviously think this is false, Ms Neighbour, hence the sneering phrase 'popular narrative'; but it is the truth.  Ask Nicolai Sennels.  Ask Lee Kuan Yew.  Ask Thilo Sarrazin. Danish, Singaporean and German, from utterly different societies, these three very different men agree on this one thing: that Muslims do not play well with others, and that it is because Muslims choose not to play well with others. - CM.

'Or, to be more precise, the perceived failure ('the perceived failure'? No, 'the abundantly demonstrated failure' - CM) of Muslim migrants to integrate and embrace the cultures and traditions of their adopted lands, which in turn allows Islamic extremism to thrive.

Ms Neighbour, these two phenomena, that is, firstly, the refusal of Muslims to assimilate to non-Islamic cultures and traditiions, and secondly, the proliferation of Jihad plots - aimed at their host societies -  among Muslim colonists, both arise from the same source: the core paradigm of Islam, its division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War, with Muslims permanently obliged to reject and despise everything not-Islam and to wage war upon it until it has been absorbed into dar al Islam, or erased.  The 'terrorism', that is, the Jihad, is not 'caused' by the non-integration.  - CM. 

'In his landmark speech, Bowen sought to reframe the debate, arguing that multiculturalism had strengthened and enriched Australia, and had been a very different and more successful phenomenon than in Germany or Britain.

Only because - up until about ten years ago - the Muslim percentage of our population was very small by comparison to the Muslim percentages in the UK and Britain.  Just you wait, Mr Bowen, just you wait; if you allow the Muslim colonisation of Australia to proceed unchecked, we will end up exactly where the UK and Germany - or France - are today. - CM.

'The comparisons were prompted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement last October that multiculturalism in Germany "has utterly failed", and British Prime MInister David Cameron's comment this month that Britain's policy of encouraging different cultures to live separate lives had fuelled Muslim militancy.

Muslims don't need encouragement from anyone else, to separate themselves from non-Muslims. their canonical texts prescribe it.  And Muslim militancy, that is, an attitude of aggression toward non-Muslims, a will to dominate and to domineer, is taught by those same texts.  - CM.

'The essential difference in Australia is that Muslim migrants, like previous waves of newcomers, have been embraced as citizens with the same rights and responsibilities as their compatriots;

and have responded, in many cases, by behaving atrociously - witness the Skaf gang of rapists, pouring contempt upon their non-Muslim teenage victims - CM.

'whereas in Germany they came as guest workers who were supposed to help rebuild the post-war economy and then leave but instead stayed; while in Britain they were treated as second-class citizens, left to live in ghettos where their grievances festered.

No; they self-segregated, creating no-go zones from which they actively drove out their non-Muslim neighbours; and they have been, and are, doing exactly he same thing in certain suburbs of Sydney, as an important article by journalist Paul Sheehan pointed out. If Ms Neighbour, and Mr Bowen, think that Australia's having been nicer to Muslims than the UK or Germany, will mean that Muslims in Australia will be nicer to us than they are to non-Muslims in the UK and Germany, then they are in for a nasty surprise - CM.

'Bowen says the 13, 000 immigrants who pledged last Australia Day to uphold this country's values symbolise the genius of multiculturalism practised here.

How many of those 13,000 earnest pledgers were Muslims?  And if so, how many of them might have been reciting their pledge in exactly the same spirit as that with which the Times Square bomber recited his Pledge of Allegiance in the USA? - "I did swear", he told the shocked Judge, in court, during his trial on a charge of attempted jihadist mass-murder, "but I didn't mean it". - CM.

'But for all his [Bowen's] seemingly heartfelt intentions, two uncomfortable truths remain.

'The first is that Australia's fast-growing (why is it fast-growing? and why is this fact of its rapid growth taken as a given, like some force of nature? - CM) Muslim population is a source of deep community angst, which fuels a polarised and sometimes ugly debate, as exemplified by reports opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison urged his Coalition colleagues to "capitalise on" such concern. (Morrison dismissed the reports as gossip, but didn't say they weren't true.).

'Muslim leaders know they have to confront this head-on, but struggle in the political arena. (Oh, yeah? - CM).

"We've never been engaged in the political process. We never understood it, because our forefathers were literally factory workers", Sydney's Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan says.

Of course, that refusal or unwillingness to get involved in kafir politics might also have just a little to do with the fact that Islam teaches that all non-Islamic political systems are, well, illegitimate...- CM.

'He's pushing for Muslims to become more politically engaged.

Of course; now that they have built up their numbers, it's time to push for power. - CM.

'Lakemba imam Hilali acknowledges the frustration and anger that can potentially breed violent extremism are palpable in his community.

Ms Neighbour - can you not see that this is a threat ? 'Make sure that Muslims in Australia are all rich, and happy, and powerful, or...our young men will blow things up and kill you in large numbers' - CM.

'There are no terrorists in Australia in terms of execution.   There are people who have the mindset to commit harm (and where, pray, is that mindset coming from, Sheik Catmeat? - CM), but no-one has the capacity to execute anything.  (Yet.  Now go to sleep, silly kafir, and don't inquire into all those after-hours meetings at the mosques, or the little excursions into the countryside..- CM). What it is, is just a mindset - just talk and ideas".

'In addition to tackling extremism, which has seen a few men sent to prison, Muslim leaders face the vexed issue of building the infrastructure needed to service their growing community, such as more Islamic schools, youth centres and mosques, developments that typically encounter public antipathy and local council resistance.

Perhaps the average Aussie knows just a bit more about the character of mosques, and 'youth centres' (where young Muslim men train for Jihad?) and Islamic schools (which in the UK and the USA and elsewhere, have been caught teaching out and out hatred for all Infidels ), than Ms Neighbour.  Hence that resistance which she so deplores. - CM.

'Two Sydney councils have recently introduced new regulations restricting the operations of places of worship, apparently in response to proposed new mosques.

Perhaps they are learning from, and legislating in response to, the observed experience of others, as regards mosques and what happens in and around those mosques. - CM.

'Some leaders, such as Dandan, say priorities need to change.  "We do not want any more mosques; that is my message to the scholars: we don't need any more mosques. We want services", he says.

'The second truth is the expanding Muslim diaspora is afflicted by entrenched socioeconomic problems that fuel alienation and resentment, which no amount of political rhetoric alone will fix.

Ms Neighbour needs to read Mr Fitzgerald's 'Almost 100 Things that Fuel Muslim Extremism', 

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm?blog_id=2487

to discover that nothing short of the achievement of Total World Domination, or a global caliphate, would quench Muslim 'alienation and resentment.' - CM.

'Two recent sets of statistics illustrate the issues at hand.

'The first is a report published last month by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030.  Using figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, it predicts Muslim numbers in Australia will increase by 80 percent, compared with 18 percent fro the population overall,  growing from 399,000 at present to 714, 000. This is due first to higher reproduction rates - Muslim families typically have four or more children, while other Australians have one or two - and, second, to migration from Muslim majority countries such as Afghansitan, Somalia, Iraq and Iran.

That is, from four of the most fanatically and violently Muslim countries on the planet. Why, why, why are we letting in Muslims from those sharia-crazed hell-holes?  The only people we should be letting in from Iraq are the Mandaeans and the Assyrian Christians - both of whom are being mercilessly persecuted by the Iraqi Muslims. - CM.

'The reactions to the projection among Australian Muslim leaders varies from cautious optimism to scepticism and open dismay.

Dismay? Really? When every Mohammedan troll I meet in every internet forum triumphantly boasts about Islam being 'the world's fastest growing religion', and looks forward with undisguised gloating to demographic dominance in the West? - CM.

"It could be a fear campaign", Australian National Imams Council spokesman Mohamadu Saleem says.  He is recalling an alarmist video posted on YouTube in 2009 that used bogus figures (were they bogus? - CM) to suggest Europe would soon be taken over by Muslims.  It has had 12 million hits.

'Reassured that the Pew Centre is reliable, Saleem adds: Whatever happens, Muslims in Australia are a tiny minority, and will be so forever".

Suure. In other words: don't bother your little head about demographic Jihad, kuffar, it's all a 'fear campaign', a mere figment of someone's imagination.  Just keep on looking the other way.  Nothing's happening. Go back to sleep. - CM.

'But Dandan is far from sanguine about the projected near doubling of Muslim numbers.

"That is of great concern to us because we don't have the facilities and the infrastructure, and the government is not supporting us", he says.

The government is not supporting us'.  Does any other religious group in Australia say this, in such a whining tone? - CM.

'The Muslim community has plenty on its plate already: intergenerational poverty, under-education and unemployment,  a pressing need for more social, welfare and aged-care services, a siege mentality fostered by a (rightly - CM) suspicious public and often hostile news media (you could have fooled me about this one, given the number of puff pieces for Islam that I have seen in the Aussie press - CM), close attention from the police and security agencies (and why is that, pray? - CM), and the problem of pockets of religious extremism (that is: the fact that every now and again yet another bunch of Muslim men in Australia are caught plotting Jihad murder missions against non-Muslims - CM).

'The challenges are compounded in a diaspora that is diverse and disunited - in truth, many communities rather than one - and suffers from a lack of language skills, public relations and lobbying know-how (really? - CM), strong leadership and political clout.

'Dandan claims Muslim communities have been abandoned politically, particularly in southwest Sydney, where they happen to live in electorates safely held by the Labor Party.

Oh. Now I see.  Having occupied Labor seats they can play one party off against the other, by hinting to the Liberals that if they agree to comply with Muslim demands, they could get the Muslim bloc vote to win those seats...? - CM.

"We're a growing community, so where are the services? Our youth get no services, our elderly no services, employment, no service, hospitals atrocious, our schools - don't even talk about it, go and have a look at our schools.  Are we not getting the services because we're Muslim or because these are safe Labor seats?"

I wonder what percentage of people inhabiting these same seats, are non-Muslims: Christian, secular, and other faiths.  I don't think that there is yet any seat in which Muslims comprise an absolute majority of the population. And yet he's talking almost as if these seats are wholly Muslim-inhabited. - CM.

'A second set of statistics underscores  his complaints, showing that despite numerous success stories such as that of Dandan, who runs a multimillion-dollar IT security firm, Muslims overall remain one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australia.

And of course, that is assumed to be everybody else's fault but their own...despite this being generally the case for all Muslim minorities world-wide, and for the Muslim-majority countries as opposed to the countries inhabited largely by non-Muslims.  - CM.

'The figures are in a 2009 report by the National Centre for Excellence for Islamic Studies, Social and Economic Conditions of Australian Muslims: Implications for Social Inclusion.

'On the upside, it found that education-wise Muslims are high achievers: 21 percent of Muslim males have a university degree, compared with 15 percent of non-Muslims.

But what kind of university degree, in what fields?  And: how do Muslim women compare to non-Muslim women, on the same indicator? - CM.

'But this doesn't translate into financial rewards, apparently because of language barriers, discrimination, and non-recognition of qualifications obtained abroad.

Depends on where those qualifications were gained...And this is not a problem unique to Muslim immigrants; it applies equally to many others. - CM.

'Unemployment among Muslims is two to four times the rate among other Australians.

'Twice as many Muslims have no income. (That is, they are living off Australian social security - CM).  Only 15 percent own their own homes, compared with one-third of other Australians.  Twenty-six percent of Muslim teenagers are unemployed, against 14 percent of non-Muslims. And, shockingly, 40 percent of Muslim children live in poverty, almost three times the national average.

'The report found Australian Muslims are more vulnerable to multigenerational endemic poverty, "thus making poverty a way of life". This in turn creates alienation from mainstream society, leading to higher rates of delinquency, crime, imprisonment, and potentially resort to religious extremism.

Aah, the old 'poverty causes jihad' canard.  Or, conversely, "pay us lots of money and/ or give us jobs so we won't blow you up"? - CM.

'These issues require urgent attention, the report advised.

'But, Dandan says, "The politicians don't care, they literally don't care".

'He cites an elaborate new youth centre built next to the Lakemba mosque, which took the local community 13 years to build because it received zero assistance from government.

And why should it have? Join the club, mate.  Other religious communities in Australia take just as long or longer to get things built, raising all the funds themselves. - CM.

'Similar grievances are echoed in other Muslim precincts such as the city of Hume in Victoria which, according to the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) is the most disadvantaged suburb in Melbourne and has the highest number of Muslims in the state. Its already high migrant population has been swollen by an influx of refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan.

(That is, from some of the poorest and most violent Muslim countries in the world - CM).

'Leila Alloush, public officer for Victorian Arabic Social Services, says the area has become an enclave for slow integration and a high level of deprivation.

'Recently, schools in the northern region of Melbourne have reported increases in cyclic racism, that is youth from Arabic-speaking backgrounds (sic: Muslim youths - CM) responding (in kind) to encounters with racism and violence. (And, of course, these Muslim 'youth' never initiate the bigotry and violence?  It's always started by the non-Muslims? I don't believe it. - CM).

'Feelings of alienation and helplessness have become pronounced, and these youth have increasingly reported feeling disconnected from the mainstream, Alloush warns.

Always with the threats..."If we're not fat and happy and flattered and stroked, our discontented youth will Go Jihad on you.." - CM.

'Dealing with these pressing challenges calls for authoritative leadership, which often seems lacking in Australia's fractured Muslim populace.

Just as well, as far as I am concerned. Long may they remain 'fractured'!  CM.

'This is partly a function of Sunni Islamic tradition, which eschews a political or clerical hierarchy because all men are considered equal before God.

Ms Neighbour, please, get a clue! This 'equal before God' business is meaningless; what matters is 'before the law'. In the sharia order women are permanently unequal to - and dominated by - men, and non-Muslims (if they refuse to become Muslim) are permanently unequal to, and dominated by, Muslims. - CM.

'It is also because Australia's Muslims are made up of 27 nationalities and as many different cultures and histories.

Observe: no mention of the single biggest split within Islam, the Sunni-Shiite schism.  But in any case, all these varieties of Muslim recite the same Quran, which calls for aggression toward the non-Muslim, and they all revere warlord Mohammed as "an excellent pattern of conduct". - CM.

'The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils covers 120 Islamic societies, all with their own agendas.

'AFIC is seeking to assert itself as the peak Muslim body, but it is under-resourced and reliant on part-time office-holders.

'And its measured tone is often drowned out by shriller voices such as that of Hilali who, despite needing a translator, even after 30 years in Australia (and whose fault is that? ours? No, his. - CM) is a favourite of the media for his sometimes outrageous remarks, like his oft-quoted 2006 comment comparing women and rapists with uncovered meat and a pack of wolves.

It was cats, actually, Ms Neighbour. And the concept expressed and the imagery used were thoroughly and conventionally Islamic, as you will find if you read, for example, Nonie Darwish or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Note, too, the contrast between the 'measured tone' of the AFIC and the 'shriller voice' of Hilali, with the subliminal hint, yet again, that if the nice moderate Muslims of the AFIC are not given money by the kafir, it is the 'outrageous' Hilali that will prevail...Goodcop, badcop. - CM.

'Groups such as AFIC and the LMA have initiated an array of outreach (PR and dawah - CM) programs such as interschool sports events, debates, interfaith dialogue, public meetings, and open days at mosques.

'The LMA and Hilali took a team of 40 tradesmen to Queensland to Queensland to help rebuild houses after the recent floods.

Yeah. PR, plain and simple. Islam doesn't teach no-strings-attached charity toward non-Muslims. It simply doesn't. - CM.

"These are all ways by which barriers can be broken down", AFIC president Ikebal Patel says.

Softening up the kafir - CM.

'But it is an exhausting and often frustrating task. Dandan cites a case where Muslims were encouraged to donate blood, prompting a potential recipient to comment, "I don't want Muslim blood injected into me".

Really?  I'd like to see third-party non-Muslim corroboration for that little anecdote. Because it sounds like a projection  of the Muslim attitude toward non-Muslims, who are considered filthy, ritually and actually unclean. - CM.

"We understand that from our [sic: your? - CM] point of view we need to engage, but if you engage and the engagement is not reciprocated, it's like a slap in the face", he says.

That, too, sounds awfully like projection. Because if there is one thing that characterises Islam world-wide, and that has characterised it since its beginnings, it is an absolute refusal of the principle of reciprocity. - CM.

"Time and time again we're stepping away from our families and businesses to do this work for the community  and we're getting burned out because we're not getting any help".

Not getting any help from their fellow Muslims? Or - not getting any help, that is, money, from the nasty mean non-Muslims? - CM.