|
Australian Muslims Complain of Anti-Muslim TV Show Segment
WASHINGTON, July 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A discrimination claim by Australian Muslims against a television show segment has reached the Federal Court in Melbourne, Australia.
Australian Muslims lodged the complaint against an Australian satirical television comedy for portraying anti-Islam stereotypes in its ABC-TV show BackBerner, according to an Australian news website.
Theage.com.au reported that a segment of the show, screened in March 2000, showed fake song titles based on the alphabet by Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam after his reversion to Islam.
The song titles associated Islam with terrorism and barbarism, with names like "A is for Allah," "B is for Bomb," "C is for Clitoridectomy," and so forth, including a picture of the bombed World Trade Center in New York. The compact disc for the fictitious album was said to have been produced by "Mecca Records", the website said.
The complaint of racial discrimination, placed by viewer Sheikh Fehmi Naji El-Imam and the Board of Imams of Victoria, aims for an apology and compensation.
Melbourne attorney Hisam Sidaoui told ABC that the segment spread hatred of, and misconceptions about, Islam, and was hideously offensive to Australian Muslims, but network TV general manager Ron Saunders, after apologizing for the injury, argued that ABC found it to be legitimate satire, theage.com.au reported.
Saunders said that it was not the show's intention to degrade Muslims or their faith, or to promote racism or discrimination of any kind, but Sidaoui, displeased with this response, took his complaint higher, to ABC's Independent Complaints Review Panel.
But the panel decided last February that while the segment "encouraged denigration against the followers of Islam," it did not constitute serious bias or unfair treatment, and ruled not to uphold the complaint, the website reported.
Muslim viewers, dissatisfied with the result of their attempt, lodged a complaint with the Federal Court on July 5th.
Just before that, Sheikh El-Imam and the Board of Imams applied unsuccessfully to the Equal Opportunity Commission, which ruled last month that religion was not covered under a section of the Racial Discrimination Act, theage.com.au reported. Their application was adjourned until September 21st.
In the past few years, acts involving religious discrimination, prominent in English-speaking countries like Australia and the U.K., have brought into question racial discrimination laws, like the Australian Racial Discrimination Act, which do not afford protection against discrimination based on faith.
British anti-discrimination laws previously protected Sikhs and Jews, as ethnic groups, but not Muslims, who form one religious group of varied ethnic backgrounds. And unlike Australian law, the incorporation of human rights law into U.K. legislature broadened the scope of protection.
|
