The Social Cohesion Paradox?
After the horrific Bondi massacre that saw the murder of sixteen people, including a ten-year-old girl – Matilda – and the injury of 41 others, the Federal Parliament in response introduced special envoys to combat antisemitism and, strangely, Islamophobia.
I say strangely because the threats to Jews in Australia seem vastly different from the alleged threats to Muslims. Jews have been massacred and have had to suffer calls for “Intifada” on a regular basis since the Hamas massacre on October 7 2023, while Muslims face no such threats. This does raise the question as to why an envoy for Islamophobia was thought necessary, as though the threats to Muslims are as serious as the threats to Jews. Indeed, calling for Intifada even seems to help on one’s job resume at the taxpayer-funded ABC, with former Australian of the year Grace Tame being offered a job after her public calls to “globalise the Intifada”. Every honest person knows that calling for Intifada is the same as calling for violence against Israeli Jews, and to deny this would be like denying that calling for a “crusade” in the Middle Ages was anything other than calling for war against medieval Muslims.
Still, despite all this an envoy against Islamophobia was established. And yet now there are calls to abolish both envoys and to replace them with a “social cohesion commissioner”. I fear that establishing such a commissioner is quite misguided and almost certainly underestimates the complexity of the causes of social division and disharmony. I will explain why.
