Our Activities and Community Campaigns
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Geert Wilders Australia Tour Rescheduled to February 2013
[ Media Statement 2 October 2012 ]
[ Pre-Register for Geert Wilders Tour in February 2013 ]
Q Society invited Geert Wilders to speak in Australia, Mr Wilders has accepted and we were planning two
evening events in Melbourne and Sydney in mid October 2012.
When Australians are lectured on the virtues of Islam by a multitude of travelling Islamists and homegrown Islamophiles,
we surely are entitled to hear from Islam-critical voices.
We were honoured when Geert accepted our invitation, but intended to keep the tour under wraps until everything was finalised.
However, in mid September the story was leaked to ABC's '7:30 Report' and matters were taken out of our hands.
Most preparations were in place late August, but Geert was still waiting on Minister Bowen's
department to issue a visitor visa for Australia. Considering Geert Wilders has special security needs, we understood this might take a few days,
perhaps a week.
It did not occur to us this Australian government would play stonewalling for over a month.
How does this reconcile with the same government opening the doors
to Islamic supremacists, OIC lobbyists, terrorist sympathisers and hate preachers; so they can call in Australia for
discriminatory sharia law? Is it any wonder the minds of many vulnerable young Muslims in our communities are poisened?
We just kept on wondering and waiting.
But there are logistics and security arrangements associated with such a tour,
so in case a visa was not forthcoming, we had to draw a line somewhere.
This was to Friday, 28 September, at 5pm European time; the Australian mission in
London had suggested Mr Wilders would hear one way or another
before the end of that week. We waited on over the weekend, just in case a notification was stuck
in the diplomatic mail for Monday. This not being the case, Geert released the news of postponing the tour before 10AM
(The Hague time) on Monday, 1 October. At midnight Sydney time, or 4PM European time,
Minister Bowen's opinion piece was then published in The Australian.
In this the Minister remarked, that he would now no longer stand in the way of issuing a visa.
But an opinion piece in a newspaper is no replacement for a valid travel document, and the Minister
did not indicate when a visa might be forthcoming. For this reason, even if a visa would be given to
Mr Wilders the next day, we will now plan for the tour in the week from 18 to 23 February. This will give
us ample time to prepare for a three or four state visit, reaching even more Australians.
Pre-Register for Geert Wilders Tour in February 2013
Media Statement rescheduling the Geert Wilders tour to February 2013
Open Letter to Minister Bowen re stalling of Geert Wilders' visa
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Concerned about More and More Mosques?
Islam-critical UK planning specialist Gavin Boby toured Australia in September 2012.
Q Society of Australia Inc was delighted to present a national information tour with
UK lawyer and town planning specialist Gavin Boby.
Mr Boby is the director of the British Law and Freedom Centre, an organisation which
assists community groups on pro-bono basis, if they are faced with inappropriate planning
applications for more mosques in their neighbourhood. Mosques are increasingly being built
in disproportional numbers and often in communities with hardly any observant Muslim
population present.
Speaker of Q Society Andrew Horwood noted that many Australians still have misconceptions about
the important function mosques and mosque-building plays in Islamic doctrine, and how a mosque
differs fundamentally from a church, temple or synagogue. Many are surprised to learn Islamic
mosques and prayer rooms in Australia already count over 340, while Hindu and Buddhist temples
combined account for just over 110; while almost twice as many Australians register as Hindus
and Buddhists in the 2011 census compared to Muslims.
Q Society invited distinguished Australian scholars on Islamic scripture, researchers and
freedom activists to accompany Mr Boby at the public info evenings in Perth on 9 September,
Adelaide 11 September, Melbourne 12 September, Canberra 15 September, Sydney 16 September,
Brisbane 18 September, Gold Coast 19 September and Cairns on 20 September.
This was our media release.
Attendance was free of charge, but prior registration required as seats were limited.
Robert Spencer visits Australia
America's outspoken researcher and bestselling
author on Islam and Jihad and patron of Q Society accepted our invitation to Australia and visited most capital cities.
Robert spoke at public events between 26 November and 1 December 2011 and took part in special
briefing luncheons for sponsors as well as other meetings with friends and associates. At a
critical time this was a unique opportunity for Australians to network and gain valuable insights
from one of the West's foremost experts in this field. An issue which now troubles and concerns
so many. The key theme for Robert's first Australia tour was
Socio-Political Jihad -
Conquering the West without Swords, Guns or Bombs.
Robert Spencer has led
seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and
General Staff College, the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism
Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.
Robert is the
director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Centre, and author of ten books,
including New York Times best-sellers 'The Truth About Muhammad' and 'The Politically
Incorrect Guide to Islam'. A DVD and downloads of radio interview will be available
soon.
Our photo shows
Robert being welcomed in Melbourne by Babette Francis with a traditional garland. Babette is a
human rights activist and prolific writer; she hails from a now islamised region of India and knows
the true face of Islam intimately well.
This is what we believe
should go on every retail product that
contains halal-certified
materials. We estimate two-third of
chicken and lamb as well as half of the
beef in Australia is now slaughtered to
comply with Islamic Sharia dietary rules.
When the self-proclaimed "community leaders"
of two (2) per cent of the population can
impose medieval religious dietary laws onto
everyone else, and
even make consumers pay for their
halal-certification schemes, something is
seriously wrong.
Our information and
lobby campaign for mandatory labelling of
all halal-certified products will begin
in April.
You can now download, print and distribute our leaflet
demanding a fair dinkum choice. Also safe it to your PC and forward it to all your friends and relations.
Marrickville
Council BDS Campaign
In early January 2011 we launched a petition against a suburban council in Sydney,
which has voted in December to align the municipality with the divisive BDS movement
against Israel and alienating the Jewish community. 4,251 signed and voiced their protest
against the BDS cancer in suburban Australia. We handed over hardcopies of the petition to
the council and relevant state ministers on 1 March.
Link to the Online
Petition
Media Statement for 1 March
Handover,
President's Report of
Petition Handover
Media Release 3 March by Chris Hartcher MP (Shadow Minister) ]
Final report on estimated cost and ramifications of the
BDS implementation for the MV council meeting on 19 April. Due to significant public and political pressure
- and remnants of sanity - the BDS campaign was eventually dropped with 8 vs 4 votes.
Alma Road
Community House Petition
In December 2010, we just had incorporated and were planning our public launch for the new year,
when two of our members noticed a planning application in their neighbourhood.
A family-size community house in Alma Road, heartland of the Melbourne Jewish community, was allowing
an Islamic prayer group to use their facility for Friday prayers. This was happening for some time in
contravention of the usage guidelines for the house, hardly any observing Muslims in the neighbourhood
and two established mosques within cooee.
Now before the council was not only councils own application to legalise the existing questionable use,
but to increase the size of the permissable patronage from 40 to 100 - way beyond capacity for the small
community house - and to declare the Alma Road House as a place of worship.
We called this an instant-mosque.
How 100 Muslim worshippers would fit into a 3-bedroom size community house, where they would park their cars,
what this would do to traffic and impact on the neighbourhood - councillors were unconcerned. Councillors
clearly had the urge to show to the world how tolerant they were, no matter the consequences.
We decided to set up a petition, both online and in hard copy to circulate in the community.
This would give
a voice to concerned members of the community and inform
the council that not everyone around Alma Road was happy with their approach. After all this
seemed a rather ill-advised and self-serving way to legalise and extend what was already a misuse of a rate-payer funded property
- resulting in a 100-seat drive-in mosque.
But any opposition was bullied down as being 'racist' (which race
is Islam again?) and council swiftly approved its own application.
After being villified as 'bigots', 'racists' and 'islamophobes' by their own councillors and the progressive
media commentariat, there was not enough fight left in the local opposition to take this to VCAT. But at least the
brave few who stood up against this are now accounted in the books. They can always point to the records,
when this eventually blows up into the faces of some self-serving councillors.
As more and more links between terrorist feeder groups and home-grown jihad sympathisers become available,
these councillors may soon have to answer for their actions.
They can't claim ignorance, advise was before them, they
chose to 'shoot' the messenger.
[ Councillors supporting the Instant Mosque
]
[ Link to the Alma Road
Online Petition
] [ Alma Road - Background and
References ]
[ Alma Road - Hard copy in
PDF to download and print ]
[
Q Media Release 8 March - response to media slander ]
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