Leadership - and courage !

The leaders of Sydney's Muslim community showed great courage when they fronted the TV cameras as a group - and roundly condemned the Saturday riot.   They appealed to their people to ignore the avalanche of hateful SMS messaging emanating from the hard core fundamentalist group behind the disturbance and to refrain from joining further protests planned for the coming days.

This is the sort of action that will go a long way to change the attitude of non-Muslim Australians towards Islam.    When the fiery scenes of death and destruction caused by the events of 9/11 burst onto our TV screens, there was a deathly silence from moderate Muslim leaders - and many people interpreted that silence as approval of what had occurred.

Hijacking aircraft and flying them into the twin towers was such a monstrous act - and so unexpected - that the Muslim community here was just as shocked as anyone else, and it took time for reactions to coalesce. This void was quickly filled by the firebrands who seemed to be speaking in a united voice and many people of the Muslim faith felt the pressure to join in this jihad.   The absence of an opinion from their leaders left them exposed to only one side of the argument - and that was the contention that Islam was under attack from the west.

Moderate Islam has now found it's voice.   The woman who brought a child to the fracas and was photographed holding a sign demanding beheading has voluntarily contacted the police.  Moderate Muslims are looking at the TV footage and recognising the hard core behind the violence, and that information is no longer locked behind a wall of silence.   Islam in Sydney has arrived at decision time.  For some, it is still difficult to speak out against their brethren, but attitudes are changing and the fact that Muslim leaders are calling for calm - and condemning senseless violence against an event that has absolutely nothing to do with this country. - is causing rational thinking to replace the biased bigotry of the fundamentalists.

Changing attitudes will be a slow process, but the courage of Sydney's Muslim leaders is showing the way.
What is needed now is support to keep these people safe from the personal violence for which the firebrands are noted.  Their aim is world jihad, and if that means silencing the voices of reason, then events in other parts of the world has shown the extremes to which they are prepared to go.

We should not underestimate the courage it took to denounce the jihadists who aim to drive a wedge between Islam and the rest of Australia !