DAR AL ISLAM - AUSTRALIA: IT'S ALL THE MEDIA'S FAULT

Media blamed for Islam bias

AUSTRALIAN Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty believes the media is fuelling a growing bias against Islamic Australians, warning that increased vilification of Muslims is fomenting home-grown terrorism.

In a speech delivered in Adelaide, Mr Keelty played down Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali's inflammatory comments on women, asserting that "many in the community also say offensive things and many of them are white Caucasian Australians".

He said rising vilification of Muslims was being fuelled by irresponsible media outlets which sensationalised terrorism-related stories with little basis in fact. And he called on Australians to teach the values of democracy and multiculturalism to the younger generation so that "our future is not worse than our past".

Mr Keelty - who clashed with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in 2004 after the commissioner blamed the suicide attacks on Madrid train system on the war in Iraq - said he met privately with Muslim groups in Adelaide yesterday.

"You hear more and more stories of treatment of the Islamic community that really is substandard by members of our own wider community," he said at a lunch hosted by the South Australian Press Club. "It is vilification, picking them out of the crowd because they dress differently or they speak differently.

"If we are not careful we risk raising a generation of Australians who will have a bias against Islam."

He said to avoid terrorism, the country must not marginalise people. "We don't want to provide them with more reasons to be further marginalised or disenfranchised to the point where they will take their own life in order to kill many others."

Mr Keelty's comments differ in emphasis to John Howard's singling out in September of a minority of Australian Muslims. He said a "small section of the Islamic population (was) very resistant to integration".

A spokesman for Mr Howard said the Prime Minister would not comment on Mr Keelty's speech.

But Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Andrew Robb said it was the terrorists who were to blame for increased "anxiety in the community".

And he said the onus was on Muslims to put the rest of the community at ease. "The actions and the statements of the terrorists is leading to stigmatisation of Muslims in Australia," Mr Robb said. "To minimise the anxiety in the community Australian Muslims have to accept they face a problem with Islamic terrorism - a problem which is not of their making but a problem nonetheless.

"But they are best placed to do something about it, by denouncing it and by asserting their Australian-ness and being confident in all of that."

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1) Media blamed for Islam bias