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Islam lobbying to be recognised as a race.

Listening to The Danger of Ideas on the RN program Big Ideas overnight which was all about safe spaces and trigger warnings coincidently, (see my post of Wednesday evening) and I was struck by this question by a member of the audience directed to the Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane about lobbying going on to apparently have Islam elevated to the status of race in anti-discrimination law and where he stood and which side he would come down on. Soutphommasane didn’t deny that this was on the table.

The average Australian would have no idea this lobbying is going on or at what stage it is at. How it squares with the fact that Islam is not a race because it is practiced by people of many races, I have no idea. It is a religious belief system/political ideology. It would be like declaring and recognising Christianity or any other religion as a race. Logic dictates that to elevate one religion to race status above others would be discriminatory.

Equally interesting was the response by Soutphommasane. It was defensive by way of an aggressive, lecturing and sanctimonious tone as he deployed the time honoured tactic of answering from the high moral ground with a question of his own.

In the wash up he didn’t answer the question anyway and as you would expect got thunderous applause from the typical ABC audience.

The Q&A occurs at the 43.07 running until the 45 minute mark.

https://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/peJLGVgpGQ?play=true