Friday, August 05, 2005
From Paul Sheehan's item in today's SMH:
... January 30, ... Elections were being held in Iraq. ... Almost 12,000 people registered to vote in Australia ... A polling booth was set up in Auburn ...
... About two dozen men ... gathered near the polling booth to intimidate voters. They took photographs, used video cameras, made threats and unfurled a banner which read "IF YOU VOTE, YOU DIE", ...
(They) walked along Auburn Road barging into Iraqi-owned businesses. They were armed and aggressive.
By the end of Sunday night, two people had been treated for gunshot wounds, at least two dozen people had been assaulted, ... Hundreds of people were intimidated. All ... (t)en thousand kilometres from Baghdad. No arrests were made.
... Last Saturday night, 300 people crammed into Auburn Town Hall to hear a visiting firebrand, Soadad Doureihi, exhort the crowd to jihad ...
... As the eminent historian and Arabist Professor Bernard Lewis told The Atlantic Monthly last year:"Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation obtained total control of Texas and had at its disposal all the oil revenues and used this money to establish a network of well-endowed schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their particular brand of Christianity. This is what the Saudis have done with Wahhabism."
