Preaching hatred: 'Islam is a puppet religion'

South Africans against a backdrop of xenophobia, racist remarks being made freely and without sanction by the chairman of the parliamentary sports portfolio committee and homophobic nonsense from Jon Qwelane, need to intervene immediately and with venom against the preacher who made Islamophobic remarks at a Cape Town school yesterday.

The Christian preacher allegedly made statements along the lines of “Jesus is alive, unlike that thing Allah” and “Islam is a puppet religion”. This goes right to the core of the Islamic belief system and represents an attack on our Muslim community.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20080729060317818C554755

Once a full investigation into this incident has been completed we will be able to find out who invited this individual and more importantly, why he wasn’t stopped immediately. This conduct constitutes hate speech of the worst kind and is guaranteed to inflame local Muslims who have done nothing to invite this unwarranted and abusive attack.

The time has come for South Africans to set examples.

Firstly, Jon Qwelane should know better than to make uncalled for comments against the gay community. Totally without provocation he elected to attack them and refused to apologise. As an experienced journalist in a country highly sensitive to bigotry right now, he should be warned against any future repetition. How can someone who has spent most of his life suffering the indignity and injustice of irrational hatred be so callous to the feelings of others?

Secondly, Bhutana Khompela for the umpteenth time has made racist remarks against South African communities. It’s not bad enough we have xenophobia problems; he wants to alienate more people. The ANC parliamentary caucus is entitled to sanction Moss Mashishi for refusing to deal with Khompela as it is not his decision to make.

Of course that presupposes that they act like the government of the Republic of South Africa first and party members second. The point of being the government is to represent the entire country, not just the party. Khompela has attacked the people whom they were elected to represent with uncalled for racist abuse.

Accordingly, if the government does not act against acts of racism committed by members of it’s own parliament, how can it hope to deal with xenophobia or win the trust of the country? Mashishi is at present the only party to emerge with any honour in not allowing this type of abuse to go unchallenged.

Thirdly, the right of people to believe in a religion or otherwise is enshrined in our constitution. This latest act of religious hatred is exactly where this country does not want to be right now. We have enough prejudices in this country to last a lifetime and adding religion to the mix is seriously unhelpful.

This preacher must be told in no uncertain terms that the right to promote his religion does not extend to abusing other religions or people who don’t follow any religion.

If we keep on sweeping these hatreds under the carpet or worse, try explaining them away, we will land up with a violent backlash. For example, by calling the poor communities, who are angered by exiles in the millions being foisted upon them, “criminals”, you solve nothing and you create a dangerous precedent ie that breathing space for politicians can be achieved by diverting attention away from the real problem.

The solution to their anger is delivery on promises made as opposed to more police to try and contain them. By classifying xenophobia as primarily the work of criminals means looking for solutions in all the wrong places.

In the case of the examples above the time has come to deal with the parties who engineer the hatred and not sidestep the issues.

Do what is right instead of what is expedient.