Give Ziad Basyouny a fair sheikh, please!!

By Jane Salmon

This segment on Dr Ziad Basyouny who is standing as an Independent in the federal election is a sniper piece:

“A bitter feud is escalating in Sydney’s west with two prominent Muslim doctors facing off.

7NEWS has obtained messages being spread through the community, warning voters not to risk Muslim independent candidates.”

Rifi is not standing against Basyouny.

Religion is already mixed in with Australian politics. To deny that is ridiculous. Our secular parliament does not change the fact that the Constitutional Monarch is head of the Church of England, ecumenical prayers are held at the start of the parliamentary year, we have had a majority of prime ministers who were staunch Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists. Religion does affect the nature of the state.

While I want to see an air gap between fundamentalism of any kind and womens’ rights, for example, it is a furphy to imply that the name foreshadows an islamist takeover.

In order to get balance we need representation, not neutralisation.

Rifi is even allied with Jewish (if not Zionist) doctors through Rozana.

Dr Ziad Basyouny is attempting to reach the wider public as Jason Clare and Dr Jamal Rifi have done.

Rifi’s religious status has been a feature of his political influence and community standing alongside his profession.

There are some islamophobic tropes to the story. One organisation is arbitrarily labelled “terrorist”.

Rifi himself should cringe at those. However he has helped sell Anglo politicians to Muslims for rather too long.

Lastly, Rifi may be a practising doctor … but Dr Ziad Basyouny actually saved the life of a man in a car wreck last month. His Emergency Room skills are fresh. If I had to be on the wrong end of a scalpel, I’d rather Basyouny was wielding it.

There are many other positive traits and policies that Basyouny deserves the opportunity to project.

Channel 7 has made itself a tool of vested incumbents. The entitlement of Labor MPs like Burke and Clare is astounding.

In a democracy we don’t expect slanted editorials based on bias. We expect information.

 

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