Islamic Schools -- A Victory for Common Sense?

The NSW Land and Environment Court has approved a development application to build an Islamic School in the Sydney suburb of Bass Hill. The Bankstown Council which had the authority to approve the application declined to do so. The reasoning for the failure to garner approval was allegedly traffic and noise concerns. Each of the concerns was listed in some 1800 objections that were lodged opposing the development. The failure to approve the development project also led to the appeal to the Land and Environment Court.

Although there were a considerable number of objections, it must be noted that there was also considerable support for the school with some 600 statements of support being lodged with the Council.

The fact that it is to be an Islamic School was never the officially stated reason for the rejection. However, the lawyer representing the developers pulled no punches in suggesting that this anti-Muslim sentiment was a strong undercurrent to the desire to thwart and ultimately reject the development application. This was supposedly supported by the idea that the majority of the 1800 objections were photocopied pro-forma objections that really only required objectors to fill in the blanks.

The Senior Commissioner of the Land and Environment Court wondered in his judgment whether there would have been the same number of objections had the school development application been lodged by an Anglican Church consortium looking to develop a similar size school.

Ultimately, the Land and Environment Court has approved the development application and ordered some minor changes to be made to allow for some additional landscaping to be included on the site.

It is expected that with the approval to develop now in place that the school will be built quickly.

I have written on this before and you can find it here.

Mongol -- Film Review

This seems like it is a film that I would enjoy watching based on this review. It is a foreign language film and was nominated for an Oscar this past year in the Best Foreign Language film category. I do not know why, but I have been watching foreign language films since I was a kid. Generally, I watch films in languages that I do not speak but that seems to be no hindrance to my enjoyment of the spectacle of film.

It might also be the reason that I have an affinity for languages and pick them up so easily. I am very lucky that way. I once enrolled to learn Vietnamese at the Bankstown Community College and after a couple of classes the teacher wanted to move me to the intermediate class because he did not believe me that I had not studied the language before. Unfortunately, I have forgotten most of the language for the purposes of being able to use it in an immediate setting. However, I do find that after only a couple of hours listening to it, it starts to come back...

Back to the film.

The film is a work of fiction but apparently draws on a number of sources including the epic poem, The Secret History Of The Moguls, which was written about Genghis Khan shortly after his death in 1227. The film was shot on the steppes of China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. This along with the fact that the cast resembles in physical appearance the people of whom the story is about should give it a great deal of authenticity.

I do not know if the film will get into theatres in Jakarta, but with a bit of luck I might be able to pick it up of DVD.

Here's looking forward to a good flick!