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.

A Camden Update...

The reaction in the press has been swift and this reaction has reached not only Indonesia but much further afield to the like of the United Kingdom from whence us convicts originated from many a generation ago!

As I posted earlier, it seems that there are others that are also of the belief that the ability of the Camden Council to reject the proposal based on traffic concerns seemed all too convenient and a little too political.

Since the decision last night a huge wooden crucifix has been erected on the site and a passage from the Bible affixed to it that reads:

"David and Goliath. The battle is won. This is the King of Kings Land. Prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. (Eph 6:18)."

Let me play Devil's Advocate here for a bit and raise a few questions.

Some of the interviews with local residents reflected that the happiness that they felt with the rejection of the development proposal had nothing to do with planning issues but an intense desire not to have Muslims in the community because they would build Mosques, ghetto-ize Camden, and make Camden a hot bed of fundamentalist Islamic activity.

1. Is Australia truly a multicultural nation or is that just lip service to an ideal?

2. Isn't it true that racism is alive and well in Australian small towns with limited numbers of migrants?

3. Would this planning / development proposal been rejected if the school was to be an Anglican, Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish school?

4. Isn't it true that schools have always been built in rural areas and usually on farm land converted for that purpose?

There are probably a thousand other questions I could ask but these four will suffice for now.

I am certain that the Quranic Society will appeal this decision to the Land and Environment Court and I think they have a good chance of winning. It seems the objections on which the Council based its decision play more to political expediency than good development sense.

There is also a history in the sense that the last time a similar case came before the Court where a development application was rejected by the Baulkham Hills Council for an Islamic Prayer Hall for reasons that it did not fit the community profile, the Council decision was overturned by the Court. The prayer hall has been built!

For Australia to really move forward and become a leader in community relations we have to escape this culture of fear and religious intolerance.

Multi-Cultural Australia?

It is being reported that the Camden Council has rejected a development proposal submitted by the Qu'uranic Society (the spelling is how it is the story -- but I would have thought Quranic or Qur'anic -- that's just me though) to build a 1200-student Islamic School on land it bought in the Camden area. Camden is located south-west of Sydney.

The Mayor, Chris Patterson, issued a statement immediately after the vote was taken saying that the decision was one based solely on issues of traffic management and the loss of agricultural land but most definitely not on religious grounds. Although I have not read the planning reports, and the planning reports recommended that the Council reject the proposal, it does sound all a little convenient.

The Council received some 3000 submissions on the proposal and only 50 were for the development. So, even if the planning recommendation was to permit the development the Council would have been between a rock and a hard place with almost 3000 residents rejecting the proposal. Some suggest that the community was divided over the application. However, the breakdown above would suggest that any suggestion of community division is a bit of a furphy. If the community was truly divided on the proposal then those community members that were for the development did not make their support all that well known.

The interest in the vote saw some 200 Camden residents attend the meeting and apparently a loud cheer erupted when the Council confirmed that it had rejected the proposal. Community feeling was definitely not running with the Qu'uranic Society on this school development.

Anti-proposal rallies attracted up to a 1000 people! This culminated in some one deciding to impale a couple of pig's heads on spikes and string an Australian flag up between the heads. This to me sounds very un-Australian for a land that prides itself on tolerance and acceptance of difference. The spiking of the pig heads also does not seem to have any relevance with the land and traffic issues identified by other stake holders, the intent was to offend and to stake claim to the land as Australian land.

The Qu'uranic Society can appeal the decision to the Land and Environment Court. However, this would require the court to not only overturn the decision but to go against the reports submitted by the Department of Primary Industries, the Roads and Traffic Authority, and the NSW Police who all rejected the proposed development.

A more likely scenario after spending AUD 1.5 million on acquiring the land and a further AUD 250,000 on the proposal is that the Qu'uranic Society will sell up and seek land in a more favourable Council area where there are unlikely to be primary industry or traffic concerns.

I wonder home multi-cultural is Australia really? Is this just an isolated incident or is it endemic of a much wider-spread of fear and loathing to that which we might not understand or that we fear?

The residents of Camden have spoken!