Found this on Ninemsn and thought it was an interesting read. Makes you wonder what Mr Beazley's intentions were when he suggested the 'test' on Australian values. Or as Mr Abbott says, 'it's difficult to be a first class Australian'.
So much for egalitarianism!

(Rather long, but just skim if you please!)
Source. http://www.ninemsn.com


Angry young men

Transcript

Adam Shand: It's Friday night in the suburbs and young men in cars are on the move. It's what Aussie boys do — whether it's in tricked up utes or street rods like these, the aim is always the same.

Shahdi: Cruising, girls, having fun just having fun doing your thing.

Adam Shand: To Shahdi, his car reflects his individuality, his personal style … an Aussie birthright, even if the heritage is Lebanese.

Shahdi: You gotta read the number plate too … YBCUT4? It's for the haters out there.

Adam Shand: Do you find you come up against a lot of haters out there?

Shahdi: Yeah a lot.

Adam Shand: What do they want to do?

Shahdi: They just give me dirties, some people want to scratch the car, damage the car …

Adam Shand: Here on the streets of Bankstown in south-west Sydney, they seem as diverse as the fashions they choose and the cars they drive. But change the setting and mainstream Australia's perception of these men drastically alters. In the crowd at Lakemba mosque they take on a uniformity that is deeply troubling to many … these are images that strike fear. As Muslims, their first allegiance seems to be to a foreign and dangerous religion. We doubt their nationalism. Unable to assimilate, their critics say they are condemned to limbo — lost between two cultures at war.

Adam Houda: They are reaching out, they want to be part of mainstream Australia but nobody lets them, that's the problem, they are not allowed to, we want to be part of mainstream Australia, but they are telling us get lost, you are not welcome.

Billy "The Kid" Dibb: I don't feel lost at all. I was born in Australia. I was raised in Australia and I will never leave Australia so that makes me an Australian. If someone asks me, what nationality — I say I am Australian Lebanese, not Lebanese Australian.

Adam Shand: Today on Sunday, second generation Lebanese Australians, speak of life as foreigners in the land of their birth. They tell of the growing racism they perceive, their feelings of alienation and the price we all pay for this. They explain why they are angry.

Adam Houda: I see the situation escalating. I can tell you there is simmering tension within our community and they are just sick and tired of the relentless attacks upon our people and our community.

Dr Jamal Rifi: When you have people marginalised, pushed into a corner, they are going to bite back and they are going to do it in very unpredictable ways and very unpredictable fashion.

Adam Shand: The Mufti of Australia Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali has unwittingly revived a damaging debate about the sexuality of young Muslim men. His comments likening women to uncovered meat were widely interpreted as encouraging, even inciting sexual assault.

Prue Goward: This is incitement. He should be deported.

Adam Shand: Such views reinforced the notion that Australian Lebanese men can be mobilised to criminal action by their religious leaders — that the Koran comes before the law of the land.

Mohamad el-Assaad: I don't think anything he said incited, I can listen to Tupac if I want to, I can listen to Nickelback if I want to, if I want to follow what this guy says, that's up to me.

Adam Shand: And you also go to the mosque and listen there as well?

Mohamad el-Assaad: I go to the mosque, here and there.

Adam Shand: Many of these young men attended Punchbowl High School in Sydney's south-west. The school is notorious for producing a notorious group of rapists who terrorised young women in 2000. The leader of the gang Bilal Skaf, now serving a 32-year prison sentence for his crimes, is always identified as Lebanese Muslim.

Mohammed: Hasn't there been anyone from Australia that's been a rapist? Why wasn't it such a big deal, why wasn't it all over the papers? But because it was Bilal Skaf and he comes from Middle Eastern background. They had to make it a big story to go against the Middle East.

Adam Shand: These young men say they understand where traditional culture ends and the law begins.

Adam Shand: What comes first the Koran or Australian laws?

Omar Abdo: For example, you are allowed to marry four women, but it also says you have to follow the rules of the country you are in. Australia does not allow that, so that's where the rules of Australia comes before that — they come together, they are integrated together so it's not which one will I choose, they work together.

Adam Shand: Far from being lost, they say they can take the best of each culture.

Adam Shand: What is the Lebanese part of your culture?

Billy "The Kid" Dibb: I mean I am Lebanese at home, I talk Lebanese at home, I talk Arabic to father and mother I eat Leb food at home, that's my Lebanese culture. When I am out and about with my friends, I am Australian.

Mazen Bakour: The way we are talking right now is what we have been taught by religion and what we have been taught at school. The prophet Mohammed, he is our inspiration, and so is Ned Kelly.

Adam Shand: Their attitudes to women under Islam are also influenced by their hybrid culture in Australia.

Omar Abdo: The man's responsibility is to go out and supply his family with food and shelter. The lady has a more responsibility of ensuring "The Kid"s are raised up right, she is like the financial planner, really.

Adam Shand: But what about women of other faiths and nationalities?

Omar Abdo: There are some uneven things that happen; in every castle there is a toilet.

Adam Shand: And if you dwell in the toilet you will always have the best view of the sewer. The media's fascination with the ethnicity and faith of Bilal Skaf's gang has created a stereotype that Arabic men have a propensity for rape. But out here, police say there is no evidence of that. It's a fantasy not supported by the crime figures.

Det Inspector Lindsay Rogerson: No, it's not indicative at all. A major problem here is robbery, and the young Arabic community is not overrepresented in our crime figures at all.

Adam Shand: Detective Chief Inspector Lindsay Rogerson is a senior officer in the Campsie region, which has Sydney's highest concentration of Arabic-speakers. This area has a long standing reputation for gang violence, but again, crime stats don't bear it out.

What's happened to this gang violence, these no-go zones I hear you cannot walk the streets at night?

Det Inspector Lindsay Rogerson: That's not true, I come here most nights to get my dinner and it's quite safe. I feel for anyone who has been overrepresented falsely, in the media.

Adam Shand: And what about domestic violence?

Det Inspector Lindsay Rogerson: The Arabic community is not overrepresented in domestic violence whatsoever. So Arab men bashing their wives out here is not an issue?

Det Inspector Lindsay Rogerson: No it's not.

Adam Shand: That's not to say the community is crime-free, but rather there is no basis for racial profiling. The NSW Police set up Taskforce Gain to tackle Middle Eastern crime in the late 1990s. Solicitor Adam Houda says it's now facing a shortage of criminals.

Adam Houda: I'd be quite surprised if any police officer would tell you there would be more than 50 people of interest. I think they are running out of work. Members of Task Force are knocking on people who they think they might be criminals in the future. This is the level that we stoop to.

Adam Shand: Local police say that even a figure of 50 may be overstating the problem.

Det Inspector Lindsay Rogerson: We do have a MEOC Squad who is targeting those people, on the ground at the local area command level, I would say that is probably an overrepresentation.

Dr Michael Kennedy: There is not one skerrick of scientific evidence that we have a problem with crime, that we have a problem that is anywhere near New York, London, Paris.

Adam Shand: Academics like Dr Michael Kennedy of the University of Western Sydney, believe the fear of Australian Lebanese young men has its roots in politics, not reality.

Dr Michael Kennedy: What happens is young Arabic people being humiliated publicly, constantly harassed, on top of that there is a march down the main street of Lakemba, it's almost like an invading army as if we are going to show them that we are in control. You just can't continually turn up the heat on marginalised and disadvantaged communities and not expect there to be some sort of reaction.

Adam Shand: And the reaction was swift … a drive-by shooting on the police station at Lakemba in November 1998 drew the battlelines. A zero tolerance campaign led to more than a thousand arrests.

Dr Michael Kennedy: They are told they have to come back with quotas. So if at the end of the shift they haven't got their quotas, they are in a panic to arrest anyone for anything. Some of the assistant commissioners know that this was … they referred to it as bums on seats, we need bums on seats.

Adam Shand: Eight years on, most young Muslim men say they still experience racist policing on the streets of Bankstown.

Mohammed el-Assaad: If a young kid is arrogant with the police officer, he is just going to laugh, laugh, laugh and then he is going to end up in the paddy wagon.

Adam Shand: So it escalates from nothing essentially?

Mohammed el-Assaad Yeah, that's right. Just a random breath test can get you arrested and your car taken off you. They usually try and find something.
There are laws in New South Wales that if you stand here in the western suburbs, you have to move on.

Adam Shand: How often does it happen to you?

Mohammed el-Assaad: It happens a lot. If the cop comes along and says move along, you say why, and they say you have to. I bet you if we were blonde, blue-eyed and carrying VB in our hands, no one would say anything to us. It's as simple as that.

Adam Shand: In the neighbouring Campsie area command, police have moved to a community-based approach, building bridges with the Arabic community through ethnic liaison officers. As a result, crime figures are down across the board and the community is anxious to help police.

Ghandi: I think the police have gone so much further than just policing, but we have the support of so many more community members — better line of communications, can depend on the members. To be able to do what you are doing, you have to know the community.

Adam Shand: It may be getting better out here, but these young men still bear the scars. Opportunities are limited for them, so powerful is the stigma of race.

Mohamad el-Assaad: Well, when I was looking for a job I had my name as Michael and in one day, I had applied for four jobs. Mind you, I had applied for six to seven months and no phone calls, and if I was lucky, I got an e-mail saying I was unsuccessful. If you say your name is Mohammed, you can't get a job.

Asif: Just because I'm Lebanese and Muslim you get people looking at you in a weird way. Only recently I had the confidence to apply for a job. I am in construction management. They are all Australians and they like me in the company. I am going alright.

Adam Shand: Most of the youth we spoke to said they never saw positive images of their own lives in the media — division and conflict were always highlighted.

Adam Houda: Well, the media is quite a powerful medium, and young kids especially in our community grow up thinking they are criminals because that's what they are told they are.

Adam Shand: Stories of assimilation are few and far between. Here, an all-Muslim cricket team plays for the Lakemba Fifths. There are small adjustments — during the fast of Ramadan, the drinks breaks are a dry affair.

And whoever heard of this story about boxer Billy "The Kid" Dibb? Invited to fight for Lebanon at the Athens Olympics, he turned it down because he's an Aussie first. He couldn't risk taking a medal off another local fighter.

Billy "The Kid" Dibb; I made the right decision…I wasn't going to fight for Lebanon.. Lebanon hasn't done anything for me, to be honest I grew up here lived my whole life here what have they invested in me?

Adam Shand: So you gave up your Olympic dream to restate your nationalism as an Australian?

Billy "The Kid" Dibb: The biggest achievement in my life to date was winning the Australian title.

Adam Shand: And who would guess that the record for the fastest time for trekking the Kokoda Track belongs to a bunch of misfit Muslim kids from Punchbowl High School?

Youth worker Brett Murray, of Dare Operations, wanted to introduce these boys to their Australian heritage. But had to overcome his own prejudice first. What was your perception of Lebanese guys before you went to Punchbowl High?

Brett Murray: Much the same as most Anglo kids. I just thought dumb Lebs … because I was ignorant, had never been introduced to the community. When I saw the degradation of Punchbowl High, they were calling it nothing but a war zone. Let's show them.

Adam Shand: What has been the trajectory since? Have any dropped off the planet since?

Brett Murray: No, all 10 guys who we took across had a direct impact on Punchbowl High. In the next 12 months, we were told by the then principal that the 10 guys had a direct impact. The rates of school violence had dropped by 70 percent.

Adam Shand: After days and nights of trekking through the jungle, they stood before the famous granite pillars at Isurava and understood the sacred values that we all share — mateship, courage, endurance and sacrifice.

There was nothing extraordinary about these young men before they left. Like the kids we met on the streets of south-west Sydney, they wanted to assimilate, to learn where they fit in the story of Australia.

Mohammad Kabaaita: The spirit of understanding, like a country that I grew up in, knowing its heritage, knowing what I stand for in this country that I feel more like an Australian. I could walk out in the street and talk to anybody I have never met before.

Adam Shand: No longer feeling like a foreigner in the country in which you were born?

Mohammad Kabaaita: Very true. It's like, how can I put this? It's like the long lost piece of a puzzle, which was waiting to be found. But it took a long, long time to be found

Very interesting read...and egalitarianism,is nowhere in sight! Shows how lack of knowledge and ignorance of each cultural group, breeds misunderstanding and hate.

interesting reading...sounds all to familar with the big brother thing!....