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| Supporters rally outside court. Herald Sun |
The preposterous excuses and Pythonesque theatrics of Carnita Matthews and her very vocal supporters outside a Sydney court this week would be comic, if they weren’t so threatening.
The 46-year-old mother of seven, wearing a full black niqab showing just her eyes, has successfully tied the justice system up in knots for the past year, simply to avoid paying a $197 traffic fine.
Described as being “deliberately malicious and … ruthless” by the magistrate who convicted her last November of falsely claiming a “racist” police highway patrol officer tried to tear off her veil during a random breath test, Matthews escaped her six-month jail sentence on appeal before the NSW District Court on Monday.
“All we know is that a person with a black burqa came in with a man in a brown suit with an envelope and that’s it,” said Judge Jeffreys.
But somebody lied about Sen-Constable Fogarty, whose innocence and gentlemanly restraint in the face of Matthews’ persistent provocation were evident on the 20-minute in-car police video recording, without which his career would certainly have been in jeopardy.
The prosecution was unable to satisfy Judge Jeffreys that the liar was Matthews, despite the fact her friend, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib, alleged to radio 2GB’s Chris Smith on Tuesday that he had accompanied her to the police station to lodge the complaint.
Moreover, Channel 7 has footage of Matthews allegedly signing a statutory declaration and driving to Campbelltown police station with Habib.
Neither Habib nor anyone from Channel 7 was asked to give evidence, which makes you wonder if the prosecution’s heart was really in it.
Maybe the case was too hot to handle. It has grown from a simple traffic fine for a woman with a string of driving offences, to a core test of political Islam: whether a veiled Muslim woman has the right to refuse a police officer’s lawful request that she identify herself.
The answer is no. That right does not exist under our law. But that doesn’t stop some Islamist activists pushing for it, as if it is their due.
Regardless of who signed the false complaint against Sen-Constable Fogarty, it was the intimidating behaviour of some of Matthews’ male supporters outside court this week that was most offensive.
The bearded men who chanted “Allah akbar” (Allah is great) as they marched roughshod on cameramen weren’t behaving normally.
Their theatrics were a declaration of war – on Australia, on the media, on police.
Linking arms and striding down the street, chanting the phrase we have heard terrorists utter when they plough a plane into a building or commit some other appalling crime, was a show of power by people who only seem to want to obey their god.
It looked like a direct challenge to Australian law and order.
We increasingly see the same challenge whenever a hardline Islamist appears in court, as the call goes out for “brothers” to run “protection” for the accused.
Matthews’ husband, Hamdi Abu Ibrahim, sent out the call on his Facebook page this week and later thanked: “All the hero’s (sic) and lions of Allah whom (sic) had the chance to come to the court and fight for the sake of Allah . . . Allah has granted your oppressed sister victory over his enemies and he granted us a judge that from the word go he was defending your sister where everyone else was determined to see her jailed, but Allah had other plans. They plot, but Allah is the best of plotters.”
His Facebook page, which had the profile picture of a bloodied fist replaced yesterday by a handcuffed figure in a burqa, contains messages from supporters such as: “Allah akbar, may all the pigs burn in hell inshallah”.
It also features videos of Osama bin Laden, slurs against infidels and “Kufaars” (non-Muslims), “American pig savages” and “Zionist dogs”.
For example, last weekend Ibrahim wrote: “Ya zionist dogs there will be a day very soon that youll find no sheltr nor a wall to hind behind and we will eat your flesh and spit it to our dogs to chew off.”
And this: “How long are we going to stay weak, no more Mr Nice Guy, we will defend our Islam and our sisters with our blood, blood, blood.”
A video also appears with the title “8 US soldiers killed in Iraq” and the message from Ibrahim: “Keep them Comming”.
Another video, since removed, has the message: “Watch the American pigs the Aussie pigs the British pigs soldiers raping your Muslim sister.”
There is also, ominously, talk on the page about disrupting a coming rally in Sydney by the Australian Defence League, an anti-Islamist group. A similar protest against shariah law in Melbourne last month had to be shut down by police after violent clashes.
On Ibrahim’s website there is a lone brave voice of reason, from a woman he refers to as his “sister”, “Philosopha Phatoom”.
“The way u men handled this is very wrong … may Allah take away this hated and anger from ur hearts,” she wrote yesterday. “I’m not judging … i can only assure u that setting an example of Islam is not that way …Remember Islam was never spread by the sword, it caught peoples Hearts.”
The vast majority of moderate Muslims in Australia want no truck with Islamist ideology. Many know all too well the turmoil it has caused in their countries of origin.
It is for them, as much as for the rest of the community, that NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and his Police Minister Mike Gallagher need to send a firm message that no one is above the law.
The burqa or niqab, as several Muslims have pointed out, is not a requirement of the Koran, which advises women only to dress modestly. But it has become a potent symbol of political Islam.
Gallagher has flagged a law change to allow Muslim women to use fingerprints to verify their identity instead of lifting their veils, but he must avoid creating special laws for any particular group.
Australia is one of the most successful immigrant nations on earth, and it would be a pity to follow the European path of banning Islamic face coverings, because the result would be further repression of women.
In order to safeguard freedom, not least of Muslim women to wear the veil, then every challenge to authority must be countered when it arises
