The days since April 25 – Anzac Day – have been dominated by conversation about how one Muslim Australian, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, published an “offensive” Facebook status.
With just seven words, which attempted to use Anzac Day to highlight the plight of refugees, the engineer, presenter, and social commentator attracted the attention of people who labelled her “unAustralian,” “disrespectful,” and “disgraceful”.
In a slightly less mainstream corner, slightly to the right, another vocal Muslim Australian is also being attacked for her behaviour on Anzac Day. Labor MP Anne Aly has been called a “b**ch,” and told she’s “a liar like all Muslims” after she was accused of refusing to lay a wreath at the Anzac Day service in her electorate.
Just after 8.30pm on Tuesday, Kim Vuga, the founder of the Love Australia or Leave Party posted a story on Facebook claiming that local member Anne Aly didn’t participate in the wreath laying ceremony during the dawn service.
It wasn’t actually a story she had witnessed. She heard it from her friend ‘Gary’.
“What the hell are they doing in our country?” she asked, presumably referring to Muslim Australians.
Comments on Vuga's post called Aly "another traitor," and a "goat for ISIS" (whatever that means). "Just shows where her loyalties lie," wrote another Facebook user.
Many of the words used about her are hateful and deeply upsetting.
Top Comments
To think that these type of people breathe the same oxygen I do. What a waste. I could do with more air. I don't think Kim Vuga and her ilk have any understanding of what ANZAC day really means and just uses it to go on a hate filled rant against anyone they don't like.
I am really concerned about the increasingly cult like behaviour and overt nationalism that is surrounding ANZAC day. I don't know when commemorating ANZAC day became compulsory, but I don't think it is a healthy development at all. Yassmin Abdel-Magied dared to suggest (on her facebook page, she wasn't speaking for the ABC) that we remember the victims of current conflict on ANZAC day and suddenly people are calling for her to be sacked. It is really obvious too that the vast majority of people criticising her have no idea what she actually said. Like everything it has been blown out of all proportion even though there is no indication from her words that she disrespects the ANZAC's or that she doesn't love Australia. She simply has a different perspective, one that probably comes from being born into war torn Sudan. Her empathy lies with the civilians caught up in war, rather than the soldiers. This incident with Anne Aly is worse because people are outright lying, for no other reason than the fact that Anne is Muslim. Or do people really believe it is a coincidence? As Australians we need to be better than this. If people want to force others to view ANZAC day exactly as they do and force them to commemorate it, what does that say about us. So much for freedom, in every sense.
There are returned servicemen that dont go to ANZAC day ceremonies and I wouldnt think one would accuse them of being unastralian and unpatriotic