Bible verse scrawled on a tribute wall to victims of the Christchurch mosque terrorist attack sparks outrage - as mourners call for it to be removed immediately

Since nobody else seems to be offering an exegesis of Luke 19:27, perhaps I should.

For a start, it is part of a parable in which Jesus is emphasizing that deeds have consequences and that good deeds are expected. And as a parable it is not meant to be taken literally.  So saying that it commands that non-Christians should be slain is wrong.

The first part of the parable tells us that we should use our abilities for good.  So those who contributed something got a reward.  And doing nothing was insufficient.  The man who had simply locked away the money he had was penalized.

And then we come to actual opponents of the good.  They were to be slain -- as the wicked would be at the last day


A Bible verse scrawled on a tribute wall for the Christchurch mosque massacre victims will be removed after it sparked outrage among members of the public.

The message, which simply read 'Luke 19:27', was spotted by Duncan Lucas as he made his way past the wall on a development site in Auckland on Tuesday.

Mr Lucas decided to look up the gospel verse, and was shocked to find it was a reference to enemies being killed in front of a king.

'Not being somebody well versed in biblical studies, it struck me curious someone would write it up with no reference,' Mr Lucas told Stuff.co.nz.

'Without any surrounding context, it [the verse] shows a particular standpoint and indicates that anyone of one particular faith is not deserving of equal treatment,' he added.

In the King James version of the Bible, the verse reads: 'But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.'

While Mr Lucas didn't think the reference needed to be removed he did say it was a 'bit sick' that someone had appeared to deliberately leave out any context.

'I just think whoever put it up there knew they avoided context and knew it would speak to people who looked it up. I think that's a bit sick,' he said.

The marketing manager for Precinct Properties, which erected the tribute wall, confirmed the company were 'making steps' to remove the reference.

She said the company were happy to hear from any members of the public who might deem a message on the wall as inappropriate. 

But she added that in the main the wall had been filled with 'overwhelmingly positive' content.

Since the message board was created many well-wishers have taken the time to write touching tributes and inspirational words.  

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Muslim campaigners condemn New Zealand women for donning headscarves in solidarity with mosque shooting victims, saying: 'The hijab is NOT empowering for us'

New Zealand women who wear a headscarf in solidarity with Muslim women have faced a backlash from campaigners who say it is not 'empowering'. 

Some women including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have covered up in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings which killed 50 people on March 15.

Ardern won widespread praise for putting on a headscarf when she met members of the Muslim community after the terror attack.

But women's rights advocates said it was a sensitive issue for many women who campaign against the obligatory wearing of headscarves. 

Critics pointed out that women in conservative Muslim countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia were forced to cover up for the sake of modesty or risk public rebuke, fines or arrest. 

'When we see non-Muslim women wear the hijab in solidarity of Muslim women it is very ironic and contradictory because our experience with the hijab is not empowering or uplifting in the political sense,' said Maryam Lee, a Muslim women's rights advocate and author in Malaysia who chooses to not wear a hijab.

'I wish [Ardern] hadn't but I understand where she is coming from because she is not a Muslim and not from a Muslim majority country.'

Women across New Zealand donned headscarves last Friday as part of a Head Scarf for Harmony campaign.

It was started by a doctor who heard about a woman too scared to go out as she felt her headscarf would make her a target for terrorism. 

Lee, who has written a book called 'Unveiling Choice' about the hijab, said women in Malaysia opting not to wear headscarves would now receive more harassment and pressure to wear the hijab by Muslims citing Ardern's actions.

Women in Muslim-majority Malaysia, which has a large population of ethnic and religious minorities, have been barred from government offices in the past for attire that officials deemed as indecent, such as skirts or shorts.

Masih Alinejad, an Iranian activist and journalist who hosts the website My Stealthy Freedom where women in Iran post photos without headscarves, had mixed feelings about the campaign.

Alinejad has lived in self-imposed exile since 2009 and received death threats for her campaigning against the obligatory wearing of headscarves.

'I felt admiration that a prominent leader and women in New Zealand showed compassion to the Muslim community, but I also felt that you are using one of the most visible symbols of oppression for Muslim women in many countries for solidarity, and it also broke my heart,' said Alinejad.

'That is why I call on them to show their sisterhood and solidarity with us, who are being beaten up, imprisoned and punished for fighting against compulsory hijab as well.'

But Mutiara Ika Pratiwi, national secretary of Indonesian women's rights group Perempuan Mahardhika backed Ardern.

'Giving sympathy to a victim's family is part of a feminist position, and the veil is a symbol for a community that is currently a victim,' said Jakarta-based Pratiwi.

'Although there are those who criticize her, the majority respect the move. What is important is that Jacinda is able to build a movement of New Zealanders who sympathize with the victims.'

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China’s ‘deadbeats’ barred from planes, high-speed trains because of bad credit

This seems an excellent idea to me.  There is no morality in failing to pay back what you have borrowed.  It is a form of theft

For this class of people in China, dubbed “discredited individuals” or “deadbeats”, daily life is a series of inflicted indignities.

Being designated a ’discredited individua’ — referred to as laolai in Chinese — often stems from acquiring bad credit and too much debt.Source:Supplied

Daily life has become pretty slow and sticky for the 13 million Chinese citizens deemed “deadbeats” by their Communist ruling party.

But despite little being known about the mysterious national database, curated by China’s Supreme Court, information has been trickling out as to the punishments inflicted on the black-listed.

According to the South China Morning Post, those 13 million are prohibited from taking aeroplanes or high-speed trains, meaning they are sometimes forced to take cross-country expeditions in cramped and crowded slow trains that can take days.

Some individuals have also reportedly had a special ringtone applied to their phones so as to shame them in front of their family and friends, according to the report.

The “discredited individuals” list was concocted in 2013 as a means to motivate Chinese people into good monetary behaviour.

According to data from the National Public Information Centre, by the end of 2018 more than 17.5 million people had been stopped from taking flights and more than 5.5 million were prohibited from high-speed train travel.

Being designated a “discredited individual” — referred to as laolai in Chinese — often stems from acquiring bad credit and too much debt and comes with a slew of other grievances beyond the scope of “luxury” travel.

Unlike time spent behind bars for a crime, this list has no term limit. Until you can pay your debts, life will be far from lush. But some argue they can’t pay their debts because their ability to run successful businesses or hold down good jobs is impeded by the restrictions and stigmas that come with being classed a “deadbeat”.

Speaking to SCMP, 47-year-old David Kong is banned from spending on “luxuries”, which include air travel and fast trains.

“It’s even worse than doing time because at least there’s a limit to a prison sentence,” Mr Kong said in a phone interview. “Being on the list means that as long as you can’t clear your debts in full, your name will always be there.”

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Fake charges of racism deepen our divisions

The intake of Lebanese Muslims into Australia in the '70s WAS poorly conceived and executed

Our history — in its good and bad aspects — is deeply compromised by the culture wars as exemplified by the media campaign unleashed against the “racist” Liberal Party for its many sins, one of the most conspicuous being the issue of Lebanese Muslims allowed here by the Fraser government.

In his celebrated interview with Scott Morrison, host Waleed Aly presented this as a primary item in his accusation: “Does your party and your Coalition have a problem of Islamophobia?” The essence of Aly’s critique was Peter Dutton’s suggestion “that Lebanese immigration in the 70s was a mistake or that mistakes were made around it”.

This was condemned as unacceptable and dangerous. A number of journalists took up the same theme. They pointed to Dutton’s 2016 remarks that Fraser had made a mistake in the entry of Lebanese Muslims fleeing the civil war and nominated this as evidence of Liberal racism or Islamophobia, or both. Aly, highlighting the Coalition’s anti-Islamic problem, asked Morrison: “Why single out the Lebanese community in that context?”

The first point to be made is that politicians from all sides should do better in canvassing ­racial and religious issues. The second point is that this arena is loaded with hypocrisy, with most politicians and media adopting one side or the other in the culture war and running polemics to suit their cause.

Asked for his view on this issue, former immigration minister Philip Ruddock, known for his ties with the Lebanese community, said: “The Lebanese Concession was recognised to have been a policy mistake and it was closed down in a relatively short time. The only test required was to have relatives in Australia, but even that could not be adequately enforced and there is no doubt it was abused.

“Malcolm Fraser properly insisted that the entry be based on non-discriminatory grounds but the entry criteria were such that the policy did not meet the normal Australian standards of integrity that should characterise our immigration program.”

Fraser initiated the policy through his immigration minister, Michael MacKellar, given the plight facing many Lebanese who fled their country. Prominent Christian Lebanese business leaders had approached Fraser and urged him to take action — in short, to bring Christian Lebanese to this country.

The entry criteria were exceptional. People did not have to qualify as refugees and were given no assessment to this effect. Nor did they have to meet normal immigration entry standards in relation to skills, qualifications, language or resources. The only alleged test applied was having relatives in Australia — and there was plenty of scope for this to be manipulated and abused.

On January 1, 2007 the cabinet documents for this period were released. Advice from the Immigration Department had been that too many Lebanese Muslims were being accepted without “the required qualities” for successful integration, a lethal conclusion violating the principles governing the success of Australia’s immigration program.

The Fraser cabinet was told many of the entrants were unskilled, illiterate and had questionable character and health standards. This was a collapse in normal entry standards. The cabinet documents explicitly confirm the humanitarian decision to accept entry was made on conditions that fell far short of Australia’s normal entry criteria. MacKellar said most applicants were sponsored by relatives living in Sydney’s southwest and many settled around Lakemba. Officials reported that many were misrepresenting their background during interviews in “deliberate attempts to conceal vital information”.

In a November 2016 column the Sydney Institute’s Gerard Henderson said: “Immigration Department staff sent to the region to administer the program had no way of checking whether the applicants had a relative in Australia.” Officials have privately confirmed this to the writer. One said: “We lost control over what was happening.”

Interviewed at the time by The Australian’s Matthew Franklin, Fraser confirmed the government’s relaxed entry criteria on humanitarian grounds. The submission said that as many as 90 per cent of the entrants were Muslims, suggesting many Christians, ironically, were not interested. In his memoirs, co-authored with Margaret Simons, Fraser wrote that of those who came “nine out of 10 were Muslim” and conceded this represented a significant change in the nature of immigration from Lebanon because previously “migrants from Lebanon had been mainly Christian”.

In his book Fraser said there had been a mistake but claimed it was in resettlement and planning. This is undoubtedly true. But his understandable effort to deny any mistake on entry policy cannot be sustained given the facts, cabinet documents, chaos surrounding the process and admissions by the minister and department about the flawed entry criteria.

Indeed, this is worse than a mere mistake. The evidence suggests it is one of the most significant failures in the immigration intake over the past several decades. While cause and effect are hard to directly prove, the southwest of Sydney was subsequently the location of Islamic gangs, crime, violence and racial and religious baiting. Do people believe that when you abandon the integrity of the intake — even for a short time — there are no consequences?

It is morally and intellectually dishonest to raise this 70s episode as evidence of Liberal Party Islamophobia, as Aly did, along with criticising any minister who calls it a mistake while ignoring, concealing or seeking to deny what really happened.

The next question is: Should Dutton have made these comments in 2016? His remarks were provocative because he drew the link between the 70s entry and the high number of second and third-generation Lebanese Muslims charged with terrorist-related ­offences, saying they constituted 22 out of 33 people.

Dutton made clear he did not seek to discredit an entire community. He called it “a particular issue” and told parliament he would not allow the community “to be defined by those people doing the wrong thing”. This, however, was the exact charge against him — by Bill Shorten, the Greens and much of the media.

Dutton was branded a racist and a bigot and much of the media agreed — as they agreed with Aly last week. At the time Shorten accused Dutton of engaging in “lazy disrespect, wholesale labelling of entire communities for the actions of a tiny minority”.

In his defence Dutton said Australia had a highly successful humanitarian program of 18,750 people and an immigration intake of 200,000, but when things were not working “we should own up to our mistakes”.

That justification is far too convenient. Greens senator Nick McKim clarified the paradox, saying: “Just because something is fact doesn’t mean it is reasonable or productive to talk about it.” That can be right — but, on the other hand, outright suppression of core realities cannot help anybody. Dutton, however, was unwise in his language given the intelligence agencies’ rely on the co-operation of the Muslim community. He should not have linked the 70s intake with the problem of foreign fighters in 2016, despite being factually correct in that Lebanese Muslims were manifestly over-represented among terrorism offenders.

This leads, however, to the final question: how much damage is being done by the progressive forces as they parade their manic virtue branding and hang the accusation of racism and Islamophobia on every hook they see? This is not helping the country; it is exacerbating, not repairing, our divisions. At the time Malcolm Turnbull as PM held Dutton’s critics to account for the consequences of what they were doing — saying they sought to “inflame unrest, animosity and racial hatred”.

Turnbull was right. We need to understand that branding our political leaders as racists and agents of Islamophobia constitutes its own form of counterproductive extremism; witness the unjustified comments that Morrison had contributed to the atmosphere leading to the New Zealand massacre. Consider the historical method at work. The progressive quest is to lay on the table every sin of the White Australia policy, every racial, colonial and sexual injustice since European settlement — and that constitutes a multitude — yet when there are historical issues that do not suit the progressive agenda, they must be hidden, disguised or suppressed. Spare us the hypocrisy.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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