Page 3261 - Week 10 - Thursday, 25 August 2005
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tolerance and respect and the responsibility we have as community leaders to promote these values at every available opportunity.
I am proud to be a member of the Canberra community, for many reasons. But in the world that confronts us, none seems more appropriate than the way in which we celebrate the richness and diversity of our community. Canberra is a place where we can truly be proud of our culture and religious freedoms, the respect we have consistently shown for the beliefs of others and the way we encourage free and unfettered debate in our community.
The acts we are now seeing around the world are not motivated by faith, as we understand it; these acts are motivated by extremism. It is imperative, then, that the actions of a few extreme people are not allowed to destroy our community’s tolerance and our acceptance of religious and cultural diversity. As I said, the acts we are referring to when we speak of international terrorism are not acts of religious expression and therefore cannot be combated by seeking to engage in a debate about faith. These acts are discriminate in their nature and ruthless in their destruction; they seek to generate fear and are designed to totally disrupt people’s normal daily lives.
The perpetrators of these crimes are totally indiscriminate in selecting their human targets. Who are killed and injured is none of their concern. Indeed, that the indiscriminate nature of the attacks can kill and injure people of any race or religion is merely a matter of who is unfortunate enough to be in a particular place at a particular time.
At a time like this it is very easy for us to become like the perpetrators and meet their force and their hate with like behaviour. As leaders in our community, we would do well to reflect on the words of those around the world and those from many religions who attended the memorial service for the London bombings. These leaders reminded us that we all have the capacity to hate and at the same time the capacity to love. The choice is ours. The remedy for preventing these attacks can be found within this choice. Indeed, the number of religious and political leaders who are raising their voices to urge us to combat intolerance by supporting acceptance is growing daily.
However, unfortunately, some in our community would express their fear by seeking to silence dissent, by attempting to impose their own beliefs in a strident manner, by seeking to deny members of the community their right to free speech or their right to free expression. Instead of turning on each other in anger and with blame, instead of looking for a particular religion or way of life to blame, instead of banning free speech or banning the publication of material, we need to show by example our understanding, our acceptance, our tolerance for all parts of our community. At the same time, of course, those who perpetrate such crimes against the human race will face the ultimate force of the law.
We have an obligation to engage in the debate of ideas rather than condemning those ideas to the bonfires of history. We can show our multicultural community that we do not seek to blame diverse faith or culture for this terrorism. We can demonstrate, by our leadership, that we know these acts are based on hatred, not religion, and that we can continue to celebrate the rich contributions of our diverse cultures. Those of us that dress differently, speak differently, maybe eat differently, worship differently or, indeed, are of
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