Australia’s first terror suspect, Zaky Mallah, was given a platform from ABC’s Q&A audience Monday night.
While there has been significant attention given to his suspected terrorist activities, his conviction and jail term for threatening to kill an ASIO officer and his angry claims that Parliamentary Secretary Steve Ciobo was inciting Australian Muslims to travel to Syria to join ISIS, less has been said about his threats to Australian women.
In January, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in Paris, Mallah threatened women columnists Miranda Devine and Rita Panihi in a twitter post:
I’ve always held the view that women who express opinions and are then subjected to violent threats and vilification should be defended, regardless of whatever political or ideological side of a fence they are on. I wondered, when some in the audience clapped in support of Mallah, if they were aware of his rape threats against Australian women or whether this didn’t matter enough to them to refrain from applauding?
And why don’t threats of sexual terrorism against women attract the same condemnation as other terrorist related threats? Mallah may have distanced himself from some of his earlier views, but his gang-rape tweet is only five months old.
Political scientist and commentator Dr Jennifer Oriel had been invited to be part of this week’s Q&A panel. She refused because of Mallah’s threats of sexual violence. She wrote this about her decision.
Dr Jennifer Oriel
Last month, I was invited to appear as a panelist on the ABC’s political talk show Q&A.
Last night, Q&A featured a self-described “Muslim activist” who tweeted about gang-raping female columnists in January and pled guilty to threatening to kill an ASIO officer.
Why would I want to appear on Q&A following such an outrage against freethinking women and our nation’s protective forces?
The man who tweeted the idea of gang-raping female journalists also has expressed support for an Islamic caliphate.
I consider him such an inferior example of manhood that I would prefer not to stain the page with his name, but here it is for the record: Zaky Mallah.
After deploying the standard Islamist narrative on the ABC – i.e. Islamists are victims and anti-terrorism is unfair – Q&A’s audience applauded Mallah.
That tells us a lot about the state of Left-wing politics today.
In the 21st century, the hard Left goes soft on men who attack liberal democracy and promote violence against women as long as such men belong to a Left-anointed minority.
Q&A host Tony Jones upbraided Mallah, but only after he had blamed the government for jihadism.
Today’s limp corrective by the ABC falls well short of the explanation we need and the apology Australians deserve.
The terms of reference for the investigation into the ABC’s indulgence of Mallah must include why a man who threatened to kill an ASIO official was cast as a victim while offending our liberal democratic government’s anti-terrorism policy.
And why a man who promoted the gang-rape of female columnists was welcomed into the ABC studio and given the privilege of being a selected speaker from the audience.
What might have happened if either of the two female columnists Mallah proposed should be gang-raped in January were on the Q&A panel last night?
Unlike those female columnists, I was actually invited to be on a Q&A panel this month.
I have written extensively on Islamist terrorism and have been threatened for doing so.
The thought that a man such as Mallah might have been sitting a few feet away from me unrestrained is, quite frankly, horrifying.
There are serious questions which must be answered about the contemporary Left, and its continued indulgence of Islamist terrorism and misogyny.
We might begin by asking why the taxpayer-funded ABC indulged a man who promoted the idea of gang-raping female columnists.
Is it because the targeted columnists, Miranda Devine and Rita Panahi, are politically conservative and therefore considered deserving victims by Islamists and their Left-wing allies in the West?
Are we seeing a new form of politically correctness in Australia – politically correct misogyny?
Perhaps misogyny is permissible to the Left when the victim is a conservative woman.
As a female political commentator who leans conservative, my right to free speech and bodily security may not mean much to the ABC.
But I did not spend my formative years in the 20th century fighting for women’s rights only to surrender to an Islamist-Left alliance of misogyny in the 21st.
I expect a public apology from the ABC for its outrage against freethinking women, freedom of speech and the basic security of Australians.
Until such an apology is given, I will not consent to appear on Q&A.
Dr Jennifer Oriel, Political Scientist and Public Commentator. Published here originally and reprinted with permission.
Update: Mallah and some others have argued that he used the phrase ‘gang bang’ not ‘gang rape’. A man who calls two female journalists whores, and argues they need to be gang-banged on popular morning television, is not inviting them to join him in a mutually pleasurable experience. Note he has continued to tweet misogynist messages about and to them, in which he upholds his use of the term ‘whore’ to describe them.
2 Responses
I’m probably more towards a lefty auntie lover but it simply beggars belief that an individual who only recently advocated sexual violence towards women was given a free media platform by the ABC/Q&A. And that is the real issue here – and why all should boycott Q&A until there is an acknowledgement of this.
What drivel. The rape comments while repulsive, were not known by Q&A at the time Mallah appeared.. Did either of the authors of these articles know of them until after the controversy erupted?
He was an audience member not a panellist remember. ARe you suggesting Q&A vet every person who might ask a question on the program to see if they have ever uttered hate speech somewhere in the past? What else should they be looking out for. It’s laughable.