Australian MP Wants to Make It Illegal to Cause Religious Offence to Muslims, by Kieran Corcoran.

An Australian MP has called for tougher speech laws so that it is illegal to offend Muslims because of their religion. Anne Aly, Australia’s first female Muslim MP, said that race discrimination laws should be expanded to cover insults based on religion as well.

Anne Aly, now 50, is a federal Labor MP from WA. Born in Egypt, she came to Australia when 2 years old. Aly graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature, with a minor in Acting. In 2008 at 41 she earned a PhD at Edith Cowan University in Perth, with a thesis entitled “Audience Responses to the Media Discourse on Terrorism: The Fear of Terrorism”. In 2015 she became a Professor at Edith Cowan.

[In the debate over 18C] Aly proposes doing the opposite – keeping the lower standard for the law, and adding “religion” to the current list of “race, colour or national or ethnic origin”. Speaking to The Australian, she said: “I find it a little bit strange that someone can call you a ‘dirty Arab’ and that be covered under the bill, but if they called you a dirty Muslim you’re not covered.”

Comments Robert Spencer:

Anne Aly has for years been an Islamic supremacist foe of free discourse. In August 2014 I wrote here about her false claims that Islam doesn’t sanction beheading and grants equality of rights to women. Instead of responding on substance, which I understand that she could not really do since I had produced numerous Qur’an verses that rather directly showed her to be lying. So instead she claimed that she had received “hate mail” from Jihad Watch readers; six months later that claim had morphed into death threats. Predictably, that became the story, as dubious as her claims were, not her deceptions. Now, if she gets her way in Australia, she could just have me arrested — not for the alleged hate mail or death threats, but for my initial post exposing her deceptions. This proposed law clearly would establish Muslims as a protected class, beyond all criticism, which would have the effect of allowing the jihad to advance unimpeded and unopposed.

Labor Party website on Anne Aly, the Member for Cowan. Here is their web page text in its entirety. Check out the spin, especially what gets omitted:

Before becoming the Member for Cowan, Dr Anne Aly was a Professor at Edith Cowan University. Anne is an internationally renowned expert in counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation. Anne is committed to working with all levels of government to make our families and communities safe. Anne was the only Australian to be invited to President Obama’s White House conference on violent extremism in 2015. She has worked with the United Nations on developing programs and policies on national security and counter-terrorism. Anne moved to Australia when she was two years old. Her mum was a nurse and her dad an engineer, but they both worked in factories in Australia. Anne was a single working mother of two young boys. She knows we all want our schools and hospitals to be the best in the world. Anne believes every child should be given the same chance to succeed as any other child in Australia and every person deserves access to quality healthcare. Anne worked for years on the minimum wage to send her two boys to school and put food on the table. She knows how important secure, well-paying jobs are. That’s why Anne supports Labor’s plan for jobs in WA, protecting penalty rates and fibre-to-the-premise NBN to foster innovation. Anne has a diverse background that spans education and training, public policy and community work. Anne is the Founding Chair of a youth oriented not for profit organisation that harnesses youth entrepreneurship and innovation to address global issues at the local level. Anne has seen first hand how Mr Turnbull and the Liberals’ cuts have hurt our health and education system. She knows Western Australia needs Labor’s plan to create and keep jobs in WA.

hat-tip Stephen Neil, Scott of the Pacific