Yassmin Abdel-Magied - Media Muslim

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a remarkable young woman. She is, in her own words: "a mechanical engineer; practising Muslim woman (Alhamdulillah), a founder of a youth-led organisation, a former race car Team Principal, a Sudanese-born member of the Arab-African diaspora, a Queenslander, a boxer, a doer and, hopefully, also a thinker who is able to add value, to be useful." She has so much chutzpah you'd think she was Jewish.

She was born into a wealthy family in the Sudan and came to Australia in 1993 as a 2 year old when her father, an academic, decided that using Arabic rather then English in the university was the last straw. Yassmin tries to blame the 'mistakes' the Sudanese government made attempting to "decolonise" the Sudan on the British control of Sudan.

Decolonisation is an unimaginably difficult and delicate process to navigate; there are few countries that have been able to successfully recover from this destructive form of oppression. - Yassmin's Story

This control lasted less than 100 years and overall left Sudanese culture unchanged. She doesn't realise that Sudan was conquered and colonised by Muslim forces centuries before and this destroyed the native Northern Sudanese culture and religion. Furthermore, this Arabic/Islamic colonialism is still ongoing. The British and Egyptian governments gave independance to the Sudan in 1953 as one country despite the huge differences between the more powerful Northern Sudan - brown skinned Muslims - and the South - dark skinned Christians and animists. So began agitation for regional independance which became the First Sudanese War (1955-72) which ended after 500,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, mostly Southern Sudanese. As the promises of self-determination made to end the war were not upheld the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005) ensued when the government of Sudan abrogated the peace accord and attempted to impose Shariah in the south. About 2,000,000 people died due to the conflict and 4,000,000 people in southern Sudan were displaced at least once. Human rights violations including slavery and mass killings were common. I think this attempt at "Islamicisation" can be considered attempted genocide. During these years Yassmin and her family made regular trips back to the Sudan to see family and enjoy picnics. Apparently she had no idea this genocide was going on or just didn't care and barely mentions it in her book.

Bashir’s move to ‘Arabise’ Sudan, which meant that the public institutions would now operate in Arabic rather than English, was about discarding the remnants of British colonialism, and was an effort to make the nation more ‘Islamic’ by employing superficial changes the government believed were significant. These changes included the policing of women’s clothing, switching the language of education and encouraging polygamy, rather than focusing on deeper, more socially impactful Islamic measures like charity and integrity within governance. - Yassmin's Story

"[C]harity and integrity within governance" are virtues across all religions and systems of government. "[P]olicing of women’s clothing … and encouraging polygamy" are purely Islamic.

Ms Abdel-Magied believes Shariah says Muslims should follow the law of the land they live in. The Sudanese Muslim government says non-Muslims must live under Shariah and has attempted to enforce this in a 50 year genocidal war. There are 38,000,000 Muslims living in Northern Sudan who at the very least are complicit, if not enthusiastic, about this enforcement of Shariah in it's most repressive form by genocidal methods. On the day that preliminary results showed some 99% of South Sudanese voted to secede in a referendum, students in Northern Sudan protested throwing rocks at police officers while chanting "No to high prices, no to corruption." Their priorites certainly demonstrated the high ethical values of Islam.

The application of Sharia law has changed over time, and that’s where this discussion gets tricky – when we need to bring in colonisation. It’s strange to talk about colonisation so often, when it feels as if it was an age ago, but the colonisation process changed everything, including, in some ways, Sharia. It started with the British East India Company (EIC) and the Dutch entering India and Indonesia in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; these movements eventually led to some pretty drastic changes in how Sharia was practised and understood. - Yassmin's Story

Ms Abdel-Magied believes the repressive forms of Islam generally enforced in MENA are due to English and Dutch colonialism, cultural patriarchy and not to Islam. However, Indonesia which was colonised by the Dutch for 350 years is one of the most liberal Muslim cultures though this has been changing since the fall of the Suharto government in 1998. Saudi Arabia the home of Wahhabism - where women are flogged for adultery and are not permitted to drive cars - was never colonised by a European power and Iran the centre of Shiite fundamentalism was never colonised by a European power. The English colonialisation of India put a stop to a millenium of Muslim colonialism, forced conversions, attempted destruction of Hindu culture and Islamic genocide against the native Hindu population. This was the largest slaughter of human beings in world history. The Indian historian Professor K.S. Lal estimates that the Hindu population in India decreased by 80 million between 1000 AD and 1525 AD, due to the Islamic invasions. She's a racing car driver, not an historian.

After the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, times became more tense for Muslims in Australia. A nutter burnt down her local mosque. He was arrested, convicted and sentenced to six years' jail for the arson. Meanwhile, back home in the Sudan, genocide continued and a new world record for rapes per annum was being set. There were no police investigations seeking these rapists and murderers. They were members of the Northern Government Muslim military. In Australia, Yassmin had no such fears. Here a woman, as she shows, can do anything. The populations of these repressive Islam countries do not agree with Ms Abdel-Magied's views of Islam and life and she would suffer persecution should she emigrate to any of them.

Ms Abdel-Magied believes the Quran is divine. Most Westerners who have studied the Quran do not agree. She has difficulty reading it in Arabic. She should try reading it in English. It's message is pretty straightforward once you understand the difference between the Meccan and the Medinan verses. Just be careful how you discuss it in Sudan … or else.

She has said, "As a Muslim woman, I’m often asked, ‘How can you possibly be Muslim and be a feminist?’” As a guest on the ABC’s Q&A program, she described Islam as “the most feminist” of all religions.

Yassmin is horrified by Annabel Crabb's hair and cleavage.
That is what drives young Muslim men to rape and radicalisation!