Native v. Muslim immigrant rioting Down Under

The mob sings Waltzing Matilda - National - theage.com.au:

"'I've got a four-year-old girl and a boy who's 11, and they see these bastards come here and stand around the sea baths 'cos their women have got to swim in clothes and stuff, or they see them saying filthy things to our girls,' he said. 'That's not Australian. My granddad fought the Japs to see Australia safe from this sort of shit, and that's what I'm doing today.'"

So said "Steely" (who was also reported to have said he declined to give his name for fear of reprisals from the Lebs - Aussie slang for Lebanese) of the religious tensions in the surfing community of Cronulla. France, Belgium and Denmark are not the only places where Muslim immigration and reaction against it is causing sporadic breakdowns of public order.

The Age, of course, refers to this as a racial confrontation and says it is the worst in the area since some anti-Chinese riot in 1860. The story notes a class or economic dimension to some prior disturbances of public order in this neighborhood going back to the 1960s, but never a word that this is in any significant way a religious conflict.

This particular round of violence began when a lifeguard asked a group of Lebanese immigrant men not to play soccer on the beach as they were disturbing other visitors and was attacked for his trouble. The next day the locals turned out in force to claim the Cronulla beach as their turf to the exclusion of the Lebs.

A very sad affair all around, but a cautionary tale nonetheless about the limits of rapid assimilation. The government leaders who craft immigration policy may be, as they seem to imply of themselves, the sort of folks who can make such a policy work. Or, they may merely be the sort of folks who figure the only immigrants they will ever have to deal with personally will be their servants. In any case, they don't seem to appreciate that wishing doesn't make things so except in Disney movies and merely making pious speeches about how other people ought to get along with one another doesn't ensure peaceful communities.