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posted by martyb on Saturday February 16 2019, @08:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the Better-than-a-rat-race dept.

Is a religious group a 'race' or isn't it? Is someone 'racist' if they publicly state their dislike of a religious group? An Australian tribunal has answered this question by ruling that Muslim is not a race, and as such, a person who vilifies them in public, an act which is currently illegal in Australia, would not have broken the law.

In 2016 Sonia Kruger 'called for an end to migration from Islamic countries' saying that she wanted people to feel safe when going out to celebrate Australia day. Sam Ekermawi, a Muslim, filed a complaint to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal claiming the comments were racial vilification.

The tribunal was unable to conclude Muslims living in Australia "are a 'race' by reason of a common ethnic or ethno-religious origin" and dismissed the application. This is an important milestone in the legal and cultural development of the ocean-bound nation which is still attempting to balance the melting pot of cultures and people who have migrated to the country from all over the world. This ruling may be a key threshold for defining what the word 'race' actually means in the legal and social and cultural context and how laws will be interpreted in the future.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 16 2019, @08:18PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday February 16 2019, @08:18PM (#802164) Journal

    If it is a social construct, then why would you need genetic surgery? Shouldn't it be enough to declare that you feel black?

    Yes, racism is a real problem. And people have made many stupid claims about different races. And there probably have also been some misconceptions how races work.

    But then, the same can be said about genders. And I don't see anyone claiming that there do not exist different genders, just because the situation with genders is more complex than we thought for centuries. (And no, there's not a genetic marker for gender either, as far as we know, except that there is a high — but by no means perfect — correlation with the biological sex; and in addition, biological sex itself is more complicated than we used to think).

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