No, former Australian PM Julia Gillard never asked Muslims to leave the country - Alt News
Jignesh Patel
18th June 2019 / 7:03 pm
A message viral on social media attributes a purported speech to former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard encouraging Muslims to leave the country. “Muslims, who are demanding Sharia law have been asked to leave Australia by Wednesday because Australia sees fanatic Muslims as terrorists. Each and every mosque will be searched and Muslims will cooperate with us in this process.”, reads a part of the supposed speech attributed to Gillard, who was the 27th PM of Australia from 2010 to 2013. Following is the complete verbatim of the message viral on social media:
“Australian PM Julia Gillard should be made Queen of the world. What she has said requires a lot of courage and confidence. All the countries in the world should have leaders like her. She says “Muslims, who are demanding Sharia law have been asked to leave Australia by wednesday because Australia sees fanatic muslims as terrorists. Each and every mosque will be searched and muslims will cooperate with us in this process. All the muslims who have migrated from other countries to Australia will have to adept and change themselves as per our country and not expect us to change as per them. If they are unable to do so, they are most welcome to leave Australia. A lot of Australian are worried that we may be insulting a particular religion….but I assure the people of Australia that whatever is being done is for the betterment of Australia and its people. We speak English here and not Arabic or urdu or any othe islamic language so if you want to stay in our country you better learn to speak English. In Australia we believe in Jesus who is our God and we believe in God. Just because we believe in and follow Christianity and no other religion, does not make us Communal which is why you will find God’s Pictures and religious books everywhere. If you have any objection to this, you are free to leave Australia and go anywhere else in the world. Australia is our land, our country and this is our culture. We do not follow your religion but we respect your sentiments which is why if you want to read koran and offer namaz, please do not create noise pollution by using speakers and reading out loudly. Please DO NOT Read Koran or offer prayers in our schools, offices or public places. You can do so in the quiet of your home or in a mosque which will not inconvenience us. If you have any issues with our national flag or national anthem or our religion or our lifestyle, kindly leave Australia at this very moment and never ever return back”. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard 👏👏👍 please forward this message at least once. I JUST DID TO YOU.”
Alt News was alerted about the message on WhatsApp, a screenshot of which can be seen below. It is viral on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook at least since December 2014.
Earlier, the message also went viral in Hindi on YouTube and Facebook.
Alt News found that the speech ascribed to Gillard was cooked-up with bits and pieces lifted from various places.
Most of it, it was from an article by Larry Bouldermilk published by a local newspaper in Georgia. “Everything in the example from the paragraph beginning with the word ‘Quote:’ onwards is an Australianized version of [the] text lifted from an opinion piece written in 2001 by a U.S. Air Force veteran shortly after the 9/11 attacks on America and had nothing whatsoever to do with Australia or Julia Gillard.”, reported the American fact-checking website Snopes.
Furthermore, the part of the message which said, “Muslims, who are demanding Sharia law have been asked to leave Australia”, reads similar to a political debate during the reign of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard in the backdrop of the July 2005 London Tube bombings. The earliest reference to the statement was ascribed to Peter Costello, the then Treasurer of Australia, in a 2006 article published by Maltese website The Independent.
A part of the viral message says, “Each and every mosque will be searched and Muslims will cooperate with us in this process.” Former Prime Minister John Howard had reportedly said something similar during his term in 2005-06. He supported spying the country’s mosques, stating that the government has a “right to know whether there is, within any section of the Islamic community, a preaching of the virtues of terrorism…”
There are no news reports which ascribe any portions of the viral message to former Australian PM Julia Gillard. It is impossible for a statement such as this to go unreported, thus further corroborating that she never said anything of the sort.
Jignesh is a writer and researcher at Alt News. He has a knack for visual investigation with a major interest in fact-checking videos and images. He has completed his Masters in Journalism from Gujarat University.
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