Middle Australia engulfed in tide of racial hysteria

A black BMW blaring out gangsta rap music screeched to a halt in the main street of Lakemba, the heartland of Sydney's Lebanese Muslim community, and discharged two slickly dressed young men, Mohammed and Moustafa.

The pair, mirror images of each other in sunglasses, leather jackets and heavy gold chains, leant against the bonnet and surveyed the scene as the muezzin called the faithful to prayer at the nearby mosque. "Just watch, the police will be along in a minute," said Mohammed. "Arab boys can't hang round here no more without being harassed."

These, according to the tabloid press, are the mean streets of Sydney, where white women dare not step outside for fear of being gang-raped by marauding Lebanese youths.

The facts tell a different story, but there has been scant regard for the facts of late as public hysteria over the activities of "ethnic gangs" reaches fever pitch and threatens to demolish Australia's reputation as one of the world's most tolerant multicultural societies.

The hysteria has been fuelled by the New South Wales premier, Bob Carr, an otherwise decent Labour politician, and Peter Ryan, the English-born NSW Police Commissioner, another man who should know better than to fan the flames of prejudice.

Lakemba and neighbouring districts certainly have their problems, which include low income, high unemployment and social alienation. There is no question that gangs are active, as in many deprived urban areas.

Gangs are believed to run the local heroin trade and are held responsible for a series of stabbings and drive-by shootings in recent years.

At the Sahara Grill, just off Lakemba's main street, Jaafar Benlamih leant over the counter and parted his hair to show me a swelling bruise on his forehead – the result, he said, of his refusal to pay protection money to a local gang. "They wanted A$1,000 ($NZ 1211) a month," he said, wearily. "They told me to pay up or I'd be in trouble."

Such incidents are grist to the mill of Middle Australia, which has always been ambivalent at best towards the successive waves of postwar immigrants. Particular hostility has been directed at Middle Eastern immigrants, mainly Lebanese who fled the civil war in the 1970s.

Until a month ago, the debate was conducted in relatively civilised terms. Then The Sun-Herald ran a sensational report claiming that "Middle Eastern" gangs motivated by ethnic hatred were systematically abducting and raping young Caucasian women in Bankstown, near Lakemba.

At least 70 incidents had been reported in the past two years, it said. During the ensuing outcry, both Mr Carr and Mr Ryan went out of their way to highlight the ethnic origin of the alleged offenders.

Another Australian newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, went further, insinuating that misogyny inherent in the Muslim faith predisposed young men to such attacks.

The premier and the police commissioner insisted they were not slandering the entire Australian-Lebanese community, but recent reprisals – including an alleged "revenge" rape of an 18-year-old Muslim girl by a group of white youths – suggest their words had precisely that effect.

Lakemba is now in a state of siege.

Sheikh Khalil Chami, an affable, white-bearded man who runs the Islamic Welfare Centre, said: "We have some good people and some bad, like any community. There are 1.5 billion Muslims around the world. Are they all criminals?"

At the Lebanese Muslim Association, Keysar Trad listed the reprisals: threatening telephone calls, Muslim women spat at in the street, an attempted abduction, a Muslim schoolboy left with facial fractures after being assaulted during a game of football.

"The community is being demonised," said Mr Trad, assistant to the imam of the mosque, Sheikh Taj El-Din Al Hilaly. "It's like the Spanish Inquisition."

- INDEPENDENT