Controversy hits interfaith network

The Australian interfaith community is reeling from Muslim comments at a recent interfaith gathering held in Sydney, NSW.

The gathering was hosted by the Inter-Denominational Interfaith Organisational Taskforce (IDIOT), a prominent organisation devoted to, “building spiritual bridges of eccumenical understanding between different faith traditions as a means of disempowering the demonisation of The Other.” Members of the Muslim, Jewish and Christian community were in attendance, as were representatives from federal and state governments.

“After recognising the traditional owners of the land, each religion was invited to give a short talk, emphasising the importance of dialogue and explaining the many similarities between the different religious traditions,” a spokesperson for IDIOT told Satirical Muslim. “We would then, as per usual, discuss the talks over fair trade decaffeinated coffee and vegan biscuits.”

“Everything was going swimmingly but then, out of the blue, one of our Christian friends asked one of the Muslim friends if he liked the inter-racial harmony lamingtons — equal part coconut and equal part chocolate — that she had brought to the meeting.”

“Well, she put me on the spot. I couldn’t lie, ” the Muslim representative told us. “I said that I appreciated the effort that she had gone to in making them but that I wasn’t really a big fan of lamingtons. You could have heard a pin drop.”

“I was just horrified,” said the Christian lady who asked not to be named. “Here we were at an interfaith gathering where we were meant to be all about asserting our similarity and someone was promoting difference. When he said he didn’t like the lamingtons, it was like John Howard had just walked into the room. There was an aura of intolerance. The atmosphere sank quicker than Siev X.”

The convenor tried to intervene. “I reminded them that we are all children of Abraham and that all our differences were checked at the door when we passed through the aboriginal smoking ceremony,” she said. “I asked everyone to give each other a group hug. But it was too late. The Muslim man had brought Otherness into the room and as we know from the last two federal elections once you invite Otherness to the table, it’s very hard to tell him to leave.”

Even recounting this story to Satirical Muslim, the member fights back tears. “It was even worse when he tried to explain why he didn’t like my inter-racial lammingtons. He said he didn’t like coconut of all things. I felt like Reginald Denny being dragged out of my truck of tolerance and bashed on the street.”

After a few minutes of stunned silence, one of the Christians said they didn’t like hommous much either. The whole meeting quickly descended into what one member called, “a narrative of needless nitpicking” about the other’s food.

Calm was only restored when lunch concluded and the group settled in for a performance by the visiting Morris Dancers for Intercultural Understanding. However, IDIOT has vowed to review its membership policies in light of this recent controversy.

“When we say we celebrate diversity,” the IDIOT spokesperson said. “It doesn’t mean we need to tolerate difference and disagreement.”