I live and work in Shepparton, as a minister, and among many muslims, being mainly refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. One of my colleagues, and close friends, was one of those muslims interviewed by A Current Affair.

He told me that the behaviour of the reporters was nothing less than harrassment. They gave him no preparation (they called him, asked where he was, and requested that he showed up at the school in five minutes, and didn’t even tell him the topic of the interview).

Then they repeated one set of short questions repeatedly, each time interrupting him so he could not finish an answer. I assume they did this so they could check if he would change his answers, and so choose which answer they would actually show on television, or call him for debate on not being consistent.

We made a complaint to channel nine and submitted a call to Media Watch for follow-up, but dodn’t get any response.

From what we saw, it was a definite slow news day, where A Current Affair had no purpose but to fuel racist sentiment about refugees and their “imported cultures”.

Great post, mate, so happy you brought it up.

Our call is to love, regardless of what someone might be, or might have done, recognising that it is only by grace that we are saved. Our sins come from the same root cause as anyone else’s – choosing to rebel against God. We’re all in the same boat. But I appreciate you commenting Joe, thanks for your opinions, even if I disagree.

1. You can’t put all Muslims in the ‘persecutor of Christians’ box.

2. I think Geoff’s point was that it’s pretty hard to dialogue with a culture (even for the purposes of evangelism) if the media is fueling the “us and them” mentality and widening the divide for cheap ratings.

For God so loved the world…

Spare a thought for Christians in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan etc. who face persecution from these so called peaceful people.