Background of the Cronulla Beach Violence

It seems to me that much of the coverage of the recent violence on Australia's Cronulla Beach is somewhat misleading. The implication is that attacks are motivated solely by racism.

Racism is a major factor, but there are other causes: primarily religious and cultural differences. While this violence is to be condemned, and the perpetrators punished, it is useful to take a deeper look at the background of the problem.

Over time, there has been a series of gang rapes of non-Moslem women by Moslem immigrants (this being but one such story).

In addition, on Sydney beaches, there have been several incidents of harassment and assaults on non-Moslems by gangs of "Middle Eastern youths". Recently, they have threatened violence to woman wearing bikinis, assaulted beachgoers and attacked lifeguards.

Many Australians have the perception that the courts, in the interests of promoting "multiculturalism", have been overly lenient with the perpetrators: the perception of many Australians is that many Muslim immigrants demanded, and got, special treatment, and that Australians could not count on politically correct authorities to adequately protect them from Moslem violence.

This recent large outburst of violence on Cronulla Beach began when "lower class" individuals waited for "middle eastern youths" to arrive at the beach. (They were surprisingly well organized, as they coordinated their attacks using cellphones.)

A "cycle of violence" has begun, as some of these "middle eastern youths" later smashed windows and committed other acts of vandalism in white neighbourhoods.

There's some good ongoing coverage on several weblogs, especially here, here, here and here.

(Note: This post as well as most of my posts here are cross-posted on A Deeper Look).