Senator Payman Seeking Allah’s Guidance on Policy Issues Has Put Religion Centre of Mind
Muslim Senator Fatima Payman has put religion back on the front page after revealing she asked Allah for guidance on what to do in the Senate.
The 29-year-old West Australian broke ranks with her Labor colleagues this week to vote with the Greens in favour of Palestinian statehood.
She was disciplined by the party (for breaking ranks, not for paying to Allah) and has since quit Labor to move to the crossbench.
But the very idea that Payman sought wisdom from Allah before voting on policy issues has surprised many Australians who rarely give a second thought to religion.
The fact is that no one arrives at any issue values-free. And we all have a religion – whether we believe in God or not.
Your religion, or if you prefer your worldview, is in essence your answer to these five big questions:
- Where did we come from? That’s a question of origin.
- Who am I? That’s a question of identity.
- What is the purpose of life? That’s a question of meaning.
- How do I determine right from wrong? That’s a question of morality.
- What happens when we die? That’s a question of destiny.
Your answer to those questions becomes the worldview, or lens, that informs all of your decisions.
A Christian, for instance, believes people are created in God’s image. With that worldview, it is impossible to agree that abortion is okay.
An atheist, on the other hand, insists that human life is entirely accidental and no more imbued with the divine than a banana. Someone with that worldview might find abortion distasteful, but has no grounds to argue against it.
In both instances, religion informs the policy position.
So it’s redundant to ask whether politicians ought to seek guidance from religion. Their religion is guiding them – whether they realise it or not.
The better question is: Which religion would we prefer our politicians take their cues from?
Senator Payman is a devout Muslim and so of course she would be taking her cues from Mohammad. Just as a Christian politician would seek wisdom from Jesus.
So the question is whether you’d prefer your nation’s leaders getting their marching orders from Jesus or from Mohammad.
On that question you don’t need a masters in comparative religion to work it out. Just take a quick look at the globe.
Western nations – like the UK, the USA and Australia – are overwhelmingly built on a Judeo-Christian worldview.
Middle Easter nations – like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia – have been built on an Islamic worldview.
Which would you prefer?
As Jesus said, by their fruits you shall know them.
And let’s not forget our atheist friends who, consciously or not, take their cues from Nietzsche. Think Communist China or the former Soviet Union.
So you can build a nation on the law of love (Christianity), Sharia Law (Islam), or the law of the jungle (Atheism).
Which would you be happiest with?
Australia’s founders never imagined a country in which politicians were so arrogant that they made decisions without seeking wisdom from above.
The preamble to the Constitution – written in 1901 – declares that Australia would be a nation “humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God”.
Notice it doesn’t say “humbly rely on the blessing of Almighty Allah”. If it did, we’d be more like Somalia than Australia. Fun times!
Our forefathers envisaged political leaders who would be humble enough to acknowledge a power higher than themselves and to ask for wisdom. And they assumed the higher power would be the Christian God since, in 1901, there was virtually zero disagreement.
A lot of people complain that our country is not what it used to be, that it has changed, and not for the better.
I don’t disagree.
A lot of people are also waking up to the fact that the chance in our nation is not just economic and not just social. Even non-church going people are starting to be open to the idea that we may in fact have a spiritual problem.
Again, I don’t disagree.
Our politicians stopped seeking wisdom from almighty God and instead – like a sailor who stopped believing in the stars and so tied a lamp to the mast of his boat and navigated by that – have done what is right in their own eyes.
The results have been disastrous.
There is only one way for Australia to regain its prosperity and its freedom. We need Prime Ministers, business leaders, educators and parents to once more humbly rely on the blessings of Almighty God. And I don’t mean Allah.
___
Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report.
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Image via ABC News/YouTube.
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Senator Payman ‘s “seeking guidance from Allah ” has now spooked even Prime Minister Albanese as he now suspects her defection was pre-meditated long ago with the aim of a bloc of Moslem MPs voting together with the long-term view to making Australia a Moslem Theocracy ruled by the Koran which preaches World Domination by Islam in which any non-Believers will suffer various disadvantages , eg be taxed at a higher rate than Moslems which has been their policy throughout history in Eastern Europe , etc.
The badge she wears shows that her allegiance is not to Australia , but, to the Palestinian and Aboriginal causes ! As she has Dual Nationality (Afghani and Australian ) she is automatically disqualified under our Constitution from being an Australian MP and that she should be shown the door immediately is not just my opinion .
James, this is a watershed day for the Australian people. I am thrilled you brought it home so clearly, thank you.
Thanks James. Simply said
Hi James thank you for this succinct and well-written article. You are correct everyone is governed by a worldview. It would be good if all had a Christian worldview!
Great article, especially the defining worldview so clearly.
Many thanks James.
Thank you James for raising the issues of our Parliamentary dilemma: ‘what freedom of religion do we now have in our Australian Govt?’ and ‘What set of values do we want to have or to keep?’ in Australia.
The bell have been tolling for some time to warn us of what was happening beneath the surface in Politics. The result of moving away from the Constitution where God and Judeo Christian values were acknowledged has lethal consequences. The move instead to ‘the Left’ (Socialist Marxism), the pandering to the ‘Greens’ (a radical anti-God environmental group who originally stood for ecology and social justice) and the gradual allegiance forged with Islamic MP’s has bitter and dangerous consequences.
Gradually the true agenda of each has emerged -many are anti God, in a Christian sense. We have sown seeds of disaster and unless we win back some of the original Christians values we will continue to have abortion, gender issues, union issues and a gradual increase of Marxist values as the Islamic ‘take over’ agenda emerges in various forms.
The Islamic agenda has always been to introduce Sharia law to the West where Islam must be the dominant religion and ideology, as you have shown in your article. This would include submission of women to Islamic ways and up to four wives per marriage, lack of education for women and girls, but on the good side it would include no alcohol, drugs, gambling or prostitution, or gender issues, but more pointedly, there there would be no recognition of any other ‘religion’.
Sharia Law punishments for some of the specific crimes include: ” death for apostasy, amputation of the hand for theft and of the hand and foot for highway robbery, death by stoning for extramarital sexual relations (zinā) when the offender is married and 100 lashes when the offender is unmarried, and 80 lashes for an adulterer.”
The stand of Senator Payman has made the bell toll louder. We are the cross roads and while all that goes on we have had the offices of MP and the Prime minister blocked off for weeks, then recently Parliament house used as a public place to hang radical slogan of Islam, and the Prime Minister found out there was a threat on his life by extremists over 10 days ago.
None of this acceptable or good for Australia but highly dangerous. We have turned a blind eye so often but can no longer afford to do so as the matter is urgent.
May God help us repent and fight for the Godly values He allowed Australia to be built on.
Please note that Allah is the word for God in Arabic. It is not a separate Muslim God. Ask any Middle Eastern Christian who attends church or speaks Arabic whether they are Coptic Egyptian, Syrian Orthodox, Maronite Lebanese, Chaldean Iraqi, or Melkite Palestinian. Allah was been the name of God well before Islam. Allah partly derived from the Hebrew Elohim and the Aramaic Eli which Jesus cites from Psalm 22 , while on the cross . We Christians pray the name of Allah . Please don’t allow tabloid media stereotypes distort the facts about millions of Middle Eastern Christians around the world.
But look at the character of the Judeo-Christian’s God – includes holy, righteous, compassionate, forgiving, healing, restoring, comforting, promise keeping, relational … etc. This is not allah’s attributes!
That is true. Muhammad’s god is against Christians, and told him they must kill all the infidels
Thankyou for the article. I too appreciated the succinct summary of worldview!
So very well put. I watched your report on Credlin tonight, thinking I would love to have a transcript of this, and here it was. Brilliant!
Thank you James. You may cop some backlash, but your supporters are many, and this worldview greatly held.
Bless you.
I think it’s important to point out that the God of the Bible, and the God of the Torah and Tanak is a very different God to the ‘Allah’ of the Koran. We need to know this as Australia has been built on the Judeo Christian values of the Old and New Testament, not on the Koran. This is why there has been a constitution written which refers to the God of the Bible but not to the Koran or Allah.
The God of the Bible is our Creator and our Heavenly Father who sent His only Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins on the cross, and conquered death and Satan. Jesus Christ was resurrected 3 days by God The Father, after and taken back to heaven, where He stands at the right hand of throne of God to make intercession for us. The Koran in contrast says God has no son and does not recognise that Jesus Christ is Gods only Son who died on the cross to enable us to be forgiven our sin and to be born again by Gods holy spirit.
The Constitution of Australia is based both on God’s word in the Old Testament (O.T.) and the New Testament. Whilst Genesis and other O.T. books makes it clear that God chose Abraham, and made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants. Tv saying he would be their God for all generations and give them land (beyond Cannan.) Abraham then left his former home and moved by faith to inherit the land of Israel.) But Romans and Galations explain that the Gentiles (non Jews) who came to believe would be grafted into the vine, Jesus Christ and become part of the Judeo-Christin family (there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ.) At no stage did God say Allah would save the people from their son, but only Jesus Christ, Gods sinless son could take our sin upon Himself and overcome death (the wages of sin is death).
The Covenant God gave Moses on Mt Sinai was a covenant for His holy people, the Jews whom He chose as He loved them but later God made a new covenant (Jeremiah) saying he would soften the hearts of His people as many had not recognized their Saviour when he came the first time.
All of this means that a Senator who is asking Allah for direction – will be consulting another god- a different one from the Christ of the Old and New Testament. It also means that she will be seeking to gain approval from a different source of wisdom.
Overall it means that Australians until recent years generally had some form of Christian heritage and we were aligned as a nation with the concepts of justice, righteousness, and laws of the Bible. As time has gone on however, there have been many in this generation who have lost sight of the original constitution the nation was built on and so the definition of ‘constitution’, God of the Bible and other religions or value systems terms can be easily confused unless we examine our foundational beliefs.