Randa Abdel-Fattah. Police speak to a group of men in Kings Cross. Photo: Steve Lunam A woman alleges she was raped in August 2002 in the city of Sydney. The alleged perpetrators spoke Arabic. Apparently ‘for years’ men were raping prostitutes in Kings Cross earning them the name: MERCs. Middle Eastern raping c----. There were a series of gang-rapes in Sydney in the early 2000s in South-West Sydney. Some of the perpetrators were Australians of Middle Eastern descent. Sexual assault is one of the least reported crimes. This woman's sexual assault took place within the time range of these gang rapes. It was not reported. It was based on this constellation of ‘facts’ and unsubstantiated claims that Paul Sheehan wrote a column connecting Louise’s claim of sexual assault to a rape ‘epidemic’ in Sydney in the early 2000s. The thread that Sheehan uses to stitch together his story is a racist, matter-of-fact, common doxa that constructs a taken-for-granted figure of the Muslim/Middle Eastern/brown man as rapist. This figure reifies a racialised discourse that stigmatises and maligns Muslim men wholesale via the rhetoric of criminalisation. And it works. Because these have become the acceptable terms of how the media presents any story connected (even wrongly) to Muslims. And they are acceptable to a readership that largely takes their truth value for granted. The production of this image of the Muslim man to be feared depends on what Goldsmiths' academic Sara Ahmed calls ‘past histories of association’. The label rapist becomes a metonym that slides between words, remakes connections and stirs a history of Islamophobic narratives. According to Sheehan's article (both the original and ‘corrected’ versions), as well as his poor excuse of a clarification, sexual assault is foreclosed as a Muslim/Middle Eastern crime. It fits into a context where the image of the deviant, criminal, hyper-sexualised male Arab/Muslim has been firmly embedded by the media, commentators and certain politicians in the national psyche. And this is the devastating and sobering reality Australian Muslims must contend with. The story had purchase, and was published and accepted as credible, because it speaks to an enduring and prevalent racialised stereotype of Muslim men. For example, Sheehan offers a general proposition: "Sexual assault is one of the least- reported crimes, and for years the NSW Police contributed to this phenomenon by pretending it did not exist". Just in case readers were to make the mistake of assuming that this is a problem without an ‘ethnicity’, Sheehan then adds: "This was a root cause of the Cronulla riots." Cronulla works like Velcro to stick ‘sexual assault’ to Muslim/Arab male. In this sticking process, Sheehan also manages to hail the narrative that the Cronulla riots were a justified civilising mission. Five thousand mostly Anglo-background young men who descended on Cronulla beach and attacked anyone ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ were, Thursday Mar 24, 2016 11865 online now Do you know more about a story? Real Estate Cars Jobs Dating Newsletters February 25, 2016 Read later Randa Abdel-Fattah s Email article Print Reprints & permissions The pervasive and systemic extent of Islamophobia Fairfax Media Network The pervasive and systemic extent of Islamophobia http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-pervasive-and-systemic... 1 of 2 24/03/2016 6:14 pm