This woman is no longer a joke. She's dangerous.

By APARNA BALAKUMAR

Sometimes you’ve just got to backtrack, admit you messed up, and apologise.

But that’s not what happened today after the Palmer United Party Senator Jacqui Lambie stood by her decision to post an image of a heroic woman in a burqa out of context to fulfil her own political aims.

In case you missed it, on Thursday night, in the midst of the fear and angst surrounding alleged terrorism threats in Sydney and Brisbane, Lambie decided to share the following image on her Facebook page:

The post had originally been shared by a far-right British anti-immigration organisation.

Lambie clearly thought it was a terrific image. A stark portrayal of the threat she believes all women in burqas pose to Australia. Especially poignant on a day Australians feared for their safety.

But she made one severe error in judgement. She didn’t reveal the origins or context behind the image — a fact journalists quickly pointed out.

You see, the woman in the photograph above is named Malalai Kakar. She is not holding a gun to deny the West their freedoms. She is holding a gun because she is on her way to release a kidnapped teenager. She is wearing a burqa to hide her Afghan police uniform, so she does not get caught.

But you wouldn’t know that looking at the image Lambie shared.

You also wouldn’t know Kakar was a mother-of-six, or the first female to ever graduate from the Afghani regional police academy. A Lieutenant Colonel who led Kandhar’s department of crimes against women. Someone who rose to fame for her services to the country, after killing three would-be assassins in a shoot-out.

A woman who for years defied death threats from the Taliban, only to be shot and killed by them in 2008.

Now. One would think Lambie, upon realising the backlash her out-of-context image had caused, would have backtracked.

She could have deleted the photograph on her Facebook page out of respect, and apologised to Kakar’s children, who are seeing their mother’s image used to support anti-Islamic propaganda. She could have apologised to the photographer Lana Slezic for misrepresenting her initial aim in taking the photograph– to depict the hardships of a female officer working ‘undercover’.

But instead, Lambie did the unthinkable.

She allowed the image to attract hundreds of comments claiming Muslims are “lunatics” or “barbarians”. She attacked the journalists who asked her to remove the out-of-context image, calling their actions a “disgusting, unprofessional beat-up”.

And then she proceeded to speak on behalf of Kakar, a woman she has never met, and who is no longer alive to counteract Lambie’s claims.

In a ‘letter to the editor’  released overnight, Lambie said, “Malalai Kakar would have been the first to agree with my call to ban the burqa. Far from desecrating her memory, my Facebook post honours her and the deadly struggle against brutal thugs and extremists.”

Here is the letter, in full:

But it doesn’t. Because an ‘honorary post’ would have acknowledged that Kakar was killed by the Taliban for standing up against rapists, killers, kidnappers and thieves.

An ‘honorary post’ would not have implied that all women wearing burqas, such as Kakar, are terrorists. Or that she had no say in whether or not to wear a burqa (for the record she did, previously stating in an interview “I am not forced to wear the chaudari [burqa], my husband or the police force does not require it. I want to wear it because it gives me advantages”).

An ‘honorary post’ would not have tried to speak on behalf of a heroic dead woman.

A stronger leader would have taken responsibility for the poor judgement call that was sharing the propaganda image. But instead this morning, on ABC’s Insiders, Lambie tried to pass off her post as a tribute to Kakar’s heroism.

“Absolutely. I already knew that (about Kakar’s background) before I posted that, but the journalist jumped straight on my throat, went straight for my jugular and took it completely out of context,” Lambie said.

“What that woman was trying to do for other women and to be gunned down by the Taliban is extreme, but this is one hell of a heroic woman out there and people should know her story and be very aware of what she was doing every day for the women of her country.”

If that is true, as Lambie insists it is, it is a very peculiar way of showing solidarity with a heroic woman.

It wasn’t Lambie’s sharing of an anti-terror image that told us of Kakar’s story. That was the job of journalists, angry that a woman they admired was having her reputation tarnished.

Rather than owning up to her poor judgement, Lambie has today refused to remove the image. She has instead told the ABC journalists and photographer that they have wasted their time attacking a ‘soft political target’.

As a Senator, Lambie today had the opportunity to make amends. To use her position to draw our community together.

Instead, she chose to justify using a dead woman’s picture to satisfy her own means.

For 10 weeks, Lambie has courted headlines as a “colourful” member of our new, fractured Senate.

But once her ill-informed opinions and posts incite– and enable–the high levels of racial hatred visible on her Facebook page, her position on issues no longer remains a quirky ‘joke’.

It becomes dangerous.

Here is Jacqui Lambie on Insiders, trying to explain sharia law:

And here are some more moments from Jacqui Lambie’s political career:

What do you think about Jacqui Lambie using the image of Kakar?

Follow @onceaparnatime