One Nation is not the only party making such proposals; three other smaller parties, for example, have included a ban on halal certification in their platforms. But what has been supported only by One Nation, and deserves respectful attention, is Hanson’s proposal that a Royal Commission be appointed to study Islam. Royal commissions are ad hoc formal inquiries into matters of great significance, usually staffed by retired judges; Hanson wants one set up to determine whether Islam is a “religion or an ideology” or, in her forthright formulation, “Let’s determine if it is a religion or a political ideology trying to undermine our culture.”

By this one assumes Hanson means to have asked, and answered, a series of questions that the political and media elites have not addressed. These would likely include: Is Islam akin to other faiths, in what it asks or demands of its adherents? In Islam is the “church” separate from or part of the “state”? What claim to worldly power does Islam make? Is the role of Islam limited in its claims on individual believers, or does it attempt to supply them with a Complete Regulation of Life? What does it mean when Believers are to think of themselves as members of a collective Umma (the Community of Believers), all over the world, who have not merely the right but the duty to spread the faith through every possible means, including but not limited to force?

Does Islam, as some have claimed, view the world as divided between Believers and Non-Believers, that is, between Dar al-Islam, the territory where Islam dominates and Muslims rule, and Dar al-Harb, where Islam does not yet dominate and Infidels, for now, still rule? Does Islam encourage free and skeptical inquiry or severely limit such inquiry by punishing any questioning of the faith? Does Islam permit Believers to leave the faith, or does it, rather, prescribe death as the proper punishment for apostasy? Does Islam allow for equal treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule? What, according to Islam, are the rights of women?