SML's main street is a place where one may "not hear a single phrase in English", where "the ethnic mix seems similar to what you'd find in any Arabic city".

Dr Blair concludes that "Haldon Street is a monoculture".

I'm not sure what an Arabic city is. I understand Arabic to be a word used to describe a language, not a location. I'm also not aware of many cities in the Arab world whose main drags are named "Haldon". But then, who am I to argue with so distinguished an expert?

Blair also provides a review of 1400 years of Islamic legal, philosophical, mystical, medical, scientific and educational literature in the form of a few extreme Saudi texts. One cannot deny that such literature exists, just as one cannot deny that similar genocidal and racist sentiments are regularly hosted on the moderated blogs of Drs Blair, Bolt and other News Corp scholars.

Pointing one finger at others exposes even the most prominent scholars to having three of one's own fingers pointed right back.

I wonder what would happen if Blair visited a suburb of Canberra. What would he say about the number of Asian eateries in Dickson? Would he complain about how the frequency of Ali Baba kebab shops made Canberra resemble Haldon Street? Would the back of Belconnen be too spicy for his liking? Would he be horrified by the excess of languages other than English being spoken in the embassy precinct of Yarralumla?

Melbourne may boast about being the most liveable city on the planet, but Canberra is certainly no monocultural slouch. Mr Abbott may insist that people migrating to Australia must join something resembling Tim Blair's vision of Lakemba during the 1920s before "certain demographic changes in the area" took hold.

Canberra is a city of migrants, many arriving from interstate to take up positions in the Commonwealth public service. If you've spent all your life in, say, Mackay or Launceston, Canberra's cosmopolitanism may make you feel like you're in another country. Some tabloid columnists might feel they are on another planet.

Canberra is so comfortable with its diversity. It is a town of transience. Canberra was the first Australian place my parents lived in during the early 1960s, before I was born. Mum tells the story of going shopping for the first time at O'Connor while Dad was at ANU doing his PhD. She barely spoke English (she did her Masters degree in Urdu literature).

She was trying to communicate with the checkout girl at the supermarket when a fair-skinned lady came up to her and exclaimed "assalamu alaykum" (Arabic for "peace be with you", the traditional Muslim greeting). The lady turned out to be a Hindi-speaking Jew! They became close friends.

Today, there are many Hindi speakers in Canberra. There are also people speaking Arabic, Turkish, Bengali, Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin and just about every other language known to man and woman. You'll see no shortage of hats, caps, scarves and turbans on heads. And no one seems to care.

People aren't made to feel like migrants in Canberra because most people are migrants. And that includes the politicians, whether they accept it or not. I'd love to see an MP or senator find his or her way around from Fyshwick to Melba without a driver.

People adapt and get along without needing the Chief Minister hectoring them to join "Team ACT" and without having to put up with an MLA calling Mandarin speakers "mongrels" or "bastards". The local papers don't feature articles that demand that an atrocity committed overseas must lead to Canberrans of a similar background vocally condemning the atrocity.

And those who have made Canberra their permanent home cannot stop bragging about the place. Some months ago, I caught up with a seasoned Canberran in, of all places, Taipei. When she wasn't conversing with the waitress in fluent Mandarin, she was reminiscing about the restaurants, the nightlife (!) and even the weather (!!).

A Sydneyphile like me may find the idea of nightlife in Canberra a bit hard to imagine (and its winter even harder to tolerate). But even on the coldest day, it's hard to imagine a Cronulla-style race riot on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin.

Perhaps politicians and pundits who enjoy engaging in cultural warrior antics should spend a month in Canberra and learn why the locals really don't care if the food in the supermarket is halal or why a certain diplomat's wife/husband is wearing a sari or sarong.

And perhaps the tabloid for which Dr Blair writes, which is trying desperately to increase its readership in the ACT beyond McDonald's outlets, might resist the temptation to send one of its columnists to racially profile the nation's capital.

Irfan Yusuf is an award-winning author and a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Citizenship & Globalisation at Deakin University.