Amanda, you must be aware that FGM/FGC is unlawful throughout Australia. Hence to suggest that criticism of the practice or of instances of it would itself be unlawful under the Racial Discrimination Act and would lead to the critic's being 'dragged through the Australian Human Rights Commission and probably the Courts' as well as subject to the 'slur of being an accused bigot', is a little far-fetched.

To suggest that anti-discrimination provisions would amount to the prohibition of blasphemy is also far-fetched. I am not sure if you are aware of the breadth of provisions against blasphemy that continue to operate in Australia (eg 'Blasphemy in Australia: The rags and remnants of persecution?', in Templeman J (ed.), Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression, Cambridge UP, 2017), and these provisions are rarely even acknowledged as existing, let alone subject to criticism. Helen Pringle

Blasphemy is wrong, mocking and hurting others is definitely wrong, but using the mechanism of state-violence against your fellow beings is even more wrong!

By asking for the state's assistance, the Grand Mufti was cutting off the branch that he sits on.

While I mostly agree with the article, I distance myself from its concluding remark:

«Without freedom of speech, democracy dies. No amount of “offence” is worth trading it away.»

Firstly, democracy in Australia can never die because it is already long dead.
Secondly, even if it were to die, I wouldn't shed a tear over it.
Thirdly, not-offending others is far more important than having a democracy... but that is exactly why the state should never offend people who speak their minds freely, including even those who speak foolishly.

Using the violence of legal-prosecution, is to counter the lesser verbal-abuse with the greater physical-abuse.

Fortunately, the Grand Mufti (is that title even recognised in Australia or any other non-Muslim country?) doesn't get a say; he doesn't speak English, is unlikely to be an Australian citizen, so can't vote. The Mufti does not believe in free-speech or democracy.

Robert Duffield is a Christian whose religion is the basis for both freedom of speech and democracy. Unlike the Mufti, who has taken advantage of the right to say what he thinks, Duffield would not last ten minutes in the sort of society Islam envisages for the West.

How dare an alien with a totally alien 'religion' and set of values presume to tell us what we should or should not be able to say!

Islam like securlarism are both death cults. That is why you have feminist and others frequently blaspheming Christ while excusing and turning blind eyes to barbarism. The slaughter of the unborn matches jihadism perfectly.

If the Grand Mufti wants to change our laws? Let him stand for popular election and on his, restriction of hard won freedom, platform!

Simply put, any philosophy founded on truth has nothing to fear from examination or the alleged ridicule of the abysmally ignorant!

For freedom of speech to remain free, it has to include the right to offend! Always providing it doesn't descend to quite deliberate intentional insult and abuse!

I mean, in some Muslim cultures, simply remarking, your wife is quite a looker can result in volcanic outrage and attempted decapitation!

As always entirely unreasonable folk, welded to demonstrably false doctrine, a cult! Will use any device to prevent any and all examination of their belief system, which could have included a flat earth in the centre of the universe, as official doctrine as little as half a century ago?

And it's never ever questioned nor examined, garbage like that, that has anchored a medieval culture, in a stone age, we've not seen in the west for around a thousand years!

And should this mere mortal pretend to know the mind of God and speak on his behalf as an official spokesman? He needs to leave and try to imprison the simpleminded minds somewhere else! Go and good riddance!

We don't need this control freak telling us when and what to think? Or park your brain in the foyer, when you go to wash your feet!
Alan B.

The trouble with Islam is that, were it not for the threat of violence, it is so easily ridiculed. All of the laws from Allah, as related to Mohammad, seemed curiously designed to favour Mohammad himself, and Allah was thus forced to include laws against blasphemy. All perfectly understandable, of course!

Yes, all religions have their origins in superstition, and really should all be held up to ridicule in any modern society. Richard Dawkins believes, as I do, that to force religious beliefs on young children should be viewed as a form of child abuse; that they should be allowed to form their own opinions when more mature. Good luck with that idea in any Islamic community!

Outlaw blasphemy? God no! I would rather it were made compulsory.