Hands up all those people who think that it is Australia's responsibility to 'sort out' Islam. Gary Johns thinks that there are such people.

The total removal of Islam from the face of the Earth is the only 'reform' suitable. Until that happens, the politicians responsible for introducing the 'disease' (thank you, Pauline) into the West should should face charges of treason, and all adherents of Islam should be deported, and detained in the Middle East, where they will eventually wipe themselves out.

Who said it was Delbert!? Even so the best way to moderate behavior is through enlightened example, not eternally whinging from the bleachers!

That said, we do need more checks and balances and deployed space age covert surveillance, assisting us on who we allow in?

Why don't we have it and use it to assist immigration and custom authorities? Is beyond comprehension, save a few ('Christian" and or secular) pollies may get hoisted on this very petard, giving public conferences in public places?

And we couldn't have that now could we? Imagine not being able to "misspeak" with former complete impunity? Least the deployed technology picks it up and sends it viral, via social media?
Alan B.

Ttbn,

'It shouldn't be Australia's job to liberalise Muslims.'

And:

'What Australians must decide is, why is this our struggle?'

So your claim that Gary is suggesting that it is Australia - or Australians' -job to 'sort it out' is a little off the mark.

Of course, it isn't primarily the burden of non-Muslim Australians to 'sort out' Islam, but of course we should be doing everything we can to assist any Muslims move to more liberal, or progressive, values, equality of men and women, and recognition of the necessary separation of religion and the State, for starters.

Paradoxically, some may think, but fortunately, change may come gradually since most Muslim people live and work and associate with many other Australians in their daily lives, without much antagonism, except perhaps from other Muslims from different sects - and probably, here in Australia here those differences are less salient, not much of that either. Muslim women see that they rarely come to any harm, or even get dirty looks, from other Australians, despite the regular beat-ups and outright lies in the pseudo-Left press and social media.

Australian Muslims are here to stay. The fascist fantasy that "The total removal of Islam from the face of the Earth is the only 'reform' suitable" would simply match one fascism, extermination of 1.5 billion people, with another, Islamist extremism, and leaves most Muslims with nowhere to go. Good one, Ttbn.

So this is going to be a long, and hopefully peaceful, process. Of course, it's fundamentally an internal struggle, but into the future, Australians Muslims will, every day, encounter, usually fortuitously, examples of Australian values, however you define them: people behaving in ways which don't seem to do anybody any harm yet somehow conflict with what are supposed to be Muslim beliefs.

Joe

From the early 50s I worked as a supervisor in an Open Hearth Furnace Steel Making department. Nearly all the newer employees were New Australians and they were willing to work hard so that they could house and educate their offspring. By the second generation those people were as integrated as the Ten Pound Poms.

Most of those heavy work jobs have disappeared.

Present Muslim immigrants do not appear to be aiming to integrate or to encourage the next generation to be educated to the limit of each individual's capability.

The children of all non naturalized immigrants should be required to attend state schools. Madrassa schools should not be permitted in Australia

While Muslims are only about 2.2% of the population the ABC pays too much attention to them. On proportional grounds only two in 100 panel members on QandA should be Muslim.

Hi Foyle

Good point about the differences between 1950s-1960s immigrants and those of today.

Back then, immigrants from Greece and Italy and eastern Europe could just as easily have moved into labouring jobs in manufacturing back home but of course on much lower wages - the leap to Australia wasn't so great, mainly just language issues.

But the immigrants of today not only come from 'cultures' which are less amenable even to large-scale manufacturing, but also are trying to enter into an economy and society which has evolved far down the track from the old days of factory labour.

The skills needed to start out now are far more developed than those of fifty or sixty years ago. I recall back then, that I could pick up the skills as, say, a storeman, or a dough presser, or a fellmongery-hand, in minutes. But, in fact, as I recall, even those sorts of jobs were becoming hard t find by the early seventies.

Even basic skills needed today may take years to learn. And if people come from societies without much history even of large-scale manufacturing, or from war zones, and with no English, or from 'cultures' which devalue both education and work, of course they are going to be much further behind the play than those of the 1950s.

So of course, there should be government assistance programs to improve people's language skills in the first instance, as the basis for desperately-needed further education in relevant work-oriented skills.

We're talking about intelligent people, whom we have invited or permitted to come to Australia. Having done that, we owe them the chance to become useful Australian citizens as soon as possible.

Cheers,

Joe

"Madrassa schools should not be permitted in Australia"

Lefties are against private schooling but would make an exception to respect Islamic religious culture. They'd hyperventilate in their own hypocrisy at such a suggestion.

Going to the premise of the thread, the major parties will not block muslims immigrating, so education into our values seems something we're stuck with, unless we can do it prior to their acceptance. However, what people do is a truer indication of their values, not what they say, so we have to see how they go after arrival. To that end, proposed citizenship qualification criteria seem good to me.

On the values question, "live and let live" in a secular, democratic society is our credo, under laws made by men, not gods.