Dear Rhian
you thought "Islam means peace and conformity to the will of Allah"

On the surface, it does. Now lets look a little deeper.

How did Mohammed the founder, 'manifest' that 'conformity' in his own life, which forms the basis and example for every Muslim on 'how to be' those things.
-He tortured
-He murdered (in cold blood, because people 'teased' him)
-He carried out mass murder.(Banu Qurayza)
-He stole, and enslaved.
-When his wives became jealous of his unfair glowing pride at his MISStress/slave who conceived through him sleeping with her, suddenly there is a convenient revelation to shut them up, and justify him.

All of the above, became a pattern in his life and in the growth of Islam, which quickly becomes an 'Islamic State' of which he is the head and which strikes terror into all other tribes of the Arabian Peninsula

All non Muslims are given the choice of death, fleeing for their lives to the desert, or embracing Islam and serving him or 'dhimmitude' if you were Christian or Jew, where under the Charter of Omar (the first caliph after Mohammed) you were required to wear distinctive dress with special markings (Remember the Jews of Germany ?) You were not even allowed to make your grief for the dead audible to Muslims. (and 10 other rules)

That, is the Islamic founders version of what you described. I refrained from using the many colorful adjectives which 'hate sites' use in conjunction with these factual events.

Contemporary mainstream 'minority' Islam is quite 'tame' yet as you saw from my example in the link. they will still seek to impose their tradition and will on the majority. (did you read it ?)

Your verses about 'All Authority is given to me/ go make disciples' has to be balanced with "As the Father sent me, so I send you" and we look at His self sacrificing life. Muslims will rarely actually deny the events I mentioned, but they will seek to justify them "All things from God are good"

John 14.6 is valid, we all have free will.

How dare Waleed Aly say multiculturalism is working! It's not working for the white underclass who live among the all too often ethnocentric, racist middle-eastern & Asian diaspora's out in Sydney's west. Who am I to say this? I grew up in that white underclass in Cabramatta/Fairifeld in the late '80's & early '90's, being offered heroin by Asians twice a day on my way to & from the train station, a place that has become the drug capital of our entire nation! I remember middle-eastern youth who would go out "Aussie bashing" as they called it, on weekends, targeting whites for no reason other than skin colour. Cabramatta/Fairfield & Bankstown, with it's adjoining areas, are the two major crime capitals of our nation, I can't believe the ungratefulness of these communities we so openly welcomed! Ali writes that it's unfair to attack Muslims as they "allegedly" have in Britain (the word allegedly has been used a lot lately, by Muslim apologists for terrorism), which sounds ridiculous when one finds that Britain's criminal activity is filled with racist bashings on whites, racist gang-rapes (sound familiar?) on whites by gangs of Pakistani's, who grew up in Britain! (uncovering their extreme racism). Ali talks of mosque windows being broken, as if thats a backlash? Whites have been copping it for years Ali, with middle-eastern thugs harrassing any female for sex that walks past the entrance to the local Westfields, or as they lay on Bondi beach, it's disgustingly unacceptable. The left is waking up too Ali, starting to see right through your type who talks of free speech, a concept unheard of in Islam, that you use for your own purposes. Muslims believe that Islamic Law, is based on the word of God, which means that they are against human rights, as Sharia treats non-Muslims little better than those thugs did as they gang raped those poor white girls in Sydney, or Paris, or London, or Copenhagen, or Stockholm, anywhere there are Islamic diaspora's sadly. The pendulum is swinging back though.... soon you won't be able to hide behind political correctness.....

"MULTI- cultural Australia" from the 2001 Census

Total PERSONS.

18,972,350

Australian CITIZENS

16,559,774

Ancestry by Birthplace of Parents, Northern European (English,Scottish,Irish,German,Dutch) (includes some overlapping responses)

10,176,063

On those 2 statistics alone, there is a very strong argument for the prevailing culture to be the 'JudaoChristian' as it is the background of all the countries comprising this HUGE slice of Australian citizenship

There are around 7,000,000 from 'Australian' birth (both parents born here) and among these, extrapolating the obvious proportions reflected in the 'by birthplace' figure, would contain a VERY large number of those from North West European background. So the total figure for the :

"JudaoChristian CULTURAL heritage" is a vast majority.

Those specifically claiming 'Christian' heritage/adherance is

12,764,342

It is not without good reason that people of the JudaoChristian heritage, and of Northern European background, can claim to be the 'prevailing culture' of this great land of Australia, and surprise surprise, our government (with all its faults) tends to reflect that very thing.

The number of 'no religion' respondents is around 3,000,000 more of a 'voice in the wilderness' than a valid claimant on
running the country. The hostility shown by Atheists like 'Alchemist' and Xena, leaves little doubt about who's interests they would promote if they did run the country.

So, we 'godbotherers' are a pretty hefty slice of the Austrlaian cultural landscape, and I dare say have an inherant right to preserve that culture, and that any person from another cultural background, should think twice before coming here, and consider whether they can feel comfortable in it. If they come here to CHANGE it, simple response. Don't come. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, that a question on our immigration applications should include something to this effect, and a committment to assimilate, which can be reviewed from time to time and citizen ship will depend on the level of compliance with this pre-given committment.

The main problem with multiculturalism is that the notion of integration with other cultures (not assimilation with a 'dominant' culture) does not need to happen. In effect, people live within their own community geographically and demographically isolated from the rest.

This spreads fear and hatred. Furthermore when people read in the newspapers of gang-rapes targetting "Aussie" women or a community leader saying that males cannot help but rape women because of what they dress. This is the face of multiculturalism - the values of a separate community being transported to our own nation where such values are not welcome by the majority.

Do not get me wrong, I am in favour of people immigrating to our nation. I am a product of multiculturalism and I am sure that everyone here actually has had contact with multicultural Australia. But therein lies a problem; when people do not see themselves as "Australian" how can we live in an inclusive society?

In the United States, even if you are black you see yourself as "African American" or you are "Latino American", all the time the common thread of identity runs through them. Quite frankly that does not occur in Australia where we have allowed people from different, varied backgrounds live amongst people from the same culture, separating themselves from the wider community and fostering the problems which we see here today.

The problems in Australia are no where near as bad as that in the UK. They have been too liberal for too long and the backlash will continue for some time.

We can avoid that, but we have to act now. Greater "civics"-style lessons in schools promoting our common history from the Aboriginals 40,000 years ago to the founding of the British colonies to the creation of the Australian Federation to now will instil within each new migrant and children of migrants a sense of 'Australiana'. If we fail to do this, then a second generation of people can grow up with the hatreds and values brought to them which is incompatible with the wider community.

Multiculturalism is working is it? The only people who are multicultural are the white anglo-saxon's who founded this land....everyone else we've brought here are utterly ethnocentric, shown in the forming of ghetto's, the disgusting crime rate with certain ethnic groups, and frauduolent behaviour towards our institutions from these groups, i.e, welfare fraud, drug running. These things are racism! Cabramatta/Fairfield & Bankstown are racism by their very nature!

My biggest problem with 'multiculturalism' as State policy is that it imposes a kind of national denial upon the Australian people concerning the ingrained racism of their dominant Anglo-European culture. It has become very un-PC to acknowledge that our dominant culture is and always has been racist to its core, certainly since 1788. Instead, we watch SBS, eat ethnic food and walk across bridges in denial that a substantial proportion of the population retains the kinds of literally hateful ideology expressed in many of the anti-Muslim posts above.

'Multiculturalism' only works at the level of actual human interaction - at the workplace, in our schools and universities, in our shopping centres, on our sporting fields - and only then to the extent that individual Australians can consciously reject the anachronistic racist ideology that, while it may have been effective in creating the kind of society we have inherited, is now well past its use-by date if we are to prosper in the global environment.

As is evident from the content and tenor of many of the posts above, some of us still have a very long way to go. Ideologies of division and hatred, whether they are based on religious texts, political ideologies or blind tradition, have no place in contemporary Australian society and culture.