Turnrighthenleft brings welcome sobriety and a sense of proportion after all the other frantic hysteria.
Also agree to an extent re Boaz as to where he's coming from, as to "value and meaning". Just wish he could be a little more tolerant. Y'know, "casting the first stone" sort of thing. At least he sometimes discusses ideas rather than ONLY loading his posts with abuse, like certain others. And they call the sheik "intolerant"?!
Was the old bloke was talking exclusively to his "own"? Perhaps our gaudy and glitzy consumer culture actually causes legitimate doubt for observers. Perhaps he genuinely fears the young people of his community heading down the wrong path.
It's not much different what he says, to the lectures some of our "olds" gave us when young about the perils of "sex, drugs,'n rock'n roll". We said "ho-hum" at the time, but in some respects I now know I would personally have been better off following some of their gloomy, crude advice.
And why all the outrage over his commments about women? Surely not ALL these are little 'saints', ALL the time, when it comes to c--k teasing and promiscuity?
And the nonsense on a recent 4 Corners show demonstrating the weird attitudes and values of some ( particularly stupid ) Australian women as revealed as to the subject of plastic surgery and ruinous tit plastic, may indicate a sincerity on his part in trying to have his young people avoid vulgar and shallow notions of appearance over substance. The sh-t represented on Australian Idol and Big Brother ought to offend ANY thinking person.
Whether or not Hillaly's comments are misogynistic or not, they are so often reiterated in private conversations in our own community as cultural lore that for many, it would be hypocritical to jump on him .
The incident was just another example of a filthy political Murdoch 'beat up", for Howard's benefit. Maybe it's actually the morals of some in our own society need a look at, too- esp in the tabloid press and media!

Hello Tanveer,

My eyes are opened now as a muslim woman Shakira speaks about her experiences:

Eyes opened by Islamic chauvinism

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20673860-601,00.html

" Mustafa - tried to drag her under their control in the name of Islam."

" As soon as we made contact, he said I should be living under my father's roof, or with my grandmother, or an aunt.

"I didn't realise how serious he was. I just told him that I wasn't interested."

"He (Mustafa) would berate me about that, in part because she was Jewish, but also because I was living out of home," she said.

"Eventually I told him to get lost, mind his own business. But he would come to the house, knocking on the door, to insist I come home with him, to live under our father's roof."

"where a young man, a relative, would decide how I should live, or dress, or behave."

"We should know from London that young Muslim men are feeling disenfranchised - they do not fit into their own cultures, or into Western cultures - and we should not have leaders encouraging them toward this frightening, controlling behaviour."

I am sure this is happening in almost all muslim families.

Now Sheik Hilali has been preaching this hate and bile for some 20yrs in Australia.Now Peter Costello noted today that when the Sheik was caught out a month ago preaching his bile to his flock of 5000 people,not one of these moderates complained or protested about him.You see,there are many thousands who agree with him.After 20 yrs most would know his track record and what all the surrepticious innuendoes meant.He just got too cocky and let his guard slip.

Now we hear that Muslims will have a march of support and solidarity for the Sheik at Lakemba.Those numbers will be very revealling since for every overt supporter in that area,there will be at least tens times that number waiting in the wings.

The extremists now realise that their cover has been blown,and now they risk dividing the Muslim Community.The solution is to show power and intimidate the moderates as they have successfully done in the past.

We should maintain the pressure on the Muslim Community to demonstrate their alligences,since now they have to make a clear cut choice between total alienation or integration into the broarder Australian society.We cannot allow grey areas of wishy washy multi-culturalism destroy our country.

Sigh.

Wouldn't you love to have the likes of edwardcav supporting you in a survival situation?His solution to all conflict,would be just the non commital "sigh" of indifference.

TurnRightThenLeft,

Sorry, but in the "context" of the sheik's comments (his level of support, the parallels across the globe, and the possibility of terrorism in Australia), I think that your's or Mercurious' "asking people to look at the bigger picture" wilfully neglects the proper "bigger picture", and is thus newspeak for "let's not do anything about it" (to say the least).

But what really makes it difficult to "calm down" is knowing that you'de be getting hysterical over far far more innocuous matters if they came from the mouth of an Anglo, or perhaps simply a member of the Liberal party, apparently the only kinds of people you must consider to have any capacity for autonomy, and hence responsibility, and are thus worthy of criticism.

I bet that prior to the arrests of those jihadists in Sydney and Melbourne that you were ranting on hysterically about how Howards sedition laws will rob us all of our "freedom".

I bet you'd agree with A Denton's pathetic motive in his latest documentary, where he felt some warped need to balance the pressure on the Muslim diaspora by symbolically associating Bush and the Catholic right, whom you'de probably fear far more than any jihadist.

I bet you went hysterical over One Nation, just for inarticulately voicing concern over the xenophobic, selfish tendencies of large amounts of members of various ethnic groups, a prerequisite for branch stacking to be at all viable.

Just think, decades from now when we start to realise that all along it was fools like you, who hold such a superficial conception of "racism", were actively (perhaps unwittingly) turning a blind eye to xenophobic violence committed against "Westerners", particularly the poor of the outer suburbs where they are in the minority.

What's wrong with talking about 'lions of lebanon' raping 'aussy sluts'? I think we should talk about it 24/7 for ten years straight