There's a lot of parochial nonsense and apologia here.

"The incoherence of the Islamic texts and incompatibility with modernity means that they cannot withstand critical examination. Should this happen, the identity and coherence of their communities is threatened. For this reason, Muslims will not give up easily on this issue, though in this instance, thanks to the two pastors, they have failed."
-Oh yes, no bias there whatsoever. A person who starts by holding a priori that Islam is incompatible with modernity, and cannot stand any critical examination (read: admitting it is incoherent), is not debating on merits and in good faith. What a joke!

As someone who holds very critical views of the Koran and the mainline Hadiths, this is ridiculous indulgence. I’ve heard of playing to your audience’s prejudices, but if this is what passes for intellectual rigour in Christian circles these days, it’s no wonder that ministries have to resort to being more and more reactionary to keep up numbers. Only the Christadelphians seem particularly concerned about intellectual honesty anymore.

"And we always need to remind ourselves that the Muslim is our neighbour in need of Christ, even as we are disconcerted by specific Islamic teaching or reflect upon the terrible ongoing persecution of Christians in majority Muslim lands."

-Lovely and condescending.

"But how are Australians, and Christians in particular, to made aware of the challenge and ambitions of Islam?"

-How very telling. Of course the author is worried about Christians in particular. If the concern here was genuinely about robust debate, and not just preserving the last vestiges of Christian chauvinistic cultural superiority, then it wouldn't be Christians “in particular.”

Speaking of the monolithic ambitions of the Islam betrays the author’s prejudice. Not only does it admit blatant ignorance about the chasm of difference between the various categories of Islam, and the fact that there is no one single voice, it apes the same bigotry that has often been levelled at the Jews. If anyone where to speak so about “Jews” and “ambitions of Judaism” it would be rightly condemned as a anti-Semitic caricature

The silence from the left of politics on this denial of free speech was incredible. Where was Bob Brown, Kevin Rudd and the democrats. While at the same time we had the left defending and making a hero about a bloke who took up arms against Australia and yet being totally silent about the denial of natural justice in our own backyard. The hypocrisy is incredible!

If you're expecting reasonable secular people to be sympathetic to Catch the Fire Ministries, and other outlets of fundamentalist invective and dispenationalist conspiracy, you'll be waiting a long time. Most sane people can see through their veneer of outward Christian respectability, to the ugly parochial cultural warriors inside. Whatever the stupidity of the laws, there’s nothing untoward about them receiving censure.

That’s just the problem: there are reasonable arguments to be made against the Victorian legislation, but those arguments are obscured when agents of hatred try to disguise their attacks on Islam, as if they weren't being made in bad faith, with due regard for the diversity within Islam. With free speech comes some responsibility.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove by bringing up David Hicks though. I thought we were talking free speech, not habeas corpus? The Hick allegation is a standard attack from conservatives who so often confuse the issue of fairness with personal virtue. When they see anyone making an impassioned plea on behalf of an undesirable person, they (so unlike Jesus) can’t seem to get past the person, and see the abstract principles behind it. When the legal profession, teachers, doctors, philosophers - advocate the rule of law, they can't really be concerned about the demands of justice against arbitrary improsonment or camp x-ray, they must actually love and excuse Hicks. They suffer from the magic moral decay which everyone but conservatives, with their magic moral certainty, do not suffer.

Frankly I'm fed up with these kind of nonsense false dichotomies. You don't have to support the person to support the rule which abets justice for the undesirable. There is absolutely no need to apologise for that.

If anyone should be apologising it's the reactinaries, whose grasp of the elements of civil society and limited government appear to be so tenuous that they could throw out the law for mob rule, whenever it is convenient to their moralising sentiments.

The issue is extremism, not Islam, and it doesn't matter if it's intolerant Christian fundamentalism, Islamic extremism, Hindutva, Jewish irredentism or anything else - this is the curse of the modern era as we retreat into the past rather than head boldly into the mosaic of the future. It is simply not true to say that mostly Christians had a hard time under Islam - most of Islamic history, Jews and Christians were tolerated (yes, taxed too, but accepted as People of the Book) while the Christians set up the Inquisition or the Crusaders slaughtered Jews, Muslims and Eastern Christians for 200 years. Have a look at the Golden Age of Islam, especially in Spain, before 1492. Fortunately there's a lot of good people getting together in the Abrahamic tradition but sadly we don't hear much about it, except on Compass, and there are many moderate voices of Islam who get ignored in favour of the hate merchants.

Peter D. Jones, Hobart

BBoy. Surprised to see a blogger such as yourself pushing the view that any wowser offended by criticism should be able to have the critic arrested, fined and maybe gaoled. You should be looking in a mirror and examining how these lefty group-think contortions have taken you down this path.

This is probably what Runner was getting at, when wondering where the Bob Brown's etc were when the s**t hit the fan. I'm amazed that you still put solidarity with the left ahead of decency. Not only are these Muslims being too precious by half, but a person like you defending their right to silence their "competition", is puzzling. It's sad, and I'm not being sarcastic or ironical. You've really lost your "moral compass" on this one BBoy. Hope you sober up. Cheers.

My imaginary friend is better then yours.

The disturbing thing about this legislation is, as far as I can see anyway and please correct me if I am wrong, that I need to be criticising the religion for a religious purpose, in other words for the purposes of proselytism. Why can't I, as an atheist, criticise a religion robustly without fear of being prosectued for vilification?

This quote near the end sums it up:
"The Act as amended still leaves a defendant with the burden of proving that they acted reasonably and for a genuine religious purpose. Even if criticism of another religion can now come within a genuine religious purpose, persons doing that retain the burden of proof to show that they acted reasonably in doing so and that their actions were part of a genuine religious purpose."

What a crock of sh!t
If you look at history over the last 1500 years you would see the score is Christians 9 Muslims 1, there isn't 1 country from Morocco to Aghanistan that the Christians havn't put to the sword at some time or other, Christians and Jews have had a better deal under Islam than the other way around.
There are over a billion Muslims in the world who are mostly decent human beings,who practice widely varying forms of Islam, the radical element is so tiny probably less than 100,00,yet you Christian ratbags lump them altogether,there are lots of nutter Christians especially in the good ole US of A, but nobody is using them as a yardstick to judge Christians, nobody follows the Bible, Koran, Torah or any other religious cr@p to the strict letter it is impossible , they are all full of contradictions.
This sort of nonsense does nothing to foster harmony and coming from a supposedly forgiveness based faith seems more than a little hypocritical.
I think the author needs to take a nice warm bath, a cup of tea, a nice liedown and a good root.

Don’t strawman me. My comments contained no explicit or implicit endorsement of arrests, fines or custodial sentences for CtF let alone provocative criticism generally. Indeed, I twice specifically mentioned that I thought such laws were defective. Maybe should you read more carefully.

In so far as I attacked CtF at all, I simply pointed out the asininity of their victim mentality, and how I thought they shared, with the original article writer, a disingenuous agenda masquerading as a thoughtful critique of Islam and the Hadiths.

"You should be looking in a mirror and examining how these lefty group-think contortions have taken you down this path."

-Generally you actually have to establish some form of malfeasance before you can mount the high horse of rhetorical clichés. Unfortunately for you, you haven’t done any such thing.

This is probably what Runner was getting at, when wondering where the Bob Brown's etc were when the s**t hit the fan. I'm amazed that you still put solidarity with the left ahead of decency.

-For a start they are federal politicians, and this is Victorian issue. The great silence turns out to be a simple matter of political constituencies. So even if there was some inherent connection between habeas corpus and free speech, (and there isn’t), Hicks and Guantanamo Bay are national and international issues which are appropriate to their domain.

Furthermore, to reiterate what I said, there is nothing incompatible between taking the position that these Victorian laws are wrong, yet still rejecting the schmalzy drivel trying to present CtF as some kind of thoughtful intellectual group who were martyred for simply engaging in debate. Indeed, the sensible position is to be entirely out of sympathy with CtF, AND be in favour of the laws being changed.

Not only are these Muslims being too precious by half, but a person like you defending their right to silence their "competition", is puzzling.

-Too precious. Some light-weight pseudo intellectual fundamentalists states a priori that the whole of Islam is incoherent and compatible with modernity, and you think no umbrage is appropriate? What a joke.

I can't believe that their are many that ignore that this has got to do with free speech. The Christian faith is demonized and mocked daily. Our National Broadcasters seem to delight in mocking Christ and His teachings. Thankfully the Lord Jesus Christ is big enough to laugh at the pathetic mockers. His followers don't have to run off to a Court because they are insulted. The Left are happy to apply the principle of free speech only when their philosophies are pushed. They are happy to have opposing voices silenced by legislation.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal posts the 22 June agreement on its website.
http://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/CA256902000FE154/Lookup/Media/$file/media_release_joint_statement_of_the_islamic_council_of_victoria_and_catch_the_fire_ministries_inc_22-06-07.pdf

The Catch the Fire Ministries posts the 22 June agreement on its website.
http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2007/06/22/vcat-media-release-5pm-friday-22nd-june-2007/

The Islamic Council of Victoria says nothing.
http://www.icv.org.au/index.shtml

Alanpoi; All religions throughout history have been ready to kill in the name of God at some time or other and still are. With the Christians it was the people they branded the heretics(evil enemies of God) and now its the Muslims with Infidel(evil enemies of God).

Religion gives them the perfect excuse to commit murder with the blessing of God. They therefore remain good people in their own eyes because they do not face the reality that they kill for darker human reasons of survival and control.

there are NO intolerant christians and christians did not kill anyone in the name of god, the people who killed were NOT christians jesus christ taught nothing but LOVE and he was killed by so called religious people! so ask yourselves how many christians have been slaughtered for their beliefs,maybe we can all live in harmony one day on this earth!

Irish, I'm afraid that's a little naive.

You can't simply claim that the unpleasant aspects of Christianity aren't real Christians. They believed they were, and they were allowed to operate under the banner of Christianity and were endorsed by Christian authority figures. That makes them the Christian incarnation of that age. It may be repugnant to today's incarnation, but it's the way it's panned out.

The major religions have evolved over many years. Much of that legacy is bloodshed - granted, there are a great many positive aspects as well, but to try and claim only the good is a little condescending.

You can't pick and choose history according to the standards that have evolved today. Those standards weren't always the way.

Once upon a time, it was quite acceptable for Christians to have slaves. We've changed that now, but it wasn't always the case.

Who changed the slavery thing? Oh, it was the Christians. Good work.

Now, why can't Catholics hold the throne in the UK? Will rational thought overcome historical, political and national interests again?

Slavery of both body and thought is dangerous. Assent to faith is better than submission, and so the basis of a civilised society is where one can accept, reject or change their religion.

Sharing one's faith is the key. Ultimately there is only one truth, but beating it into someone else undermines its credibility.

Yes, people who are christians were involved in the abolition of slavery - my point is, the standards of a religion change over time.

irish's statement above implies there is a simple, cut and try classification for who a 'real' christian is.

The thing is, that definition has been different for every age and still isn't concrete.

Once upon a time slaves were acceptable. So were the crusades. So was the Spanish inquisition.

Of course there has been plenty of good as well - but it's a bit rich for a christian living by the standards of 2007, to say that the bad deeds committed by previous incarnations of christianity means that they weren't real christians.

To emphasise my point - I imagine plenty of christians today would say condemning homosexuality is acceptable and they should be ashamed of their behaviour.
Others wouldn't.
Who is right? Are those others who don't condemn them 'not real christians?'

I'm essentially saying you can't pick and choose who you call real christians. You've got to accept a little more responsibility than that.