Yes, we are a bit insular and parochial in this country, aren't we? As evidence of this, we need look no further than the national outpouring of self-defense after Sol Trujillo suggested that we are "racist and backward". We are not good at accepting criticism, not good at "negotiation of difference" and not open to change. We in this country know what we like and we like what we know. Whether they be indigenous, Moslim or intellectually disabled, they are not quite one of us, are they?

A pretty accurate summary of the situation.

The author forgot to mention one objection - which I'm sure will arrive in the comments thread soon - that is a variant of "look what would happen if you tried to build a Christian church in Saudi"

I've always particularly liked this objection, because it is effectively saying "we should conduct our communities like they do in Saudi Arabia", without the slightest trace of irony.

It's not that Australians dislike foreigners, of course.

Just as long as they don't want to live here.

Oh no, I forgot - it's not like that at all.

Everyone is welcome, as long as they adopt "Australian culture"

Also delivered without irony.

And of course Pericles it is not possible to hate everything the religion stands for and yet still like the people is it? The amount of frothing from many on OLO about funding for Christian schools certainly demonstrate the lefts hypocrisy.

I don't have much sympathy for the winging expressed in the article. We are all tribal. I recall my disquiet when a Muslim school was built on my path to work. I imagine it was felt by everybody - after all a new tribe was moving in. Undoubtedly they will have their own agendas to peruse and will in general shake the pot, probably in ways I am unfamiliar with.

After a time I got used to the school. The chaos outside was the typical mill of mothers, cars and children. Some parents drove aggressively, and earned the scowls of other parents, but for the most part people where polite and helpful, as always. And after a time I compared this lots behaviour with that of Christian firebrands around the traps I decided this mob was not so bad after all.

After a few decades they won't be a new tribe - just a tribe building a school, as tribes tend to do. And it will of happened gradually, and for the most part peacefully - the odd winge aside. What is the problem here. Isn't that how things are meant to work?

A good mate of mine phoned yesterday to catch up for a beer and to celebrate his looking for a house - his first. He's looking at the Kuraby (Brisbane southside) area. Happily gay, he's buying a house for extended family and himself.

His father counselled him to beware, there were a lot of Muslims there and to 'be careful what side of the railway to buy on'. Kuraby has a mosque, a fantastic, eclectic community with a larger than usual proportion of Muslims.

Whenever he looks at a house he makes a point of asking about the neighbours. The body language of the various real estate remoras say all he needs to know - so he makes a point of saying hello over the fence while he's there.

Guess the reaction is from the violent, aggressive terrorist Islamist (there DID that word come from?) neighbours. Invariably "welcome - come over for tea when you settle in - anything we can do to help - it's a great neighbourhood." You get the idea.

Trujillo might have been a bit of a tosser, but he was spot on about Australia's racist psyche.

runner,

Medieval Spain:

"Spain developed three different literary traditions during the Middle Ages. The presence in the Iberian Peninsula of three different established religions--Christianity, Islam and Judaism--gave rise to three distinctive intellectual communities and practices. Muslim philosophers and scientists developed knowledge in areas like medicine, optics, algebra and chemistry. Jewish scholars gave shape to the Talmudic tradition, and Christian Europe sent its theologians to discover Aristotle among the few who still could read Greek in Western Europe: the Arab and Jewish scholars of Córdoba and Toledo. The Iberian Peninsula was known simultaneously as Al-Andalus, Sepharad, and Hispania, depending on the cultural tradition of the scholar approaching it. The 11th century saw the figures of Averroes and Maimonides as towering philosophical figures in search for a solution to the contradictions between religious truth and the truth of science." (Braswell)

For some centuries, benefitting from cross-cultural scholarship and understanding, folk of the three religions lived harmoniously side-by-side under an atmosphere of freedom. Too much for the hard-core Christians. "We can't have scholarship, can we?" In 1492, Christians, Ferdindand and Isabella expelled the Jews and the Muslims, bringing the close relationship to its end.

You will recall that Christians acted in a similar manner, after Constantine, when non-Christian artifacts were destroyed in Taliban fashion.