Cont/....

Islamophobia is fuelled by what is seen to be the norms of Muslim practice. Many Muslims cannot agree on fundamentals such as the wearing of the burka as a religious versus a cultural requirement, nor does the Koran say women are not allowed to drive etc.

However, Muslims living in Australia who have escaped those sorts of regimes should not be generalised in the same way that Christians are not generalised. But how to reconcile the broader observations with the domestic status quo is not easy. In 50 years time with later generations of Muslims who have been born and schooled among a wide variety of other Australians of all shapes and sizes, the problems being experienced now will naturally fade but efforts have to be made by everybody.

At LEGO,

Congratulations for being the first clown to post a personal attack against me on OLO.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any *complaints* in my post, merely a support of another posters question with another somewhat rhetorical question around phobias.

So I suggest you take your own advice and go look for the toy brick you are so obviously missing.

Hello to all, and lots of good reading here, and some not so.
To Pelican, I certainly hope the influence of non-Muslim Autralians has a good effect on the more radical Muslims who come to Australia. But as others point out they, like other ethnic groups before them, tend to gather together, and so lose the opportunity to be influenced by other Australians. This is espsecially marked among Muslims coming to Sydney. But I frequently see Muslims families walking the street in Sydney, and only half of the older girls are wearing any headcovering, so they at least are resisting the Muslim influence.

And to Yassir, I offer an alternative explanation of the use of Islamophobia, which I see you have not responded to. Would you like to do so?

And I can recount some personal experience. I lived for a year next to a major Lebanese Christian cultural centre and school and I, along with all of the neighbours, came to hate them. They would dump their rubbish on our propoerty, their kids would throw their rubbish over the school fence onto our property, and on busy holy days they would park their cars all over everyones' property - they even parked an ambulance in at a nursing home. They did this for about 30 years. So I fought back - I put red wheelbearing grease under the offending drivers' door handles, and after around 2 months, they had got the message and left us alone. Maybe abuse from Lebanese is more cultural than religious.