Not to mention the recent terrorist plot on the Canadian train network which was nabbed.

It looks like the Boston bomber murdered his three ex Jewish friends on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. He went to Russia for 6 months soon after they were murdered:

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/boston-bombers-link-to-murders-20130505-2j13w.html

I'm no expert but I try to educate myself. I’ve studied an 8 lesson course on” Islam and the West” and didn’t come away positive at all. The instructor had been involved in interfaith dialogue and stated Muslims just don’t do dialogue (only pretend) as they insist definitively, Islam is beyond criticism as the Koran comes directly from the word of God. It looks like they would be using Taqiyya (Koranic lies). The instructor wasn’t there to pillory Islam (the college would not have allowed it) - he just lay the facts out in front of us (history) and some of his personal experience. He relayed one incident when he boarded a bus in Rockdale where a young Muslim man pushed in front of him and outright just said to him, “you know I can kill you”. The instructor was an elderly man and iterated this with nonchalance.

I don’t consider it’s even a religion, it is more like a political ideology/Mohammad cult. I think a considerable amount of Islam’s followers are psychologically disturbed. Why is it anywhere they go trouble follows. Southern Philippines, Southern Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, Nigeria, the West and the rest. There is a huge exodus of Christians fleeing the middle east. There won't be any left there in time to come.

Australia has had four terrorist plots foiled that we’ll never know about but here is a list of what’s been happening in the UK:
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/the-threats/terrorism/international-terrorism/international-terrorism-and-the-uk/terrorist-plots-in-the-uk.html

Denialists will bang on about the Crusades but all they were doing was defending Europe after persistent invasions for goodness sake.

But we keep on grovelling, shamefully. Trojan horse.

Hi Constance,

Just to put that early Middle eastern history into perspective - we forget that in the six hundred or so years before Muhammad came out of his cave (where have we heard that myth before?), Jewish, Christian and various syncretisms of these were widespread across the MIddle East. Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia were Christian, Indigenous Christian, way back from the first century. (After all, the south-western coast of India was Christian from before 100 AD). Europe was still barely Christianised by the time of the peaceful Muslim Invasions of north Africa.

So, when the peaceful Muslims invaded the Christian kingdoms along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, the Christians rather understandably hankered to get those lands back: after all, they had been christian for hundreds of years. After the peaceful Muslims (Arab and Berber) invaded Christian-Visigoth Spain, understandably the Christian Spanish wanted to get it back again. They regained most of it pretty soon, within a couple of hundred years, but it still took them nearly eight hundred years to get it all back.

As an atheist, I have no axe to grind for Spanish Christendom, but I just want to put the Crusades in a sort of perspective: it wasn't a simple matter of nasty, foreign European imperialism against peaceful Indigenous Islam.

In other words, they had as much right to invade those territories as the Muslims. But of course, that tit-for-tat sort of idiotic history has to come to an end sooner or later, so, as it happens, the Muslims gained eventual control of nearly all of it. It's theirs now. Okay. Let's move on, draw a line under it.

No more invasions. Let democracy bloom in its own way, in each region - equal rights for all, and a recognition of the primacy of a common set of legal rules, for all, male and female, believer and non-believer.

And everybody should wash their hands before being involved in medical operations, modesty be buggered.

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

I liked the spirit of your post. However, you wrote: "But of course, that tit-for-tat sort of idiotic history has to come to an end sooner or later."

As long as religion carries the idea, "We have the truth." and keeps the missionary spirit alive that 'tit-for-tat sort of idiotic history' will not come to an end. As Faulkner said, "The past isn't even past."

Seems like Greg has not bothered to check his facts. A simple phone call to the NCC head office or to myself would have helped here.
No such policy changes have taken place!

As for critique of article on Boston bombings..await our reply later this week. As for 'not covering Christians under persecution'...are you kidding? try 27-4-13 "MIDDLE EAST: Egypt becomes a nightmare for Muslim Brotherhood" by Frank Lindsey.

What Greg failed to mention is news weekly has a policy of not running articles that rely on sources known to be connected with Serbian nationalists that supported ethnic cleansing of muslims in the Bosnian war. And we are proud of this fact.

Greg is also wrong in that we never pulled an article by Cardinal Pell on this subject there was a reported broken link at some stage.

Greg would do well to read the book we published by Paul Gray The Nightmare of the Prophet

and also Gilles Kepel’s book Jihad.

Greg Byrne has provided a fairly comprehensive list of Islamic terrorism post 9/ll, but he has overlooked the recent terrorist attempt on the Canadian train system which was foiled by alert security. If only terrorism in the US is considered significant, it should be remembered that Canadian train was headed for New York where the explosion was intended to happen.
Among the authors banished from the News Weekly website is Patrick Sookhdeo, founder of the Barnabus Fund which supports persecuted Christians all over the world - but the persecution occurs primarly in Islamic countries.
It is also of concern that there have been recent riots in Bangladesh by fundamentalist Muslims demanding an Islamic state and Sharia law, and demonstrating against the secular government of that country.
Every week I get an email from Farideh Araki detailing the arbitrary arrests and executions of prisoners in Iran, among them Christian pastors or "apostates" from Islam. The only thing keeping some of these hapless victims alive is international publicity. That is why it was unfortunate that my article on Aisia Bibi, mother of five young children, who has been on death row for several years in Pakistan on spurious charges of blasphemy, was removed from the News Weekly website.
Those who minimize the dangers of Islam should remember John Donne's poem:
"No man is an island.......any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
Babette Francis

LukeMc - so why were all those articles taken down?