Philo, I doubt that the clothing idea would work. It looks to me as though the terrorists are very willing to kill muslims. How many muslims have been killed and maimed in the attempts of these fanatics to get at infidel pigs? Lots as far as I can tell.

R0bert

Fellow Human said:

'That is like asking me to see, Christianity for example, through the eyes and writings of Nazi Germany and Hitler speeches.'

I thought that Hitler and all the Nazis were atheists. Nothing to do with Christians.

Cheers

Yowie

Yowie,

Hitler/ Nazi germany saw themselves as devout Christians.
Please check the German government archives website under Hitler speeches. He hated Jews thorugh religion first then politics. Check his infamous 1922 speeches onwards where he quote things like "there is not enough baptism water to purify Jews" and that he is 'doing God's will by murdering them.

Hitler actually was a church goer and the church was in denial (they are still actually).I guess similar to some Muslims in our camp who still believe Bin laden have nothing to do with Sep 11.

All the best,

Before I comment on Leslie Cannold's argument, to those posters who post sentiments along the lines of "when in Rome": Islam is an Australian religion as much as Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Atheism or any other faith or ideology.

Muslim contact with Australia predates white settlement, there were Muslims on the first fleet, Afghan cameleers helped open up the interior, and today around 36% of Muslims in Australia were born here. Hijab-wearing is an Australia practice as much as wearing a Christian cross, a Jewish yarmulke or a Sikh turban. I say this as a Muslim who is a sixth generation Anglo-Australian (from both sides of my family).

If you want to play the game of majority rules or who was here 'first' then you are going to get yourself in dangerous territory trying to define Australian-ness. Australian Islam is here to stay. Four little words of advice - get used to it.

Cannold writes that feminism has taught her to look for power. Many feminists have long moved past the second-wave myth that power is only or even primarily located in the public domain. Cannold may need to be introduced to the thought of indigenous and third-wave feminists who reject the hegemonic voice of white, middle-class, Euro-centric second-wave feminists like herself who presume to speak as universal Woman.

As a Muslim feminist who has researched veiling practices and the experiences of Muslim women, I suggest it appears Ms Cannold has little access - and therefore intimate knowledge - of the worlds of Australian Muslim women, and therefore cannot speak *for* us with any authority. She may be surprised to learn that loci of power are found in diverse places.

One of those sources of power is in veiling practices. Anything to do with dress is overdetermined and not easily categorised into a binary of right or wrong. As Cannold notes in a throw-away paragraph, the hijab can be liberating for some women. If she really believed this, she would not attempt to force her own peculiar understanding of liberty on us. She wants us to become unveiled because it is a common misconception that the hijab symbolises oppression. She demands to see our bodies in order to pander to prejudice. Whether individual Muslim women experience oppression, liberation, or any other state of being is not in question here. Cannold wishes Muslim women to be forced to expose parts of themselves in an act of symbolism - incredibly the very same motivation against which she rails.

Instead of forcing women to veil or unveil, Muslim feminists argue that each woman has the right to adopt and interpret the faith for herself. Many Muslim feminists choose not to veil, others do. They perform the age old practice of ijtihad - of struggling with the texts in order to determine the will of God as they understand it. Only then can the headscarf - or its absence - be a liberating experience.

Fellow Human wrote:

Hitler/ Nazi germany saw themselves as devout Christians.
Please check the German government archives website under Hitler speeches. He hated Jews thorugh religion first then politics. Check his infamous 1922 speeches onwards where he quote things like "there is not enough baptism water to purify Jews" and that he is 'doing God's will by murdering them.

---

But it isn't quite that simple. The Nazis had their own 'religion' in which Jesus was to be forgotten and God barely remembered. German propaganda rallies were based upon Catholic ideas, but leant more on Nordic myth than Christian liturgy.

The policy against the Jews was not based on religion, but on race, the same as the policy against the Roma.

Jews who had converted to Christianity were just as likely to be imprisoned and killed as those who were secular or devout Jews.

Something not commonly known is that the Germans recruited Islamic troops in the Caucasses, the "Handschar" division. There was no active discrimination against people of Islamic background and the Mufti of Jerusalem spend a lot of WW2 in Germany.

German ethnic cleansing was about race, not religion.