Thank you, Timothy Cootes. Your admirable dissection and trashing of Uthman Badar's amazing mindset, make my own written response look inadequate in comparison.

I love the quote from 1984 where someone said "a good book does not tell you anything new, it just arranges your scattered thoughts into some sort of order."

10 out of 10.

And thank you for sticking up for free speech, although I am sure that Nicola Roxon now has you marked for "re education" in some media gulag, somewhere within the wastelands of Canberra.

And you are right with your assertion that the more the Uthmar Batin's of the Caliphate write, the more they stick their collective feet in their mouths.

After reading this excellent piece, for which I thank you Timothy, it makes sense not to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir. It's a better option to let people like Uthman Badar **hang themselves**

Sydney demo: Uprising in the Muslim world 2011 [Jan 31 2011]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhrWpOkqUHE

@ 15:50 Br. Wassim Doureihi

@ 32.11
"To those who are before me today, to the Muslims in the West, to the Muslims in this country, I say to you that indeed are a part of this great ummah, let it be clear that you are not Australian, you are not British, you are not American, you are Muslim. Those who would divide you from the body of this ummah, let it be known that our allegiance is to Islam and Islam alone. That our support is to Muslims & to Muslims alone

Let it be known that you are part of this great ummah & don’t believe anyone that will suggest otherwise

We are not an ummah which will be content at the crumbs which are thrown at us. We are not an ummah which will be content at sharing the power. We are not an ummah which will be content to remain in a position of subjugation. We are not an ummah which will be confined to remain in artificial borders. We are not an ummah which will be content with sharing the power. We are not an ummah which will be content to accept the most vile rulers of mankind. We are the ummah of Mohammed etc - you know the rest"

An informative article, however, most of the arguments presented by the author have already been made by commenters on Uthman Badar's original article.

"...does not represent the values of the wider Muslim community in Australia."

I admit to considerable scepticism as to the influence and proportion of "moderate" Moslems in any majority Islamic society. If the majority of Moslems were indeed moderate, majority Moslem nations would not be the oppressive, violent societies that they are, even Indonesia and Turkey, the best examples of "moderation" have serious problems with creeping Islamisation and the persecution of religious minorities.

As to the "irrational values that belong in medieval Europe." The late Middle Ages in Europe were a period of rapid technological and cultural progress, in contrast to contemporary Islamic societies.

Another myth of Islamists, and totalitarian propagandists in general, is that the West's human rights political philosophy is not universal, they're careful not to allow a free and informed discussion.

Westerners escaped by a hair's breadth from Islamisation and then fought for a thousand years to maintain their civilisation against continual Moslem attacks, Uthman Badar's inept propaganda is simply another stage in a long conflict.

A very good article.

This is a key point:

"I extend, then, your right to free expression"

The issue is this: we live in and enjoy privileges of a free society which is immeasurably better than the society offered/demanded by Uthman Badar.

Should our free society offer the same rights to people like Uthman Badar when his type would not reciprocate and when they use those rights to actively usurp and try to overthrow our free society?

Having just read Uthman Badar's article, I am having difficulty understanding Tomothy's condemnation. You should go back and read the article again.

I have lived through the various wars in which we have participated as pawns of the United States and its other allies, and I am generally appalled at the crass disregard for human life shown by those in charge of such wars. This is even more disturbing when one considers that the aim of most of those conflicts has been apparently to improve the conditions of the citizens we finish up killing.

I suggest that Timothy and his youthful friends, take a step back and look at the reason behind the mindset of the militant Islam community. They have had a gut full of the West telling them how to run their countries and killing their people. We are only playing into the hands of their leaders who find ready listeners to their distortions of the Koran to justify vengeance attacks even as the U.S. and its allies send drones to kill people in Pakistan.

It is time we woke up to those who just put the blame on one side. Both are equally culpable.

"Both are equally culpable."

No they're not.

Worst attempt at moral equivalence yet.

Islam is a self-starter; it doesn't require anything done to it to be barbaric and primitive; look at SA which has the US genuflecting to it:

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/64500/Barack-Obama-Bowing-to-King--64695.jpg&imgrefurl=http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic%3D234912.40&h=426&w=611&sz=96&tbnid=lj-TSPOgKi3d-M:&tbnh=90&tbnw=129&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpicture%2Bof%2Bobama%2Bbowing%2Bto%2Bsaudi%2Bprince%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=picture+of+obama+bowing+to+saudi+prince&usg=__GG00pp7skUaZxpi_YJLc7sITLs8=&docid=2Lg0i-QuB_IO7M&sa=X&ei=Shi4UfGSGfC5iAfenoCgCQ&ved=0CFsQ9QEwDg&dur=188

As for wars where we were pawns of the US; that would be WW11 when the corrupt yanks got between us and our japanese liberators I suppose.

The only surprise for me is that people like Badar even bother; he must be just brushing up on his Taqiyya and Kitman skills; they still work obviously because he can still suck in some useful idiots; that is, of course, if you are not islamic yourself