A little quote the ABC 7:30 report last night --a Freudian slip perhaps, from the otherwise PC party-line broadcaster:

"It's a nightmare too horrible to imagine, but Iraq went down this road, narrowly avoiding catastrophe six years ago. This time, neighbouring Syria is riven by the same sort of conflict. Sunnis and Shiites fear an existential crisis is unfolding and that can bring out the worst in even those with the most moderate views."
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4038040.htm

<< and that can bring out the worst in even those with the most moderate views>>

So much for "moderates"--so much for multiculturalism!

To Jay of Melbourne.

I have on OLO strenuously attacked the Anti Discrimination Laws as an attack on free speech. These new laws mean that every minority group and their values, attitudes and beliefs (except white people and their values, attitudes and beliefs, of course) are totally exempt from criticism on the grounds that they might "offend, humiliate or intimidate" them.

Bringing people into Australia who really do believe that people who criticise their faith should be murdered, is the height of idiocy. The Salmon Rushdie affair was instructive. If the majority of Muslims living in the west were "moderate", then one would have expected that the Muslims in Britain who heard the the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa on Rushdie would have laughed the whole thing off. They didn't. Not only did every Islamic leader in Britain applaud Khomeini's fatwa, several of the leading luminaries publically expressed their desire that they should be the one who committed the honour of murdering Rushdie themselves.

Even Cat Stevens, the pop idol who was once acclaimed for his peace, love, and mung beans songs in the seventies, and who had converted to Islam, expressed his desire on British TV to the fact that he would kill Rushdie himself if the opportunity presented itself.

Muslims do not believe in free speech but it is supposed to be a core value in the west. That core value is now under attack by "liberal" appeasers who will do anything to try and make their "multicultural", socialist paradise fairyland a reality. As westerners, we cannot say that Uthman Badar should be prevented from speaking, now matter how offensive his views are to us. He has already sneered in the media "so much for free speech in the west" and he was right. This is exactly the "western hypocrisy" he claimed he really wanted to talk about.

Support free speech. Don't give the Neanderthal sod a free kick. Don't think like they do and say that he must shut up because we find his views offensive because they can use the same logic on us.

Onya SPQR.

Thanks for that quote. It is going into my files for the next time some ABC type claims that only a few radical Muslims are the problem, the rest of them are all just nice and peaceful.

Nothing like having a quote from your enemies to shove back in their faces when they get creative and try to massage the truth.

What was notable about the furore is how the usual defenders of 'free speech' (Bolt etc) were so vociferous in their condemnation of a speech they never heard. Seems free speech is only free for some.

Sorry minotaur,

I must have missed where Badar was taken to court and sued.

As far as I can see it is just the venue that was in dispute--I mean, if you really want to hear views like Badar's expressing you can go to one of the mosques or bookshops that hold regular anti-everything-West gabfests.