Neither the author nor the legislators have a clue about what religion is - nor would I expect them to understand because only the religious can understand religion.

Instead, if need be, the "terrorist act" could just drop the word "religious" because what they mean is already covered by "ideological". However, why should it matter WHY someone wishes to intimidate others? Would what they do become any better only because they do it to extort money or to have fun rather than due to some ideology? I think not!

"because only the religious can understand religion."

I think I get your drift here. What a powerful idea.

Only the courageous can understand courage. Only the musical can understand music. Only the terrorist can understand terrorism. Only the faint of heart can understand faint-heartedness. Only the communist can understand communism. Only the pedophile can understand pedophilia. Only the rapist can understand rape. Only the …

Yuyutsu, I used to be religious but I'm not now. Does this mean I used to be able to understand religion but I can't now?

BTW, I thought this article was brilliant and brave.

Interesting article although like with most lawyers it leads you with more questions. The question that most won't answer is the daily acts of terrorist, murder, lying, suicide done due to no religion or at least no moral basis. As a Barrister peope like L W Maher have made huge incomes from the taxpayer by defending blokes who rape/murder/molest children etc. Many would be still locked up if it was not for some sleazy lawyer finding loopholes in poor laws. Yep daily men drop faithful wives for another model, women murder unborn for convenience, 10 year old girls speak filth from the rot they listen to, teenagers kill themselves after 10 relationships and the list go on an on. All in the name of moral relativism so adults can enjoy their 'guilt' free little indulgences.

I know the usual ignorant claims that 'relgion is the cause of all wars' is just a smokescreen to stop any scientific self examination.

Whilst I enjoyed the article there was however some key issues which needed further development.

One of them is that the media must provide unbiased reporting of both sides of the issue.

Unfortunately, the quality of Australian journalism is so bad that I cannot recall ever seeing any discussion that really goes to the crux of why the fighters of Islam are at war with us. And make no mistake, they are at war with us whether openly declared or not.

Bare in mind that I have spent some time amongst the Muslims of Indonesia and that for the most part, they have been very kind to me and something of their grievances are known to me.

It is after all the West who seems to consider itself so superior that they will not speak to their enemies, who defile the bodies of the leaders of their enemies and have slaughtered the innocent and formerly moderate Muslims alike on a scale that is likely to well exceed a ratio of 10,000:1.

I would agree that eduction is part of the solution and a key component of that is broadcasting both sides of the story and not merely propagating tired old guvment clap trap.

For example, ISIS has been accused of sexual slavery, but is it not so that they are committing these war crimes against their enemies? And is that not better than those in the Australian military, who are allegedly rapists, who are accused of not raping their enemies, but of raping their own!?

Whilst I do not seek to legitimise the extreme acts of the likes of ISIS, I do suggest that those obsessed with hiding things usually do so out of guilt, and fear of public scrutiny due to the likelihood of political condemnation.

Like our very DNA, there is in my view far more that makes us all the same as Humans than those things which set us apart.

The situation will always be messy whilst religion is given any credibility at all. Trying to appease those who are religious but not aggressive is skirting the issue. The common cry is that all Muslims are not terrorists but that does not mean that their religious attitudes do not cause damage to society. When they respond to reality with primitive behaviour such as praying, reading or quoting the Koran or visiting the mosque they are in effect dragging society back. Our society is based on reason because it is something that each one of us possesses. It is the common denominator which binds us as a human race. When people behave in ways that put them outside the dictates of human reason then they should be held accountable.

Attention should be drawn not to the religious ‘beliefs’ of someone like Mons but to his underlying behaviour which is at odds with the developing understanding of human nature. It is not the beliefs that should be questioned but whether or not religious behaviour is an appropriate response to human experience. Religious beliefs are simply a camouflage for primitive behaviour and we should never give them credence by engaging with them.

Anyone who comes forth as a Muslim and disassociates themselves with terrorists should be challenged as to why they associate themselves with Islam. We should not play their game by engaging with their ‘beliefs’ but put pressure on them to justify why they indulge in religious actions when they feel angry, afraid or sad. The media should not engage with their beliefs either but with their behaviour but many media outlets do not want to elevate questioning to that level.

To be fair all such religious behaviour needs to be scrutinised. In the wake of the siege how many politicians and commentators said that their prayers go out to the families of the victims? How quick were they to line up at the cathedral to respond to the event with religious behaviour. Primitive responses are alive and well in the west but much more so in the Middle East.

Agree mostly with GlenC:

And can only add, any form of "MAN MADE" compelled unquestioning belief, is just that and could be, for all anyone can KNOW, as far from the literal truth as one can get?

An unexamined life is not worth living. Quote unquote.

That should apply even more so to unquestioning belief, but particularly when that unquestioning belief all but compels crimes against humanity. Not for nothing is it writ large, let your conscience be your guide!

Or put another way, make your decisions with your heart as well as your head! If it just doesn't feel right, it probably isn't!

And finally, free speech must retain the right to offend, given we've all likely alienated everybody else at one time or another; and usually by being less than economical with the literal truth/calling a spade a shovel?
Rhrosty.

I don’t think they can settle on an interpretation of the Koran. Women subjecting themselves to beatings, stoning to death, Honor murders, Child marriages, bodily mutilation, unable to live with people of another clan.
This is the domain of male fulfillment. They can not assimilate, They want to rule the world under one interpretation of the Koran.
I can’t believe any god could have written such words as they believe is the case. It’s more like the words of a madman.
Some countries are on the verge of civil war because of the anti assimilation, when this happens proper, it is likely to spread across all countries that have populations of :
Best they stay in their own country and live their male dominated murderus” life or face extinction.

Good article, Religion can be a force of good, but mostly it's a force for bad. The SBC (Sydney Broad Casting) and SBS are always going to take the social worker, lets worry about the impact on the offender and their sub culture. Unfortunately the Lib's cuts are only going to make it worst.

Runner I look forward to your posts, not matter how "out there" I think religious people can be, you always push to envelope.

Laurence,
I agree that Freedom of speech, if it exists in Australia, must mean we are free to discuss any ideology. And religion would fall into the category of ideology.

And it is a concern that our leaders and law makers are so dimwitted as to not be able to differentiate race from religion. Race is associated with things you are born with, things you can't change, such as: birthplace, family lineage, skin colour. Religion is more ideological, associated with giving assent to various sets of facts or propositions. You can change your mind about what you consider your base facts, as often as you like, as easily as changing your underpants.

There may sometimes be some overlap between race, religion, language, and culture. But essentially race and religion are very different things. That the AHRC can't see the difference makes one suspicious as to what freedom restricting agenda they have in mind to impose.

So I agree that there is no reason why religious ideas and beliefs, as any other ideology, should have any preferred claim to legal protection from critique.

Yet I'm suspicious about your antagonism to religion. You refer to 'indoctrination' by religious parents of their children. Is it not the right of parents to pass on to the next generation whatever whatever values they consider worthy? To do otherwise would be irresponsible. Or do only atheist parents only ever engage in appropriate education and child rearing, while never imposing their views on their children?

Laurence, are you selling on both sides of the street?

Summarising Lawrence Maher's 1,967 word article in legalese.

A QANGO called the INLSM, which the ethnic vote sucking Gillard government set up to monitor Australia's anti terrorism laws, doesn't like Australia's perfectly adequate legal definition of "terrorism", for a bunch of lame reasons. Although the INSLM admits that it would have defined Man Haron Monis's act of Islamic terrorism adequately. Maybe the INSLM sees that as the real problem.

But it seems that the ABC/Fairfax multicultural tolerance fanatics are frightened that their multicultural utopia has coming apart, so they support the INLSM's bid to distance the Islamic religion from terrorism. Their lame excuse, is that Muslim terrorists misread the passages in the Koran which compel Muslims to ethnically cleanse non Muslims, to really mean "Love Thy Neighbour." Therefore, Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. Like, their kidding, right? No wonder Fairfax is on a slide, and the calls to reform the ABC or abolish it, keeps getting more strident.

Not to be outdone in self evident stupidity, Australia's Human Rights pukes weighed in with more insanity. Islamic terrorism is not Islamic terrorism, because, well gee, nobody can agree on what a religion is anyway, so the Muzzies get a free pass by default. Looks like it is time for the taxpayers to save a lot of money, by abolishing the HRC, the ABC, and INLSM, since these lotus eaters have lost touch with reality.

Anyhoo, the multiculturalists have a tiger by the tail, and as usual, they have come up with ridiculous solutions. We can't criticise religious dogma because that is "racism". So, we have to push the line that all religions (with the exception of those damned Catholics) is beyond reproach. We will feed the public the line that all religions (except those damned Catholics) are moderate, and that any extremism which is self evident in Islamic religious dogma, is not really there. We then expect the Australian government to become religious experts and set up another publically funded QANGO to instruct wayward Jihadis on the error of their ways.

Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

That's right LEGO,

When the ABC axed "The Religion Report" along with their excellent investigative journalist, Steven Crittenden. They purposely threw him in the wilderness for the purpose of non-debate on religious issues.

http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/003887.php
The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

"Supporters of radio presenter Stephen Crittenden, who has been stood down as the host of Radio National's The Religion Report, have accused ABC management of seeking to suppress religious and cultural debate at the national broadcaster.

Crittenden faces dismissal at the end of the week unless he can convince management to overturn the findings of an internal investigation which found he had engaged in "serious misconduct".

The case involves an article written by Crittenden for the July 19-20 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald's Spectrum section, which examined Samuel P. Huntington's contentious 1996 book on growing Islamic unrest, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order."

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=16731#.VKhuqGSUfpB

Posted by cornonacob, Saturday, 3 January 2015 3:31:41 PM

" ... Runner I look forward to your posts, not matter how "out there" I think religious people can be, you always push (the) envelope. ... "

..

Posted by runner, Friday, 2 January 2015 3:04:04 PM

" ... Many would be still locked up if it was not for some sleazy lawyer finding loopholes in poor laws. Yep daily men drop faithful wives for another model, women murder unborn for convenience, 10 year old girls speak filth from the rot they listen to, teenagers kill themselves after 10 relationships and the list go on an on. ... "

Yes, there have been more than a few times when one of *Runner's* posts have left me giggling for quite a while too.

And yet, there seems to be such a sense of disillusionment, such a sense of sadness. And, to a certain extent, I can sympathise and understand that.

Perhaps *Runner* finds himself torn, with his great of Love for the Church on the one hand, and yet his abject horror at the behaviour of its leadership on the other.

Whilst there is much of a most foul and evil nature in the world, there is also great goodness. And given that largely what goes in is largely what comes out (which also goes to why the media carries on the way it does as with the advertisers) perhaps he would do well to immerse himself also in the goodness of the world.

We would all do well to be mindful of the following, which I picked up from a recent sojourn to Balder's Gate:

" ... He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster .. when you gaze long into the Abyss, the Abyss also gazes into you. ... " Friedrich Nietzsche

I love the way you socialist humanitarians think, Dreamon. You equate a few cases of rape and sexual assaults of women in the ADF, with the wholesale, institutionalised, and clerically sanctioned rape and sexual slavery of thousands of female captives by ISIL.

You must be obsessed with cultural relativism, if your mind can ignore the fact that rape and sexual assault in the ADF is a military crime, while in ISIL it is a religiously sanctioned prize of war. Using your peculiar reasoning, a socialist humanitarian like yourself can therefore regard ISIL as morally superior to the ADF, because at least ISIL only rapes the females of their enemies. Cuckoo. It is logic like that that, Dreamon, prompted me to renounce the socialist humanitarian worldview and start thinking straight.

It is just too bad if the Muslims resent the western world because we think we are superior. Of course we are superior, Dreamon. The western world has defined what the modern world is, invented almost everything in it, lead the world in scientific advancement, and our people enjoy personnel freedoms unprecedented in the history of the human race. The success of our societies is underlined by the millions of Muslims who are clamouring to get into our societies, with only a handful of brain dead western converts to Islam going the other way. Hopefully, the yank drones will squish them out of existence.

If Muslims resent us killing their brethren, could they please stop being the cause of almost all the trouble in the world at the present time? Muslims have been brain washed by the mullahs to think they are superior to us, but they just can't fathom why they are so poor, ignorant and miserable, when their moral inferiors are so prosperous and happy. That their stupid religion has everything to do with it, is something that never occurs to them. Especially since western loonies like yourself continuously making ridiculous comparisons between western institutions like the ADF, and Islamic ones like ISIL, thereby reinforcing and condoning the mullahs message of hatred of all infidels, to their ignorant followers.

Dan, "Is it not the right of parents to pass on to the next generation whatever whatever values they consider worthy?"

I would say no. Taking an extreme because its fairly clear cut to most, we don't willingly allow parents in believe in sexual activity for children to pass on those values. Parents caught doing so will generally be prosecuted. Not always easy to deal with it when its the values aspect without the act but overall we do try and protect children from choices of their parents which harm the children.

Religious belief is obviously a more difficult topic, some parents deal with it responsibly, others on both sides of the belief fence not so well.

R0bert

Congratulations on a good article, Laurence Maher
I am intrigued by the reference to the National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security (2006). I would like to see a copy but have not found it on the website of the Department of Immigration, though there are several references to it.
Grateful if Mr Maher or another reader can point me in the direction of a copy.

LEGO, Australia was conquered and invaded by genocidal, filthy white trash slavers. Some of you, have inherited and benefited unjustly from this.

WWII and the Japanese involvement came about because of the refusal of england, america and australia to recognise the equality of the races.

Your comments about western superiority echo this. I do not think we are superior. Different, yes, but superior, no. And for you to suggest that it is the West who has invented mostly everything just shows how truly ignorant you are. The Chinese for example had an advanced civilisation whilst your monkey relatives were still running around in skins.

If you knew anything about the ongoing legal inquiries, you would know that it is far more than a few isolated cases of rape in the ADF. Members of the brass remain unpunished for this but they may yet change. These individuals need to be put in the bin and the fact that they have not already goes to the heart of the corruption in this country.

I'll tell you one way to fix the problem. Let us hope that the others see to it that ISIS is armed equally, and the Muslim fighters have a lot of work to do to catch up on the wholesale slaughter which has been wrought on their people before the books are balanced out.

Let's see how brave your ADF is when they are not hiding behind uranium enrichment waste munitions and uranium plated battle tanks.

After all, you talk of superiority but they couldn't even put down a rag-tag bunch of Taliban.

And with all the West's talk about the Syrian use of chemical weapons being a line too far, who is too gutless to do anything? The ISIS fighters clearly are far braver, and your mob are just full of sh!t.

Dream on, Dream On, dream on.

phanto: "Religious beliefs are simply a camouflage for primitive behaviour..."

Couldn't have said it better myself. Gullibility and a sense of superiority pegged on a mob mentality make fools of them.

I get the feeling from your recent post that you are a Muslim, Dreamon. Firstly, only a Muslim could be thick enough to suggest the points you have made. Secondly. your use of the term "your ADF" and "your mob", suggests that whoever you are, you do not consider yourself Australian, and that your sympathies are with the enemy.

Please note, Dreamon, that we westerners do not like it when our soldiers are killed in action, so we do everything within our power to give them the weapons they need to

send as many of your Jihadis mates to paradise as they can, without getting killed themselves. The reason why we are killing your crazy friends 10 or 20 to one, is because we are a scientifically advanced civilisation. Which is more than can be said for religious nutters like yourself, or your religious nutter terrorist friends that you support.

If you want to fight us, Dreamon, you take on our technology. Crying "foul" because we are kicking the ever lovin' sheet out of you with our drones and our smart bombs, just makes us laugh. Your boys should have done a little thinking before they tried to Jihad us. But thinking is not what you Muslims are exactly famous for.

Last I heard, the Taliban, Al Qaida, and ISIL, all sheeting blue bricks every time they hear the lawnmower sound of a Predator drone overhead. The US air Force says that terrorising terrorists is fun. Your friends never know who is going to be blown to smithereens by a Hellfire missile coming down on them like the wrath of God. They can't meet, they can't train, and the yanks just love it when they try to travel. That is the best time to squish the slimeballs, vapourising them and their cars remote from innocent bystanders. Their friends have to pick them up with tweezers and bury them in buckets.

The Taliban are so scared that they are now sleeping in caves in Waziristan. And Allah has got so many Jihadis in heaven, that he is running out of virgins.

Thanks R0bert, for picking me up on a phrase which could have been better worded.

It is the responsibility of parents to pass on worthy and upstanding values to the next generation. Would we agree? Now, it could be we disagree over certain values. And some disagreement can be healthy, which is why we need the protection of 'freedom of speech', to allow for healthy criticism.

So I agree with Maher on the importance of our supposed civic freedoms. But I think he's incredibly short sighted to say that its only religious values that rely on 'indoctrination' for their survival.

Maher said religious values exist "ONLY because they are drummed into the heads of innocent babes." Is he ignorant of the many time honoured cultural legacies that have well served our communities for generations? Babies appreciate them, but intelligent adults can recognise them too.

I suppose when there is freedom to speak, there is freedom to occasionally make loose statements.

Dan, if I understand you correctly I agree with all of that last post.

The aspect of parental responsibility and rights in regard to raising children is not a simple topic. Responsible parenting is certainly not something that can be legislated (nor for that matter can the influences of others be easily regulated). There is a balance in there between trying to instil good habits and values which does not always sit easily with teaching our children to make their own decisions.

In almost every direction there are extremes which ar not in the childs best interests but which may suit the agendas of the parents.

R0bert

Leonard Cohen - The Future (Lyrics)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnaxvBsyigM