You are a goose, loudmouth (apt).

Re-read the article- from the beginning.. the issue is still current.

The reason it is still current is because of Abbott's and his string- puller Murdoch's hysterical nonsenses and the fall out from them.

Syd Hickman blew it in his first paragraph, when he claimed that Muslim behaviour has no relationship to the Koran. What a load a crapola , Syd. Everything about Muslim life is laid down as law in the Koran, including which hand you must use to eat with, and which had you must use to wipe your backside. How anyone could write something like that so obviously potty is beyond me.

Credibility is important, Syd. Once you blow it, nobody will believe a word you say.

And I am afraid that you got a lot of Islam's history backwards, Syd. Tony Abbot is sort of right when he says that Islam must undergo a reformation. We all know what he means by that. But you see, where Tony and yourself got it wrong, is that Islam is already undergoing a Reformation.

You see, Christianity was started by a Jewish pacifist, and his teachings extol the virtues of pacifism. It is true that Christianity morphed into a very violent religion, because this protected the interests of the Church and the State. But the invention of the printing press, and the translation of the Bible into the various national languages, began the process of turning Christians away from violence.

Islam was different. It was begun by a warlord who wanted his new religion to justify his military expansion, and to make his warriors invincible in battle. That worked a treat for hundreds of years. Islam became incredibly wealthy by virtue of the fact that it occupied the trading routes between Europe, China and India. Then it decayed when the Vasco de Gama sailed around Africa to India.

Today, Islam is the most backward civilisation on the planet. Muslims think that the reason why Allah has abandoned them is because they are not religious enough. They are now going back to the original scriptures of Islam to try and be powerful again. And the Koran tells them how to do it. Keel the infidels. Take their property. Make their wives your sex slaves. Take over the west through immigration and birthrate differentials.

LEGO " But the invention of the printing press, and the translation of the Bible into the various national languages, began the process of turning Christians away from violence."

Is that so? So we have no violent Christians now do we?
I think that would be untrue in the extreme.
Violent people will be violent, regardless of what religion, if any, that they have.

Just think of the Christian Yugoslavs, Germans and Irish during their various conflicts, killing each other and other groups of people quite violently as I recall.
Then let's remember the two world wars...plenty of Christians violently killing others in those wars wasn't there?

I would hazard a guess there are Christians being violent in many places in the world right now, Africa being one such place.
And all this long after they had read their bibles...

LEGO,

Jesus was not a pacifist:

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34 NIV)

"Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division." (Luke 12:51 NIV)

"He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." (Luke 22:36 NIV)

"I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war." (Revelation 19:11 NIV)

It all depends on how one chooses to cherry pick their holy book. As a fan of war (yet somehow pacifist when is suits), I'm sure you'll be delighted by the info I've provided (http://www.salon.com/2015/12/14/scientists_claim_this_is_how_jesus_christ_really_looked). I even specifically chose the NIV interpretation of the Bible so that you could not be accused me of selectively choosing the old, more blood-thirsty versions of the Bible. But Never fear, your Aryan Jesus loved war too.

What this article leaves out is the fact that the Islamic nations have all been moving towards secularism and modernisation, but this has been mostly thwarted by Western intervention.

Wherever the move towards secularism in the Islamic nations coincided with socialist principles, the Western nations moved to overthrow their regimes. Mossadeh in Iran in 1953, the leftist government of Afghanistan in the 1970s, the secular Ba-athist regime in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the Jamahriya government in Gaddafi's Libya and now Assad in Syria ...

The West has a track record of propping up Islamic fundamentalist regimes in order to preserve Western pro-capitalist interests. It also has a track record of destabilising nations that do not adhere to Western pro-capitalist interests - whether theocratic or secular.

The current preoccupation with the history of violent Islam is just a furphy. Wherever populations come under severe political distress, they tend to turn to religion to alleviate their suffering. And they resort to terrorism and guerilla warfare to preserve their national integrity. Islam is no different.

To Susieonline

Most Christian people completely reject the pacifism taught by their Prophet, unless they are "fundamentalist" Christians like the "Quakers." Most Christians agree with the concept of violence for self defence, and the concept of a "just war." But it is the underlying pacifism and the commitment to tolerance that Christian teachings advocate, which makes Christian (especially Protestant Christian) societies the most peaceful, just, and desirable countries on Earth today. Like all socialists, Hitler hated religion, but he praised Islam as a "warriors religion", and bemoaned the fact that Christianity was fundamentally a pacific religion.

Islam is different. Islam is a religion/legal system/political ideology which is inherently violent. It was started by a warlord, so it obviously must differ fundamentally in ideology from a religion started by a pacifist. It is a "religion" which openly seeks world domination, and it's holy scriptures encourage war, extreme violence towards non believers, extreme intolerance towards non believers, committing genocide on opposing cultures through making the females of defeated enemies sex slaves, and outright terrorism. It is hardly surprising that "fundamentalist" Muslims are not pacifists. Nor is it surprising that when Genghis Khan was trying to make up his mind which religion his Hordes should adopt, he rejected Christianity and embraced Islam.

How a supposedly "intelligent" woman like yourself can even try and equate Islam with Christianity is beyond me. How you can indirectly defend a "religion" who's beliefs are diametrically opposed to what socially "progressive" people think, is also beyond my comprehension. I suppose you are another one of those curious people who has accepted the Three Monkey Ideology You think that you can Save The World and stop war, if only every race, creed and culture is treated absolutely equally.

Sorry to destroy your idealistic illusions, Suze, but every race, creed and culture are not equal. And you don't have to be too intelligent to figure that out. I have always been astounded at how a commitment to an ideological fantasy can completely over ride a person's objective observance to self evident reality.