SkidMatrix,

Apples & oranges in the mix.
First Theo Van Gogh story: pure tribalism. The man made a movie calling all Muslims goat fu…ers..Now you go into a bar in Houston Texas and call all Texan Americans the same word….lets see if any parts of you will come back. Another example, last year a Christian monk in Egypt was forcing women into pervert sexual relations after their confession. The man was arrested and the local newspaper that talked about the incident was destroyed by local Christians. A clear sign of tribalism is the extended blanket that link belief, race and actions.

Second, Salman Rushdie and “Le loup et le Chaperon rouge” known as Irshad Manji:

While I am not defending the Iranian regime fatwa at the time, There is a lot of what we call “Fatwa best sellers” which is in essence a simple formula for desperate writers:

Pick a controversial subject, invoke anger and then market the book.
I read a couple of Irshad Manji book: her lack of understanding of Islam can only be superseded with her self conflicting writing style.
None of the Loup & et le Chaperon rouge writers have substance in my view.

It would be interesting to know what sense of compassion the various Muslim groups attending their talkfest on terrorism today, has for Americans who lost loved ones in the twin towers on this very aniversary day [9/11].

Though America is largely a rough and decadent society, there are many individuals who pray for a spiritual change in the life of the nation and they are not proposing changes in laws by committing terrorist acts, but personal moral change of hearts and minds that can only happen from within the individual themselves.

Fellow_Human. What on earth are you wittering on about? Apples & oranges in the mix? What drugs are you on?
In a previous post I invited you to PROVE ME WRONG after you said that I "made it up". I threw down the gauntlet and you picked up a bogey-encrusted handkerchief. You have all the debating skills of a squirrel and the vegetable-cunning of a potato. I'm still waiting for your refutation (no ridiculous tangents please) of the original issues.
As for "Theo Van Gogh story: pure tribalism. The man made a movie calling all Muslims goat fu…ers."
Tribalism? Van Gogh made a documentary, written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch MP and ex-Muslim, called Submission (Islam), about the plight of Muslim women and the Qur'anic texts that promote wife beating and subjugation (see Qur'an 4:15, 4:34, 2:223, Tabari IX:113, Tabari I:280, Ishaq:496 and Bukhari, vol.7, book 72, no.715). He made the quote "goat fu…ers" in an interview some time before he made Submission. Are you saying he DESERVED to have his throat slit and have Islamic mumbo-jumbo stuck to his chest with a dagger, for daring to criticise Islam? Critics of Islam, and there are multitudes of them, have the absolute right to speak the truth -- which is apparently what you seem incapable of facing or seeing exposed.
"...Christian monk in Egypt was forcing women into pervert sexual relations..." tribalism, Theo Van Gogh - what, exactly, is your point? Salman Rushdie......Irshad Manji (never read her, but will now)? "None...have substance in my view". If you don't like it, don't read it. Was Rushdie calling for the destruction of Western culture? Death to unbelievers? Dhimmitude? Global dominance? Honestly, expecting logical debate with you and some of the other drabs in this forum is like expecting ravens to sing Be-bop underwater.

I, too, saw Lateline with Waleed Ali (nice tie, shame about the dodgy rhetoric).
Yes, those who value their rights to freedom of speech should be very concerned. But not about the new proposed anti-terrorism laws (in fact, I'd like to see a much more aggressive approach).
Why is it so hard for so many people to make the distinction between freedom of speech and speech that is directed toward the destruction of the society that gave us freedom of speech in the first place, and replace it with a 'fear society'? Freedom of speech was not meant to be and should not be taken to be a death wish.
"Those new proposals do sound rather dodgy" eh? Calling for the demise of Australia as it is presently constituted and its subjugation under Islamic law is to be protected as freedom of expression? Have Western societies no right to protect themselves from the spread of such ideas?
Trouble is, Islam as a religion does not have much time for such decadent, Western, Secular-Judaeo-Christian notions as freedom of speech (except to use it to eventually eradicate it) — and, more dangerously still, there are altogether too many leftists around prepared to pay obeisance to such repulsive and authoritarian instincts.
There is a time for peace and there is a time for war. When you are attacked, you must fight back. If you choose peace, when the enemy wants to kill you, you have chosen death.
More abhorrent than war is making peace with evil. In the words of the 18th Century British parliamentarian Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Those who advocate peace with Islam are fools.
Let's remove these masks of deception. Those who advocate “peace” and demand more appeasements and concessions for Muslims are not really working for peace. They are either the enemy itself, or the “useful idiots” working for the enemy.

Allan Behm is a strategy and risk adviser. From 1990 to 1994 he was responsible for national counter-terrorism policy in the Attorney-General's Department. He makes the following observations regarding the new terrorism laws in an article in the Age.

"What these measures fail to grasp is that terrorist cells cannot be eliminated using the traditional tools of legislation and law enforcement. They are not like criminal conspiracies that have structure, leaders, management and bureaucracy. Terrorist cells are ephemeral: they coalesce around specific terrorist operations, then mutate as other opportunities appear. They are opportunistic rather than targeted, which explains why terrorist events cannot be prevented absolutely. What governments, acting co-operatively, must do is to attack the causes and motives of terrorism by addressing the issues that alienate vulnerable communities and generate radicalism.

Australian governments have traditionally shied away from granting what are tantamount to royal commission powers to the police. The scope for abuse is too great. Yet the apparently unlimited scope of the notice to produce "information that will assist with the investigation of terrorism and other serious offences" has the potential to undermine both legal professional privilege and the protection of media sources. Similarly, the preventive detention proposal is far too open-ended, and lacks any sunset provisions that would remove it from the statute books when it is no longer needed. What is more alarming, however, is that these stern measures are unsupported by argument and evidence of threat. Nor is there any analysis of their likely effectiveness. And accountability is totally overlooked. It is here that one might suspect the victory of politics over reason.

Australia will not be more secure by becoming less free: our real defence is the rule of law, inclusiveness and prosperity.

http://theage.com.au/news/opinion/taking-away-freedom-wont-make-country-safer/2005/09/11/1126377201189.html

To Fellow Human,
I challenge you to prove to me that most of the "low-skilled" workers in the "RICH" gulf states are not from predominantly Phillipines, Indonesia, malaysia, etc.
And they are treated inhumanly. In the case of the Philipino workers, the money that they send home to their country amounts to the single biggest income source for their national economy. In a case study done by "Jane A. Margold, on Philipino migrant workers in the middle east", she found that many are not paid, abused, racially humiliated, etc. The only reason it still is allowed to happen is because the workers are poor and cannot defend themsleves.
Anyway, how does this connect to Islam? Well, I was getting at the concept of "dimitude" and various other things mentioned in the Quaran that tell muslims to disrespect others who are different. This is clearly a strong reason, since Islam has been a part of Arab culture for 1400 years. Also, if you take a little look at any islamic country, especially the Arab ones, you will find extreme divisions based on ethnicity and religion. Another more recent reason I think this is the genocide currently happenning in Sudan, where blacks are being swept out by the Arab militias. Why do we hear almost nothing from the muslim world?
Take Keysar Trad alone, a representative of the Lebanese Muslim Association, in 2002 at UWS there was a conference on "Islam & Homosexuality"(see the "GreenLeft Weekly website for links). Present was a certain Sheik Shadi who called for gays to be stoned to death in Australia and Keysar Trad, standing next to him, then told all muslim Australians to ignore discrimination laws when it comes to dealing with gays. This is just one of a thousand things I could bring up about the leaders who regular muslims like yourself do not denounce or even care to denounce. How do you expect other Austarlians to not think that your whole community is bigotted and racist and never fitting in out of disrespect?