‘The Big Fish’. Social injustice is the fact that the majority of humanity lives in unsustainable, sometimes sub-human conditions, while a small minority live in material excess. The balance is wrong, & we as a race are responsible.
“who forced the middle eastern countries to spend more on defence than the needs of the population?” - You’re implying an external influence or cause has resulted in the poverty being experienced in many individual middle eastern nations. I think you’re right. Examine each case as it stands. There are many historical reasons as to the political structure of each country, from the Monarchy of Saudi Arabia to the Tribal representations of Afghanistan. One thing is indisputable – western nations have been taking advantage of non-democratic & democratically vunerable nations for centuries now. The US is currently doing its best to secure oil reserves. It has no excuse for the violence it uses in the process. Multinational corporations frequently use their financial clout to ensure natural resources & cheap labour available in these nations are taken advantage of. These are huge influences. These are influences we can, to some degree, control.
“the responsibility of ones actions” Yes, we certainly need more of it. We are responsible for the external influences on the middle east & the people that comprise the nations are responsible for their own local affairs. Many of these nations are non-democratic. The west must be consistent in its values & not allow multinationals to influence the finances of many nations (unless of course it actually benefits the masses)
“Boaz”. I repent.

Aisha,

You are saying exactly what the terrorists want you to say. Well done. You should receive a certificate of appreciation from al-Qaida.

Terrorists want ordinary believers to turn against each other. They want to create a moral vacuum which they can fill with their nonsense.

I accept that your goal is to defeat Islam. My goal is to defeat terrorism and violence and war. If you wish to write the same things some Germans wrote about Jews in the 1920's and 30's, be my guest.

What great postings and revelations, it is good to see great debates. Are we not lucky we live in a country that can criticise, denounce, speculate, debate and hope? And freely express that. A true democracy. Ifran, am paying attention to all your articles and unfair dismissal is one of them. This one has captured my email time the most (I do have a life outside this forum which sometimes gets in the way). Shall always look out for an article by you.

Anomie, thanks for the feedback about George Dubya/US subsidies - spot on. Re your vision of Sr Janet lipsynching to St Leonard, Vatican Idol not! I shall now have nightmares about what's going on "beneath her resplendent chemise"!

They say it’s a war on terror, which is nonsense. One has to understand: it's a war among Muslims. Bin Laden’s fractional minority does not want to fight against empires; but to fight to restore an empire, the ancient Caliphe, that fight is for a particularly sectarian and vicious and exclusive form of Wahabi Salafi Islam. We have a huge number of Muslim allies; they don’t want to live in a Taliban world. Who would?

Remember what the grievances are, those people who’ll say their grievances are over Palestine; that’s nothing to do with it. Their grievances are the grievance of the unveiled woman. That’s what they can’t stand. They don’t want to see any statues that are not Islamic. In fact, they don’t want to see any representational art of any kind. Remember the Bamiyan Buddhas? They don’t want people to be able to listen to music. They don’t object to the state of Israel but to the existence of the Jewish people. They declare Hinduism and Shi’ism to be vile heresies, punishable by death. We absolutely disarm ourselves if we grant them any of their first premises—that they’re interested in justice or in a better distribution of resources. They’re fascist, pure and simple.

Yes, they know that in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, young Muslims go with their frinds to pubs and they occasionally take a drink and cheer on the same football teams and the next you know, they’ll be eating pork and going out, walking along hand in hand with women who are not their sisters. This, they feel, has to be stopped. It’s blasphemy. They don’t care who they kill. I don’t think it can be underlined enough. Anyone who says putting a bomb on a bus in rush hour at the time my daughter is going to school is protesting about the war in Iraq is lying to themselves and lying to others. It’s the kind of stuff that ceases to be tolerable to me and I really think today should be one of the days that’s remembered for rolling this nonsense back.

What we need in Australia is for the moderate Muslims who love our democracy and our way of life to be vigilant in exposing those dedicated to the cause of the religion above the equal rights of all citizens of Australia. They need to dob in those talking extreme language including those who continually vilify Western Christian Nations to our National Security. When we have Good Muslims doing the work for the police we can see some hope. However one of the aspects of Islam is deception, i.e. all methods are acceptable even lies and suicide bombings if it achieves the cause of having Allah reign supreme.

Firstly Di, “Anomie, thanks for the feedback about George Dubya/US subsidies - spot on” Not Quite. Did not mentioned that GW Bush offered to lower US subs if Europe also came to the table. What I am getting is that I am worried that even if the subs are removed how much of the benefit would flow through to the populations of the poorer nations? This was the context of my discussion and follows onto what Infran is saying (IMO) in that Muslims must do something to start redress the damage a small minority is doing to the majority who follow Islam. That is people have to take responsibilities for their lives and influence where they can.

Following on from that. Swilkie indicates that large multinationals and Western Governments have put enormous pressure onto the poorer countries and have also exploited them. Enormous pressures exist yes, exploited maybe once yes, in the fast receding past. But that has happened in many countries over many centuries including through dark-middle ages when Muslim empires exploited Spain and Northern African if you want to go back that far. But these empires introduce science and mathematics to Europe. So move to present day, little change. Take a look at Asia. Exploited once, maybe, but now Booming. To say a country is exploited because of enormous pressure Swilkie you forget one thing, material resources do not move and a country has them and nothing changes that. So Multinationals have to deal with that country. If you say that this pressure in cases dealing with Islamic cultures or African states leads to exploitation, well, sounds a bit racist. In essence you are saying that these societies cannot provide themselves with benefits as well as other societies eg Asia. Why not? Not because they are “not Western”. I think Muslims and Africans have the capability as any other society to contribute to the world but must face up to what impedes that path. And part of that is denounce terrorists, extremism and bad governance.