Boohoo, another muslim whinging about how hard life is. What about the time when Sydney women could walk alone without the threat of a Muslim gang, gang raping them. Or young Australian men can walk alone without the fear of being shot dead for being white.

Bashir,
A simply thankyou for enlightening us to the virtue of your religion, as practices in it’s purest form. Between you, Waleed, Ifran, Shakira and the other moderates out there, perhaps there is hope for this fractured, paranoid world yet…

Bashir, thanks. Kind of reminds me of some of the writing Kim Stanley Robinson has done about about Islam in some of his fictional works.

hoppa, did you actually read the article?

I didn't notice any whining about the plight of muslims in australia but rather a celebration of aspects of Bashir's childhood and an expression of concern about the impact of muslim extremism on that cleaner purer form of islam. Some of the same kind of concerns the rest of us have about extremists of any form impacting on our lives and freedom and on the future our children have to look forward to.

One of my goals as a parent is to share some of the good stuff from my growing up with my son as he grows. The picture will be very different for him than my experience but I'm kind of hoping that some of my values are seen as worth picking up as he puts together his own world view. Seems fair for Bashir to want something similar and I appreciated reading what he wrote on the topic even if the things I want to share with my some are very different.

R0bert

I sympathise with you Bashir and welcome you to islam 101 - what you have enjoyed in your childhood is profanity according to true islam, a mixture of tribal animism and folk islam is simply not acceptable. The events that followed 911 in 'islamland' are a revival and a call to unification and purification of islam "back to the book". We see it everywhere in the world from defiantly wearing the hijab to riots, rape, cry for attention, political infiltration... Islam is about world domination my friend - it's on a mission from Allah (or should we say God as it is often used for propaganda) to propagate and correct the world from other beliefs. Islam is a complete political system self sufficient that cannot exist under or next to any other regime. It's either islam or nothing. So get used to it, wipe your eyes and prepare your children for the future.

Isn't it up Muslims to say to these miserable faith floggers......get lost!
Your article is written about a time of innocence,a bit like we had in this country before the colonisation of Islam. Ruined in the same manner by the same people.
Stand up the bullies, make them eat their warped zealotry but do not let them walk on you.
That is no peaceful religion , it is a religion of hate and dominance, fit only to be demolished.

"Only a man who doesn't know the menace of a lion will try to rescue a sheep from its mouth".
Wise words expressing a sentiment applicable across a wide spectrum: appropriate to society whether it is within the one third of humanity devoted to Islam, Christianity, and their predecessor - Judaism; or to humanity's two thirds which are heathen.
They are just as current today.
Who dares to wrest society from consumerism? Consumerism wedded to economic growth at a preferred four per cent per annum and, predatory as a lion, upon its own environment?
Who dares to step between religious determinism for numbers of its own to increase, at a time when modernity has brought about increased fertility while lessening death rates as never before?
The sad decline of society described in the article would be from a number of fundamentalism inspired causes. Among them is the pressure upon it from an approximate doubling of Somalia's population between the times of father and son. And the forecast is for a continued doubling in about the same interval of time.
In neighbouring Ethiopia, Haille Selassie adopted the title "Lion of Judah"; but those concerned with population increase in east Africa face the lion of religious authority, of whatever persuasion, in trying to rescue ever-more numerous society from its jaws.