Kalweb,

Thanks for your wishes.

Coach,

Apologies I thought you are another Boaz, you turned to be much simpler and plainly mis-informed.
On www.musliminsight.blogspot.com I addressed women rights in Islam and few other points you raised. Mohamed (PBUH) never called himself Obliterator or anything else, I think you are confusing him with Arnold Schwarzenegger the Terminator.

Few points you raised worth addressing:

Point 8: the myth of the Quran/ Islam hates Jews. This is absolute non-sense. The Quran (in our belief is God’s word not Mohamed) blames the Jews for 3 contexts only:

- Not following the mosaic law (ie charging interest to their brothers, working on the Sabbath, etc…)
- Rejecting Jesus (PBUH) and claiming they killed him.
- Accusing Virgin Mary of Adultery
2 Out of 3 reasons is because Jewish people rejected Christianity and 1 for not following their own scripture. Jewish people and tribes always lived peacefully among Muslims.

The points relating to stoning, etc…: this is no different to the Torah and the Mosaic law, it is meant to be a framework for legislation and authority to implement and not individuals. The spirit of the law is not to cut off body parts but to explain that the penalty have to be preventive (harsh enough) and not corrective or mild.

Btw, Jesus confirmed the Mosaic Law in the bible and did not remove it as you claim.

A question for you, why can’t you practice what you preach? Why the “God is love” motto always becomes ‘God is Love you are wrong” or “MY God is Love”?
Is this what they teach you on Sundays?

Fellow_Human - happy birthday my friend. I'd be happy to have you as a neighbour but might change my mind if you get the Harley. 10 or 12 houses away is about close enough if you get up early to go to work or a Saturday morning ride (and from my early morning walks most people who go to work early seem to have very noisy vehicles).

Irfan, can you please explain the context of the comment about the Tabloid Journalist. Are you suggesting the reported bashings did not happen? That is the only context where that comment could be appropriate and given the desire of some of us to calm the tension it seems like a really harmful comment to make without explanation. I have no first hand experience of the reported Lebanese Gangs. My knowledge comes from "Fat Pizza", some media reporting and what is posted on these pages. Are they an urban myth?

If there is any truth to what has been reported about them then they make a significant contribution to the suspicion and tension between muslim and non-muslim in this country. If there is any truth to the stories about the incident at Cabrimatta the posse on the beach should not be BD and friends but rather a large group of Muslims and people of middle eastern origin who don't want this kind of trouble. The loudest voices speaking against the thugs who bashed that reporter recently should be Muslim leaders. Treating any incident of this nature as trivial is feeding the fire and somewhat disgusting. If I've missed comments by you speaking out against such incidents then I apologise, if not it is time to stand and be counted.
- Do you condem the reported actions of the ethnic group at Cabrimata who reported threatened and bashed lifeguards?
- Do you condem the actions of those who bashed a reporter covering the arrest of suspected terrorists?

Again if I have badly misunderstood what you tried to say then I apologise, if not I am very saddened.

R0bert

Robert, I suggest you compare the reporting from the tabloids to the reporting (or lack thereof) from the broadsheets (including The Australian). The tabloids focussed on ethnicity. My comments were directed to some tabloid journos, not to concerned Aussies of any background.

Any attack on surf lifesavers or others involved in saving lives is an incident that needs to be condemned. I am sure everyone here condemns it, including the wackos. But these men don't commit such deeds because they have Middle Eastern appearance. Just as those calling for vigilante action don't do so because they are apparently of anglo-Australian appearance. This is a law and order issue that should be left to the police. 1 person has been arrested, and we have no idea what his ethnicity of religion is.

Irfan. I really would like to get your comments on the issues raised in my posting on your thread "Bridging the cultural gap- in a swimsuit". I posted the issues there because this thread was heavily into point scoring and I did not want to get involved in that.

Nor do I want to get involved in discussions about ancient or contempory religious theology. Current issues are far more relevant.

I read there was to be a conference of young Muslims last weekend and would like to know if any good proposals or ideas came from that.

Irfan,

If you were to take your article and replace Turk with man, Arab and Lebanese with woman, change the subject to emotions no matter how true it was would be construed as sexist.

A Harvard professor got whipped earlier this year because he said that men might be better than women in science. Media frenzy ensues.

Replace them with different races it can be construed as racist.

What do Arab and Lebanese mossies think of your article?

I’m not criticizing what you wrote, in my experience Turks are more with it than the others.

Regarding ESL classes, I’m bi-lingual, I wouldn’t mind brushing up on my German though, the Austrian accents on Inspector Rex just don’t cut it, they sound like Hitler.

I’m not making personal insults against you, it’s your ideology I question.

I used to argue with old and young nazis when I lived in Germany they rarely got as uptight as you when I insulted their prophet. Even skinheads could listen.

Perhaps I’ve insulted you via your prophet. The first time that I was ever told of him being a murderous paedophile was from an Iranian Muslim woman I met in Germany. The Turkish and Bosnian Muslim women that I worked with and befriended in Germany also said the same thing. As did the two gorgeous Turkish women I befriended when I returned to Australia. Up until then I believed that he was not a bad bloke, it was just his some of his followers that were a bit off colour. They also had numerous other interesting tales to tell.

To them, as women, Islam sucked.

Fellow Human.

I say such because the overwhelming majority of bad experiences came directly from dealing with Middle Eastern Muslim males. It was so completely in your face and impossible to ignore. Pre September 11 without any assistance from the media I saw young university educated lefty work mates turn into rednecks in weeks.

Thanks to my wonderful mossie lady friends mentioned above who gave me tips on dealing with mossie men, they helped defuse most incidents.

Frohe Weinnacht everybody

Irfan, I'm kind of in agreement with you re the gangs thing being a police issue but also wondering if that might inflame things more. I'll try and spell out my guesses about the gangs based on what I've heard and read and some generalised thinking - I may be very wrong.

- A gang or gangs exist in the Sydney area comprised of mostly young guys whose parents came from the middle east, probably Lebanon.
- They grew up with families who mostly socialised with others of similar ethnic and religious origin.
- As kids they were isolated from the broader community due to
o Cultural differences
o Religious difference
o Language difference
o Racism of the two way variety. Some european aussies don't like them and they don't like skippies.
- No acceptance of the idea of multiculturalism where it relates to cultures different to their own.
- Part of a broader group which feels picked on and hard done by.
- Probably not much interest in the spiritual aspects of the Islamic faith but retaining some of the cultural identity stuff.

I suspect that the police dealing with the issues only increases the sense of being picked on (right or wrong).

There are aspects of multiculturalism which I'm not confident that we have worked out how to deal with (although I think it works well in most cases). Ethnic gangs are one of the problem areas.
How best do we stop them without creating new problems.

Multiculturalism has both freedom and responsibility. It allows the freedom for people to practice aspects of their culture which are not in contravention of Australian law. It also carries with it as responsibility to allow others to do the same regardless of how the individual feels about the choice.

R0bert