Umm..how..do..I..explain..my..view??..well..lets..start..with..I'm asshamed to call myself "Australian" after all this "C-R-A-P" thats been happening in Cronulla and arround Sydney (mind you I have grown up on the sydney beachs) and I am discussed with how these ... these.. ANIMALS behaved (The Animals I am Refering to are the so called "Australians" ) at the end of the day I CANNOT understand why the human race has to segragate groups ie. Arabs, Blonds, Asians, Wogs, ..and..so..on...and EVER one of these "Clicks" has a negitive connentation. Why can't it be I'm Human and your animal so were dominate to other animals and not each other? Why is that so hard to do? The word Patriotism causes more HATE and more Racism. Is is so hard to not care about someones apparance or herritage, rather we care about our future and the future of our children? Is it so much to ask that people wont put themselves first and that we consider others. When those.... Animals .... deceided that they riot arround crunulla do you think they even gave a "rats" about anybody else but themselves.! cause if they did, Firstly they wouldn't have done it at that time of night when people are asleep, secondly it wouldn't have been abusive so innocent people wouldn't had ben affected. and not lastly but 3rdly the views pushed out by the minority of australia the rest of INNOCENT Australians will be attack. much like what happend to muslims after sep 11!. I have been discusded with peoples behaviour in the past but vilionce begets vilionce.
Unfortunally after trying to figure out what I as in individuall can do about these situation. I realised no ONE person can do anything, you need those People that want peace to inform the public that it isn't right what these... "holligans" are doing.
and secondly we need to Re-Educate The Australian Youth and young adults. and thirdly (and most deffinalty, not lastly....proberbly would be a good idea to do this FIRST) GET JOHN HAWARD OUT OF GOVERMENT WE DO NOT NEED TO MAKE AUSTRALIA ANOTHER STATE OF AMERICA!!

Irfan,
Thank you for your well written and reasonable article.
For years I have staunchly maintained that Australia is no more racist than any other country, I can do so no longer. To my intense misery, I have to accept that there is something very nasty and dark in the Australian culture. I watched the footage of those Australians wrapped in the flag on Sunday, their faces contorted by hate and their appalling mob behaviour and I despaired. My daughters burst into tears as they watched the two young men being attacked by the screeching mob on the train, saved only by the extraordinary courage of one police officer with a baton. To the posters on this thread who have attempted to minimise or justify the behaviour of these young men, I think you need to do some really, really hard thinking about what sort of a person you want to be and what sort of country you want to be part of.
Sure, some individual young men from Lebanon may have behaved badly, just as some individual young men from Cronulla also behaved badly. Individuals need to be judged as individuals, whatever their background. The young men (and girl) attacked on Sunday have probably done nothing wrong at all except be born to Lebanese (or maybe just Lebanese looking) parents, but they risked serious injury or death at the hands of a baying, self righteous mob. There is no justification for this behaviour, none. As Ghandi said "An eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind."
Text messages continue to do the rounds on both sides. My daughter went on a date with a very nice young man of Lebanese extraction last night and he received a message. His response was to say how stupid it all was and how nothing on earth would get him near the place. An Anglo boy she went to school with received a similar message from the other side. He was at the riot on Sunday and intends to go again, Which boy would you rather your daughter dated?

How fair dinkum are we here? I dislike raceism in any form, includeing the growing minority raceism against the majority, raceism is always evil.
I Aussie born and bread, fear for my country as minoritys fight to undermine our way of life.
And can not find myself defending that minority within a minority who are acting in a raceist fashion.
And are we blind? this dreadfull weekend ahead will not only be about Australian youth miss behaveing nore was last weekend.

Kenny

We don't follow the Nueremburg laws here. However we do have some people here that follow a little book called the koran - and they follow it too seriously, which has verses similar to what you quoted.

Some people, and I think Ali Sina at www.faithfreedom.org is one of them replace 'infidel' with 'muslim' in koranic verses to show what pile of hate filled twaddle it is.