Hey Realist,

One name: Timothy McVeigh.

(Yeah, I know, not technically a "skin head". But he was the the US equivalent.)

Not a criticism or rebuttal of your post, just info.
odsoc

Good comment Realist.

I really agree with what Irfan said. People are people, and you are going to get the good, bad and ugly in every group that exists.

It seems like we have this expectation that everyone who immigrates is going to be very grateful and law-abiding. However this is not reality. There are always going to be people who come over and disrespect our culture, break the law, offend us etc.

I mean I remember not that long ago, everyone was making a big deal about the asian immigration. Being a Perth boy, everyone was talking about how they've taken over Northbridge with their gangs. This had an element of truth to it, but the problem was more a case of the poor response of the police at the time which has been rectified. Therefore its humourous to now read “Asian immigrants of the last part of the 20th century are now doing likewise. None of these peoples harboured any hope or desire to imprint their culture over that which existed here.”

The point is there is no Islam conspiracy being guided by every muslim immigrating about taking over Australia. There's just a few bad eggs. Let's face it, if half a million of us Aussies immigrated somewhere, I'm sure there would be some trouble-makers among us who would annoy the host nation as well.

As Scout is often eager to point out (lol), there are even bad eggs within the Christian church as well (shock horror!). All we need now is Yabby here digging up some fringe catholic terrorist site ;).

However in taking in such large immigration numbers, I believe the government needs to provide better guidance for these families. There also needs to be better co-operation with community leaders of these groups, which I'm glad John Howard's government is now doing. Finally we need to be realistic in the numbers we take in. Although I realise that we need our population to increase, we mustn't take in numbers that we aren't yet equipped to handle, otherwise it just ends up causing larger problems long term.

As per normal, whenever someone attack the Muslim culture, instead of looking inwards and fixing the problem, the Muslim community hits outward and attack the culture they are in

I do not see any muslim leader condemning their pupils, when they gang rape girls, because they were "Aussie" in appearance

The catholic church had came out and condemn the Cronulla riot.I do not see any muslim leader come out and say the same thing about what the ethnic gang did to cars in Brighton or Marouba.

I do not see followers of any other religion apart from followers of Islam, celebrating the death of thousands of people, when the twin towers comes down.

I do not see any other religions trying to rewrite history and say the hollocaust did not exist.

I think Islam has a major problem, instead of blaming the rest of society for their problems, they have to look inward and solve these problem, and the problems are many and they are significant.

I have been a reader on these forums for some weeks now and have been amused by the battle between the socalled “Islamofacsists” and the “arm chair Nazis”. It seems to either “my imaginary friend is better than yours” or “I’ve just googled your religion and have managed to dig up some disgusting facts”. To those who want to dig up every bit of nasty detail about the life of Mohammed lets face the facts, he was a product of his time – if there indeed was any conquering, slavery, rape, underage marriage – please name me one other culture that was not behaving in the same way 1400 years ago.

The actions of Mohammed are irrelevant, what is relevant is the tenants of the faith that resulted. To the Muslims on the site, I would like some clarity on a few tenants of your faith:
- sharia law – this is barbaric and I never want to live under its conditions – is this what Islam teaches?
- Dhimmitude – Christians get to live like second class citizens - does not sound like a barrel of laughs. Is this what Islam teaches?
- The House of Allah and House of War thing. Is this it a tenant of the faith that Islam aims to rule the world and that any area not under Muslim rule is the House of War?
- The taquifa thing (forgive the spelling) whereby a Muslim can lie to non-muslims about his intentions in the goal of ruling them in the end – is this what Islam teaches?

My interpretation is that Islam is prescriptive about pretty much everything and Christianity is more values based. If any of these tenants are a truly part of the teachings of Islam (a prescriptive religion) will they not always be able to be manipulated by extremists to cause problems?

I take a lot of pride in western society, and I truly believe that we've got it more "right" than the theocratic cultures which yield Islamic extremists.

That said, we've got to get over the idea that western civilisation is a product of who we are and not what we do.

The vast majority of Australians have no idea what underpins our democracy. They think we're naturally egalitarian and tolerant. That's why governments can undermine the public service, the courts, and parliament with hardly a peep from the electorate.

The people who mouth recycled dogma about democracy and free speech are every bit as small-minded and hateful as the terrorists. It's merely an accident of birth that they're shouting "deport the lot of 'em" and not "jihad against the Satanic west!".

The ugly fact is that people like a nemesis. All this tolerance leaves us with a hankering for someone we can hit with our aggression and judgementalism. I have more in common with a progressive muslim like Irshad Manji than I do with some suburban cretin who roams the beaches, forcing people to kiss the flag draped over his shoulders. Yet we're expected to believe that one is a terrorist waiting to happen, while the other is a compassionate patriot.

Maybe the majority of muslims are moderate and pro-assimilation, maybe not. We'll never know because the ignorant majorities on both sides get better value from anger and condemnation than they do from co-operation.

Howard walks the border on this issue, carefully allowing himself to appeal to conservatives, older australians, rural australians and xenophobes - while not venturing into the Hanson area, something that would generate strong criticism from the press (maybe).

The one positive aspect is that we are probably better off having a calculating moderate xenophobe in Howard (who takes these voters with him, and who somewhat represents the concerns of many others) than the existence of true splinter groups such as One Nation.

And as for the press... The Australian ultimately is a business - and it will do what sells, just like the current affairs shows.