Democracy and Islamic Law Don't Mix, Iraqi Official Says
CNS News, David Thibault, 10 April 2006

”Despite President Bush's insistence that the Iraqi "people want there to be a democracy," a pro-American member of Iraq's new parliament claims there is "no relationship between Islam and democracy." Islamic or "sharia" law has "nothing to do with democracy or human rights," according to Iyad Jamal Al-Din, and mixing Islam and democracy "is like mixing Marxists and capitalists."

Al-Din escaped Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime in 1979 but returned and was elected to the Iraqi Parliament last Dec. 15. He addressed an April 6 luncheon sponsored by the Middle East Media Research Institute.”
AT: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200604/SPE20060410a.html

Why are people so threatened by an alternative world view to their own? Are their values really that delicate?

What i took from this article is that we should seek to understand other cultures and accept that they may include something of value - rather than dismiss an alternative way of seeing the world outright because it doesn't conform with our own narrow values and experiences.

I certainly don't think the writer was advocating that Australia abandon our own laws in favour of Sharia law, as some alarmist commentators seem to be suggesting.

If we have to have every nations laws in place in Oz then let us bring back stonong to death for adultery and any thing we decide is not good or moral.
Oh by the way I read ona website last week that a woman was stoned to death which was started by a 5 years old Muslim boy who had to learn that women were eviland had to be killed ,it was a gruesome story as the woman would not die until a man dropped a huge rock on her head from 6ft up,then there was the 13 year old girl only their heads showing and 15 years old boy recently stoned to death for some small crime in an Arab state.
Could we really approve of and agree with this in Judeo- Christian Australia?
Our Christian God is Love .
Christ came to do away with the archaic laws and gave us liberty and freedom.
We do not want to go backwards 5,000 years but go forward.

Last Saturday a small Muslim group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, held a public meeting at the Bankstown Town Hall to discuss whether Australia's Muslims really should subscribe to those values Costello mentioned.

The answer was: No. No to democracy, a secular society and Australia first.

For instance, Usman Badar, president of the University of NSW Muslim Students Association, told the 300 or so people that "Western values are not worthy of human subscription".

Take democracy: "Democracy sounds nice enough, (but) not to a Muslim . . . Sovereignty is for none but Allah." And "Allah did not say . . . whatever the people want, we'll have this."

As for a secular society, "it relegates Allah to the margins of public life and places human beings above him. This, to put it blatantly, is as blasphemous as it gets".

Nor was any overriding loyalty to Australia possible. "The overriding commitment of a Muslim is to Allah, and Allah alone."

I expect to hear the usual protests -- that Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Students Association are small, representing few people.

But surely it's now clear that far too many Muslim activists and leaders have at times seemed to reject Australian values and even Australians themselves. To remind you of some of them:

cont:

Melbourne cleric Abdul Nacer Ben Brika: "This is a big problem. There are two laws -- there is an Australian law and there is an Islamic law."

Melbourne's Sheik Mohammad Omran: "We believe we have more rights than you because we choose Australia to be our country and you didn't."

American Sheik Khalid Yasin, then based in Sydney: "There's no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend."

Khaled Cheikho, now on terrorism charges in Sydney: "Sharia law is gonna prevail through this land, it's gonna be ruled by it, you tell Howard this."

Sheik Faiz Mohamad, of Sydney's Global Islamic Youth Centre: "A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself."

The Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj el-din el-Hilali, who called the September 11 attacks "God's work against oppressors" and blamed "Australian society" for pack rapes by gangs of Muslim Lebanese youths.

Keysar Trad, of the Islamic Friendship Association: "The criminal dregs of white society colonised this country and . . . the descendents of these criminal dregs tell us that they are better than us."

There's more, but you get the message. Perhaps it's time more responsible Muslim leaders got it, too, and realised they'd do more good by criticising their radicals than by attacking those who confront them.

The real battle is not, or should not be, between Muslims and non-Muslims.

It is as Arab-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan bravely put it in a debate on Al-Jazeera two months ago: "It is a clash between civilisation and backwardness, between the civilised and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship."

The hard truth is more Muslim spokesmen need to join us on the right side of that battle . . . and to fight with us, not against.

At: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18809142%255E25717,00.htm

I don't always fully follow the religous conversations that take place on this site so I can't make many constructive comments towards their meaning. However, notwithstanding a lack of religious knowledge, I am still fascinated by those who would seek to RE-combine church with state such as those few who, like the OLO author, who sees "no problem" with importing sharia "law" into Australian law.

So for those who are interested, I thought this article in the Asia Times two days ago was really really interesting and might add to debate from those commenters in a position to compare two religions and their approaches to morality, society and government.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HD18Aa02.html