Let’s go a little further and remove offending passages from the various holy books. For instance, the simplistic Manichaean theme is something that would disappear after a thoroughgoing review. After all, many people might be offended by the tag ‘sinner’. And so on to the qur’an and other holy books. Once the offending passages are removed holy books may consist of a few pages only.

I'll agree its a fine line - but I've always been of the view that stereotypes such as these are a symptom, not a cause. You can't cure the symptoms until you cure the disease, and to simply ban certain images is not the solution.
The racist images of jews and chinese and so forth you refer to have never been banned - the public has acknowledged their racism and don't want to see them, which is why a cartoonist won't draw them - though the cartoonist could if they wanted to.

Once you start banning forms of expressions, you're hitting a very rocky road.
I for one, was disgusted to hear the Australian government was banning certain books that encourage terrorism.

I don't care what the book contains. I don't want to be told what I can and can't read.

The only real way to deal with problems such as this is to force a change in public opinion, so there is a non-violent outcry when they are published. Then the publisher won't publish them anymore. I'll acknowledge that its hard to change public opinion if you can't remove the cartoons, but that's just too bad.

" One day I called a Muslim editor of a leading paper in Sydney suggesting ways to repair the damage inflicted by cartoonists. His immediate response was “Why should we? We know the truth ...”"

If he isn't doing something about it, you can't expect the rest of us to go along with banning a form of expression.

Abe Ata,

Welcome to the western world were freedom of speech, stereotyping, and humour is a way of life.

You are blaming the media for portraying what Arab islamists are. If you don't like what you see in the mirror : CHANGE IT.

We all know that Arabic speaking Muslems make only 15% of the global muslem world. Most Muslems are Asians - who incidentally can't read or comprehend the Arabic text of their holy book.

The fact is that Muslem Arabs are more visible and more vocal in our society - they get a first serve of the sharpened pencils. Then they scream foul play and come back for more.

First you have to admit to yourself that Islam is the culprit not the media.

Second don’t attack freedom of speech because you don’t like what you see or hear.

Thirdly grouping Islam with other religions (Christianity) is not adding any legitimacy to your cause. Let the people judge your religion on its own merit – not how it compares to others.

Islam is a political movement, disguised as a main stream religion; turbo charged with religious zealots, fuelled by ignorance (50% of arabs are illiterate), motivated by a self inflicted stereotyping that cannot be homogenised in our free society.

The worldwide unrest of Islam that we are witnessing is mostly self-inflicted. Islam is growing faster than any other group. Migration (forced or otherwise) puts Muslems in a lose-lose predicament – with very little prospects for integration in new (non-islamic) places.

World domination by destruction of “other ways" of life is their only way out for the continuous global spread of this irreversible, inflexible, intolerant, so called “religion”.

TurnRightThenLeft, well said.

coach - did the author suggest that he was muslim? If so I missed that bit. Again your post looks like any excuse to let your own agenda's come before fair play but that is old ground.

I'd prefer to see the Aussie muslim community putting more effort into censoring the extremists in its own midst rather than telling the non muslim community how to speak (Irfan and others have done some good work on this) but I still see Kaiser Trad on the media seemingly speaking on behalf of the muslim community despite his previously referenced insults regarding the mainstream australian community.

I'd like to see the comdemnation of muslim extremism by mainstream muslims be much louder and more public. I would have liked to see the same level of protest at the loss of life for people living in Israel at the hands of muslim militants as I have seen regarding the loss of life in Southern Lebanon but that does not make most muslims extremists or supporters of extremists. Rather it shows that like most of us they have an ability to downplay the wrongdoings of those they identify with and get offended at attacks on what they percieve to be their community.

That is part of the human experience.

R0bert

Robert,
As an Australian Muslim who attended the first protest against the conflict, I agree that there needed to be the same level of protest against the killing of civilians in Israel just as much as Lebanon.
There can be no double-standards where the loss of innocent life is concerned. I was dissapointed after attending the rally because it did not address all of the complexities of this conflict: most speakers at the rally were merely playing the blame game. Although the rally was peacfeful, it failed to address the issues at hand. Hence, open forums like these and dialogue are a great place to start.

I will make this view known: Mainstream Muslims abhor and condemn acts of violence and we will persist in doing so.
There is no justification for violence or murder, criminals may usurp Islam and claim they speak for Muslims and God but in fact, they show complete disregard and misunderstandng of the tenets of Islam when they commit acts of violence.

Rayann

Dr. Ata stuffs himself up in his first few words: ‘Australian, and other Western ignorance about the Arab world.’

People just love to be called ‘ignorant’, and will always respond in a friendly manner. NOT!

As Arabs are the ones who have come to Australia, Dr. Ata should be concentrating on trying to improve Arab knowledge of the Australian and Western world. The rest of us will manage just fine without any knowledge of the Arab world. And even if we did wish to delve into Arabian mysteries, Arabs themselves have made it quite clear that they don’t want to be ‘looked into’.

Dr. Ata does admit that Arab community leaders ‘have not always been good at presenting their case.’ What an understatement that is. We only hear from them when they bellyache about how some Arab atrocity in the world will rebound on their ‘community’, or when they want our Government to remove Hezbollah from the terrorist list.

‘The pitch of imagery targeting Muslims finds no match’, eh Dr. Ata? Perhaps that could be because they are so very, very different from the other groups you mention? For starters, the others you mentioned can take a joke and have fitted in very well with the Australian love of extracting the urine.

It has to be accepted that Arab people are the most ‘different’ people ever to arrive in Australia. It will be a minor miracle if they ever fit in properly. In the meantime, they are safe and have the same opportunities as everyone else. It’s up to them make the most of it, and blaming the culture of a country they chose to come to is not the way to go about it.