Usual stuff from Irfan.

Leigh, I liked the last paragraph of your first post.

Cheers
Kay

The refusal to integrate that is marry outside of your tribe is the ultimate racism. Its the old black daddy or moslem daddy doesnt want his children to marry white girl and white daddy doesnt want his children to marry black.

The old kings instinctively knew that intermarriage, that is forming biological links was the way to avoid war when they married their sons and daughters off to the children of the King of another country.

Yes religions are tribes because strict religions dont't marry outside of their religions for generations and so they become tribes at the biological level. Religious tribes often mask there racist attitudes towards other tribes behind a smokescreen of religion.

When the Catholics were killing the heretics in early day England they wanted control of England. They couldnt admit to this and still be seen as good religious people, so they called the people they wanted to kill heretics(enemies of God) and killed behind a religious smoke screen. Heretic sounds a lot like Infidel to me.

This Howard "integration" stuff was blown definitively out of the water last week, in Adele Horin's punishing article in the Friday SMH.
He and his government have bent over backwards to sabotage by every means possible, civilised communication with Muslim communities and immigrants. Integration/assimilation programs and even teach-English courses have been gutted,in relation to muslim arrivals. and rather than encouraging a civilised response from the gutter media, he has assiduously dog-whistled the most mindless, hysterical components of it.
Howard has not yielded an inch in his studied hostility. Only traditional scapegoats like the unemployed and aborigines have fared as badly. This adds exponentially to the difficulties of these people settling, yet he then has the cheek to claim he can't understand how a few have not settled well. But, I have always looked forward to the day when Howard qnd his ilk impose the same rigorous demands they make of others upon themselves.
Nor has the harrassment been in the interests of the furphy of "security". Rather, an ignorant and arrogant group of politicians and their supporters have created a "bogy", through a foul and premeditated smear campaign for electoral purposes. So, the parading of the manufactured ideological "bogyman", including an unprincipled smearing of Islamic philosophy and thought and a thousand years of scholarship is as crude as the old "Judenhecht " of feudal Europe. But the stereotypes conjured induce enough fear in a deliberately ill-informed public, that it will vote for precisely those massaging the fear, out of a mistaken idea that such gangsters will "protect" them from what is merely a chimera. In the mean time, the Rules and Spirit of Law and Justice are dismantled to further protect those in power, under the pretext of the imperatives of a bogus "war on terrorism".
I must say I find Irfan's defence of Costello here incomprehensible. This narrow individual, who claims he was brought up by his parents to never tell a lie, has just done such damage to FOI in this country, under the heightened smokescreen of "governance", as to deny him ANY right to future trust.

Funguy

Couldn't have put it better myself.

I believe that only time will reveal the full measure of deceit and corruption that is at the very heart of the Howard regime. Ironically, it is the most religious government that Australia has ever experienced. Leading me to conclude that its anti-muslim stance is no coincidence.

Interesting report from John Warhurst, Australian National University who states:

" Public Presentation of Religious Beliefs

The public presentation of personal religious beliefs, now widespread in public life, is of equal interest to the denominational changes that have taken place. More than any other federal government the senior members of the Howard government have been active, in word and deed, in emphasizing (or at least being open about) its religious credentials and beliefs and in emphasizing the positive contribution of Christian values to Australian society. One has only to compare the publicly Christian approach of the Howard-Anderson-Costello-Abbott team, for instance, to the privately Christian, even secular,approach of the Fraser-Anthony-Lynch team in the 1970s to see that this is true (Mutch 2004: 15-16)"

and concludes:

"Not for the first time religion has had a heightened profile in Australian politics during the Howard era. Just as in the 1950s Labor Split the overall impact of religious intervention appears to have benefited the Coalition parties. In fact, some elements of the
story, such as the growing presence of Catholics in the Liberal Party and the diminished contribution of Catholics in the Labor Party, are actually a long-term consequence of the Labor Split. The cultural receptivity of the parties towards religion has altered.

Nevertheless, although the ultimate impact of religion on the parties may not yet be equivalent, the last decade is a more interesting story. During the Howard decade the influence of religion has been markedly more varied and has crossed denominational boundaries from the mainstream to the newer evangelical churches. Furthermore, religion and personal religious belief has been much more public. A wider cultural change has occurred in 21st century Australian politics."

The full report is available at:

http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/pubs/occa_lect/transcripts/

Howard plays on fear, superstition and the gullible.

Irfy

Your attempts to paint the Muslim threat in historical terms misses the point.

Yep in 1868 an Irish nationalist shot the visiting Duke of Edinburgh, 1980 later Armenians, Ananda Marga and Croats had their moments.

But you are clearly clutching at these historical straws to avoid the obvious that the common denominator for Australia's main and current terrorist threat comes from Muslim wouldbe terrorists - both "homegrown" and of the al Qaeda (international) type.

As you say its not a monolithic Muslim threat, but Muslim nevertheless.

Whether the motivation for wouldbe terrorists is more to defend (or exact revenge) for the occupation of Middle Eastern countries by the West, rather than a religious motivation, is a big question.

Even if nationally motivated, Islam, provides a psychological path for suicide bombing.

These nasty truths aside you should placed in the Muslim Community Reference Group for a very long time.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com

Interesting historical fact. The first recorded act of terrorism against Australians of European decent was a rifle attack on the Silverton Picnic Train by a group of Afghan Cameleers in 1915.