Flissy has made the most sensible comment I have ever read on OLO. It Demands repeating: "the words of Jesus and the way that the early Apostles expounded upon his words lays great emphasis upon self-control - perhaps what we need is men having more 'self-control' today rather than 'control'"

The only improvement i can make is that it not only be limited to men who need more self-control as is increasingly becoming evident in the times we now live in.

ALL churches, with the possible exception of the Buddhist temples, are more about imposing control over others than helping us realise self control over our own desires and attitudes. In the main it is about re-inforcing a perceived belief that men are superior to women as it is almost entirely the men who populate the hierarchy's and ministries of the Judeo, Christian and Islamic Religions.

Ultimately it is more about maintaining Religious control over their human sheep that they regularly fleece out of part of their incomes as reward for looking after 'mens' souls than it is about providing a 'moral' society for us all and salvation in the hereafter.

By subjugating our personal control over to them as intermediaries for a 'higher' power we are then freed from the burden of having to exercise control over our base desires and exercising punishment upon ourselves every time we fail to live up to our, and therefore society's, expectations of ourselves.

Animals such as cats have no such problem. If we want to kid ourselves we are morally superior to cats and animals like them fine, some of us might actually succeed. Many of us obviously fail and our churches teachings are partly at fault.

Read your New Testament and the full teachings of Jesus carefully.

Brainy....thats why there are millions of Chinese Christians in the 'house church' movement. There are many groups in Australia also, who meet with a few others and worship God and study the scriptures, grappling with daily life and our Lords teaching.
There are also many autonomous, independant fellowships which don't fit your blanket statement "All" seek to control, but your point is very well made, and can often creep in in subtle ways over time.

Now for the purpose of this post:

I TOLD YOU SO !......
Not you Brainy, but the pro multiculturalists.
I've stated many times here that the more DIFFerence is emphasized, the more vulnerable communities are to EXploitation by 'dark forces' who see advantage in the polarization.
The current culprits/dark forces appear to be the Mass Media who are having a feeding frenzy with the Hilaly outburst. They are selective and focused for the MAXimum contentiousness, and are not letting up.
Who does this advantage and what impact will it have ?
a) It advantages NEWSCORP mainly as they are the primary drivers of the story.
b) The Impact will be further polarization and further exploitation of any tidbit of 'intolerance' or 'racism' or 'religious bigotry'.
c) The likelihood of a sequel to Cronulla is now much higher.

But in all this, the conclusion is really inescapable. Difference/Diversity does NOT give us strength, it gives us turmoil.

Aah..I hear our lefty/bleeding heart/MCers reply "But all we have to do is have 'responsible media' errrr sure.. yeah..right.. but SORRY.. this is a free society with a free press and the only way to avoid this is shock horror.. CENSOR them :)

After race riots in Malaysia they introduced "The Sensitive Issues" which were not allowed to be mentioned in the press or EVEN in private discussions.
1/ Islam is the state religion
2/ Racial privilege the Malay race.
3/ The New Economic Policy which strengthened Malay privilege
4/ The New Education Policy fast tracking Malays at the expense of Chinese.

But that of course is State Control of the Press and Privacy. We would never tolerate that.

After reading the posts, some of you sound like a flock of hysterical galahs.

Sure mufti's used a poor metaphor to try to explain his position. I suppose I should get hysterical about being compared to a cat, but then feminists have said much worse than that about men.

I didn't hear many protesting when this happened. So we have bunch of hypocritical hysterical galahs or maybe hysterical hypocritical galahs.

Lebanese Muslims are not the only ethnic group in Australia that regard Australian women and men as less than ideal. Many of these groups send their sons and daughters back to the country of origin to get married.

"All men are rapists and that's all they are" -- Marilyn French, Author, "The Women's Room"

"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan

"[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" -- Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will p. 6)

"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometime gain from the experience," said Catherine Comins, Vassar College Assistant Dean of Student Life in Time.

"My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter." -- Marilyn French, in "The Women's Room

Meanwhile, Wayne's comments were spot on - let's have an open debate about male behaviour and values, as well as female behaviour. Neither society would come off well.
Posted by kang, Saturday, 28 October 2006 10:24:08 AM

Great idea! YOU first Kang!

As much as it would be great to have an open debate about the values and behaviour of both genders. It simply is not going to happen!

You would be drawn and quartered, tarred and feather, keel hauled, skinned alive, castrated and finally burned at the stake and excomunicated. Oh! and subjected to a hundered years of gender sensitivity training.

I have the fortune or misfortune to know a few lesbians and if I behaved even a fraction of the way they behaved. I'd be in goal.

I'd probably be in goal too, JamesH - but not in gaol! I know, and work with a number of women who would identify as lesbians, and I only know this because of open and genuine conversations. The fact is that there is no way of identifying them as such. And they are intelligent, interesting, generous - and accepting of a wide range of ideas. By the way, I am a practising heterosexual (if I practice long enough, I might get it right!) And please don't mix up feminists and lesbians. There are plenty of heterosexual feminists, and plenty of non-feminist lesbians.

But this is not the point. We are talking about mysogyny and religiosity. In my view, the mufti's ideas are obscene and divisive. But bear in mind that Muslims don't have a monopoly on this. Remember that the Catholic church has condemned too many women to pain and suffering by its bans on contraception. And it is setting back the fight against AIDS (which affects as women as well as men) by its refusal to support the use of condoms.

I believe that it is not the fundamentals of religious belief that create the problem but the interpretation by churches and those who profess to be religious leaders - of all shades of belief. G K Chesterton said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting: it has been found difficult and left untried". I am not familiar with the Qu'ran, but I suspect that that comment could apply equally to Islam.

Oh, wise one, explain to me again how, 'the meat is to blame for the cats eating it'.