West says that the Buddist, Hindu, Pagan and Wiccan Sermons have managed to be conducted for decades without any grievances caused in this country. My answer to that is "not yet" but give it time.
Remember the bloody clash between the Hindus and Sieks in India.
These things can sometimes take a few generations to manifest themselves.

Rhian talks about antagonism and misunderstanding between Islamic and White Australia. There should be no Islamic and White Australia. There should be only one united Australian people.

As long as Islamists refuse to marry outside of Islam and White Australians wont marry Islamists there can never be one united Australian people.

Islamism has dominated these pages for quite some time - it is curious how deeply the trenches have been dug and how clearly thelines have been drawn - particualrly by the opponents of Islamism and indeed multiculturalism in any of its manifestations.

I dont know that the debate has informed too many minds and am wondering if this is a fools errand - posting on this site - I dont intend to change my mind - now there is a stubborn assertion - No one has convinced me of any inherent evil in Islamism - or of the veracity of a Pan Arabic conspiracy to take over the world
- terrorism does exist however so long as we continue to over value the life of a westerners over all other species our reactions will remain disproportionate, paranoid and consequently wrong.

I have to ask myself when I read some of the anti Islam rants herein - what is the plan? Does any one really believe that by bagging the sh** out of the beliefs underpinning a religion of some 22% of the world they will all of a sudden - go AHA! - those guys were right! Mohammed was a ponce - I wish to convert!.

Or if they are so inherently evil as so many whakos here contend - how do we get rid of them - which, lets face it is the covert message - that people are just to gutless to articulate.

Sneeky

"No one has convinced me of any inherent evil in Islamism"

clearly I have failed. Have a look at "Obsession: the Threat of Radical Islam" on Fox news if you have it.

"We ruled the world once, we will do it again, from the White house and Downing street"

You will never see the inherant evil unless you go deeper than the 'Screen Saver' sugar coated web sites which promote it.
You will see it when you actually look mate.. Sunni's believe the Quran+Hadith+Histories/biographies = 'Sunnah' the way/path.

Shia believe the Quran is eternal and along with some Hadith, the unchanging Sharia.

If by this point you have not picked up on the justification of:

-Taking female captive slaves as war booty.
-Keeping them in servitude.
-Using them for sexual convenience.

in Surah 23:5-6 ..where the heck have you been ?

I'm sure you would not suggest such things are 'good' ?

Have you followed my many posts from the earliest sources about the behavior of MOhammed and connected this to the concept of 'Sunnah' ?
and that in turn to Radical (true) Islam of today ?

Have you not seen the report in the hadith of Mohammed poking the eyes of criminals out with hot irons ? If you have.. this fails to convince you of his vengeful cruelty ? His actions were way worse than AbuGraib ... yet you don't consider them 'evil' ?

I'm astounded by your 'not yet convinced' remark.

Does it not trouble you that Mohammed would marry 13 or more women ? that he was described by his favorite wife Ayesha as loving 3 things
"Women, Scents and good food" ? Does this sound 'Holy' and 'Godly' to you ? If it does, then I suggest that your concept of God is a product of your own carnal desires! Haven't you heard that saying "If it sounds too good 2b true, it probably is"
Mohammed killed Saffiya Binti Huyay's father and husband and took her as wife. Good ?

jjjdrmot@yahoo.com.au for further convincing.

One wonders if this author has even read "the Clash of Civilisations" because he seems to completely miss the point. The book has nothing or almost nothing to say about cultures with nations but is a broad brush examination of the post Cold War world. The basic idea is that the world will dissolve into competing groups broadly formed based on shared cultures including shared religion. But is specifically not a book about the competition between cultures and using it to talk about the place (out-of-place?) of Islam within Australia completely misses the point. To further suggest that the book is about an "attempt to create a monstrous global threat" (ie Islam) is simply wrong. Sure it suggests that the Islamic bloc will be at the centre of many of the coming conflicts but he doesn't pin Islam as the cause. He talks of fault lines across which cultures and civilisations will fracture and fight and merely observes that many of the fault lines boarder the Islamic world.

I never doubt your sincerity BD -

However if we look at Surah 23 5-6 it just says sex with slave girls is lawful - and in the 7th Century it probably was and agood time was had by all.

Ya cant take a century old text an use bits of it to suit as one pleases - Christians do it all the time - and anti christians with an axe to grind can find endless bits of the bible prey offensive to women as well

The point I am trying to make is we a looking at Islamism through the prism of 9/11 - we have a distorted perception - and people are scrambling around to find reasonds to hate them - not unlike Bush scrambling around to find reasons to hammer Hussein - his perception of the truth about WMDs and the Al Queada link to Iraq was distorted by revenge - and we all know who is the rightful owner of revenge -

if are rotten now they were rotten in 1964 and 1914 and 1923 - where were we then.

And in the realisation they are evil what do we clammor for?their? ..their what - their destruction?, incarceration?, conversion? Marooning on their own various parts of the world? Fling them into space maybe -

they are here. they walk amongst us. If they are so rotten why has no one proffered a final solution to deal with 22% of the worlds population - all of whom seem hell bent to place their religious heel on our necks.

that is what gets me no one who rails against these guys comes up with any ideas - which leads me to suspect that the outrage is a veneer, a temporay reaction to an unsual set of circumstances - their extremism is fuelled by our foolsih behaviour - there will always be extremists and the same can be said of Christians and Jews