coach writes: "Iran has passed a new law allowing men to marry girls when they turn nine or reach puberty."

Please provide your source.

Coach I dont deny Islam is counterfeit , christianity is counterfiet too. Both cults are deciet dependent , you yourself claimed the Bible is not fiction. Of course the Bible is fiction. Are you to be trusted? What authority do you base your superiority over Muslims on? Your god? I defy you to prove the god you claim ? See how it is? You are in the same boat as your Islamic, Jewish , Hindu, Wiccan brothers.

I am capable of aknowledging the evil that is the Taliban or alqueida and I believe they must be stopped. I am also aware that the average first year university student is exposed to more information in one day than a member of the Taliban in their entire life time. What is the excuse for a western Christian lobbying to ban gay marriage or trying to brainwash innocent children in intelligent design?

This isn't a conversation on comparative religious dogma. The author is comparing a Muslim cleric, the representative of all Muslim of Australia, speaking the most ugly and racially abusive trash against his\their adopted society to his\their religious\cultural community. And trying through twist and turn to equate that to the language used by an individual to discuss the socially observable cultural challenges created by such people as Hilali and other like minded Muslims who do not want to integrate into their host societies.
Naturally Irfan is also misreported, misconstrued, mistranslated, misunderstood. It's a Muslim thing.

Dear Irfan

With regard to your post of 28 February 2007 at 10:32:33 PM, you do write the most utter twaddle don’t you mate??

To quote: “As I read more and more about the Holocaust, I am convinced that the things said about Muslims today are almost exactly what has been said about Jews for some 2,000 years”.

And … “Western Christians have for more than 2,000 years been programmed to hate Jews. Today, many of those Christians have transferred their hatred from Jews to Muslims. Usually, the reasons for the hatred are exactly the same”.

It may surprise you Irfan but a lot of us in the West view ourselves as secular rather than Christian. Also if you write that “Western Christians have for more than 2,000 years been programmed to hate Jews”, this just goes to show that your maths is abysmal. If we accept that Jesus Christ was an historical figure then his crucifixion happened less than 2,000 years ago. For several hundred years after his death Christians were a persecuted minority within the Roman Empire – were they participating in pogroms against Jews at this stage?? Please enlighten me. I sincerely doubt it by the way.

I recall a movie that I saw as a child that had been set in England in the late 1940s or early 1950s. One of the protagonists – a boy about my age at the time - said that his father didn’t like Jews, because the “Jews killed Christ”. Are you trying to suggest that warped Christians hate Muslims because the “Muslims killed Christ”?

CONTINUED FROM ABOVE

As I noted in my previous post of 23 February 2007, “Irfan also fails to realise that there is no valid comparison between the position of Jews in Germany in the 1930s and that of Muslims in Australia (or elsewhere in the world) in the 21st Century. ... European Jews in the 1930s were a small minority who had suffered centuries of discrimination and violence directed against them. Today's Muslims constitute about one-fifth of the world's population and enjoy rights in the West which their co-religionists in Saudi Arabia (the cradle of Islam) deny to all other faiths”.

That’s right Irfan, Muslims constitute about one-fifth of the world’s population and they enjoy rights in the West which your fellow-believers in Saudi Arabia deny to all other faiths. As a non-Muslim I can’t even visit Mecca yet you can visit – as I can – the Vatican City or Canterbury Cathedral in England.

What you fail to realise Irfan is that people are heartily sick of Muslims bleating about how hard done by they are. Especially when nations that describe themselves as Islamic have such appalling records on human rights - such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Sudan, to name just a few. If you want to pursue a religious faith that is presided over by a god who would be best described as a cosmic megalomaniac then it is your problem, not ours.

Irfan

Please understand I am not against you and wish to debate with you. I am more than happy to receive your comments and corrections

Firstly, since Christianity is a version of Judaism Judeo-Christian culture has been around ever since Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Only the term is new. Also Judeo-Christian culture is equally a product of science and the enlightenment. It has always had a strong Judaic element regardless of politics.

It is true that the holocaust was a Christian event but the Mufti started something new in Islam which is continuing in some areas, particularly Iran. Also the Jews continued to be dhimmis long after their acceptance in the west. Islam was much kinder than Christianity to Jews during the middle ages, but complete equality was still denied.

The Muslim world seems not to have reached the liberality of the modern West. I hope that I am wrong but this is the fear of people like Israeli and others that propels a concern about Muslim enclaves. Australians have largely accepted the Vietnamese but not yet the Muslims, the propensity of some to change the lands in which they have settled and the failure of so many Muslim states is a worry.

I do hope that Islam will accept the enlightenment in the same way that other countries (including Japan, Taiwan and India) have done. If that happens out troubles are over but until then the so-called Jihadists are a very negative influence.

PS I also have little respect for coach or B_D.