TRTF

Getting down to practicalities, does this mean we should have women only bathing beaches or muslim sensitive hospitals with only women staff treating women in burkhas while Imams prowl the corridors?

In advance, where do you think we should draw the line if at all? Can we afford these changes and not only from the financial point of view?

I suggest to you that it is unrealistic to expect that women should lose what they have gained over the years. In our society as yet unborn female children ought have their rights protected. I cannot do much about abuses of female adolescents and limitations on women in other countries but I will fight as will others to preserve their rights in our secular state.

Cornflower: Nope to both your initial suggestions.

I find it interesting that you speak of protecting the rights of the unborn - does this mean you are against abortions, and would support moves to restrict them?
I ask only because I suspect you would have this in common with muslims of varying degrees of fundamentalism.

You may be speaking of protecting rights, but others see it as restricting rights - believe it or not this can be used as a microcosm for muslim immigration.

On the basis of religious precepts and a belief that the muslim faith will harm Australian society, some are opposed to muslim immigration: largely because they feel it will impinge on the rights of Australians.

Other see it as impinging on the rights of others to seek a better life in Australia.

Which is right? I don't think there's a simple yes or no answer. Nothing about this is simple, and those who would have you believe that it is simply a matter of challenging some kind of opposing empire, or even about protecting what is Australian, are misleading you.

In answer to your question: I believe muslims should be extended the right that are extended to any other Australian.
And if they desire special beaches, or indeed special birthing procedures, then surely the market can dicate that through private arrangements if the demand is there and there is profit to be had.

Off topic, but personally, I hate with a vengence, the quote "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance".

To me it is the licence for people to get paranoid about other people, and to 'use eternal vigilance' and that can mean exactly whatever one wants it to mean. It covers it all from snooping on your Muslim neighbours, to ASIO going through your sock draw, to just not excepting someone's intentions are 'honourable' from the outset as you have to keep an eye on things. It can be used to justify all sorts of iffy behaviour.

It's claimed by a number of groups. Both the RSL and a Civil Liberties group use it in Australia. Wendell Phillips is credited with authorship of it but it's also put against Thomas Jefferson, a great man of his times, but still a slave owner.

US Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has even wheeled it out to serve on occasion.

So down with the quote. I prefer "the price of eternal vigilance is Liberty" which might mean that we show others more respect.

Cornflower wants me to "Get[] down to practicalities".

The practical message of this article is that liberty and xenaphobia don't make good bedfellows. Attitudes that lead us to hate and despise an entire group or to hold them guilty of acts committed overseas they have little or no control over makes no rational sense.

Democracies only work when a large proportion of people behave rationally. Western countries have shown a capacity to act rationally just as nominally Muslim societies showed this for centuries up until a few centuries ago.

I hope liberty is retained in the West. I also hope people in the East learn about its virtues. But we in the West must be vigilant, especially now that bigotry is making inroads in so many places.

That there is a problem with moslem migration is self evident.
Otherwise these discussions simply would not be there.

Like it or not, peolple see a problem & they see a direction of travel
that they do not like.

So why should we be bothered with it all ?
We do not need to import problems, we have enough of our own.
Let them stay in moslem countries and leave us alone.

Fear, bigotry and prejudice are the opposites of the principles we believe distinguish “us” from “them”, and they lead is inexorably into actions which undermine our other core values - democracy, freedom of speech and thought, protections from arbitrary arrest and detention, the equality of all citizens. The great majority of Muslims (and others) who have come to this country did so to participate in these things, not to harm them. We must be careful that the things we do to protect what is best in our society do not end up destroying it – in that sense, eternal vigilance is indeed to price of freedom.