Infran,
Re Domestic Violence :
From a statistical angle, one wouldn’t need a 50% increase in population of perpetrators ( whoever they may be )to account for a 50% increase in reported cases .
( I’m sure you can work out for yourself the other variables that may be involved)
But perhaps more significantly - the only populations likely to report domestic violence are those who see it as being immoral/ unnatural. – if it were part of some groups ethos they would be little inclined to report it .

Re Secularism:
Not all forms of secularism are the same .Secularism having recently evolved ( or more correctly, re-evolved) still carries many fundamentalist genes .

While secularists may not appeal to some deity. Many forms of secularism still have their liturgies , priestly classes , chosen peoples & their (lesser ) inquisitions .

Domestic violence is real & has been with us for a long time but it has recently been adopted by secular fundamentalists as a weapon to bludgeon their opponents. And it has becoming popular with that priestly class called lawyers as a component in plea bargaining.

[ One would be on safer ground questioning Mohammed’s credentials, in a mosque than question the figures & definitions re domestic violence in many of our secular institutions

Leigh,

If you read or watched thinkers like Karen Armstrong lately, you will see the Judeo-Christian slogan is an American term opposing the Abraham faith ie creating the "us versus them" which is divisive.
Any responsibe true Aussie could have picked that one up. But Mr Costello missed it along with his cheerleaders squad :yourself, Boaz and TR). How dare the Aussie muslims ask to be included in the elite "Judo-TaiKuando-JuJitsu-Christian" cocktail :-)
Sounds like a religious martial arts group.

You quoted:
"The same people talking the same crap"

In deed!

Irfan tells us that when he was a lad that his mother befriended all the Catholics in the street: "It was her way of showing solidarity with other oppressed peoples"!

Has that message rubbed off on you, Irfan? How do you show solidarity with people who are being oppressed by Muslims in many countries around the world?

Don't believe me about the facts of Muslim oppression? Check out the Religion Report of May 30th, 2007 at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2007/1937124.htm#transcript

As Stephen Crittenden notes in his introduction:

"The plight of Christian minorities in the Islamic Middle East is one of the 20th century tragedies to which we pay least attention.

From the Copts in Egypt, to the Maronites, the Melkites in Lebanon, Orthodox and Chaldeans, the Christian population of the Middle East is a fraction of what it was, and more vulnerable than ever. Nowhere is the situation worse at the moment than in Iraq. And few groups are more vulnerable than the ancient Assyrian Christian community. In fact, this week the Italian journalist Sandro Magister, has warned of the end of Christianity in Iraq.

In early May in a heavily Christian suburb of Baghdad, a Sunni extremist group began broadcasting a fatwah over the loudspeakers of the neighbourhood mosque: the Assyrian Christian community had to convert to Islam or leave, or die. Their Muslim neighbours were to seize their property. The men were told they had to pay the gizya - the protection money Jews and Christians traditionally had to pay to their Muslim overlords - and families were told they could only stay if they married one of their daughters to a Muslim.

More than 300 Assyrian families have fled, mostly to the north into the Kurdish region of Iraq where they are not welcome either. They are sleeping in cemeteries, they have no food, more than 30 of their churches have been bombed, their children are being kidnapped and murdered".

Inherent in Costello's assertion is the idea that values are or can be founded in a religion. That claim is mistaken. Rather, religious doctines depend logically on presumed moral beliefs. For example, you can only understand the Christian doctine of the atonement if you bring to it an understanding of wrongdoing. To settle the debate between the theories of the atonement you require to assume moral views on, amongst other things, punishment. Yet the doctrine of the atonement is the core of Christianity.

The core of Judaism, as I understand it, is the call of God to Israel to be His chosen people. Yet there was a dispute until first century AD about whether the call was for the sake of Israel itself, or for the sake of everyone else. It was settled (in favour of the latter view), essentially because it didn't make moral sense for God to have chosen Israel for its own sake.

I know less about Islam, but there is an ongoing dispute about the interpretation of the Koran, essentially between liberal ethicists and others--though there is a wide range of views. Some of the debate concerns the meaning of individual words--hence the variety of translations. Some, though, is on how the circumstances of modern life may require a rephrasing of what was written.

Here too, pre-existing moral views are required to partipate in the discussion rationally.

The beliefs that are central to these three religions thus depend logically on moral views. Those moral views therefore are not, logically cannot be, dependant on the religious views.

The reformers understood this perfectly well. So did Aquinas, and the Islamic thinkers whose writings led him to write his tomes. (Pun intended.) (William of Occam didn't, it is true, and neither did Ghazali 100 years earlier.)

The notion that people who come from overseas should adopt Australian values is confused nonsense. What kind of value is that principle itself? It seems to depend on a universal assertion--roughly, that people should adopt the values of the country they happen to be in. That is rubbish. If I had gone to Hitler's Germany, would I have had any obligation to adopt the anti-Semitic nonsense which had become widely accepted there? Of course not.

When I came to Australia, there were many widely held views which were mistaken. The double standard of sexual morality was widespread. People were still taking indigenous children away from their parents. There was common rejection of inter-racial marriage. It was thought to be morally acceptable for police to beat up peaceful demonstrators. Women were still being denied jobs one they married--though that was changing.

In the circumstances, I had a clear obligation, as an academic in particular, to do what I could to change those values.

There are still widely held values, that should be argued against. You give some examples, Maracas--(my sports team, right or wrong).

I accept, with modificatons on the equality part, the values of “respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, equality of men and women, freedom of religion, commitment to the rule of law, Parliamentary democracy, and a spirit of egalitarianism that embraces mutual respect, fair play, and compassion for those in need.” But certainly not on the grounds that they are Australian. That would be irrational.

Snappy Tom, it amazes me when Western Christians rabbit on and on about the plight of Arab Christians at the hands of Arab Muslims yet are strangely silent about the plight of Arab Christians at the hands of Israeli Jews.

But I guess for many so-called conservatives, Israeli Jews can confiscate as much church property in Jerusalem as they like. The Israeli army can build settlements in Beit Jalla (where the real Saint Nicholas lived) and can divide Bethlehem in two by building a giant wall. You might want to check Stephen Crittenden's archives and check out his interview with the Christian Mayor of Bethlehem.

Yes, Assyrians are suffering. So are many others in Iraq, a country that has been plunged into civil war. Whose fault is this? What are the Coalition forces doing to rstore order in Iraq? Isn't it the responsibility of those who invaded Iraq to maintain order and ensure sectarian forces don't pit Iraqis against each other?