CJ Morgan,

How is Boazy or Boozy or whatever the hell you called him spreading fear?

By showing a link to a video of a HUMAN RIGHTS activist furious at Islamic values?

Are you leftists so cowardly that you can't handle hearing anything negative about the ethnic other?

Islam is barbaric - it's treatment of women must be changed. How dare you, or anyone, try to say that spreading that message is hateful!

Are you a white supremacist? Believe that only whites should live good lives, under good value systems like ours, where women and men are equal before the law, where the law is colourblind?

Do you even know what Sharia mandates? Go read mate, then come back and apologise.

So ignorant!

Boazy - I watched the video. It seemed to be a Muslim woman being interviewed on Bahraini TV. She made various claims about the poor deal that Muslim women get from some Muslim customs, and also (without any evidence proffered) linked those customs to sexual abuse of children.

If one accepts the subtitled translation (there was no soundtrack), then she said many of the same sorts of things that were strenuously promoted by Western feminists back in the 1960s and 70s.

Like in our society a few decades ago, I have no doubt that in Bahrain women suffer from customary subjugation by men, and child abuse occurs under the cloak of religion.

However, since your chief witness in this case is clearly still a practising Muslim, I don't really understand how the video strengthens your scurrilous attempt to further besmirch the Islamic religion. I would have thought that the fact that a Muslim woman can air such concerns on Bahrain TV is a positive sign for that society.

Benjamin - Having read many of your rabid posts about Islam and Muslims, I have no intention of engaging with you on this subject. Your comments make Boaz's seem almost sane in comparison.

Enough said :)

Benjamin, someone cannot be leftist AND a white supremacist. Leftie people are those who allow all sorts of other people into a country, black, white and brindle. They also have this terrible tendency to be tolerant of illegal queue jumping asylum seekers.

It is generally white supremacists who are right wing people who are afraid of anyone of a different colour to themselves. They hate asylum seekers who queue jump who country shop. Right wing people are also afraid of anyone of a different religion to their own. Sound familiar?

You should be scared to bits by someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is someone right wing people classify as an illegal alien, queue jumping to bring their barbarian cultures which will threaten Australian values.

That's why Ayaan was first a member of a left wing party. She is, or at least was, a feminist with outspoken views on the right of women to abortions. She is now an Atheist. I'm really curious how that fits in with her new friends in the USA.

Her statements increasingly became so extreme that she became more interesting to a right wing party. Until her statements became increasingly ridiculous considering her own back-ground as a Muslim illegal alien that it became embarrassing to her right wing party.

There is not a single conservative right wing person in this country who would have tolerated Ayaan Hirsi Ali if she had arrived here. Now they're her biggest fans. I've said it before. It is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

She is just the author of an autobiography. She was smart/lucky that she chose the Netherlands to illegally enter. Not Australia.

Mark, you place a lot of strawmen on the dry branches of your tree to make your morally and intellectually shrivelled argument against the intellectually and spiritually invigorating Hirsi Ali. Who of her supporters who accepts the canons of reason would ever suggest that to criticize Ali is to disrespect her freedom of speech, as you clearly imply? No argument could ever have any respect that doesn't accept criticism. And Ali's supporters, unlike you, would never put her argument in this intellectually shameful category.

Further, "equality under the law" also means-which in your one-sidedness you do not state-that one accepts unreservedly all the laws of the country if he expects to be treated as a citizen equally and without discrimination. The cardinal BREACH in your argument is that many Muslims breach the law of this country by widely practicing female genital mutilation upon their children. In what way would they therefore be treated "unfairly", as you suggest, if they were vigorously condemned for this abominable action, as anyone else would have been condemned who sexually violated his chidren, by the citizenry? One would expect the Left to be up in arms on this issue instead of running away from it on the silent feet of the rabbits, i.e. keeping their silence about it all in the name of not "breaching" the paper walls of multiculturalism.

You have created mythical arguments to make your case.

See:Australian Political Chronicle-http://ausiechronicle.blogspot.com

Why does nearly every discussion end up being a polarised debate about the 'Left' and the 'Right'? It's like watching a game of frikkin' ping pong.

I do not care what religion or political bent Hirsi Ali is. The most important aspect of her visit is that it again brought to the fore FGM and the fact that it is carried out here in Australia.

There are possibly hundreds instances of FGM carried out each year and, to our great shame, nothing is being done to prevent this.

Although medical staff are supposed to report cases, this is not done because it may discourage parents from seeking medical help for post FGM problems. Consequently, no person has ever been charged with FGM.

FGM needs to be stopped completely and this will only be acheived by taking the following action.

1. Much stronger laws with severe penalties need to be introduced in each state, all begining at a proclaimed date.

2. Much local publicity given to this and ALL prospective immigrants informed of this.

3. Insistance that the laws are carried out.

4. Stop immigration from those countries whose nationals carry out FGM here.

While we all pay lip service to the horrors of FGM, I wonder how many of us actually lobby politicians about the issue. I wonder how politicians can sleep at night knowing that they wilfully allow Australian girls to be tortured and multilated, when they are in a position to prevent it.

I cannot think of a more important issue for our community.

If all people reading this thread took the time to write to their local politicians, State and Federal, it may just help to save some little girls from the pain and suffering of FGM.