Ramadan may well be a duplicitous Islamist toad, just as Melanie Phillips is a demonstrated Islamophobic hack. David Irving is a loathsome holocaust denier, just as John Howard is a pathetically poor loser. Stevenlmeyer is a supposedly secular Islamophobe, while Boazy is an extremist Christian Islamophobe.

I support the right of all of them to express their ideas. Surely it's better than having all the hateful frootloops underground? At least if they are allowed to give voice to their loathsome sentiments, the rest of us have some idea of what we're dealing with.

Pericles.
I am an agnostic. Therefore I would be a prime target of the Islamist threat.
You should read a lot more about Islam and not only from those that oppose them, but the words from their own mouths.
Read "The Islamist" by Ed Husain.
If that doesn't wake you up to reality, I don't know what would.
I don't have any religious agenda. I doubt that David BOAZ has a purely religious agenda, but it is possible.
With me, it is not possible as I am opposed to religion in all it's forms.
Islam based on a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran is a dangerous religion, and its radical elements are scum.
You remind me of the people in England who refused to believe that the Nazis were dangerous until September 1939.
Funny thing is, the Islamists have got a lot in common with the Nazis, yet the "progressive" elements in our society are bending over backwards to try to accommodate them.

Ramadan was but a stone's throw from Sheik Hilali,yet we treated the the Sheik as a harmless fool to be tolerated and humoured for many a year.One of Paul Keating's proteges.

"At least if they are allowed to give voice to their loathsome sentiments, the rest of us have some idea of what we're dealing with."

That is true CJ Morgan, providing those like yourself who continually defend violent cults such as radical Islam, whilst castigating their own, do not succeed in gagging members of the public who are sufficiently courageous to express their concerns over those who wish to live in the West but despise our way of life.

History reveals that vigilance is essential when a sect continually threatens a league of nations whose beliefs differ to their own.

For some reason, I am reminded of the Japanese Aum Sinri Kyo "Supreme Truth" Sect accused of instigating the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack.

Most posters here would be unaware that this wonderfully charitable nation allowed these lunatics into WA where they bought a remote sheep station - Banjawarn. That was before they gassed the Tokyo subway.

Locals witnessed many strange events during the sects stay at Banjawarn including the poisoning of sheep by methylphosphonic acid, the metabolite for sarin gas, massive fireballs and an earthquake:

http://www.aic.gov.au/policing/case_studies/afp.html

And geophysicist, Harry Mason gives a differing account:

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_8.htm

At least a US Senate inquiry into the fireball event over WA took it seriously and other American scientists believe the fireball was a "Tesla shield" due to the sect's affiliation at the time with Russia. Australian officials claim they were meteorites (no craters found.) Who will ever know?

And no comments please on conspiracy theories. The event was published worldwide. I resided in relative proximity to Banjawarn at the time and my post is a simple reminder that we should never fall asleep at the wheel nor become sycophants to any cult or creed whose preachers continue to describe non-believers as dogs and infidels.

I'm not entirely sure, Boaz, how quoting the lady's comments back at her can be described as "attacking the messenger".

Melanie Phillips deals in the broadest of generalizations, which presents a problem similar to the one I face in your own posts. It is impossible to respond with specific "balanced evidence of why". You provided the perfect example:

>>She said: "Britain... is -locked into a spiral of decadence, self-loathing and -sentimentality that is incapable of seeing that it is setting itself up for cultural immolation"<<

That's her opinion, and that, it would appear, is that.

Given that sane and intelligent debate with her on specifics is impossible, one must provide the context in which she writes, to help people gauge the level of credence her "thoughts" should be given.

And there is plenty of that to go around.

"Sharia courts are dealing with Muslim criminals outside the criminal law; one reported case involved a gang of Somali youths who were allowed to go free after paying compensation to a teenager they had stabbed - with the police and courts apparently looking the other way" Daily Mail Feb 11 2008

The "police and courts" looked the other way because the matter was settled between the participants. Perfectly legal, standard procedure where the is no serious injury. Yet Mel presents it as evidence of the breakdown of law and order.

Insinuation and innuendo, presented as fact.

"Phillips repeats the rumours that Mohammad Sidique Khan, the 30-year-old teaching assistant turned ringleader, had "links to an al-Qaeda fixer". But according to the government report, "there is no reliable intelligence or corroborative information to support [these claims]". Moreover, there is "as yet no firm evidence to corroborate . . . the nature of al-Qaeda support, if there was any". New Statesman 12 June 2006

So choose: Government report or bigoted journalist?

>>One thing I note, in her case and mine, we argue issues and point to evidence, our opponents point to 'us'.<<

More Melanie-speak, Boaz.

But drawing wild conclusions from your own preconceptions and prejudices does not, and never will, constitute evidence.

dickkie: "providing those like yourself who continually defend violent cults such as radical Islam"

I don't suppose you'd like to provide just one example of where I have defended "violent cults such as radical Islam"?

It is a particularly annoying debating tactic to attribute statements to others that they didn't actually make, and one that seems particularly characteristic of the various extremists who peddle hatred in this forum.

Fortunately, it's very easy to deal with: put up or shut up.