This type of nonsense is to be expected from 4 Corners. They make a speciality of siding with and championing the world’s freaks, including murderous terrorists and other threats to the Western society that protects their freedom of speech and broadcasting.

The Neighbour transcript exhibits the hypocrisy of the media and Lebanese-Australians with a ‘boy’ being told how terrible it is to be called Lebanese when he has never been to Lebanon.

What rubbish! Most of the time the media and non-Anglo Australians insist on identifying themselves with any nationality except Australian; many of these people don’t even think of themselves as Australian.

It is not only Muslims who blame others for their own hatreds and abhorrent attitudes and behaviours. For instance, left-wingers are never wrong, it’s always the right; spoilt, undisciplined young people cry that “it wasn’t my fault”; parents with bad kids always blame the “company they fell in with”.

These people all have something in common with Muslims, though: they are all ignorant misfits who cannot take responsibility for themselves and need to blame everybody else.

People who encourage Muslims in their ‘victimhood’, as they encourage vicious little punks knocking grannies over, are increasing their own chances of one day being proper victims of Muslims and little punks.

The auther is of course spot on. I also saw the 4 Corners article I thought that it was a pathetic piece of journalism. But then it was the ABC.

The Muslims were playing their victimhood game to the hilt.

In the meantime the score for violents acts by muslims against others since 9/11,somewhere in the world, is now over 11,000.

"At the start of the show, Neighbour makes her prejudices clear..."

In contrast, Leon Bertrand shows commendable restraint in holding off until the fifth paragraph of this article before parading his own ego (Neighbour's report was nowhere near as insightful as what Leon has written on his blog) and making his own prejudices about muslims clear.

Extremism in any form is scary and dangerous. God fearing Christians blowing up clinics that do abortions is just as wrong as those claiming to be Muslim killing or hurting others. The problem we have to face up to in our society is how we deal with the aftermath of those events. We need as a society to identify that the fault lies with the perpertrators of these crimes. We shouldn't lay blame on others, just because they are from the same nation, religion or ethnic type.
I lived and worked in China from 1998-2000. During the war in Kosovo in 99, the Americans bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade killing 3 Chinese citizens. People in China were (rightly) angry over this. Considering the US argument that they were using an old road map bought from a service staion to co-ordinate their bombing, I'd be upset as well.
During this time I took a train trip from inside Sha'anxi to Chengdu in Sichuan. I had made this trip plenty of times before. My ticket was reserved and I was to pay for it when I got on. I was probably the only white guy on this trip and one of the conductors felt he didn't want some "terrorist" on his train. The fact I was Australian meant nothing as "we were all the same".
I was saved from being thrown (literally) off the train by a 75 year old woman who gave this kid a real dressing down. After I paid for my ticket, she apologised over and over for the conducter. Even though I understood why he felt the way he did, she insisted it was no excuse and asked that I don't think badly of Chinese people for his actions.
People do terrible things, but they are the ones responsible, not some poor bugger living somewhere else who is of the same faith or ethnicity. If we don't recognise this and start throwing them off the trains, how long before it comes back to bite us?

I would like a Muslim reader to answer two questions for me, which are critical to the acceptance of Muslims by other Australians:

- What percentage of school age Muslims attend State schools?

- What is the average number of children in Australian Muslim families?

Jack Sturgess

I would like to see a dinky di Australian lawyer take on the ABC and sue them for the slander of Australians.
These unfortunate young people are in a mental straight jacket tightly stretched by their own leaders.
In this land of freedom and opportunity, they spend their days punching, punching more in closed gyms. Do any of them work? Earn their living? If not ,why not?
They are crippled by their victimhood . Australia does not owe them anything, they owe it to themselves to prove that they can be good Aussies, then they will be at peace with themselves.They are making their own shackles.

So I take it it's ok to hurl insults at Moslems, treat them like dirt and accuse them of not being Australians just because some crazy extremists misuse the religion to justify terrorism? When will people grow up and realise that such behaviour simply exacerbates violence and will make things much much worse.

Jacks, why precisely is the average number of children in Australian Moslem families critical to their acceptance by other Australians? Is that also true for Catholics?

Four Corners was absolutely right to show this program. Carry on like that and we'll end up with a disaster on our hands.

"In the meantime the score for violents acts by muslims against others since 9/11,somewhere in the world, is now over 11,000."

I guess that the documented 80 to 90 thousand civilian deaths in Iraq since the Good Guys arrived to save them only count as one single incident - not to mention the hundreds of thousands that died because of the economic sanctions against them before their liberation.

Nice to see that somebody is keeping score.

The ABC would only be second to the SBS in cheering on Mr Arafat getting the noble peace price. Why shouldn't we be surprised at their propaganda. At least the tax payer isn't paying for the commercial stations when they mis report issues or have a totally one sided dogmatic view as the ABC reporters often seem to do. Kerry O'Brien and slip of the tongue on election night said it all. A balanced reporter is highly unlikely to have any senior role with our beloved leftist ABC.

The usual assumption of migrants coming to a new country is that they will assimilate. But with the help of the multi-culti grievance mongers the opposite is turning out be true. We are being assimilated ourselves. In many areas in France non-Islamic women need to wear head scarves to avoid abuse. In Britain separate bathing times are being allotted for Muslims who don’t wish to swim with the infidel. In America prisoners have sued and won when the prison authorities failed to provide traditional Arab feast foods like goat and camel on Muslim holy days. In Iraq and other places mosques are no go areas for non-Muslims even though they are used for weapons storage. In Canada a Sri-Lankan schoolgirl won a court order to allow Muslim girls to wear the Jilbab, fortunately overturned, because it was part of her culture. Yet the Jilbab has only been around since the 1970’s and was an Arab custom not Sri Lankan. In Australia, imams compare uncovered women to “cats meat” and suggest that rape is their fault. In Denmark the freedom of speech is being wound back for fear of insulting Muslims, while crucifixes in piss are considered art. In Guantanamo Muslims get their free Koran handed to them in gloves to avoid contact with the unclean infidel. Its one thing for Muslims to consider us unclean, it’s another entirely for us to agree with them.

The decision of women to wear Jilbab and men to wear beards in our communities is as much a statement of political intent as it is a statement of religion. It proclaims support for a more radical and political Islam that is totally at odds with the pluralism and democracy of the west. A recent survey in Britain found that 60% of Muslim Britains would be happy to live under sharia law. 7% of Muslims felt that targeting civilians, as in the London train and bus bombings, was acceptable. That’s 70,000 people who think its OK to murder civilians in your own country.
That’s why the fertility rate for muslim’s in Australia is important.

The problem I have with this article is that the author simply knows nothing about Moslem migration to Australia. For instance, he claims that most Moslems migrated as refugees. This is complete nonsense. Moslems migrated at different times and for different reasons. For instance, Albanian Moslems migrated during the 1920's to work as farm labourers. Many have now set up their own farms. Turkish Moslems came here as factory workers. South Asian Moslems largely come as skilled migrants.

The author also seems to confuse Moslems with Lebanese. But most Lebanese are Christians. And there is little or no difference between the cultures of Maronite, Malekite, Orthodox, Sunni and Shiite Lebanese - same food, language, dress etc.

What Cazza and rache said.

(I haven't the heart to argue this one, time and time again).

"The decision of women to wear Jilbab and men to wear beards in our communities is as much a statement of political intent as it is a statement of religion."

Next time I see that orthodox Jewish couple walking around Westfield at Parramatta in Western Sydney, I'll let them know that. Then I'll pass on your message for them to go back to the gas chambers.

Rache >“documented 80 to 90 thousand civilian deaths in Iraq ... not to mention .. hundreds of thousands that died because of the economic sanctions.”

I notice you haven’t bothered to break those figures down into numbers killed by Americans and those caused by other Muslims. It is typical of the left to always want to blame someone else. If the Sunnis decide they want to wipe out the Shia, that’s Americas fault?

There is a war going on within Islam at the moment for control of its future, and incidentally, for control of ours. So tell me. Are the attacks by muslims extremists in the Philippines and Thailand our fault? What about the 150 dead school children in Beslan? The killing of Christians and others in Dharfur? The attacks on Jews in Israel? The attacks on Hindus in India? The terror cell that comitted 9/11 were based in Hamburg. The recent riots in Paris by the so-called “youths”. Cartoonists in Denmark fear for their lives. Film makers in the Netherlands have lost theirs. All across the globe radical Islam is on the march, fighting not just for the future of muslim countries, but also of European, Asian and African nations.

I’m not suggesting that Australia’s muslim population is about to rise up in arms. What I am suggesting is that we need to stop fuelling the sense of victimhood which is pervasive in the Muslim communities. We have not only provided these people with a home, health care and a gov’t income, we have assured the protection of their right to practice their religion. Unfortunately we have gotten to the point where we are changing customs and practices because it offends them. Rather than the other the other way around.

BTW the sanctions were a UN initiative and many on the left begged for the chance to allow those sanctions to work. Well they certainly did work, unfortunately not on those who were its targets but is it our fault that Saddam chose to spend the money he received on weapons and aramaments instead of on food and medicine?

It interests me very much that I saw the same 4-Corners program as the author but I did not interpret it in the same way. I think most of us tend to read in an interpretation that reflects our bias. I thought Sally Neighbour was telling it like it is rather than making a case to blame non-Muslims. Perhaps she should have glossed over the ugly scenes and sentiments of protests against the application for a new Muslim school. Perhaps she ought have censored the angry victimhood of the young Muslim men. The program left me considerably disquieted rather than feeling guilty for what was happening to "poor disenfranchised Muslims". This article is one more example of someone with a strong ideological position using a dire social situation to beat upon a perceived ideological opponent. There was a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment out there and there was a lot of angry alienation out there from Muslims. Neighbour brought this situation to our loungeroom. Understanding of who and what is to blame, and how to ameliorate the situation is the task to which we should apply ourselves rather than taking opportunity to vituperate the so called Left.

The propagators and followers of the non sequitur that "non-Muslims are to blame" for Muslim extremism are bereft of imagination and historical sense. The causes might be many and complex but the dots that connect it with a KNOT to Islam are few and incontestable. It's in the religious fantasies of Islam, and the fatal attraction these have on many young Muslims, that extremism lies.

http://kotzabasis1australiaagainst.blogspot.com

I too felt disquiet at the 4 Corners show; and real despair watching the Camden debacle.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Well said FDR. In the present context what a pity it has not become a motto for us all so that we can welcome our Muslim brothers and sisters to this country instead of demonising them.

The only people who benefit from creating this fear and fostering division are those who bank the profit we make for them, and those poor misguided working people who address their own alienation by "lording" it over others, thus reinforcing their divorce from their own humanity.

Dear Bozo.. you got in b4 me.. shame :)

Ok.. I do recognize some very real biases here. Yes, some of them are in the article. Some of them are in the transcript and others in the posts.

1/ THE PROGRAM. The author correctly points out the discrepancy between Neighbours 'preferred orthodoxy' of poor alienated etc.. with the reality, 'educated, of considerable means and employed'

2/ RACHE She continues the other orthodoxy along the line of death of umpteen gazillion babies because of sanctions.. not mentioning Sadaam siphoning off available funds for his new palace or for military spending.

3/ CAZZA makes a reasonable point, which if nothing else, should re-direct the focus away from sizes of families and ONto the central doctrines of Islam.

OUTCOMES.
The four corners program at least provides a perspective, and one which these days can be itself used for a critical response.. on YOUTUBE. For a paltry $150 you can get a video editing package which will enable you to do all kinds of creative things and make your point 'seeable as well as readable.

Cow Towner,

I believe you twisted your story when alleging that a train conductor didn't want some "terrorist" on his train.

It is more likely the conductor was a hateful racist and simply wanted to bully a white foreigner. Quite definitely not because he regarded white people "terrorists".

Racist crimes and religion-induced crimes are two different things. It's wrong to put them in the same basket.

Four corners had a clearly biased position.Why does the smallest minority group in our country give us and themselves the greatest amount of grief?No other religious group or belief system causes so much angst as the Muslims.Could it be their intransient attitudes and philosophies?

This friction was happening way before Sept 11.It started in the early eighties.I remember the shooting up of the Statue of Our Lady in Parramatta by Muslim Lebs on Christian Lebs,the Council's solution was to have the statue removed on the grounds that it was too large and incited religious friction.

We are told by the ABC to be more tolerant for fear of the violent ramification that may ensue.Who is holding who to ransom?

Muslims have created this rod for their own backs.I see no olive branches eminating from Islam, nor do I see tolerance towards other philosophies.

Italians, Greeks, Chinese, and Lebanese (Christians) have come to Australia and, in spite of experiencing early rejection and outright racism from some Australians, most have integrated well into Australian society, and many of them have done exceedingly well.

All the Lebanese Muslims seem to be able to do is whine about how they are being "victimised". The Four Corners programme simply indulged this self-serving weakness and lack of character.

The blame was predictably put on the "white red-necks" who, according to the programme, for no apparent reason, are objecting to their presence in this country.

There was little or nothing about the years of abuse suffered by the residents of Cronulla, which led to the outbreak of violence against the Lebanese thugs.

Is there something about Islam that leads to these outcomes? I think there may be.

These Lebanese Muslims should be grateful that they have been given the opportunity to make a go of it in this great country. As an immigrant myself, I know I am grateful for the opportunities this country offers.

They should get some backbone, start doing some hard work, and stop whining and get on with it, as other successful immigrants have done.

Blame Fraser

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon#Demographics_and_religion

Muslims in Lebanon – about 60%, Christians – 40%

% of Muslim Lebanese in Aus - under 40%.

There were 3 major waves of Lebanese immigrants to Aus. The 1st 2 integrated successfully. The 3rd group – overwhelmingly Muslim, did not - 1976 following civil war.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20996448-601,00.html

Fraser was warned by immigration officials that:

“it was accepting too many Lebanese Muslim refugees without "the required qualities" for successful integration.”

“The Fraser cabinet was also told many of the refugees were unskilled, illiterate and had questionable character and standards of personal hygiene.”

So how does Fraser answer the charge of responsibility for today’s problems, eg Cronulla riots? In the way Fraser or any true lefty does – pass the buck.

“Fraser rejected yesterday any link and said modern Muslim youth felt alienated because governments had not done enough to help them integrate into the general community.” ….. but not his government. What did HE do from 1976 to 1982?

“But demographer Bob Birrell said the relatively depressed nature of Sydney's Muslim community could easily be linked to the lack of education and work skills of the 1970s migrants.”

“In September 1976, as a humanitarian response to the civil war …. cabinet agreed to relax rules requiring immigrants to be healthy, of good character and to have a work qualification.”

“(Fraser) said it would be wrong to assert that current tensions in the Muslim community came about because his government had allowed "bad people" to enter the country. “I think the EDUCATION SYSTEM and the COMMUNITY have got to take a pretty fair part of the blame (for current problems)” "

“Whereas earlier Lebanese intakes had involved an even split of Christians/Muslims, the submission said 90% of the migrants were Muslims and that a high percentage were illiterate and unskilled.”

“Dr Birrell, who heads Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research, said a study last year had shown Lebanese Muslims in southwest Sydney were less well-off economically than Lebanese Christians….this reflected the lack of work skills and education of many of the refugees who arrived in the 1970s.”

Interesting how Bertrand glosses the opening scenes of the program, featuring a mob of foul-mouthed yobbos saying

"MAN 2: Filthy grubs. Dirty filthy grubs.

MAN 3: No-one wants you here.

MAN 4: F@#* off wogs, go back to your own country Mohamed.

MAN 2: We pay our tax mate and we don't want ..."

as "anti-Muslim sentiment". I'd call it xenophobic hatred of the ugliest kind. Bertrand doesn't even mention the even more disgusting footage of the Cronulla riots.

Bertrand's thinly-veiled Islamophobia pervades the rest of this miserable excuse for an article.

Bertrand: "Gandhi Sindyan was the only person to bring a sober perspective to the program".

Bertrand conveniently ignores the participation of Prof David Wright-Neville, of Monash University's Global Terrorism Research Centre and formerly a counter-terrorism analyst of the Office of National Assessments in the Dept of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Instead, Bertrand intentionally distorts the words of Waleed Aly at a seminar at the Monash Centre, while completely ignoring those of Wright-Neville.

Bertrand: "She speaks with Waleed Aly from the “Global Terrorism Research Centre”, but he is simply an Islamic spokesperson and community leader, who opposes the banning of books which promote terrorism. So Neighbour has done the equivalent of asking a trade union leader for an opinion on industrial relations: you are never going to get an objective, disinterested answer"

[cont.]

[cont.]

Here's the actual transcript:

"WALEED ALY, GLOBAL TERRORISM RESEARCH CENTRE: It seems to be characterised methodologically almost by a kind of belligerence; that is that we feel the more aggressive we can be, the harder we can be, then the better that is, that it’s better to err on the side of being aggressive than to err on the side of being soft.

Now I can understand where that comes from, it kind of makes intuitive sense. But the problem is that as we repeat that approach what we actually end up doing is exacerbating the problem. We set in motion drivers that move us towards greater radicalisation."

"DAVID WRIGHT-NEVILLE: In this sense the injudicious use of hard power can in fact feed the process of terrorism.

SALLY NEIGHBOUR: Associate Professor David Wright-Neville specialises in the psychology of terrorism. His research echoes studies worldwide which show that alienation is a critical factor in creating terrorists.

DAVID WRIGHT-NEVILLE: Nobody is born a terrorist. In any society...only a few people will make the transition from membership in mainstream society to the point where they’ll involve themselves in violence here at the end of this transition.

Terrorism is a process, people pass through a series of processes. Along the way they cross what one might call the alienation threshold, at which point they begin to disengage from society and mix in groups of people who are similarly alienated, who have similar experiences, who feel collectively as if society is against them and excludes them from involvement in all mainstream activities...

...Once they’ve crossed the violence threshold they begin to ethically disengage from society and they’ll begin to contemplate killing others outside of that particular in-group into which they’ve gravitated.

Alienation is critically important. Most terrorist research shows that unless the person is alienated, coupled with feelings of humiliation, disempowerment and so on, it’s very unlikely that a person will become a terrorist."

While omitting the clearly "sober" perspectives of these experts, Bertrand instead refers us to notorious lunsr right blogger Tim Blair.

I could go on, but what's the point?

CJMorgan the comments by man 2,3,4 are to be expected after the torrent of abuse many have endured by many from the Muslim community.
Remember Sheik Hilali who implied that Aussie women who got raped were at fault since they were uncovered meat waiting to be devoured by males.This was the leader of of their community who was merely reflecting the Koran and community views.

The savagery of the beatings and murders their gangs have perpetrated on decent folk has been ignored,as with their criminal activities.They are disproportionally represented in our gaols and the Police are so fearful of any interaction,that they will not attend a disturbance when these gangs are in sizable numbers.

You don't deal with the wrongs and injustices of Islam by submission and hoping the violence will go away.Muslims have to realise that is they who must change,since our freedoms will not be bargained way by the weakness of the left.Eg ABC and 4 Corners.

If we give up so easily now,then our predecessors may as well have given into the Japs and Germans.

Anyone who adds the score between Islamic terrorism and Western political interference needs to take a good check of colonial history added to what is happening today in Iraq.

It was a couple of years ago that Mubarek, leader of Egypt was asked by a British journalist what was the main problem in the Middle East.

Because Egypt is not regarded as a terrorist Islamic nation, Mubarek's quick reply that the Middle East's main problem is Western Intrusion and Injustice was doubtless surprising.

However, many academic historians believe the above also,
and it could be backed by the fact that Israel, a non-Islamic little nation has been allowed by the Western dominated United Nations to gradually build up one of a most deadly array of nuclear weaponry while the rest of the Islamic Middle East is even refused normal protective weaponry.

It is so interesting that it was Henry Kissinger way back in the early 1970s when Israel first became militarily nuclear, predicted what the Middle East is plagued with right now, abnormal hatred between Jews and Arabs made worse by Western political easiness towards Israel- made much worse of course right now by the Western world looking to the Middle East to allay the global oil shortage.

CJ.. people are listening to what you say..don't despair.

From one of your quotes (Wright Neville) is this:

<<"the injudicious use of hard power" can feed the problem of terrorism.>>

The key word here of course is "Injudicious".

Our whole society is held together by rather 'hard power' in the form of police, and untlimately military.

The major problem with the Cronulla events was the LACK of 'hard power' where and when it was needed, in stopping both the ratbag element of the Anglos and the convoy of Leb Muslim cars in the revenge attacks.

The racist knee jerk "we don't want youz" which you quoted.. is the reason why I take the approach of examining the doctrines which feed the alienation, (Quran) and at the same time, to avoid a reaction exactly like what you observe, by adjusting immigration and education policy in terms of social harmony, cultural cohesian and political stability.

If you don't aim at those things, you surely will not hit them.

Sadly, as long as you tend to avoid closely scrutinizing the history of the growth of Islam from Mohammad to the end of the conquest of North Africa, the Middle East and Persia, India, Spain...paying particular attention to the role the doctrines and example of Mohammad play in all of that, you will only be able to make knee jerk comments about knee jerk reactions, like in your last post or 2 :)

Blessings.

I think Bertrand's central contention - that Ms Neighbour didn't do enough to emphasise the other side of the argument, holds up reasonably.
He really falls to pieces however, because he does a pretty similar thing. Aside from a couple of throwaway phrases, the entire article pretty much dismisses the idea that muslims in Australia are being ostracised, regardless of whether some bad apples have provoked this negative perception.

Though the article had some minor merit (albeit with quite a number of flaws), I'm not so sure about the posts in response. On reading the heading I knew the article was going to provoke a stream of grammatically spurious muslim-hating offerings, and reading the first few, I wasn't disappointed.

I do however, give the prize for most one-eyed post, to bigmal, for completely neglecting to mention that some muslims appear to have died at the hands of non-muslims as well.

TRTL

My comment did not exclude the possibilty of there being muslims also being killed. Thats why I used the words "others". If I had wanted to be on eyed, as you so suggest I would have said "non-muslims."

CJ Morgan,

What's your point?

Why did you quoted DAVID WRIGHT-NEVILLE ?? (Quote paraphased)): "Terrorism is a process, people... cross... the alienation threshold... begin to disengage from society and mix in groups... similarly alienated... crossed the violence threshold... and they’ll begin to contemplate killing others..."

You still do not understand. Above proposition is not rocket science. You have not said anything that we DON'T ALREADY KNOW.

I had already addressed that point on "Master of Islamist doublespeak" thread with this comment :-

<<This is only true in the case of followers of Islam, but NOT any other religion. Not Christians, Buddhists; not Hindus or Jews.
When Taliban lorded over Afghanistan, there was no social alienation in Afghanistan, no "ugly non-Muslim", no xenophobic rally, no "Islamophobes", no infidels. But nonetheless we found the worst extremists, fundamentalists right there.>>

Actually DAVID WRIGHT-NEVILLE would confide to you what I said is correct, (that the problem lies with ISLAM itself), but only if he trusts you not to dob him in as a racist, (or as you would call - an Islamophobe).

You failed to respond to my post on "Master of Islamist doublespeak".... So here is another opportunity for you to answer the following question :--

Tell us why, despite an absence of social alienation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, nonethelss we found the worst extremists, fundamentalists right there ??

CJ,
What is even more interesting is that the program actually neglected to examine the massive retaliatory attacks by car loads of muslim yobs. There was a lot more damage to person and property done on that day. Nor did sally neighbour do any research as to why a group of Australians, ( who are among the most politically inactive people on earth ) decided they needed a rally of the type we saw at Cronulla. To suggest that the “ xenophobic hatred of the ugliest kind” is only confined to white Australians is to live in fairy land. The insane game of turning aggressors into victims and vice versa is unfortunately a staple of the left. It’s an integral part of the “white guilt” that the soft-left have internalised over the past 30 years. Muslim rapist says” I’m depraved on account of I was deprived, your honour. Its really your fault”

What we are arguing is that the increasing anti-muslim sentiment in Australia can be better understood as a reaction to the behaviour/intolerance of certain muslim groups. You mention Islamophobia as if it was a disease that could be cured if we were all just a little more tolerant. But tolerance of others faiths and cultures is not a noted strong point in Islam. I don’t see many muslims holding out olive branches. All I hear is, “start doing what we want or there will be violence.” How many times throughout the program did a muslim interviewee mention the possibility of violence.

By stoking the muslims sense of victimhood, that they have learned so well from the grievance mongers of the left, we are creating a situation in which tolerance becomes less likely. You are completely missing the fact that today’s muslims are less integrated than they were 20 years ago. The malign influence of foreign imams payed for by Saudi or Iranian radicals has had the expected effect of radicalising the muslim communities. The radical islamists see us as effete, weak and lacking in will. We have given them every reason to believe this so far

Turn left then right,

You say >” I do however, give the prize for most one-eyed post, to bigmal, for completely neglecting to mention that some muslims appear to have died at the hands of non-muslims as well.”

You seem to have implicitly accepted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are attacks on Islam and that therefore the retaliation against any infidels they can lay their hands on is OK. That is precisely what the radical Islamists would have you believe, and it is what they are telling their communities to provoke a confrontation between Islam and the West. That kind of division allows the radcal islamo-fascists to gain better control over the own people, whatever the negative effects are likely to be for the average muslim.

Perfect example young muslim bloke makes a video vowing to kill as many infidels as he can. Then he’s upset he can’t go within 20KM of the Sydney CBD during the recent heads of gov’t meeting. Of course it us who are responsible for these head-hackers. We couldn’t possibly hold them accountable for their own actions.

In the mid 19th century India was suffering a spate of violence over the banning of the practice of suttee, wife burning. The locals claimed the brits were interfering with their local customs. The governor told them they could go ahead with their cultural practices but that we had one of our own which consisted of hanging from a noose the head of any one who burned women. That’s the message we need to send now. Where so called muslim cultural practices conflict with our cultural practices, muslim practices are going to have to give way. Surveys of the world’s least free countries are always over represented by muslim nations. For me that seems to be a very good motivator for us to resist the reverse assimilation being attempted by muslim migrants.

ZAKKY MALAH whining about how he was victimized.....

I've had personal email contact with Mallah, and the content of those emails from him, shows an extremely hateful, beligerent attitude.

He did a video on Youtube (since removed) in which he glorifies the worst criminals in the Goulbourn Supermax such as Bassam Hamzy as hero's of Islam..and calls them all brothers .

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22906309-5001021,00.html

Mallah is specially intolerant of Christianity and Christians.

Boaz

'Mallah is specially intolerant of Christianity and Christians.'

It is a horrible thing to say but that is why the left seem so comfortable with 'the religion of peace' The earth worshippers also claim to be peaceful but their actions certainly don't show it.

Arjay: "the comments by man 2,3,4 are to be expected after the torrent of abuse many have endured by many from the Muslim community"

Nonsense - it is to be expected from good old Aussie racists egged on by radio shock jocks and the tabloid media.

TRTL: "I think Bertrand's central contention - that Ms Neighbour didn't do enough to emphasise the other side of the argument, holds up reasonably"

Fair comment. Four Corners should do a program that analyses the roots of Islamophobia in Australia.

gz: "Why did you quoted (sic) DAVID WRIGHT-NEVILLE ??"

Because he featured in the program and provided an analysis of the causes of terrorism that was completely ignored by Bertrand.

"Tell us why, despite an absence of social alienation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, nonethelss we found the worst extremists, fundamentalists right there ??"

Do you know anything at all of the colonial history of Afghanistan, particularly under British, then Soviet domination, followed by the transformation of the mujahadeen into the Taliban after the Americans abandoned them?

Paul.L: " You are completely missing the fact that today’s muslims are less integrated than they were 20 years ago."

You seem to be completely missing the fact that the "West" (including Australia") declared war on "terror" in the wake of 9/11, but has confined its hostilities to predominantly Muslim nations. Also, see my comment about the conflation of some forms of Islamophobia with racism in the General thread on that subject [http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1593 ].

Boazy, Zakky Mallah is precisely the kind of alienated young Muslim whose attraction to extremism was fed by his experience of belligerence by Islamophobes. Yes, he was an idiot, but he was a peaceful and law-abiding one until further alienated by bureaucratic bullying and tabloid journalism. See http://www.bobbrown.org.au/files/campaigns/extras/australia's%20terror%20laws_the%20second%20wave.pdf .

"Aside from a couple of throwaway phrases, the entire article pretty much dismisses the idea that muslims in Australia are being ostracised, regardless of whether some bad apples have provoked this negative perception."

On the contrary. The article acknowledge that there is anti-Muslim sentiment, it merely questions the causes of this sentiment in the community and questions the 4 Corners account.

This is also where CJ's account falls as well. The hostility can only be described as anti-Muslim sentiment because it is not felt towards other groups.

I believe the article does rattle Sally Neighbour's account. Tim Blair makes the fair point that the English terrorists were not marginalized, and this calls into question how much marginalization plays a role in the creating of terrorists.

Indeed, as the article shows, bad behaviours committed by some Muslims occurred well before the media spotlight was thrown on them. It's pretty obvious that it is these unacceptable behaviours which have caused the spotlight to be thrown at them, rather than the other way around.

I can see that some are resisting the not-so-PC view on this, but most comm enters seem to be pretty sensible in rejecting political correctness and examining the issue

CJ Morgan,

Your ability to comprehend and logically reason are in serious doubt because you completely missed the point of my question.

Read carefully !!
Whether Taliban had evolved from self-replicating molecules in Afghanistani soil; or whether British, Soviet or Americans planted them inside Afghanistan, had nothing to do with my question !!

Let me re-phrase my question more simply :-

"Tell us why, despite an absence of SOCIAL ALIENATION in Afghanistan under the Taliban, nonethelss we found the worst extremists, fundamentalists right there ??"

( I am sure Bertrand has a stronger ability to logical reason and therefore chose not to refer to David Wright-Neville quote in the first place).

(Sometimes you can tell a fool when the fool keeps telling others what others already know.)

Now we shall see if you are able to respond to a simpler version of my question !!

CJ.. the Mallah case is quite interesting.

1/ Mallah wants a passport.

2/ Passport refused, Asio gives a negative assesmment. (reasons are not given, but they must have been substantial because there were 25,000 Lebanese Muslims with Australian passports in Sth Lebanon during the recent war who COULD get them)

3/ He becomes 'anti' toward the Australian government.

So far.. pretty normal, and perfectly legal.

THEN......he crossed the LINE.

a) He bought a GUN and ammo.
b) He made a video of a suicide message!

ALL THIS BEFORE...... anything had happened to him apart from the rejected passport application.
It was also BEFORE the undercover officer had approached him.
(if the chronology of your linked article is correct)

THEN... it appears he got caught up in his own image, and experienced national publicity via the Australian article.
THEN... the AFP decided to 'plumb the depths' of this tortured soul and see how far he would go.

THEN.. Mallah explained he planned to kill a DFAT or ASIO officer.. and did a video explaining his actions.

Now.. I saw his apologetic on the ABC and his suggested that he was just 'playing along, got caught up' etc.. and that "no..I never had any plan to kill anyone"

Unfortunately, the evidence suggests otherwise.

-He HAD bought the gun.
-he HAD bought ammunition.
-he HAD done a video.

all "before" the AFP undercover operative encounter.

Now.. you can take this assessment with complete confidence, because it comes from "behind enemy lines", -always a persuasive approach.
So it is not based on some 'loony right wing nutter Islamophobic rant' but a 'sympathetic leftist explanation' :)

In an attempt to avoid the sniping that percolates our discussions just want to point out what many academic historians believe what our troubled world needs now, especially in the Middle East.

The term - Sharing the Blame - probably more relates to family problems, but reckon if something similar is not achieved in the Middle East, we could be headed for outright war, especially if full blame is sheeted on Iran.

Like most academic areas, especially in universities, talks about Blame Sharing is becoming more common, as it also being discussed with religious clerics, not so much, unfortunately with right-wing fundamentalists.

There is also a section of Israelies who believe that Jews, Christians and Muslims should all get together and try to save the future world from a catastrophe which will surely outdo global warming.

For Godsake let's all get together on it.

CJ and that ilk- if you seriously think tossing around terms like racist and islamophobia somehow explains what happened in Cronulla 2 years ago then you do not have a clue.

Terms like those might accurately describe some of the behaviour and some of those who took part in the Sunday protest, but are only one element in the genesis of the situation.

Teenagers habitually form cliques based on interests like music, style and yes, even ethnicity. That testosterone fuelled teenage boys identify themselves as Leb or Maco or Wog as part of their development shouldn't surprise anyone, and nor should the ensuing territorial fights with other groups, who thru their privilege think that their suburb is just that, 'theirs'. As a good friend who runs a primary school in the Bankstown region says, High School teachers ask her "what happens in those 6 weeks over christmas to turn that classroom full of responsible angels into this room full of beasts?"; knowing all along that puberty is the answer.

Maybe too this was the 9/11 generation- those who were exposed to the horror of the twin towers without the analytical ability to understand. Add to this incidents such as the Skaff brothers race related rapes, and impressionable minds get it wrong. On both sides.

Bob Carr, when premier had no hesitation in fingering criminal Lebanese gangs in SW Sydney, and nobody called him a racist. It remains a mystery why he disbanded the special police task force dedicated to this very group. What is not a mystery is that Morris Iemma owes his political survival to his successful branch stacking of Lebanese Moslems from the Lakemba region. Thats on the public record.

TBC

What is not understood by people is the extreme levels of tension that existed before the riots. Everybody heard about the attack on the lifeguard one week prior, but I've yet to hear of any expert who has taken the time to look deeper. I swam at North Cronulla almost daily that year and witnessed (twice) groups of Lebanese youths accost skip girls in intimidating ways, threaten single white youths and intimidate beachgoers with their over-the-top behaviour.

My little vox pop of 12 14-23yo Shire kids in the week before the protest found 5 of them had been subject to physical or verbal abuse, 6 more had seen such instances; and only one who had not. This included my daughter who hadn't told me she had been molested.

The reality was that there were perhaps 200 youths who were running wild and no attempts at law enforcement. The govt. had effectively closed the local police station, Morris was in debt to their community and in no mood to police them.

That teenagers from both sides took the law into their own hands says more about all our failings than any deep seated fears or phobias.

Convenient labels are for the lazy, and fit the prejudices of those who use them

With respect to the Four Corners program, the issue isn't whether or not the Cronulla riots were an outpouring of racism or simply an extreme example of Sydney beach tribal conflict. The point was that it was expressed in racist terms on talkback radio and in the SMS messages that rallied the "Aussie" thugs:

"This Sunday every F*#@^%g Aussie in the shire, get down to North Cronulla to help support Leb and wog bashing day...

Bring your mates down and let’s show them this is our beach and they’re never welcome back"

The riot itself featured crowds chanting "F*#@ the Lebs! Let's keep our country clean! F*#@ the Lebs off! F*#@ off kebabs!" and worse, and people being attacked simply because they had 'dark' skin, including a Greek girl and a couple of Bangladeshi students.
[http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1590953.htm ]

In last week's program, several young Muslim men described how such racist slogans and mob violence made them feel further marginalised in their own country.

Similarly, Boazy's email mate Mallah had been subjected to racial abuse and had his home broken into, after receiving publicity over his passport application. This was prior to him purchasing the gun - funny that Boazy missed that bit in the article I linked to above. If Zaccy Mallah wasn't an alienated Australian born young Muslim, I don't know who is.

The Four Corners program attempted to explore how Australian intolerance, Islamophobia and racism might be implicated in the production of 'home-grown' terrorists. While it's not the whole story by any means, I think that its overall point was valid.

gz, I haven't answered your off-topic question for several reasons, including that it's difficult to know what you're actually asking. Is English your second language, perchance? However, the main reason is that you've shown yourself on various other threads to be an ill-mannered Islamophobic troll, and I don't want to play with you :)

Besides which, on your own account you didn't see the program and you obviously havn't read the transcript, so you're just talking out of your arse again, anyway.

CJ Morgan,

You find it difficult to know what I am asking?? Very interesting...Ummm...

Let me make it even simpler for you:-

"Tell us why, despite AN ABSENCE OF SOCIAL ALIENATION in Afghanistan under the Taliban, nonethelss we found the worst extremists, fundamentalists right there ??"

This is just a simple question of logic...

Things are getting clearer all the times about you:-

1. Mentally feeble in terms of logical reasoning
2. A hypocrite - Calling me names and swear but have the cheek to say I am ill-mannered.
3. Disingenuous and deceptive - Why did you answered my "off-topic" question previously??
4. Either ability to comprehend (English) is doubtful or you indulge in false pretense.

It is possible to make the question simpler, of course. But chances are I will answer it for you.

CJ

You obviously don't live in Sydney, or if you do, you are very selective in what you read or hear.

The Cronulla "riots" were the result of years of abuse from Lebanese thugs who tried to take over the beach, and prevent the residents of Cronulla from peacefully enjoying their own local beach.

The police did not take the matter seriously enough, and did not take steps to stop these Lebanese Muslims. Perhaps because they knew that they would be lambasted for "racism" by the PC crowd and people like you. On top of that, the legal system is infested with bleeding heart liberals, who give the Police no support in their attempts to protect law abiding people from being molested.

Your refusal to consider this and many other factors and incidents to do with the behaviour of the Lebanese Muslims, and not only in relation to Cronulla, says to me that you are trying to occupy some "moral high ground", for some unknown reason.

Do you consider the acts of the Lebanese over the previous years to be right? Do you think they were right to take their revenge subsequently on innocent people in suburbs far away from Cronulla?

You are certainly not being even-handed in your consideration of this matter.

If the Muslims continue in this way, they are asking for a far worse reaction in the future.

It’s funny that CJ can make apologies for a lunatic who buys a gun and goes and makes a video declaring jihad. Poor fella had been victimized by someone breaking into his house and calling him names and making threatening gestures. D’Ya think that the residents of cronulla might not have felt they were the ones being victimised? Perhaps? The left seems to have lost any sense of personal responsibility, except of course if you’re middle class and white. In that case everything is your fault.

CJ says “young Muslims … feel … marginalised in their own country”

CJ, how many other migrant groups suffered a sense of alienation in their first few generations here. Did you see any of them raving on about jihad and plotting to kill citizens of the country that houses and feeds them? The emphasis on your quote is that they “feel” marginalized, whether or not they have a sound basis for that feeling. Certainly discrimination of the magnitude suffered by Italian, Greek and Vietnamese migrants has not afflicted the newer Islamic arrivals. Their greater sensitivity has been fanned by radical imams and the grievance mongers of the left. How do you think muslim youth is going to turn out if they go to mosque and hear foreign, and local, imams tell them how disgusting our society is and that its their responsibility to god to fight it?

Take Britain for example. The protections enjoyed by the muslim communities over there are far more advanced than they are here, yet they have had far more problems. There have been recent demands from the Muslim Council of Britain for all schools to "ban 'un-Islamic activities' like dance classes, teach contact sports in single-gender groups, allow Muslim children to wear all-encompassing garments while swimming, and to limit certain school activities during Ramadan ..". There have also been calls for an introduction of sharia law and for Muslim holidays to become British national holidays. British flags are no longer flown in many places as muslims are offended by St Georges cross and its links to the crusaders.

Cont’

In Australia, Muslim university students have called for lectures to be rescheduled to fit in with prayer timetables and separate male and female eating and recreational areas”. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23269447-2702,00.html?from=public_rss

Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, the first Muslim peer, has called for Muslim women to stop wearing the face veil as “The face veil is a barrier to integration in the West. The veil is now a mark of separation, segregation and defiance against mainstream British culture.”

The problem as many of us see it, is that our western way of life is under the concerted assault of islamification by stealth. This represents a serious problem as there is little support for this outside muslim communities and the multi-culti soft-left. Muslims in Australia need to be heading towards integration with the rest of us, not asking for yet more accommodations at our expense.

GZ’s question is simple and obvious and it is clear you don’t want to answer it because it doesn’t fit neatly into your “white guilt” view of the world. The re-emergence of pan-Islamism and the associated violence can not be neatly explained away by pointing to the actions of the west. The already numerous and increasing number of battlefronts which radical Islam has opened cannot be explained away in this simplistic manner anymore. Wealthy Islamic kids, many with university education are involved in the new global jihad, so poverty and deprivation are not realistic causes either. Of course this completely discredits the left tired old explanation of “class” as a catchall. Race is out as well, since muslims are from a myriad of races.

Islamic head hackers are hard at work on just about every continent. From Sudan and Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania, across the whole of the middle east, Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, through Former soviet republics like Chechnya, South Ossetia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, In Asia, India, Pakistan, the Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia and more recently in Canada, the US and Australia. The death lovers are everywhere and there not going to wait quietly for the demographic changes that will inevitably deliver them more political power.

CJ, teenagers often express their individuality by joining little 'gangs' or groups, dressing alike, speaking alike with their own little slanguage and generally being anything but individuals.

Alienation and a sense of disenfranchisement goes with the territory. Along with puberty comes chest beating...... ah shoot CJ, you know all this stuff. Why can't you see that Cronulla was a) a genuine protest against rampant criminality and b) a rallying cry for every half-baked racist south of the Mason-Dixon- all 2-3 thousand of them, and c)a mob like any other mob.

I'll be explicit in one pre protest incident I saw- a group of 5 Lebs(as they describe themselves) sneering at a young girl passing by asking would she like to come for a ride- in the climate created by the Skaff brothers this was a threatening invite to rape and a gang bang.

Our craven govt. and police service were unwilling to keep order- they had dismantled the unit set up to eliminate known about Lebanese car rebirthing rackets, drug rings and gun dealing- effectively giving the criminals in that community a green light. And remember that Iemma owed his political survival to the Lakemba Lebanese.

CJ, I took the time to talk to Shire kids before and after that Sunday and there was nothing racist in their comments; and they were Islamophobes to the degree that they rejected the prevailing "cat-meat' attitudes of this group of kids,(sexism gone wild) and some were genuinely confused as to why these youths were so anti them, anti australian and so focked up.

Late last year my then 16yo daughter worked in the local seafood shop owned by 2 Leb Moslem brothers. One day she came home with a copy of Islam For Everyday Use or some such to show me the following gem about divorce "...should not do so in the period of mens because the women is liable to become ill-tempered.....this physical disability may lead her to act indecently and cause the male frustration'.

"The Four Corners program attempted to explore how Australian intolerance, Islamophobia and racism might be implicated in the production of 'home-grown' terrorists. While it's not the whole story by any means, I think that its overall point was valid."

It's amazing that CJ says that after the article effectively demolishes that argument by pointing out that the English terrorists were not marginalised, and how there are many others reasons for anti-Muslim sentiment in Australia.

Can this guy read at all? He doesn't seem able to take a trick at all. The article rebuts a theory, and all he can do is dogmatically repeat the theory, as though that's a satuisfactory response to the rebuttal. Whoeever said that this guy can't reason was spot on.

Also, notice how he accuses Australians of racism whilst also refusing to consider why there was so much fury directed at 'Lebs' in Cronulla. The continual bullying by Lebanese Muslim gangs in the area is a reality that this lunar leftoid does not want to face.

Whilst calling others racist, he has the nerve to disregard facts in favour of siding for the Lebanese thugs who had terrorised the beaches at Cronulla for years at the expense of their non-Muslim victims, who had simply had enough.

Like Sheik Al-Hilali, this guy prefers to blame the victims for being victimised.

How low. And racist.

The main reason I don't understand gz's question is because I can't discern whether he wants to know why the extremist Taliban gained control in Afghanistan, or why terrorists like Al Qaeda were located there. In either case, that's not what the Four Corners program was about.

I note that the increasingly shrill Islamophobic invective is becoming more personal, following gz's belligerent lead. I'm not making excuses for antisocial behaviour by young Muslims - I'm trying to understand why it happens, in order that we might be able to find ways for groups of Australians who evidently hate each other to somehow live together peacefully.

Also, there is far more to marginalisation and alienation than simply poverty. Terrorism wasn't invented by Muslims, but when it's combined with the extreme ideology of Islamism it is indeed something that threatens all of us. However, the solution isn't mass, blatantly racist beachside thuggery in response to isolated acts of racist thuggery - the retaliatory attacks after the Cronulla riot is evidence of that.

Certainly, better policing is part of the answer, but it isn't the role of the police to be community workers. Certainly, the Islamic community needs to be more proactive in promoting integration within the wider community, but they can hardly be blamed for feeling defensive in the face of the blatant displays of Islamophobia that have become more commonplace since 9/11 and Australia's sycophantic membership of the 'Coalition of the Willing' - who are widely perceived even by moderate Muslims to have declared war on Islam, which they have simply renamed 'Terror'.

Lastly, AJFA/Leon - don't you think it's rather low to post as emphatically and abusively as you have in defence of your woeful article without identifying yourself as its author?

Thought I'd respond to the responses to my earlier post:

Bigmal, you stated: "n the meantime the score for violents acts by muslims against others since 9/11,somewhere in the world, is now over 11,000."

Did you mention the hundreds of thousands of muslims that have died during western actions in the middle east?

Look - I'm honestly not one of those who thinks that terrorism can in any way be justified by the sins of the past. We're all accountable for our actions, and those who would attack civilians are reprehensible.

That being said however, many, many civilians - non military - people have died during the course of western retaliation.

Okay - yes, the west has the moral high ground in that we don't attempt to kill civilians. Regrettably, they die anyway.

A dead person is a dead person regardless of intent, and when our governments make stupid decisions that result in people dying, I don't think we can just sit back and use that 11,000 number in the manner you have.

So yep. It was very one sided.

Paul the intent argument I put forward there goes for you as well. I never implicity accepted it as an attack on Islam, I'm more in line with the cynic's attitude that the west is protecting its interests.

AJFA, in regard to anti muslim sentiment, I'd say that you're right in that some actions by muslims youths contribute to a negative perception. But you appear to be dismissing Sally Neighbour's contention that harassment is also to blame.

I'd say it's a combination of both. I concurred that Neighbour didn't examine sufficiently the notion that some acts by muslims have contributed to this perception.
You however, didn't accept the validity of her concerns either.

As long as both sides are just hurling insults and insisting they're the innocent victims, we're locked in a spiral.
As with most conflicts, neither side is spotless.

I think we're seeing things blown out of proportion, and this is a bad thing as it leads to further ostracism.

Can we agree on that score?

"Lastly, AJFA/Leon - don't you think it's rather low to post as emphatically and abusively as you have in defence of your woeful article without identifying yourself as its author?"

Posted by CJ Morgan, Monday, 17 March 2008 8:22:18 PM
___________________

IS THIS TRUE? You pathetic little man.

You still here, Ginx? I thought you would have kept quiet out of embarrassment concerning your previous ridiculous little rant.

You are a fine one to throw comments like "pathetic little man" about.

What could be more pathetic than someone who says "What BOZO said" and thinks that is a reasoned comment.

Go and play in your sand pit, will you?

AJFA is right,those of CJ Morgan's ilk refuse to let the reality interfer with their ideology.Why are not the Buddists,Jews or Hindus causing us so much angst?The Muslim philosophy is flawed.Just read the Koran and the bile it preaches.

We cannot allow vile and uncivilised ideals pervert our culture in the name of religious tolerance.End of debate

G'day green slime!

You wouldn't be yet another sock puppet?

I’m with bushbred, who speaks of “Sharing the Blame”. This is not to avoid controversy. It’s because we should accept that some of the Lebanese Muslims behaved disgracefully, and so did some of the “locals”.

CJ Morgan, I'm glad you wrote that last post. You often write so heatedly, that you sometimes sound more partisan than [I think] you intend.

We don’t have to take an “either/or” approach to this. It's very unlikely that one side is all right, and the other all wrong. We waste valuable time thinking this way, and trying to work out who "started it". (Actually, I would love to know "who started it", but I think the time spent finding out would not be time well spent - if only because you'd have trouble convincing the guilty side that it was them.)

The Cronulla Police, and Australian governments and the community generally, need to uncover whatever is wrong – without fear or favour – examine it and address it. No favouring the locals, and no favouring newcomers. Each side must treat the other with respect, regardless of history and regardless of their wishes. Some won’t like it, and will try to make excuses: too bad, it should be insisted on.

And, of course, it's not just a matter of law enforcement. The communities need to meet and have serious, courageous, honest and civil discussions. But, if the dialogue fails, the law should be enforced.

Pax,

TRTL

I quoted the 11,000 incidents figure since 9/11, because of the role played by the religion of Islam itself and how some choose to interpret it.

Whether it is Muslims killing other Muslims as is the case between Shias an Sunnis or Al Quaida against the Shia it matters not.

I cited this in the context of the feature article which criticises 4Cnrs for implying that it it is non muslims creating the extremism in Muslims, when the evidence world wide is demonstrably not the case.

Indeed one would do well to read Major Coughlin Treatise "It is to our Detriment". You will find it here,a very definitive and thorough piece of research.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/saving_major_coughlin.html

If you dont like that, try reading Dr Bill Henderson's (Univ Melbourne School of Historical Studies) letter in Saturdays Australian.This highlights the role of the Mufti of Jerusalem,Amin Al Husseini in Hitlers genocidal rage against the jews,all supported by texts in the Koran.

So much for being a religion of peace, and why there are 11,000 incidents.

The Lebanese portrayed in the program are just another small example of the particular mindset that has developed over the last 1400 years.

Paul.L,
I don't think it matters to the victim whether he or she gets shot by a frightened marine at a checkpoint or by an untrained contractor or blown up by a domestic car bomb.

The point is that we are the ones who let the genie out of the bottle.
We are the ones who dismantled the police, army and civil service soley because of their possible former political party membership and started all this chaos.

We (the silent allies) are also the ones who helped Saddam put down the populist uprisings urged by Bush Senior after Desert Storm because he favored a military coup rather than an uncontrollable and possibly sectarian civilian government. He wanted another Saddam that would follow orders.

We also allowed Turkey to kill thousands of Kurds along the border because of the imposition of the no-fly zone that stopped the Iraqis from defending their own territory.

You may also be interested to know that the majority of all recorded terrorist incidents between 1968 and 2008 have come from seperatist/political groups and not religious ones. The incidence of recorded attacks in South America was (until recently) greater than those in the Middle East.

And as for ("don't generalise") BOAZ, didn't our very own AWB contribute to Saddam's efforts to overcome the sanctions? The UN and the world knew what was happening for years, yet let it continue. Two senior UN representatives resigned in protest over these sanctions. It was the banning of various chemicals such as chlorine to disinfect drinking water and basic medicines that led to many deaths - especially children - and not just Saddam's covert diversion of funds to other areas.

It's these sorts of things that fan hatred across generations.

Finally, your assumption that I am female is (typically) incorrect.

This all seems a lot like the anti-Asian sentiment that was rife pre-2001.

Only then it was all triads, drug-running, non-integration, racial enclaves, street gangs, refusing to speak English and adopt our values.We had all sorts of threats of social upheaval and being out-bred by foreigners and rabid shock-jocks warning us of the danger.

There was probably a 4-Corners programme about it at the time too.

Maybe when the Muslims are able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of us and attack some other group, they will finally be accepted as part of the community.

The sock puppet speaks.... :) Green slime? Ginx.. we can always rely on you for very 'creative' abuse .. one of these days, it will tweak to you that it only reflects on 'you' 0_^

ISLAMIZATION OF AUSTRALIA. Yes.. this is me being hysterical....xenophobic...and ranting.

I checked out that article Paul.L gave us and just about kacked my dacks!

HOW DARE .. let me repeat that HOW DARRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Muslims students try to restructure our whole educational time tables at Uni's to 'suit their prayer times'? Good GRIEF.. there is not enough space in 350 words for all the exlamation marks I WANTED to put after those words.

Howwwww many times, have we said "Thin end of the wedge"... 'Camels nose inside the tent'...etc... how dull, thick headed, lacking in basic common sense and intellectually challenged does a person need to be...NOT to see that all we have been harping on over the years now, is actually ....'true'...

I can't recall the thread, but I did once say "Muslims in community will seek to re-structure their host community in TERMS OF their own value system."

MORE IMPORTANTLY... is that we identify the "mindset" behind these bizzare requests.

1/ Islam is the ONLY true religion.
2/ The WORLD and all in it belongs to Allah AND his messenger.
3/ Islam is a POLITICAL system. "A way of life".

The truly bizzare nature of these requests, is that they are a declaration of WAR against our established norms, they are just doing it by 'our' means of freedom, to establish THEIR non freedom.

Can anyone imagine the outcry if, for example prayer times WERE allowed, and some activist piped up with "Muslim prayer times are discriminatory" ? Oooooh the howl would be heard in Mecca. "Islamophobia".....

PS."times" don't make a scrap of difference for a Christian. We are called to FREEdom.... NOT "LAW"

THE REAL SOURCE OF MUSLIM ALIENATION!

yep.. here it is. THEM.

Lets examine some double speak/spin/propoganda from the one described as:

“Australia's most prominent female Muslim leader”

GOOD COP.(Aziza) 2005

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/vet-imams-say-muslim-leaders/2005/08/22/1124562804298.html

"Among them is the president of the Muslim Women's National Network Australia, Aziza Abdulhalim, who says all imams need to have grounding in Australian law and the Australian way of life."

BAD COP (AZIZA) 2008

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23269447-2702,00.html?from=public_rss

Islamic leaders yesterday backed the push by Muslim students to have their lectures arranged to accommodate prayer sessions, but said such a move would be essential only for congregational Friday prayers.

<<Female Muslim leader Aziza Abdel-Halim said yesterday it was a religious duty for those who followed Islam to preach with their fellow believers on Fridays.>>

COMMENT. Who (aside from those who have had long stints in Larundel psychiatric facility) thinks that 'just friday' adjustments would be the end of this ?

At THIS point in time, there is no 'accomodation' (for that read 'Islamification') but it is being requested. At some FUTURE point in time, a further request for 'fitting in with daily prayer times' might seem like a minor adjustment only. "Oh.. but you already allow friday prayer times.. why not daily"?

CALL TO ARMS.. haha. .gotcha... the 'arms' I'm talking about are spiritual..and social. We can all take individual or group action of a protest nature about this, as long as it's peaceful and lawful.

RMIT sounds like a good place to start.

Thanks, Goodthief, just happened to have played a lot of sport. And as we know good sportsmen do try to get togther and share the blame, as happened recently with us and the Indian cricketers.

But sharing the blame, of course, like forced to shake hands or kissing one's wife in front of the kids after an argument is possibly the simplest but most wonderful example in the pursuit of peace.

CJ,

i just didn't want to confuse anyone, that's all.

You have now finally admitted that the behaviours of some Muslims have contributed to anti-Islamic sentiment. Reasonable people can quibble about how much it has to do with it, but its good that you have finally moderated on this one.

I still think that there is little evidence of social alienation producing terrorists. To repeat, those failed terrorists in England had not been marginalised at all.

To repeat, terrorism involves the accepting of ideas that together can be described as the "Islamist narrative". Often it's young and impressionable minds being influenced by radical Muslims and then persuaded to plan a terrorist attack. No social alienation is necessary in this process. To believe that Muslims are being victimised, it is not necessary for you, as a Muslim to have been victimised.

Ginx

I’m shocked and dismayed by your devastating attack on my species.

It’s not my fault I was born green and slimy. You are obviously a “Frogophobe”. Also, you don’t seem to believe in the Great Green Toad God in the sky, and my religion Frogism...

I feel completely misunderstood, maligned, marginalised, victimised, alienated, etc etc…

For years you’ve eaten our legs, experimented upon us in laboratories, destroyed our ponds…

What is worse, you even deny the truth of our wonderful religion, Frogism, and the prophet Froggo (pbuh), who came among us many years ago to spread the news of the true way to the Great Green Toad...

One day you’re going to regret this, and Frogism will take over the whole world. For didn’t the Prophet Froggo say, “kill the unbelievers wherever you find them”? And aren’t there two parts to the world “Dar al Frog and Dar al Harb?

Gosh, I’m really mad now.

I think I’ll go out and bomb a shopping centre or a railway station, and kill a few innocent bystanders. Or cut a few heads off.

If there are any frogs there, well too bad, they probably weren’t true Frogists anyway.

:-)

wobbles, You say – “Maybe when the Muslims are able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of us and attack some other group, they will finally be accepted as part of the community.” I wish I could be optimistic about this happening. Are you optimistic?

I suppose we were pessimistic about, say, Vietnamese assimilation in the 1970s(?), and that our pessimism has proved to be groundless. Yet, I think that pessimism really was phobic and a kind of reflex, whereas pessimism about Muslim assimilation has a stronger basis:

i) a lot of Muslims in the West seem to hate the West – and many of them are happy to say so. I never noticed this with other immigrant groups.

ii) we see this in every Western country that I’m aware of that hosts Muslims, and the ethnicity of the Muslims doesn’t seem to make a difference.

I know Paul. L has pointed out these things.

If Cronulla was considered in isolation, we might speak of the chicken and the egg. But, Islam’s track record is devastatingly relevant.

I don’t know how to avoid the conclusion that the problem is inherent in the religion of Islam – although I suppose it may be the Arabic culture that has accompanied or driven much of Islamic proselytism. What do you think of this possibility, Paul.L?

Whatever the cause, “they” seem undoubtedly to be a major danger. I’m still perplexed by how many are dangerous. We all agree that certain extremists are dangerous. Most of us agree that genuinely reasonable and peace-loving Muslims like Waleed Ally would be a great neighbour. What about the middle group, which presumably contains most Muslims? Where do they stand? How easily manipulated are they? This is what I’d like to have a better handle on. Any illumination welcome.

(Note to the socialists: I'm not saying Islam is the only problem in town, just a problem.)

Pax,

It's good to laugh!

Well done Froggie lad!

Rache
Once again the soft left brings up the furphy about the victim being just as dead. Tell that to our legal system. Ask them if they see all deaths as equal. Is someone who runs over a pedestrian who steps in front of their car as culpable as someone who stabs their wife twenty times?

It is arrant nonsense to suggest the equivalence of all death. And it is typical of the apologists of the left to try and defend the human-bombs and head-hackers.

Rache > “You may also be interested to know that the majority of all recorded terrorist incidents between 1968 and 2008 have come from seperatist/political groups and not religious ones.”

What? There have been terrorist attacks in countries including Sudan and Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania, across the whole of the middle east, Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, through Former soviet republics like Chechnya, South Ossetia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, In Asia, India, Pakistan, the Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia and more recently in Canada, the US and Australia.

All of those attacks have nothing to do with a pan-Islamic movement? They are all separatist nationalists are they? The fact that a significant number of these people are named Muhammad is irrelevant is it? How about this list? See any similarities or points of common interest?

- Abu Sayyaf means Father of the swordswith also known as Islamic Movement".
- Ansar al-Islam means "Supporters of Islam."
- Al-Qaeda The base AKA Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places,
- Asbat al-Ansar "the League of the Followers."
- Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement
- Egyptian Islamic Jihad
- Fatah al-Islam
- Hamas – means Islamic Resistance Movement
- Harakat ul-Mujahidin
- Hezbollah – means Party of Allah
- Hizbul Mujahideen
- Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
- Jemaah Islamiyah
- Lashkar-e-Jhangvi means Army of Jhang
- Lashkar-e-Toiba – means Army of the Pure
- Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group -
- Palestinian Islamic Jihad
- Rajah Solaiman Movement
- Sipah-e-Sahaba now Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan
- Takfir wal-Hijra – means Excommunication and Exodus
- Taliban – Students (of the Koran)

Paul.L
Firstly, I'm not a leftist apologist but I'm also not one to believe everything that comes out of the mouth of "our Washington Correspondent" either.

Historically, the resurgence of Militant Islam is the direct result of failed US policy in Iran and the aftermath of their involvement in Afghanistan.

Secondly, it's an impressive looking list. Of all these, only 4 existed before 1990, 7 started in the 90’s and the rest are no more than 7 years old. Why are these periods significant?

According to the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base (funded through the US Department of Homeland Security and directed by the United States Congress to conduct “research into the social and political causes and effects of terrorism”), these are the actual statistics from 1968 to 2008 -

1. Officially recognised terrorist incidents by Group Classification
CLASSIFICATION / INCIDENTS
Anarchist / 122
Anti-Globalization / 217
Communist/Socialist / 3848
Environmental / 83
Leftist / 435
Nationalist/Separatist / 5021
Other / 300
Racist / 41
Religious / 2833
Right-Wing Conservative / 127
Right-Wing Reactionary / 14

2. Number of Terrorist Groups per Geographic Region -
REGION / NUMBER OF GROUPS
Africa / 128
East & Central Asia / 24
Eastern Europe / 50
Latin America & the Caribbean / 140
Middle East / Persian Gulf / 283
North America / 79
South Asia / 171
Southeast Asia & Oceania / 68
Western Europe / 312
TOTAL = 1255

3. Incidents by top ten recognised groups (discounting "unknown") in descending order of quantity.
GROUP / INCIDENTS
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) / 656
Hamas / 581
Taliban / 435
Basque Fatherland and Freedom (ETA) / 418
Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) / 403
National Liberation Army (Colombia) / 296
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) / 257
al-Fatah / 233
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) / 233
Communist Party of India-Maoist / 221

Only four of these are Muslim and Hamas is an officially political-only group, despite some members being named Mohammed.

Also, the last terrorist attack on Australian soil was in July 2001 when an abortion clinic security guard was shot.

The fact that the comments on this discussion have become so anti-Islam increases the fear that there is little hope for peace in the future without one governed by Pax Americanian missile diplomacy.

Further, because such a situation renders the need for Iran to be militarily occupied by the US in the future with alled little Israel becoming even more scientifically combatantly nuclearly advanced besides, gives a picture of a future world not very nice to exist in.

Without a genuine attempt to find a way to share the blame between societies in this world, reckon it makes one glad near the end of one's life that he may have experienced the best of it.

Cheers, BB - WA

I consider that ABC has been so dumbed now that it is simply a parrot of the Rudd government. Switched on to listen to early news on
ABC radio this morning and the big news, the priority item was---plastic bags being given the boot by the Minister for Plastic Bags who gave an indepth report on same.
Who ever is responsible for the news should be given the sack, we listen to hear state, Federal and world items- we got plastic bags.
This is the low standards the ABC has now descended to. What next?
The infertility of fleas in the Arctic?

Rache,

Once again you have proven the old adage “there are lies, damn lies and statistics”. Here are the figures I found at MITP.

Total casualties including dead and wounded 1990 – 2008. Of these you can see that 80% of the most dangerous terrorist organizations are Islamic. Three out of the top 4 are Islamic extremists and Aum Shrinyionko have since been destroyed.

al-Qaeda 12328
al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers 5654
Aum Shinrikyo / Aleph 5012
Hamas 3509
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) 3167
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 2061
Taliban 1886
Islamic State of Iraq 1753
Ansar al-Sunnah Army 1741
Riyad us-Saliheyn Martyrs' Brigade 1680
al-Fatah 1341
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) 1286
Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade 1075
Hezbollah 1058
Mujahideen Shura Council 1058
Liberation Army Fifth Battalion 1048
Jemaah Islamiya (JI) 960
Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) 722
Basque Fatherland and Freedom (ETA) 576
Islamic Movement for Change 574
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) 196

Rache > “Hamas is an officially political-only group. “

Really? That’s the most ridiculous thing you have said so far. Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic phrase Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya or "Islamic Resistance Movement". Ami Isseroff on MidEast web states that the acronym is also the Arabic word for "zeal. The 1988 Hamas Covenant (or Charter) states that the organization's goal is to "raise the banner of God over every inch of Palestine," in order to establish an Islamic Republic.A quote from the charter ”There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas Hamas is without a doubt an Islamic organization.

Rache > “Also, the last terrorist attack on Australian soil was in July 2001 when an abortion clinic security guard was shot.”

So I guess the police needn’t have arrested Jack Roche or Abdul Benbrika? Benbrika and his mates were aiming to kill a thousand people at the football but I suppose the anti abortionists are more dangerous. Your lame attempts to suggest that Islamo fascism is not a global movement are preposterous and a denial of the obvious.

“Historically, the resurgence of Militant Islam is the direct result of failed US policy in Iran and the aftermath of their involvement in Afghanistan.”

This doesn’t sound like “history” to me, but merely a subjective statement.

Surely it is a matter of opinion, isn’t it?

Also, just a cursory glance at the few references you drew from the “MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base” shows an overwhelming large number of the incidents have been committed by Islamic Terrorists. (1506)

This, of course has been expanded by Paul to show that the Islamics are indeed the most prolific of terrorists.

Looks like you are being a bit disingenuous here.

Paul.L
I specifically said INCIDENTS, not casualties. One indicates the relative amount of activity, the other indicates their effectiveness.

There are other international terrorist groups just as active (if not more so) than the current Muslim ones.

Hamas is a militant organisation and now a legitimate political party, whose stated aim is to restore the state of Palestine, not to spread Islam throughout the world.

I also said the last INCIDENT in Australian, not any arrests.

Froggie,

Modern Militant Islam (it's always been there but only became a significant Western problem in the last couple of decades) is said to have begun with formation of an Islamic Republic by the Ayatollah in Iran. In 1953 the US helped depose Prime Minister Mossadegh who had tried to nationalise the oil industry and put the Shah in control. (Much like they did with Saddam in Iraq).

His oppressive regime literally killed of all the moderate opposition and after his overthrow, Khomeni was the only one left who could take control.

The other source of profound Muslim resentment toward the West was the US treatment of the Afghanis after their war with the soviets. Despite their assurances that they would help with reconstruction and assistance after the war, the Americans just walked away (known as "the great betrayal") leaving people at the mercy of Mujahideen warlords until the Taliban took control. This fostered deep anger all through the Middle East.

Incidently, Reagan was a great supporter of the Taliban and heaped great praise on them at the Whitehouse - comparing them to the American Founding Fathers and paying them tens of millions of dollars, right up to a couple of months before the invasion.

Once again I'm not trying to deny the existence of Muslim terrorists but the media coverage of much of the last few years has not been particularly balanced or accurate. One would imagine that there are millions of them waiting to come swarming over the rest of the world, like a huge army of orcs coming out of Mordor. Terrorism is a tactic, not a specific thing.

Rache,

So you can admit that you were being rather disingenuous when you quoted incident statistics, which might include total non events, instead of casualties, which is surely a far better method of discerning a groups’ importance. The activity of a group when measured by incident is of far less relevance than the number of casualties caused. To suggest that somehow FARC are more dangerous to the average person than Alqaeda requires breathtaking stupidity. To include statistics from 1968 is also a little disingenuous because many of the old nationalist and communist terror groups of the 60’s ,70’s and 80’s are now gone.

Hamas’ stated aim is to create an Islamic state across all of Palestine including Israel. The very suggestion that they are somehow separate to the growing pan-Islamic movement is ridiculous.

If the intervention in Saudi was such an important milestone how come we don’t see any real increases in terrorism until 1990? Which is when the Kingdom pleaded for American intervention to save their oil fields from the rapacious Saddam Hussein.

I would like to see your link for Reagan supporting the Taliban. Certainly Regan supported the Mujahadeen in their fight against the Soviet invasion of their country. The Americans supplied billions of dollars to help the Afghans take back their country. Beyond that the reconstruction was their responsibility. Tribalism in Afghanistan isn’t a creation of the west it’s been around forever and the Afghan’s themselves are responsible for its perpetuation. And if you remember it was Ahmad Shah Masouds’ army we fought beside to overthrow the Taliban.

The medias coverage has focused on Islamic terrorism because
1. they are doing all the damage
2. they are doing it internationally.
FARC is Columbia’s problem and the Tamil Tigers are Sri Lankas, but Islamic terror can occur anywhere.

When is 'discrimination'.... "inclusion"?

and what does this have to do with the alienation of Muslims?

If you discriminate against non Muslims by DENYING them access to a university gym on religious grounds. (that they are not Muslims).. according to the Muslim spokes person from CAIR..this is in fact 'Inclusion' and 'accomodation'.....
err..NO...IT'S DISCRIMINATION! against non Muslims.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upGCMl_b0n4

Why worry about Jidahist or Islamists..when the real war is going on in our public institutions, taxis, schools etc.

The objectives of the Jihadists, i.e. the 'Islamification of Western society' is being if not achieved, at least energetically attempted by Muslims.

-Muslim TAXI drivers denying passage to Blind and Booze carrying on "religious freedom" grounds. (Minnesota/Minneapolis and some in Melbourne)
-Muslim Students demanding
a)changes to University lecture times to permit 'religous obligation' daily prayer times, specially Friday.
b)Separate dining/recreation areas for Muslim women.

So.. as for me, I have no illusions whatsoever as to 'why' Muslims feel alienated, it is because signficant members of their community, are trying to re-shape ours in terms of theirs. Its really not complicated.

ILLUSTRATION. Today I had a moment of illumination :) yep.. I was driving down a rather narrow dirt road, but still there was enough room for 2 cars to pass. The 4wd coming the other way from me, occupied 70% of the road, because he had a large space on his passenger side to the edge of the road. But when he saw me driving toward him... he gave me the 'no way mate' look... because I couldn't fit through. So..I got out of the car.. went up to his car and king hit him many times.. aaaaah :) no.. that was fiction, I just slowed down, and waited for him to REALIZE! that he was taking up so much of the road and move to the side. Cultures, see others, like he saw me.

Boazy: "Muslim TAXI drivers denying passage to Blind and Booze carrying on "religious freedom" grounds. (Minnesota/Minneapolis and some in Melbourne)
-Muslim Students demanding
a)changes to University lecture times to permit 'religous obligation' daily prayer times, specially Friday.
b)Separate dining/recreation areas for Muslim women."

Oh come on, Boazy - every one of those examples has been refuted several times in this forum. You are exaggerating each one of them as if they hadn't been, so you are effectively reverting to your habit of telling porkies. Is lying pathological with you?

Being concerned about radical Islamists is one thing, but once again you attempt to tar all Muslims with the same brush.

In your example of two cars on the single lane road, it's hard to tell if you're making a clumsy analogy, or whether the other car contained Muslims. In either case, that's a situation I face daily, and invariably both cars slow down and move over. The only ones who are reluctant are rubbernecks from the city who don't want to get their cars dirty.

In the real outback, of course, the larger vehicle has right of way.

CJ... I dunno what drugs ur on man but none of those examples has been in the slightest 'refuted'... some might have 'whined' whinged etc..but refuted ? you cannot refute fact, but you can't resist putting your snout in the trough of lies yourself can ya :)

and where do you a-gain get this 'tarring all Muslims with the same brush' bit ?

TOPIC.. kinda.

One reason Lebanese Muslims feel 'victimized' is that ethnic tags are used in reporting of crime. Here is one example..

"The attacker was described as being Caucasian or European in appearance and aged between 25 and 30."

Oh WAIT... this perpetrator is 'white'... must be a misprint, shouldn't it read 'of middle eastern appearance'.. after all..thats the way ALL crime is reported isn't it?

Nothing like a good dose of reality to clear the victimization air.

Paul.L.
Disingenuous? I don't believe so.
The fact remains that the number of incidents shows how active certain groups are. If you care to examine some of the details of the information in that site, you'll also see that many groups have small numbers of members, some with few incidents, some inactive for some time.

Just because the Middle Eastern terrorism is constantly in the news doesn't mean that it's the only terrorism happening in the world and it puts paid to that myth that "all terrorists are Muslims".

As for the Communism reference, we see the same sorts of arguments, allegations and lies today that I used to hear back in the sixties.

Here's a nice photo of Reagan meeting with the Taliban in the Whitehouse -
http://politicalinquirer.com/2007/12/31/ronald-reagan-meeting-with-talibanal-qaedamujahideen/.

Here's another reference with some context -
http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/01/charlie-wilsons-war-genesis-of-taliban.html

Here's some comments from 1997 about funding and the notion that the US knew what is was doing in Afghanistan-
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/115.html

Here's something more recent from a Republican Presidential candidate -
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2001/tst110501.htm

Here's something about their attitude to the Taliban regarding that oil pipeline that was one of the real reasons for the invasion. (Our very own Sydney Morning Herald reported Colin Powell's announcement that they were planning to invade Afghanistan - BEFORE 911 even happened.)
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/oil.html

I also recommend you check out what was said by Robert Pape Jr.about the true nature of suicide bombers and their relationship with religion.

Meanwhile, I hope you're having an enjoyable Easter. (Really!)

Rache

Thanks for your response.

I don’t think anyone ever said that the only terrorism happening in the world today is the Islamic terrorism. As you have said, most people are aware of the Tamil Tigers, the ETA (Basques) the FARC.

The difference with Islamic terrorism is that it is global, pan-national, and dedicated to the installation of a religious-based political system everywhere in the world.

The three terrorist movements other than Islam mentioned above, are very specific in their aims and are only concerned with one small region of the world.

I don’t think the Reagan link proved much at all. (in fact the two responses really negate the point you are trying to make)

In “realpolitik” it is necessary to sometimes use other political movements to achieve one’s own goals.
The point is “what are the goals”?

You could say that Bin Laden himself was a “tool” of the CIA based on what was said in the articles you refer to. Nowadays of course he would deny that and say that he was only using the CIA for his own purposes.

People can be duplicitous and change their minds easily-ultimately we all act in our own interests.

Is it wrong of the US to try to ensure its (and our, by the way) access to energy? The US is not “stealing” the oil, it is paying for it.

The mantra that “everything the US does is wrong” is equally as simple minded as saying “all Muslims are Islamic terrorists”.

What worries me is that Muslims do not seem to have very effective measures in place to limit the power and influence of their extremists.

Boaz, you know exactly what CJ was referring to when he pointed out:

>>every one of those examples has been refuted several times in this forum<<

You are perfectly well aware that those "Muslim TAXI drivers denying passage" were told to shape up or ship out by the authorities, in a unanimous decision.

http://wcco.com/topstories/Muslim.taxi.cab.2.366674.html

And as for the "Muslim Students demanding a)changes to University lecture times to permit 'religous obligation' daily prayer times, specially Friday", you know perfectly well that these requests were politely turned down. It even said so, in the very article you used to "expose" this activity.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23269447-12332,00.html

In the light of this, it would be appropriate for you to reconsider your rather intemperate - and totally inaccurate - response.

>>CJ... I dunno what drugs ur on man but none of those examples has been in the slightest 'refuted'... some might have 'whined' whinged etc..but refuted ? you cannot refute fact, but you can't resist putting your snout in the trough of lies yourself can ya<<

(I have omitted from my cut-and-paste the little smiley you added at the end, since it is more than a little insulting in the circumstances.)

>>...putting your snout in the trough of lies...<<

Of course, this is not one of those ad hominem attacks that you deplore so much, is it Boaz?

This reflects badly on you, both in terms of the "facts" that you choose to spray us with, and the lack of grace you show when confronted with a dissenting view.

Thanks Pericles. I was just debating with myself whether I could be bothered digging out the references.

I think that it's instructive that Boazy seems incapable of recognising when his exaggerated claims are refuted. His contention that Australian society is in dire danger of being 'Islamized', because some Muslims seek to have their Islamic practices recognised administratively, is effectively refuted when those efforts are rebuffed by the appropriate authorities.

The taxi drivers were told to pull their heads in and carry passengers with guide dogs or alcohol, on the pain of being fined if they didn't, and the university in question declined the students' request. However, this doesn't matter to Boazy, who has never let reality get in the way of a good Islamophobic rant.

Boazy - you've just been demonstrated to be telling porkies again. And you wonder why so many of us find your posts here offensive.

B_D, Is it possible that, while there is a danger, as you point out, that Muslims want to take over - by administrative stealth, for example - their chances of succeeding are low because the wider community is onto them?

CJM & Pericles, Might Boaz be right that a high degree of vigilance is needed to make sure that a stealthy inculturation of Australia by aggressive Arabic Islam doesn't take place? It would be terrible if they succeeded, I think, so it makes sense to make sure they don't.

Are we actually close to agreeing that -

i) there is a threat to our culture, in the form of an aggressive desire to take it over by slowly altering it;
ii) we can defeat this threat by exposing it, and keeping it visible;
iii) we should remain vigilant for that purpose;
iv) beyond that, we shouldn't exaggerate or get overly agitated - in fact, we should try our best to be on good neighbourly terms with Muslims within our personal spheres.

I'm on my consensus kick again. How wide of the mark am I?

Meanwhile, if we devote too much energy to Islam, less energy is available for other problems like global warming, which are arguably more serious.

Pax,

goodthief: "Are we actually close to agreeing that -

i) there is a threat to our culture, in the form of an aggressive desire to take it over by slowly altering it"

No.

I agree with goodthief that there is a threat to our culture, and that we are "on to it". The degree of threat is debatable perhaps, but if CJ lived in England or elsewhere in Europe, he would possibly begin to understand it a bit more. Here in Australia, although we do have a Muslim minority, they do not carry the same weight that the Muslims do in England.

Consequently we have not yet seen the kind of intrusions that they are trying to make in Europe.

I have relatives currently living in England, and I am informed by them and my own reading of the English media, from all sides of the political spectrum.

I do not believe it will be successful, provided that we are on our guard, and that we can reduce the demographic impact of the increasing Muslim population in the UK and the rest of Europe. We still have the ability at this stage to prevent a Muslim takeover.

I definitely don't want to live in an Islamic country, having visited one.

It would be a dreadful pity to see an Islamic culture predominant in Western Europe, particularly after so many lives have been given in the cause of retaining our freedoms.

If CJ cares to examine the politics of Islamist extremism, he will see there many parallels with those of the Nazis. And as I said in a previous post, Muslims do not seem to have very effective measures in place to limit the power and influence of their extremists.

CJ Morgan

It is only a matter of time.

Not about Qaradawi alone, but about the menace of demographic conquest is the following, just posted at www.newenglishreview.org by Rebecca Bynum:

“Don Morris writes at Doc’s Talk (thanks to Janet Levy):

…As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States — Muslim 1.0%
Australia — Muslim 1.5%
Canada — Muslim 1.9%
China — Muslim 1%-2%
Italy — Muslim 1.5%
Norway — Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:
Denmark — Muslim 2%
Germany — Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom — Muslim 2. 7%
Spain — Muslim 4%
Thailand — Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.
They will push for the introduction of halaal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply. (United States).

France — Muslim 8%
Philippines — Muslim 5%
Sweden — Muslim 5%
Switzerland — Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands — Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago — Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.
When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris — car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam — Mohammed cartoons).

----next

Its only a matter of time--cont'd

Guyana — Muslim 10%
India — Muslim 13.4%
Israel — Muslim 16%
Kenya — Muslim 10%
Russia — Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:

Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%
At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:
Bosnia — Muslim 40%
Chad — Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania — Muslim 70%
Malaysia — Muslim 60.4%
Qatar — Muslim 77.5%
Sudan — Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:
Bangladesh — Muslim 83%
Egypt — Muslim 90%
Gaza — Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia — Muslim 86.1%
Iran — Muslim 98%
Iraq — Muslim 97%
Jordan — Muslim 92%
Morocco — Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan — Muslim 97%
Palestine — Muslim 99%
Syria — Muslim 90%
Tajikistan — Muslim 90%
Turkey — Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates — Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of “Dar-es-Salaam” — the Islamic House of Peace — there’s supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan — Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia — Muslim 100%
Somalia — Muslim 100%
Yemen — Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that’s not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.
“Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel. — Leon Uris, “The Haj”…

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond’s book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat”

By Hugh Fitzgerald

CJ Morgan, When you say “No” to my question above, what are you saying No to? Are you saying Islam is safe? It’s not aggressive (but just plays hard-ball defence)? Or, are you saying it’s not aggressive in Australia just yet? Or something different.

Would you agree with this proposition:

<In view of the global experience with Islam, and assuming that Australian Islam cannot be guaranteed to remain immune from the worst aspects of Islam indefinitely, it makes sense to be cautious about the possibility of a virulent, aggressive, imperialistic strain of Islam occurring in Australia.>

Do you think there’s no threat, or that there is but some of us are overreacting to it?

If the former, you’re up against a great deal of evidence, aren’t you?

If the latter, then okay maybe we should all calm down a bit, but what kind of precautions would you consider appropriate?

Pax,

goodthief, what I'd agree to is this slight amendment of your proposition:

"In view of the global experience with religions, and assuming that Australian religions cannot be guaranteed to remain immune from the worst aspects of religions indefinitely, it makes sense to be cautious about the possibility of a virulent, aggressive, imperialistic strain of religions occurring in Australia."

While that may seem trite, I think that our society is in danger of being recaptured by religious fundamentalism in general, by stealth. The supposed threat of Islam to Australian culture and society is minuscule compared to the insidious Christianisation of traditionally secular spheres, such as education.

Our education system has been compromised in recent years by inequitable funding of religious schools and the placement of chaplains in public schools, while our elected governments are increasingly captive to the projects of e.g. the NSW Catholic Right, the Australian Christian Lobby etc. Under such conditions, there is no way that the minority religion of Islam can be singled out as any worse than the overtly political and competitive agendas of organised Christian fundamentalism.

The best way we can be vigilant about such threats is to engage consciously in a program of 'resecularisation' of our institutions, such that the practce of one's religion is relegated to the private sphere where it belongs. Australia should regain its place as an avowedly secular and egalitarian bastion of democracy and rationality.

Then the Islamists wouldn't have a prayer, so to speak.

[P.S. Pericles - I see that Boazy has departed this thread and is throwing rocks at us in others, as he usually does when his mendacity is pointed out]

BB - Part One

Sharing the Blame as the Means for World Peace

The above is most often quoted by academic historians who sense today’s problems in particular, as balanced between mainly the Christian West and an Islamic non-west, Jewish Israel being favoured in the West rather than in the East.

The triggers of war right now, are thus very different than the problems causing both WW1 and WW2 which were both virtually backed by an elitist thrust for power from a Germany which had missed out on Western elitism and colonialism, Bismark’s Germany being just a late-comer into the 18th and 19th centuries.

Japan too was late hitting its colonial straps, no doubt careful ly and jealously regarding colonial Britain and a fast-growing United States as the extenders of a 19th century colonial expansion thereon, English-speaking America now virtually on the same colonial trail, urged on round the White House by Jewish-related Neo-Cons and a reborn Israel, backing an already Pax Americana as imperialist inheritor of our 21st century and beyond.

Obviously because the Islamic world is capable of insightly thinking the same as the Christian West, an academic saying that the Arabs, including the former Persians, did not come down in the last shower, is very apt, and it is obvious that when today’s Pope talks about a Christian Quest for Peace, he takes all the above into consideration.

Let us hope also, that like a genuine historian, the Pope is learned enough to take all of history into consideration, especially the growth of Scientific Reasoning, just as one of our OLO contributors has mentioned, that most of our Christian leaders who have gained Sainthoods, such as St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, have also been regarded as worldly historical philosophers who used reason to balance faith

BB - Part Two

We might also hope that the present Pope might agree, probably not so much in a Sermon, that the majority of problems in the Middle East today, have been caused by historical faults from both sides, Western colonialism being possibly the major contributor, Mubarek of Egypt’s belief that Western intrusion and injustice has been the biggest problem in the Middle East since WW1 not helping our Western position.

But then again, the grisly style of terrorism that the Islamics are using in what might be called a justifiable fightback, has caused most of us Westerners to regard them as inhuman.

Of course, suicide bombing is not only confined to Islamics, in fact, the record considering population, is still much held by the Tamil Tigers in Sri-Lanka, and our Irish relatives were not light-hearted about such horrible tactics neither.

So let us so-called honest whites put ourselves in the same position as families fighting against what they term injustices, especially right now as in Israel where crudish Arab rocket bombing is illegal, while Israel has the means to totally crush the Palestine Arabs any time allowed, especially with the most modern nuclear weaponry.

Only hope our Pope does look at things this way, and that his quest for peace, does include an admittance from both warring sides about Sharing the Blames of the Past in a Quest for Peace as a possible answer for what Immanuel Kant wanted when he wrote about a Perpetual Peace held by means of a Federation of Libertinian Nations.

Best Wishes for Easter

Rache,

You are really struggling here and it is becoming clearer that this is not an area you spend a lot of time on.

Let me respond to the utter rubbish you have linked.

1. The photo of Reagan posted by the Political Inquirer has no link to its origin. In fact they labelled the photo “Ronald Reagan meets with AlQaeda/Taliban/Mujahideen”, as if there was no difference between those three organisations. For all any of us know this could be a meeting with Ahmed Shah Masoud’s people, likely, in fact because there is a woman present. Masoud and his army have been allies of the US for nearly 30 years. We fought alongside them to retake Kabul in 2001, if you were paying attention.

2. you send me a link to a post by BIG_GAV on peak energy.com as if that was evidence of anything. If there is a point within those ramblings maybe you could highlight it.

3. When you talk about $40 million dollars to support farmers in Afganistan replacing their opium crops you are really stretching the friendship to suggest that this somehow constitutes support for the Taliban.

4. Some rabid candidate for congress pointing out what most educated people already know. Yes some of the money which was sent to support Afghan resistance ended up in the hands of extremists. The vast majority of the money however went to groups who were actually defending their country against the most dangerous and immoral empire that the world had yet seen.

5. Finally you reprint a submission from an Oil executive attempting to garner support for a central asian gas and oil pipeline. You don’t have any reply to this submission. Unless of course you believe those absolute morons who think that the US staged 9/11 to invade Afghanistan and the Middle east for the oil wealth. Funny that those people can reconcile the twin realities of the greatest ever succesfull covert operation with the rather below average results we are seeing from the “PLAN” today. Why don’t you just post loose change and have done with it?

con't

Pape’s hypothesis is utter nonsense. Please explain the Sunni suicide bombers blowing up shia Iraqis. How does that fit in? The vast majority of casualties in Iraq are caused by this sectarian hatred. How does it explain the large numbers of middle class Syrian boys who came to Iraq to kill themselves? Or the Egyptian and Saudi bombers who killed 3000 people on 9/11?

Pape makes a number of mistakes including substituting western notions of piety to rule out the role of Islam in these attacks. This is a grave mistake and completely misunderstands the nature of Islamic extremism. He neglects the fact that Islam has recruited in prisons because to rape and kill in the name of Allah is truly the work of god. He ignores the strong pull of redemptive violence and the ability to assist your loved one’s from the afterlife for those who have strayed from the path.

Pericles and CJ.

The fact that Islamic fundamentalists have had some of their requests knocked back is not to the point. You suggested that the requests themselves were somehow bogus. They were not and they are part of a much broader attempt to recast our society in a manner more acceptable to muslim’s. This is the very antithesis of integration. As big mal has noted, as muslim minorities increase their representation more pressure is brought to bear to make civil life more Islamic. This is borne out in Britain and more openly in France where they have significant muslim communities. There have been calls for an introduction of sharia law and for Muslim holidays to become British national holidays. British flags are no longer flown in many places as muslims are said to be offended by St Georges cross and its links to the crusaders. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British said that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is “not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with.”

Not convinced, Paul.L

>>The fact that Islamic fundamentalists have had some of their requests knocked back is not to the point.<<

It is very much to the point.

If I approached State Rail and asked them to build a railway station nearer my house, which would be the more important fact to emerge? The fact I had made the request, or their refusal to bend to my personal whim?

>>You suggested that the requests themselves were somehow bogus. They were not and they are part of a much broader attempt to recast our society in a manner more acceptable to muslim’s.<<

No-one remotely suggested that the requests were bogus. They appear to be entirely genuine.

The part we disagree on is whether this is an "attempt to recast our society", or merely an expression of personal preference.

You see conspiracy, I see - at least in the case of the lecture times - a perfectly valid request, closely akin to asking if the canteen could serve vegetarian food.

I have no knowledge of the detail of the Muslim taxi drivers in Minneapolis, but it smells like a beat-up. However, one point that I did miss last time around was Boaz's attempt to bring Minnesota to Melbourne:

>>-Muslim TAXI drivers denying passage to Blind and Booze carrying on "religious freedom" grounds. (Minnesota/Minneapolis and some in Melbourne)<<

I forgot to ask him to provide a link to the Melbourne incident. It is probably too late now as he seems to have rather quickly moved on, but just in case, here goes.

Boaz, is the reference to Melbourne just another of your fabrications, or does it have any substance?

CJ Morgan, Your amendment is hardly “slight”, but that doesn’t discredit it.

The expanded wording means you agree with my proposition, doesn’t it? But you think the same caution should apply to Christianity as well as Islam.

I can think of at least three observations to make, which suggest that Islam should be a priority:

i) Islam seems to be opposed to democracy. Christianity seems not to be. The idea of a Christian theocracy is remote, even though there are doubtless some Christians who are keen on it. Islamic theocracies exist, and more are sought.

ii) There’s a higher proportion of Muslim literalists than Christian or Jewish. This is partly due to the perceived pedigree of the scriptures. The Koran was delivered over 10-20 years to one man, the New Testament over about 100 years to about a dozen people, the Old Testament over about 2000 years to a much higher number. These are approximations, but they have an influence on the degree of freedom to interpret, speculate, and even simply learn about these different scriptures.

iii) Then, of course, there is simply the widespread strife which is unavoidably associated with Islam.

While it’s hard for me to regard Christianity as a threat, I also don’t like any religious people trying to induce the Apocalypse, as I think that’s highly presumptuous of them (as well as dangerous, of course). I know some Christians are into this. And I don’t buy creationism, any more than I buy literalism in any field of literature or endeavour.

If we’re really going to expand the proposition to capture all dangerous ideologies, I see no reason to limit it to religious or theistic ideologies. After reading the posts of some of the socialists online, I find them pretty alarming and not very inclined to listen or reason. I say the same about some atheists. It’s just that neither socialists nor atheists have a lot of influence at present, so they cannot be regarded as an immediate threat.

Pax,

I think this is more on the mark

'"In view of the global experience with secular humanism, and assuming that Australians cannot be guaranteed to remain immune from the worst aspects of secular humanism indefinitely, it makes sense to be cautious about the possibility of a virulent, aggressive, imperialistic strain of secular humanism occurring in Australia." Children, the elderly and the unborn are not safe.

Paul.L: "The fact that Islamic fundamentalists have had some of their requests knocked back is not to the point"

Firstly, who says they were "Islamic fundamentalists"? As an atheist, I wouldn't regard a request for allowances for prayer time from any religionist as fundamentalist - rather, in the context of a secular institution I would regard any request for religious consideration as irrelevant and therefore unworthy of approval. Nothing to do with fundamentalism, everything to do with rationalism.

"You suggested that the requests themselves were somehow bogus"

No I didn't. They were undoubtedly genuine, but that doesn't in itself confer a good enough argument.

We have more to be worried about in the insidious Christianisation of many of our State institutions.

goodthief: "If we’re really going to expand the proposition to capture all dangerous ideologies, I see no reason to limit it to religious or theistic ideologies"

In which case it is, of course, a nonsense. You can't ban ideologies (among which I include religions) - they either take off and succeed amongst the populace or they don't. Of course, there's often a lot of breast beating and bloodshed along the way.

Which is of course why none of them deserve special dispensations from the State.

CJ.. I left ? :) I rather think that when I depart for a while its like a breath of fresh air for but now I know... YOU MISS ME! (sniff)....

Throwing stones at you in other threads? I throw them at you in ALL threads.. and why? Well..in this case, you fail to see any important difference between Christianity and Islam, and you lump all religions in to the "Danger" basket. You could have done a bit of homework, and discovered that the New Testament has no concept of an earthly Christian 'State' and that immediately would have unblinded you from at least one bit of bias. You could have qualified your amended statement with "Though clearly Islam, being a 'State' as much as a religion is by far more dangerous" ..then you would have had 'balance'.

So, until you DO attain a level of balance in your posts, you need more metaphorical rocks thrown at you to wake you up. (as does Peril)

*sigh* Pericles.. yes.. MEL-BOURNE.. in VIC-TORIA in AUS-TRALIA
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20544457-2,00.html?from=rss

GoodThief... CJ has been working too hard, (setting up timetables) and he cannot actually grasp such a fundamental idea as 'difference between religion' so.. lets just wish him well and a good rest.. maybe after the trauma of Easter, his mind will begin functioning again :)

B_D, I think CJ mistook me to be contemplating a ban.

CJ Morgan, A few odd things:

i) I’m half sympathetic about your special dispensations point.

ii) I’m not talking about banning Islam, Christianity, socialism, atheism or any other ideology or viewpoint. Just talking about being vigilant about any group which is a threat to peace and freedom. I’ve tried to take a soft line on Islam for some time now, and it’s getting increasingly difficult. I now see Islam as a threat, until someone can show me that the majority of Muslims in Australia are happy to live with the rest of us in peace without upheaving the community or damaging it.

iii) I don’t see Christianity, socialism or secular humanism as posing a comparable threat. But, if they do, they should be watched.

Runner, I agree that secular humanism is not exactly neutral, and that some of the so-called freedoms it says it stands for are evil – eg the freedom to kill the unborn. However, although some of its “freedoms” are serious problems, I think secular humanism tries a lot harder than many others to be ethical, and I also think it’s one of only two environments that Christianity can survive in.

The other environment is a Christian theocracy, which I’m not keen on because:

i) I don’t think it’s what Jesus had in mind, when He established the Church to tend His flock and stand against Hell. The flock, of course, consists of people who choose to belong: a theocracy too easily destroys choice.

ii) Some of the Christians who fancy a theocracy strike me as pretty scary.

Pax,

From BB

Though most of the points from both sides are historically sound, they are not thoughtful enough to penetrate deep into the worrying religio-politico conflict that our world faces right now.

With such Moslem bashing from our Christian right, as if Christians over the centuries have been as pure as the driven snow, we tend to forget that WW2 was begun by a Christian nation Britain declaring war on another Christian nation, Germany.

A Germany which under Nazism was determined to expand as well as prove itself a master race by getting rid of Jewry, a Jewry which with its natural knowledgeable aptitude might become even a part of a Germanic rulership.

Furthermore, Christian Germans would not have become Nazis unless there was a horrible religious righteousness that they believed in which even before Hitler and the Vermacht began the war, homosexuals and even Gypsies were being placed in concentration camps, to be executed if they tried to escape, German Christian bishops calming their congregations by informing them that if they truly believed that the soul could never die, those born with unrighteous twisted emotions might be born again on earth as normal persons.

Not far back from the Nazis, of course, was the burning at the stake by Christians, as well as the torture chambers forcing a needed truth out of persons that justified the torturing.

looking well back, and with us now absorbing many peoples of many colours, we need to be careful that those so-called steel-like honourable tenets we boast about might be in for a testing time – even proving that they were racist, even the Klu Klux Klan in the American part of it.

If that is still true, and the Bush regime gets its way through Saddam’s Sunnis being forgiven in Iraq. If we refuse to discuss peace by sharing the blame, and by asking or offering forgiveness, as so many clerics and academic historians ask us to, the only answer will be more war war war, leaving our world pretty well broke, and in more of a state of uncertainness than ever.

Same old, same old, Boaz. Yet another tiny storm in the most minuscule of teacups.

I noticed that the point was made in the same article:

"Over the past two years the licences of 306 drivers were revoked or suspended, including those who refused to carry the blind and their dogs"

So, what do you have? A few bigots who don't observe the rules of their chosen occupation being weeded out. Hardly an earthshaking event. Not really worth bringing up at all, unless you are determined to foment hatred between communities, wouldn't you agree?

Anything more recent than 2006, by the way?

Let's go back to your earlier rant, shall we?

>>HOW DARE .. let me repeat that HOW DARRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Muslims students try to restructure our whole educational time tables at Uni's to 'suit their prayer times'? Good GRIEF.. there is not enough space in 350 words for all the exlamation marks I WANTED to put after those words<<

When I was at school all those years ago, we had separate prayer arrangements for each religious group as a matter of course. Nobody made a fuss, even when some of the groups were given days off that their fellow-students were not. It doesn't seem to me that asking - politely - that there are some allowances made for their religion is in the slightest unusual or noteworthy. It certainly doesn't warrant the over-the-top frothing at the mouth quoted above.

The only possible reason for your intemperate and near-hysterical response is that you choose to use every single opportunity to rant against Muslims. It is this behaviour - not your particular religious leanings - that I take great exception to, and will continue to do so whenever you give me occasion.

Which tends to be pretty much daily, wouldn't you agree?

BB, I’m not sure if you regard my posts as “Moslem bashing from our Christian right”, but anyhow I don’t see how pointing out the past sins of Christianity is relevant to a discussion about the present sins or dangers of Islam.

Even if we open up the discussion about the present, I think all the Christians online are fairly candid about the dangers presented by some Christians. We just see the dangers of Islam as more pressing. If it was only Christians pointing out this danger, you’d have a case for saying that there’s some kind of proselytising rivalry behind it. However, it seems to me that this concern is shared by the general community.

Are you saying that Islam does not present a danger?

The question is, I believe, what is to be done about that danger? Ban Islam? No. Smash up their communities? No. Bury our heads in the sand? No. What, then?

In a practical sense, we might not be arguing about much here.

I suggest that some kind of vigilance is needed. And a willingness to say “No” if ever some request for accommodation or special treatment is made that seems quite unreasonable. Maybe we do this anyway. Maybe. But, I’m concerned that the saccharine side of politically correct multicultural secularism is disinclined to do this, and is easily taken advantage of. I like multicultural secularism, but it occasionally lacks gonads.

Pax,

goodthief

'The other environment is a Christian theocracy, which I’m not keen on because: i) I don’t think it’s what Jesus had in mind, when He established the Church to tend His flock and stand against Hell. The flock, of course, consists of people who choose to belong: a theocracy too easily destroys choice. ii) Some of the Christians who fancy a theocracy strike me as pretty scary.

I agree with you totally on this. I believe that one day Jesus Christ will rule the earth but we are not to take matters into our own hands. We are called to be His hands, feet and mouthpiece.

I strongly believe democracy is the best current form of Government. What I object strongly to is the silencing of any voices other than secular humanism which is anti Christ in many ways. It is also extremely untruthful when it comes to calling evolution science, abortion as termination and pornography as harmless entertainment. Often secular humanist would rather be apologist for Islam and enemies of Christianity because they know one day they will face a Righteous God. I just pray that as many as possible find forgiveness in Christ before that day.

Paul.L.
Like all neo-con apologists, you’re the one that’s struggling.

If you look at the photo caption it’s clearly dated as 1985. These Afghanis were being met at the Whitehouse and although that pre-dates the Taliban, they were the actual forerunners of that group.

These were the same "freedom fighters" that morphed into the Taliban ten years later. The same ones trained, equipped and funded by the CIA to fight the Russians. That same year Reagan asked the Chinese to pressure Pakistan to allow the US to provide the Mujahidin with ever more sophisticated weaponry. Even the Pakistani military had initially balked at this crazy idea. Even they knew who the Gulbuddin Hikmatyars and Osama Bin Ladens really were.

I recall that in the 1980’s the Christian Coalition and other rightwing religious groups supporting Reagan had a “Biblical Checklist” by which they wanted all Senators and Congressmen to be judged. One of the items was that if you didn’t support al-Qaeda and its Mujahideen allies, you didn’t deserve to be in Congress.

It’s also somewhat naive to suggest that money was being paid to the Afghanis to simply hand over to struggling farmers to simply cease opium production.

I’ve been watching the international drug trade since the days of the Nugan-Hand Bank and there is a significant difference between what is blandly reported in the media and the facts on the ground.

Since a low production point in 2001, once Taliban banned poppy fields have mushroomed again. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world’s heroin supply. All this under the control of the current regime.

(Cont)

(Cont)
As for the oil executive involvement I can say that Unocal became involved even before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and before al-Qaeda moved from Sudan to Afghanistan. They signed an agreement with Turkmenistan in 1995 and announced plans for a consortium to build a pipeline through Afghanistan in August 1996.
When the Taliban took control in September 1996 Unocal initially hailed the Taliban's capture of Kabul as a positive step towards stability.

In February 1997 Taliban representatives visited Washington D.C., where they met with State Department officials and Unocal. They later returned in November and again met with Unocal in Houston. According to a report by Caroline Lees of the Telegraph, the Taliban representatives visited the Houston Zoo, NASA space center, a Super Target store, and the home of a Unocal vice-president.

Unocal later described its meetings with the Taliban as efforts "to educate them about the benefits such a pipeline could bring" to the "desperately poor and war-torn country." Unocal ended its involvement in the pipeline project in 1998 after the United States launched missile attacks in Afghanistan and condemned the Taliban.

The Bush administration also met with Said Ramatullah Hashemi from the Taliban Foreign Ministry on March 19, 2001. A few months later, Colin Powell announced plans to have troops in Aghanistan "by October".

A couple of months later, was September 11th. The pipeline remained stalled until about 3 months after the war ended.

It's just a sheer coincidence that most of the US Presidents in the last few decades were Oil men or came from Oil States (except Carter, whose contribution was to trash the nuclear industry).

AS for discounting Pape, you tell me what sort of devout religious zealot spends the night before his suicide drinking and gambling at a strip club?

Finally, taking cheap shots at others without providing any sources yourself is an interesting strategy.

Pericles.. you wonder at my 'hysteria' ? You are dismayed that I 'attack' any hint (however small) of 'Islamization' in Australia?

Perhaps.. just maybe, I react as I do, because Christians are being specifically targeted by fanatical Muslims.. and I regard a taxi driver who refuses entry to a blind person as a 'fanatic'.

MALATYA, Turkey: Three Protestants murdered at a Christian publishing house here were tortured for three hours before their assailants slit their throats, a press report said Friday, quoting one of the doctors involved in the grisly case. Dr. Murat Ugras, a spokesman for the Turgut Ozal Medical center, told the daily Hurriyet of hospital surgeons' fruitless efforts to save Ugur Yuksel, one of the three victims of the massacre at the Zirve (summit) publishing house, which distributed Christian literature.

"He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum and his back," Ugras said. "His fingers were sliced to the bone. It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him," he said.

The only thing I wonder about Pericles..is why you wonder about why I 'attack' any hint of Islamization.

In the RAAF we also had 'separate' prayer arrangements,.. OPD this way, RC that way.. all on Sunday.. we didn't restructure "the Air Force" for anyone.

It's all a matter of perspective, Boaz, and in my opinion you have entirely lost your sense of proportionality.

There is no doubt that bad things happen around the world, Boaz. Countless Iraqi civilians are now dead, who would have lived if the US had been a little more intelligent in their handling of the Saddam Hussein problem, for example. That does not mean that every American citizen is a terrorist bent on the destruction of goodness and decency, which is what Osama Bin Laden would like you to believe.

You could agree, I trust, that this is a reaction to a grave situation (the Iraq War) that lacks perspective. It has its internal logic, of course, but is far from being the whole story.

Which, I'm afraid, is the trap that you set for yourself every day, and just as surely as Wily E Coyote keeps buying from the Acme Company, you are a victim of your own blindness.

Sure, three Christians were murdered in Malatya, in very nasty circumstances. But if you actually did your research properly, you'd discover that all those horrible details that you lovingly recount, are pure embellishment.

But don't take my word for it.

http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2007/05/turkey_the_trut.html

So, back to perspective:

>>and I regard a taxi driver who refuses entry to a blind person as a 'fanatic'... The only thing I wonder about Pericles..is why you wonder about why I 'attack' any hint of Islamization.<<

What puzzles me about you, Boaz, is how you manage to persuade yourself that there is a link between a savage murder in a small Turkish town, and a taxi driver who doesn't want a dog in his cab.

Which reminds me - have you stopped beating your children yet?

Rache,

The caption says “Ronald Regan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985).

But the picture is in the oval office. There is no mention of which mujahideen leaders that he is meeting. As I have already mentioned twice and you have continued to ignore, we have supported the Northern Alliance of Shah Masoud since the early 80’s and we fight beside them in Afghanistan now. They formed a major part of the mujahideen. Your continual attempts to suggest that Mujahideen = Taliban = Alqaeda shows your lack of understanding. It simply is not the case.

Rache >> That same year Reagan asked the Chinese to pressure Pakistan to allow the US to provide the Mujahidin with ever more sophisticated weaponry. Even the Pakistani military … knew who the Gulbuddin Hikmatyars and Osama Bin Ladens really were.

You don’t know what you are talking about. Virtually all US military funding was funneled through the Pakistani gov’t via ISI. THEY mostly decided who got the money. That was their condition for allowing the escalation of the conflict. The Pakistani’s were concerned that the Soviets might retaliate against Pakistan. Pakistan’s ISI virtually created the Taliban and supported Gulbuddin when no one else would. There is no suggestion that aid money went to Osama bin Laden. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan_%281979-1989%29

You say that you recall that in the 80’s many in the US believed if you didn’t support al-Qaeda and its Mujahideen allies, you didn’t deserve to be in Congress.

Yet you have already acknowledged that in the 80’s there was no Taliban and even Alqaeda was only started in 1988. So what are you talking about? Do you perchance mean that you didn’t belong in congress if you didn’t support the people who were defending their countries from a communist agressor? Ie the Mujahideen?

I’ll tell you what type of religious zealot might spend the night before his suicide drinking – an Islamic zealot. You are attempting to substitute western notions of piety. You don’t need to be pious in our sense to be a muslim holy warrior.

Boaz said 'Islamification of Western society' is being if not achieved, at least energetically ATTEMPTED by Muslims. And he then included efforts by Islamic fundamentalists to make our society more acceptable to them. CJ said “every one of those examples has been refuted several times in this forum”. Now that is just a lie. You guys are attempting to retrospectively cover up the fact that you hadn’t done your homework. Boazy’s point was about the requests themselves. They were obviously never refuted.I also believe that the requests are important as they form part of a pattern of behaviour.

Lets make your analogy a little more apt. What about a local councilor who wanted a railway station built out the front of his house instead of in front of the local primary school. What if that particular councilor had a long history of asking for “accommodations.” In that case the very act of asking would be the more important fact, since it would be part of a pattern of obnoxious behaviour.

“I see ... a perfectly valid request closely akin to asking if the canteen could serve vegetarian food.”

Oh do you? Well that is probably the biggest problem of all. For starters the request is akin to asking the canteen to serve ONLY vegetarian food. Secondly Muslim prayer times aren’t fixed they have a number of hours in which to fulfill their obligations. Thirdly, will we amend lecture times for all religions? Or are we committed to retaining secular education. If you insist on seeing this request in isolation, instead of the rightful context in which it exists you are burying your head in the sand.

I have posted a lot of information about fundamentalist requests/demands from lecture time-tables to sharia. The western world has experience with nearly all these requests/demands and the larger the muslim population gets the more it wants to shape society in a manner acceptable to muslims. I believe that this is divisive and the very antithesis of sustainable integration

Boaz is bang on target when he talks about the different religous classes in RAAF.

Paul.L: ". CJ said “every one of those examples has been refuted several times in this forum”. Now that is just a lie. You guys are attempting to retrospectively cover up the fact that you hadn’t done your homework. Boazy’s point was about the requests themselves. They were obviously never refuted.I also believe that the requests are important as they form part of a pattern of behaviour. "

Come on, Paul. While it mightn't fit your paranoid Islamophobic fantasies, the fact is that, while reasonable requests were politely made and a handful of taxi drivers behaved badly a couple of years ago, the requests haven't been granted and the taxi drivers were disciplined. I grant that ham sandwiches weren't available at a council function in Melbourne, but I really don't see that as a portent of cultural oblivion.

The fact is that we live in a multicultural society of which a small percentage are Muslim. They are as entitled as anybody to follow the religion of their choice, and to advocate lawfully for their communities. That some bigoted and paranoid individuals want to interpret that as a "pattern of obnoxious behaviour" says far more about them than it does the vast majority of moderate and law-abiding Australian Muslims.

For example, Boazy's egregious equivalence of the acts of a few fundy Muslim taxi drivers with the murder of Christians in Turkey is just another example of his (and your) tiresome campaign of vilification of all Muslims because a small minority of them are nutcases.

People like you are every bit as much of the problem as the idiot Islamists are. But you're so convinced of your rightness that you'll never see it, which is why I don't bother arguing with you much.

Sharing the Blame et al

Many thanks, Goodthief, for your kind advice, but my near 87 years experience of life, growing up in the outback, broken by nearly five years in the military in WW2, back to the bush building up a family, and the latter 25 years as a political scientist and an active philosopher, makes one though even less sure of himself, still with the sense of hope that looking for a compromise is far more sensible than letting hatred shape our future, which surely is happening with much too much of our world today.

As mostly former Germanic barbarians, us whites must admit we have made rapid progress in this world, and sometimes wonder whether our possibly jumped up elitism is going to hold out.

Here we are worried so much about China treating the Tibetans so harshly, yet it was not so long ago that we were peddling the same procedure, when I was going to school in the late 20s and early thirties, so proud to point out to other white kids and one or two black kids, how much of that spinning school globe was coloured in our proud British colonial pinky red.

Though under our suspicion through having to be shocked into entering WW2, we now find America on the same elitist colonial jag as the Brits but preaching the American Way as is happening so much in the northern ports of the Mediterranean, mostly all illegally grabbed by the Brits as booty after WW1.

Only hope the same thing doesn’t happen to a formerly proud Iraq, as well as Iran, what was once a proud and illustrious Persia.

Anyone who has studied Western history thoroughly, cobber, must surely feel the way I do, holding Churchill’s original belief that Jaw Jaw is always superior to War War, especially when it is religion that is the Cause Cause.

Best Regards, BB.

PERICLES... I'm quite appreciative of the 'extra mile' of research you did on the murder in Turkey.

All I did was present a typical report of the events.

What you miss, is that serious Christians will seek the real truth, and don't see any advantage to the gospel in mis-potraying events.

The fact that these brothers who were actually on the scene, and inspected the bodies, then took the trouble to publically set the record straight should tell you something about their hearts.

"Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." (IICor4:2)

Now.. I have no problem with accuracy, I seek it, but don't always attain it to my own satisfaction. You might view some of the material I've presented about Islam, as the very opposite of the verse above, but to me, I present material which is the very essense of that verse.
Being human, and not perfected in Christ, there will be blips on the verbal radar... moments of high passion, concern etc..

I regard the approach you and CJ in particular take, as very deceptive, but in a naive fashion. I simply don't think you have sufficient understanding of Islam either doctrinally or historically to properly assess the information I provide. Further, the absense of faith in your lives (by your own confession) will also determine how you view a faith based perspective.

Hence it is obvious, that from this lack of understanding on your and CJ's part, you will view controversial material in a very negative light.

This...goes with the territory of public debate.

If I say "Islam permits child abuse" and back it up doctrinally and historically, and then support it further from contemporary Muslim interaction...you cannot imagine how starkly and nakedly 'naive/biased/in-denial/head_in_sand/prejudiced' etc it appears.

You usually come back with your usual "You tar all Muslims with the same brush/You are exacerbating the problem/You are Mosely/you are dangerous" mantra

Yikes!

that last post was mean't to say:

If I say "Islam permits child abuse" and back it up doctrinally and historically, and then support it further from contemporary Muslim interaction...you cannot imagine how starkly and nakedly 'naive/biased/in-denial/head_in_sand/prejudiced' etc it appears... WHEN YOU DISPUTE it......

CJ....you still are in denial over the good sense in goodthiefs post.

You are STILL equating all religions!

You should (if you were honest and sufficiently knowledgable) be making the clear distincion between the 'political' nature of Islam and the 'non political' nature of Christianity. (i.e.. one requires a 'State', the other does not)

You should also realize that Buddhism does not even have a concept of God.. and that many other faiths have their own differentiation points.

You are just loathe to condemn Islam for its racist hatred of non Muslims... for reasons known only to yourself..... but I'm sure that in time they will become apparent to all.

If Christianity contained 'racist' doctrines or permitted child abuse, or permitted domestic violence, or allowed sexual abuse of captive women....then you would be quite right in having an extreme fear of it.

But you, like Pericles can only point to 'bad moments in history' rather than 'bad doctrines' which underpin them.

sad..but true.
cheers

A little bit of further deconstruction might be in order here, Boaz.

>>All I did was present a typical report of the events<<

No, Boaz, you chose to present a report that was factually inaccurate, in order to make yet another point in your game of "whack-a-mozzie".

The fact remains that you describe it as "typical", when those brave souls who were actually there describe "unfounded news reports and media exaggerations".

And the problem with all this is, as I have said many times before, is that you are stirring up hatred that will ultimately require some form of physical release.

At which point I have no doubt that you will step back and say - there, I told you there would be trouble.

Your friends in Turkey understand this.

"it appears that those who murdered or arranged for the murder of these brothers are getting what they hoped for. By means of our reactions we may unwittingly help them. If we do not bring the facts into the light, these people will end up getting what they desired"

And what is it they desire? Violent reactions that will further justify their own violence.

>>You usually come back with your usual "You tar all Muslims with the same brush/You are exacerbating the problem/You are Mosely/you are dangerous" mantra<<

But Boaz. You do. You are. You certainly sound like him. And I'm afraid you could well be.

Rache, all your allegations of US complicity in the establishment and development of the Taliban, Al-Quaeda and many other interesting things are well documented in Steve Coll’s Pultizer-Prize winning expose “Ghost Wars”.

In 1985 Reagan sent Senator Orrin Hatch, Fred Iklé and others to Beijing get China to pressure Pakistan into giving the Muslim radicals more sophisticated weapons. The Pakistan/China link was used to insulate the US from direct involvement, after their bad experiences in South America. The CIA was buying the weapons from China and shipping them to Pakistan for distribution.

As well as giving the Mujahidin C4, access to a satellite-linked targetting system, long-range sniper rifles, anti-tank weapons and stinger missiles he also built up Saddam Hussein as a balance to Khomeini and authorised US and Western companies to send him ingredients for chemical and biological weapons. Rumsfeld was also sent to Iraq to assure Saddam that it was all right if he used those chemical weapons against the Iranians. However, they also covertly armed the Iranians because they didn’t want a total victory by either side.

The Centre for Defence Information (CDI)says that the US “provided over $2 billion in weapons and money to seven Islamic mujahidin factions in the 1980s (via the ISI) , making this last Cold War battle the largest covert action program since World War II “ and describes how it all later backfired.

You’re also correct in assuming that no matter how some people try to distort the facts, the Taliban grew out of the Mujahidin and are essentially the same thing.

The US really created this mess and like the ISI, China, Pakistan and other contrived arms-length connections, they are now trying to hide behind some mysterious evil bogeyman they can point a finger at to take the whole blame and like all their previous fiascos, think they can bomb their way out of it yet again.

Funny thing about religious martyrs too. Muslims are strictly forbidden to drink alcohol. Not a clever thing to do if you expect to be getting fasttracked into heaven the next day.

Wobbles

It’s all very easy to post a quote from one source, analysis is another thing altogether.

You say >> In 1985 Reagan sent Senator Orrin Hatch, Fred Iklé and others to Beijing get China to pressure Pakistan into giving the Muslim radicals more sophisticated weapons.

Sorry, which Muslim radicals are you talking about? Do you mean the ordinary Afghans who were fighting the communists for their homeland? Those radicals? Because there was no Taliban in the 80’s and Al-Qaida was still three years from being conceived ( indeed it was the Saudi decision in 1991 to invite American forces to help defend their oil fields which earned America bin laden’s ire). Masouds northern alliance was the largest and most successful mujahedeen group operating at that time. They are still our allies today.

These weapons that you talk about allowed the Afghans to defeat the Soviet Army which in a very real sense led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. That collapse must rank as one of the greatest successes of liberal democracy over totalitarianism ever.

The Taliban are not the same thing as the mujahedeen or Al-Qaida. Afghan Machiavellian politics are far more complex than your naïve and simplistic analysis suggests.

It is also one-sided to suggest that this is all a result of American meddling. You forget that the Saudis matched dollar for dollar any American aid money. You forget that Pakistan was supporting the mujahedeen well before the US became involved. You ignore the fact that the Chinese were interested in doing damage to the Russians as well. None of these groups are US lackeys. It is far more accurate to note that they found a common cause in damaging the Soviets and supporting the afghan people.

Your analysis of martyrs and their behaviour is not only simplistic its plain wrong. By dying in Jihad all of a suicide bombers sins are forgiven and he will rightfully take his place with Allah. There is no accounting for your sins as in the western tradition. A martyr’s death is an automatic get out of hell free card.

Thanks for replying, runner. I agree that Jesus Christ will rule the earth, and I regard the Christians’ brief as being to herald His coming, to give other people their best chance of recognising Him when He arrives and, in the meantime, to love everyone unconditionally, with special emphasis on the needy. Our evangelising brief has limitations on it, I think – eg our evangelising behaviour has to be consistent with love.

I also agree that, just because we have a secular society, it doesn’t mean that secular humanists should be the only people who get a hearing. We should all be heard.

I’m not sure that secular humanism is any more anti-Christ than any other viewpoint that is not overtly Christian. It’s just a bit conceited in countries like Australia, that’s all. Besides –

i) Jesus was pretty tolerant of anti-Jesus remarks, so He knows the scene and probably doesn’t require us to be more sensitive than He was.

ii) Some Christians occasionally say and do things that Jesus would not say and do.

Perhaps anti-Christ stuff is among the things Our Lord shouldered, along with His cross, so that it’s been/being dealt with by Him and needn’t occupy too much of our time and energy.

Or, if “anti-Christ” includes anything that is wrong or bad – including, say, abortion – then it is among the myriad issues that the community/government has to address. I think we Christians can only participate honourably and energetically in the democratic process and hope for the best.

Evolution. If you’re saying it didn’t happen – and isn’t happening – then we will have to agree to disagree. Mind you, I still believe that life works as if Genesis 1 and 2 were literally true – for example, that we evolved until we took on God’s image. Perhaps God watched us unfold – in a process that seems long to the scientists, but which is nothing to God. I’m sure He was always in control.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of very needy neighbours out there who require urgent attention.

Pax,

Thanks BB, I’m really not wanting to be unfair to Islam, but I can’t avoid seeing it as a danger. I agree that “us whites” also have a shabby pedigree, and that the US has been the spearhead for, say, the last 60 years or so. I agree we should be critical and watchful of the US. I’m happy for everyone to be subject to equal scrutiny - for us to be generally careful, not just careful about Islam. I also agree about Jaw Jaw: it’s why I’m here on OLO, in case some jawing can lead to some agreeing.

Paul L and rache: I know history informs the present and present decisions. In view of what you’ve discussed so far (no resolution in sight that I can see), what do you say we should do? Trust the US implicitly? I suggest not. Trust to luck with Islam? I suggest not. Surely, we need to look critically at both.

Pericles and CJ Morgan, Are you saying Islam does not present a danger to a country like Australia? For instance, do you think the Muslim community in Australia is somehow benign, unlike (it seems) its counterparts elsewhere?

What do you think we (the general Australian community) should do? Be watchful or ignore? Say Yes on reflex to every request for accommodation, or consider such requests (from any source) on their merits?

B_D, I believe you wish to inform and are exasperated, not “fanatical” in a troublesome sense. I guess you know, though, that passion is often alarming and easily misinterpreted. No offence intended: good luck.

Pax,

This present OLO exercise must have just about broken the record for recent historical small-talk, something even the CIA gives reminder of, calling it mostly about Blowback, meaning that over it all, modern war-talk since the two World Wars 1 and 2, wars that were justified, unfortunately has got too much the old colonial smell about it, as proven so much with the presence of Pax Americana in the Middle East right now, calling it fighting for the freedom of the American Way.

Pity there was not more commonsense about it, rather than in old language, heading for much more gunfire, smoke and flame?

Cheers, BB.

PaulL,
Using one group of bad guys to fight another group of bad guys on your behalf might seem like a clever idea but what happens when it's over and you just walk away and expect things to fix themselves.
They also armed the Vietnamese to fight the French but in that instance it was the Vietnamese who betrayed the Americans. Either way it never just goes away by itself.

The radicals I am talking about include the ones the CIA were training and equipping in special camps, like Bin Laden.
I think you'll find his argument wasn't so much that they put bases in Saudi but that they kept them there long after the Gulf War was over.
This whole affair makes me think of a kid who attacks a hornet's nest with a stick in one hand and a can of fly spray in the other - then squeals when he gets stung.
If rose-coloured glasses make the world look more palatable to you, then that's fine but assuming that this is entirely the result of some 1400 year old quasi-religious argument over "hating our freedom" makes the least sense of all.

GOODTHIEF :) should I understand your last remark in terms of Hebrews 10:24? I'll take it that way of course.
But I'm not 'exasperated' nor (in my view) fanatical, my own assessment of my approach is 'colorfully passionate'.
You are right about my desire to 'inform'... very much so. To inform early is much better than just sitting back and waiting for another Cronulla knee jerk event. My objective is to persuade, and to promote changes to "policy". Unfortunately, most such changes are not achieved by the quiet voice of reason, but by the shouted voice of threat.

PERICLES. We could actually make some real progress here. I find it intriguing that you see the media embellishment of a few stab wounds and the mention of torture as being somehow 'whack-a-mozzie' when the far bigger issue of the poor brothers having had their throats cut and killed as somehow....'not' ? Most curious indeed. So.. If I just mentioned "Fanatical Muslims cut the throats of Christians, brutally and cruelly murdering them" is not whack-a-mozzie, but adding "And they were tortured" is?
Now..you have some serious issues of basic understanding of reality there old son.

The media embellishment adds nothing to the horror of the murders. How much 'more' will readers hate Muslims for 'adding a few stab wounds' than for 'cutting their throats'? Can you quantify that?

Next..I suppose you will be saying 'Mentioning' such reports just feeds hatred? as IF.... the world does not already know of these things. You also forget that most people who are likely to really 'hate' are not those who will hate over 'Christians' being killed in Turkey but by bashings like Maroubra.

PATTERNS.... that, is why such events must be mentioned.. until people realize that if you don't control both immigration of Muslims and totally stop the aid from wealthy Oil states in building overbearing 'dakwa' oriented infrastructure in Australia, then the price you pay might just be most costly than you can afford or your society survive.

goodthief, your questions are ever-so-slightly loaded, but fair enough for all that. Here goes.

>>Are you saying Islam does not present a danger to a country like Australia?<<

At this moment - despite the efforts of Boaz and his team to stir up animosity in the general populace - I see any danger to this country to be at a very low level. We might see the odd religious fanatic occasionally, but less frequently, and with less impact, than we see, say, a Hoddle Street, or a Port Arthur, or a Snowtown, or a Queen Street, or an Ivan Milat.

>>For instance, do you think the Muslim community in Australia is somehow benign, unlike (it seems) its counterparts elsewhere?<<

"...somehow benign" would appear to be a fair description. Despite, again, the provocation from our own Christian jihadists.

>>What do you think we (the general Australian community) should do? Be watchful or ignore?<<

It's a little difficult to do the obvious - ignore - because of the noise created by the Boaz's amongst us. So I tend to be watchful, and try to dampen down Boaz's rabble-rousing as much as I can each time it rears its ugly head.

>>Say Yes on reflex to every request for accommodation, or consider such requests (from any source) on their merits?<<

I think we should carry on doing what we seem to be doing so effectively, which is to consider each request on its merits.

Now you are being silly, Boaz.

>>I find it intriguing that you see the media embellishment of a few stab wounds and the mention of torture as being somehow 'whack-a-mozzie' when the far bigger issue of the poor brothers having had their throats cut and killed as somehow....'not' ? Most curious indeed. So.. If I just mentioned "Fanatical Muslims cut the throats of Christians, brutally and cruelly murdering them" is not whack-a-mozzie, but adding "And they were tortured" is?<<

The commentary, I would like to remind you, was not my own, but the considered contribution of some Christians who actually live in Turkey.

It was they, not I, who pointed out that the (presumably deliberate) sensationalization of the gruesome story is counterproductive.

The fact remains that you did not check the facts. You chose the story because of the gory details, not in spite of them.

Let me remind you briefly of how it went.

>>"He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum and his back," Ugras said. "His fingers were sliced to the bone. It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him," he said. The only thing I wonder about Pericles..is why you wonder about why I 'attack' any hint of Islamization.<<

As it turns out, you swallowed this hook line and sinker, and in doing so exhibited exactly the reaction that your Christian colleagues in Turkey warned against.

By standing on your soap box and regurgitating this pornographic detail, you cannot fail to incite fear and hatred, can you?

So don't point fingers at me, my friend, for making you aware of how you are being manipulated.

I do wish you would read Mosley's "My Life". So much would be come clear to you, as to the dangers that lie ahead for you if you continue to be led by the nose in this manner.

There can be only one outcome if your rabble-rousing succeeds in its objectives, Boaz, and it will inevitably involve weeping, wailing and - you can bet on it - the gnashing of teeth.

Wobbles

“They also armed the Vietnamese to fight the French but in that instance it was the Vietnamese who betrayed the Americans. Either way it never just goes away by itself.”

What? The Viet Minh were armed by China and the USSR. Initially the Americans were neutral in that conflict however after Mao’s victory in China, America threw all of its support behind the French and the two countries were bound by a Mutual Defense Pact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War

There is no evidence at all that the US trained or supported Bin Laden and his group. And as you point out, the falling out with bin laden came after the 1st gulf war anyway.

Your simplistic analogy suggests to me that you see the world with some kind of bizarre lenses of your own. You and your fellow soft lefters who see the US as more culpable than real imperialists like the USSR and China are suffering from an acute lack of perspective.

I have never argued that the Islamo-fascists are attacking us because they hate our freedom, although they do hate it. I firmly believe they are provoking the west because they hope that retaliation will bring their divided communities into the fundamentalist fold under the banner of the defenders of the faith. It is about a war for the hearts and minds of muslims and a return of the caliphate. Whether we retaliate or not its all upside to them. If we retaliate they point at their casualties and say look at what the infidel has done to us. If we turn the other cheek they will continue to provoke us until they get what they want which is Sharia law and rule of the mullahs. The only way we can win is to defeat them by fostering democracy in the middle east. Undoubtedly a task which will take at least a generation.

What do you think we should do? Should we return Iraq to the saddamites or more likely, if we just leave, to Iran’s puppets? Should we leave Afghanistan to the Taliban and let Afghanistan fall apart again?

PaulL

"The Viet Minh were armed by China and the USSR. Initially the Americans were neutral in that conflict however after Mao’s victory in China, America threw all of its support behind the French and the two countries were bound by a Mutual Defense Pact."

I was referring to the first few pre-China years of that war. America had a stockpile of weapons on Okinawa in preparation for a probable invasion of Japan. After the Japanese surrender, many of the weapons were arranged to be "sold" (for a dollar) to Ho Chi Minh to help him drive out the French.
This was a covert economic strategy on the understanding that Standard Oil could later carry out explorations of suspected off-shore oil and gas fields but Ho Chi Minh later reneged and aligned with the new Communist China, forcing America to assume a political stance against him - particularly after the French discovered what had been happening.

With hindsight it would have been a better political strategy to have given those weapons to the Chinese Nationalists instead.

I actually agree with you on many points but feel that the true situation is far more complex than the simplistic Hollywood-style script we are being fed. One thing I can't accept however is why the Muslims "hate freedom". People fight to gain benefits, not to lose them. Either they want something extra or want to restore something they lost. Who wants to die so their own children would have a worse life than their own?

Pericles, You’re calling B_D a “Christian jihadist”? If Islamic jihadists were only interested in passionate awareness-raising through communication (which is what I think B_D is into), I’d personally be very relaxed about Islam.

Without B_D, and without any other non-Muslim religious people sounding the alarm, I think we would still hear a lot about what Muslims are doing – say, in Europe, Africa and the Pacific. One group we’d hear it from is the new atheists: Dawkins et al are largely motivated by their alarm at Islamic jihad. They then talk more about Christianity, but I think that’s because they’re Westerners writing primarily for a Western readership. Even allowing for legitimate concerns about the apocalyptic Christian neo-conservatives (if I’ve got that right), the atheists remain concerned about Islam.

Anyhow, informed vigilance – and considerating accommodation requests on their merits – is probably the best we can do. Thanks for responding.

I would add “We should get as close to Australian Muslims as we can". Simply to use the better side of our shared humanity – good quality acquaintance, if possible – as a counterweight to the West-hating that some of them our doubtless exposed to.

Do you agree? CJ?

One problem with a lot of our posts on OLO is that so many of us adopt extreme positions. Or, are responded to as if we have. For instance, it would be extreme to say, “Islam is the only problem”. Or to say, “Islam is guaranteed safe”.

If A offers “Islam is a serious problem”, it is no answer for B to say, “Islam is not the only problem, look at the US (or the Christian neo-Cons)”. Or, if this is the answer, it should be acknowledged that Islam is a problem. Why could the reply not begin with “Yes, but …”? Then, we’d make progress.

Surely, we are beset with a number of problems and should keep an eye on them all. I’m so surprised at the difficulty in reaching agreement on such a point.

Pax,

goodthief: "Anyhow, informed vigilance – and considerating accommodation requests on their merits – is probably the best we can do. Thanks for responding.

I would add “We should get as close to Australian Muslims as we can". Simply to use the better side of our shared humanity – good quality acquaintance, if possible – as a counterweight to the West-hating that some of them our (sic) doubtless exposed to.

Do you agree? CJ?"

Not so sure about "informed vigilance" with respect to Muslims in particular - I'd apply that principle to all religious extremists, as well as e.g. white supremacists, neo-Nazis, radical socialists, gun nuts, etc etc.

I don't necessarily advocate "getting close to" people whose worldview is different to your own for its own sake, although in my experience that is usually a beneficial activity for all concerned. What I advocate is tolerance - which doesn't mean that you have to like or agree with the other point of view, rather that we all acknowledge other people's rights to have points of view and beliefs that differ from our own.

"Accommodating" those differing points of view and beliefs should be the baseline position, and should only be refused if such accommodation involves real inconvenience or other actual costs, as opposed to basic antipathy towards the beliefs and customs of others.

The Awakening?

Paull’s mentioning of Saddamites still being active in Iraq brings out his lack of knowledge about what is really happening in Iraq right now.

Paul Bremer had the chance to put the bulk of Saddam’s 300,000 frontline Sunni troops on the payroll, but instead let them become most of the so-called outside insurgents attacking the Americans and the Shias. Thus has come the official Bush Awakening.

Realise now why early last year the Washington Post published the news how, surprise, surprise, a US gunship swooped into another ruckus near Baghdad but instead of gunsighting on the usual Sunni insurgents, aimed on a crowd of Shias, the people the Americans had come into Iraq to rescue.

We thus now find that a crack mob of Iraqi militia under command of the Americans, is 80% Sunni.

Why the Washington Post is the only part of any world news service that can bring out the much needed facts, is hard to fathom?

Sadly it seems most ordinary folk want the Iraqi conflict to end even it does finish up with the Baghdad Green Zone forever under US official neo-colonialist control with Saddamite Sunnis well on the payroll.

Cheers - B

Toleration as an end in itself leads to a society with no shared values, no cohesion and a lot of hate. Toleration should be a means to achieve a fair and peaceful existence for a nations’ diverse peoples. But how should we apply this theory to the intolerant. Should we really tolerate those who, not only don’t share our opinions, but actively wish us harm. Don’t pretend that I am tarring all muslims with this brush. I fully recognise that the majority of muslims don’t feel this way. But what should we do with those who do. Deflecting attention away from the fact that these people actually do exist and instead pretending that, repugnant as they may be, Christian fundamentalists are just as big a danger, is cultural relativism at its worst.

Here is an article from the Times online. It discusses the effects of multiculturalism and its role in creating home-grown Islamo-fascism.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article544443.ece

Wobbles

“The most detailed study yet of al- Qaeda supporters shows that the majority are middle-class with good jobs. Most are college-educated, usually in the West. Fewer than one in ten have been to religious school.”

The suggestion that all these men are rigidly puritanical in their adherence to muslim holy law is misleading to say the least.

“The London terrorists — like those in Madrid, Bali and New York before them — issued no warnings, made no demands, left no list of grievances. Four men simply sneaked on to three Tube trains and a bus and without a word created carnage. For them, terror was an end in itself, not a means to an end.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article544443.ece

The French Government clamped down on radical Islam in a way that no other country has. No mosque or Islamic prayer hall is off limits to police. Imams preaching hate are regularly deported. France stopped giving asylum to Islamic extremists wanted in their home country, and was disgusted when many of them were given refuge in Britain. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article548063.ece

We need to revisit integration as our policy for migrants.

Bushbred,

Now I know you are an old bloke but I am not going to let you get away with that one. I did not suggest that the saddamites are still active. What I asked was whether those soft left morons would actually give Iraq back to the saddamites. Surely you can see the difference.

The very idea that we went to Iraq to crush the Sunnis and rescue the Shia shows you don’t know what you are talking about.

>> “.. the Bush regime gets its way through Saddam’s Sunnis being forgiven in Iraq.”

Really do we need to send all Sunni Iraqis to The Hague for membership of Saddams nominal sect? Do we ignore Moqtadr al Sadyr and his Iranian funded Shia mates who want to reorder Iraq in a manner that favours the Iranians. Or should we just evacuate all the Sunnis and let Sadr at the Kurds? Should we ignore the Sunni groups fighting Egyptian, Syrian and Saudi fundamentalist trying to impose Sharia upon the more secular Iraqis.

>> “.. Egypt is not regarded as a terrorist Islamic nation.”

Oh yeah right!! Remember Mohhamed Atta. “According to the BBC, Mubarak has survived six assassination attempts. Mubarak is said to have authorized raids on The Islamic Group which by 1999 saw 20,000 persons placed in detention related to the revolutionary Islamic organizations. “

>>… the grisly style of terrorism that the Islamics are using in what might be called a justifiable fightback, has caused most of us Westerners to regard them as inhuman.

Justifiable fightback? You are insane. What was justifiable about killing 3000 innocent people on 9/11? What was justifiable about blowing up the London tube on 7/7? Were the people they killed responsible for any harm done to anyone?

Your white guilt and self hate make me wonder how you could ever have justified WW1 and WW2. Surely imperialist Britain and the Johnny-come-lately American crusaders started WW2 and inflicted defeat upon poor old Hitler ( who was really no different to all the other white imperialists). And of course Franco and Tojo were just misunderstood.

You have not given a decent answer, Paull, you are that full of yourself, you are another one who let the news last year from the Washington Post about the US gunship attacking the Shias instead of the Sunnis deliberately pass you by.

You only hear what you want to hear, Paull, like your belief that a nuclear Israel is good for the Middle East.

No one with any commonsense believes that, Paull, because it multiplies Islamic hatred against Israel a dozen times.

Thanks for responding, CJ. I agree about vigilance regarding all nuts, not just Muslims (I mean, Muslim nuts).

I agree that the reasonableness of requests for accommodation needs filling out – in terms of real inconvenience etc as you suggest.

I agree in acknowledging “other people’s rights to have points of view and beliefs that differ from our own”. The most dangerous people, I suspect, are those who don’t acknowledge this. People who are essentially undemocratic.

This is where Paul L’s point comes in, I think. Tolerance is good, I’d say, as an expression of respect for human beings. However, comes a time when we have to say “this is intolerable”.

Paul, CJ will speak for himself, but I don’t hear him saying that we should tolerate people who seek to harm us. This could be seen as simply a matter of law and order – which, for all I know, CJ supports.

I also don’t hear him say the Christian fundos are an equal danger. I think he’s saying there are many dangers, and that some forms of Christian fundamentalism need to be on the watch-list.

Faced with an array of dangers, I suppose it makes sense to prioritise them. I’d list them this way:

Global warming
………….
China
……….
Radical Islam
……….
Christian fundos
……….

The dots represent issues I haven’t thought of. Countless, no doubt. I don’t see Christianity as such a threat to peace as Islam, mainly because its doctrines tend away from temporal domination and support a distinction between Church and State. Christianity has to be distorted to become dangerous. By contrast, Islam seems to occur in a dangerous form fairly naturally. There are a few peaceable Koranic verses, but very few. I think this is what B_D has been trying to tell us all this time.

Happy to have my list improved on.

Paul, If it matters, I’m not a relativist. Actually a very dogmatic Christian. Just trying to be neighbourly, as instructed.

Pax,

Tolerance sounds good, but don't be surprised when the line gets crossed.

Are we, the great unwashed, now expected to accept the taking of more than one wife simultaneously, {as occurs within both Muslim and indigenous cultures)? Or the acceptance of marriage between grown men and newly pubescent girls(ditto)? Or institutionalised sexism? or anti homo-sexual beliefs? or FGM?

It's our intolerance of these more extreme(and usually illegal) practices that will see them disappear here in Oz, and not our tolerance of them.

It might seem to be splitting hairs, but I note that some recent posts gloss the quite critical distinction between "toleration" and "tolerance".

My Concise Macquarie Dictionary defines "tolerance" as:

"1. the disposition to be patient and fair towards those whose opinions or practices differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.

2. the disposition to be patient and fair to opinions which are not one's own.

3. the ability to endure disagreeable circumstances."

"Toleration" is defined as:

"1. the tolerating, esp. of what is not actually approved; forbearance.

2. allowance, by a government, of the exercise of religions other than the one which is officially established or recognised; recognition of the right of private judgment in matters of faith and worship."

I was prompted to look at this distinction after reading Paul.L's latest spray and an article from the UK to which he linked. I've never heard the word "toleration" used in public discourse about these subjects in Australia, and it's quite easy to see why - unlike the UK Australia specifically does not have an "officially established or recognised" religion, and as such the notion of toleration doesn't apply.

The article's Muslim author laments the loss of British identity, and asserts that "Britishness has come to be defined simply as a toleration of difference". While I doubt that is the case to many Brits, Australian society and culture has always valued "tolerance" as defined above - notwithstanding a largely repressed racism that bubbles away below the level of polite discourse.

Paul.L asks "Should we really tolerate those who, not only don’t share our opinions, but actively wish us harm?" - to which the answer is, of course, no. That's why we have laws against people harming each other.

Thanks once again to goodthief, for injecting some balance and, indeed, tolerance into the debate. I quite like your prioritisation of the likely 'dangers' our society might face, although I have to say that I'm still somewhat more relaxed about them than you are.

Bushbred

Are you senile or just not very bright?

I think it’s probably the former. I already mentioned in my previous post that the war in Iraq is not a war against Sunnis, as you have so simplistically suggested. Therefore the fact that the Americans turned their weapons on Shia insurgents is no great news to me, nor should it be to anyone else.

Maliki is now fighting the Shia gangs, like the Sadrists, many of whom have Iranian weaponry and support. Seems they have managed to turn the once rather secular Basra into a mini Iran where women are being murdered for having the temerity to work or wear their own clothing.

So I haven’t ignored your “NEWS” that the US had a run in with the Shia. It just isn’t news at all. It would only be NEWS to those who were stupid enough to imagine that the US had gone to Iraq to make war on the Sunnis.

It is absolute nonsense that Israel’s nukes multiply Arab hatred. The Arab’s mostly hate the fact that they can’t ethnically cleanse the Middle East of Jews. Their absolute defeat in three wars, all started by Arab nations, has also dented Arab pride. Finally, the fact that Israel has not succumbed to the European notions of first world guilt and refuses to deal with Hamas, an organization not only committed on paper to Israel’s complete destruction but actively seeking it out daily, marks them as a hated enemy.

Israel hasn’t even admitted it has nukes let alone threatened anyone with them. Yet nearby Iran, that home of the maniacal Ahmedinejhad, not only quests for nukes but actually threatens to wipe out Israel. And you think they are just misunderstood. Iran’s meddling in Iraq, including providing the weaponry that kills Sunnis and Kurds every day, puts the lie to the ridiculous suggestion that somehow Iran is not a military threat to anyone. Iran is bent on spreading its hegemony in the Middle East and its military assistance to terrorists, along with its nuclear ambitions are an obvious pointer to that fact.

It is you that needs to wake up, Paull. I am talking as an academic historian who knows history thoroughly right back and before Socrates, which is more factual than religion because it has been tried and tested for instruction in universities.

The line you are taking appears spot on with the preaching of George W Bush, which being based on a so-called global tussle between good and evil, Bush believes he has the right, as one on God's right side, to declare who is evil and who is not, very similar to his so-called evil Moslems in many ways.

As well as his so-called role to rid the world of evil nations as well as their leaders, Bush also along with his neo-cons, has also claimed the 21st Century as America's own.

Both Blair and Howard went along with the above Bush line also, and both have been tossed out virtually by their own
Parties.

I must say I have not much time for the present leader of Iran, either, Paull, but there are many decent people in Iran also. Just as an Iranian woman judge has mentioned, she believes in democracy also, but would prefer it not to be patterned on the American Way.

What worries me so much, Paull, is that if Bush and Cheney manage to get us all backing them along with Israel to attack Iran before Bush goes out, heaven knows where it will turn out?

In fact, to not believe in a term like Sharing the Blame to preserve future peace, Paull, sounds very elitist and arrogant to me.

Gentlemen, please!

bb and Paul, Surely it's unlikely that one side is to blame and one side is innocent.

Paul, Do you agree that some US behaviour has made things worse (even if we allow for the possibility of good, or mixed, intentions)?

bb, While you speak of Sharing, you also speak largely against one side (the US et al). Do you agree that Islam is a problem, and that it would be even if the US were not around?

Like any two polemical adversaries, you would address issues of disagreement more efficiently if you first identified common ground. I don't mean you to wallow on that common ground, just identify it, as that will take some of the heat out of the disagreement. (I'm assuming that you're not disagreeing for the joy of it.)

Pax,

From BB

Excellent question, Good Thief, so much needed.

Yep, reckon without the US and Israel in the Middle East, peace would be a very strong possibility.

As a historian, one is reminded here of the differences between two great German philosophers Hegel and Kant.

While Hegel taught that war's are necessary to open a path for peace, Immanuel Kant taught about a much more peaceful world brought on by a Federation of Nations, not so much in love with one another, but able to fathom things out like sharing ideas rather than going to war.

It was from Kant that our United Nations grew, but so difficult when you have a nation like America believing one very strong nation is needed alone to Rule the Roost, especially when it is free to indulge in regime change on any country it wishes to do so.

Spot on Goodthief... "informed vigilance"...but the focus I've tried to maintain is on the doctrines and practices of "Islam" rather than the somewhat relativistic and moderate behavior of most cultural muslims.

I would hate to think that a person could be so gullable as to embrace a religion which permits what we describe as 'child abuse'.. Of one thing you can be utterly sure- No Imam or Muslim 'evangelist' will tell a propsective convert:

-And your little 5 yr old sister will now be available to the 'Ummah' men as a wife...

-If you convert.. you will face extreme sanctions if you then withdraw (in some cases the death penalty)

-It is your obligation to fight for Islam even in your host non muslim country.

-Domestic violence is permitted in Islam, just don't hit such that bruises occur and don't hit the face.

Aah..but THIS one is a likely candidate for them being fully informed:

"Muslim Jihad will result in captive women with whom you may have sexual relations"

I went to considerable trouble to determine the truth of the 'child abuse' claim and now feel totally confident the claim will stand up in the highest court using Muslim expert witnesses.

In my case, rather than seeking to stir up animosity against Muslims, I'm hoping that 'would be' converts are informed of what they would NOT be informed about by Muslim missionaries.

I've not said "Australian Muslims practice child abuse according to the Quran"... because Australian law would forbid them, but if the law was challenged...changed...?

Regarding the 'danger level'? Practically speaking I'm probably pretty close to Pericles believe it or not, but lets KEEP it that low.

Yes B_D, a list of very scary doctrines, and that’s why I said Islam can get dangerous fairly naturally, without distortion. I hope your readers take note of your final two paras, because they make it clear that your list is not a rant but simply information. I would love to see multiculturalism work. I think it’s a high-risk experiment, but I’m excited about it.

bb, I’m not a student of history or of thought, but I bet Islam missed both Hegel and Kant. I have no doubt that the US has aggravated whatever is going on, but I thought the existence of Israel was problematic even before the US got closely involved. Britain was the original sponsor, wasn’t it?

Whether or not I’m right about that, there seems to be a great deal of Muslim-sourced strife elsewhere than in the Middle East. Places where the US has not been active. I used to think that resolving the spat about Jerusalem would solve it all, but I no longer think that: I think Islam is on a roll.

I see the US as quite enigmatic: powerful (though declining), greedy, belligerent, benevolent, self-righteous, self-opinionated, naïve, clumsy, analtyical, ignorant, smart, unempathic .... Leaving me very ambivalent. My impression is that you have a very one-dimensional view of the US – regarding it as simply evil – which seems at odds with your general approach to issues. Is it possible that this is what has got Paul L so steamed?

Paul L: You ask bb, “Are you senile or just not very bright?”. It’s rare on OLO for one to take another directly to task about the use of intemperate language. I take the liberty now because my impression is that we are both Christians, and I think I have a fraternal obligation to ask you to pause and reflect. That aside, I have found your posts full of useful information: alarming, but that’s not your fault, it’s just alarming information.

Hey runner, where you at? Wondering what you think of my last post to you.

Pax,

Many thanks for your enlightening info’, Goodthief, so much needed in our OLO's right now.

First, you ask me why I regard America as evil?
I must say we have friends in America, visiting them after our youngest son stayed there, where he graduated in 1972.

American history and politics is also part of my political science major. Later in Political Philosophy, it was where I learnt how, like others of our major Western nations, there is a tendency towards what some philosophers term, two-faced politics.

Unfortunately, such has happened more so in our Christian politics, as occurred not so far back in history, with the rack, etc, like torturing even to force a liberal Christian to be more faithful.

It was Thomas Jefferson, who in the early American colonies, accused the Pilgrim Fathers of carrying out religious punishments.

The truth is that political philosophers are saying that the way the Bush government has been carrying on, may not be evil, but to chastise other nations by calling them evil, is not good political sense.

The way Bush moved into Iraq illegally, was also not democratic, America acting like it did when it grabbed Texas from the Mexicans.

My main annoyance with Paull, is that he seems to believe that the US as global top dog, can get away with anything bad as long it is promoting the good, more like the Old Testament than what the young Jesus expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Also letting Condoleeza Rice jump into Israel and unlawfully speak for the United Nations, does prove that Immanuel Kant was right when he said that in a true democracy one nation alone has not the right to speak for the world, only a Federation of Nations - which our present United Nations, is not, because it is subjugated by the US with its freedom to arm itself as Global Supremist.

Finally, Goodthief, from the above you might more easily understand why I have been desperate to promote – Sharing the Blame - as a means for future world peace even between Muslims and Christians.

Good old Boazy:

" I would hate to think that a person could be so gullable as to embrace a religion which permits what we describe as 'child abuse'.. Of one thing you can be utterly sure- No Imam or Muslim 'evangelist' will tell a propsective convert:

.....[a selectively poisonous interpretation of a few cherry-picked verses from Muslim myths and legends] ......

In my case, rather than seeking to stir up animosity against Muslims, I'm hoping that 'would be' converts are informed of what they would NOT be informed about by Muslim missionaries. "

Yeah right, Boazy. And where are all these "Muslim missionaries", do tell? The only people who have ever been silly enough to try and "convert" me to their religious fantasies have been various versions of frootloop Christians, Scientologists etc. My doorstep has never been darkened by fervent emissaries from Mohammed, clutching their Q'urans and hadiths.

Are there actually Muslim missionaries out there proselytising in the benighted McMansion suburbs? Somehow I think that our Boazy is exaggerating just a little bit again...

Wasn't Boazy a missionary once?

A new low - even for BOAZy.

An ongoing "nudge-nudge-wink-wink" suggestion that Muslims are somehow all latent pedophiles and mysogynistic wife-beaters - all the classic hallmarks of a conclusion desperately looking for facts to justify itself.

If he's right then they may have to line up behind some Christian priests to wait their turn and I think they missed their chance in South Australia, according to the recent news.

Oh that's right, those unsaved devils are going to take over and rewrite our laws so they can get their evil hands on our white women and babies and we're just going to stand by and let it all happen.

I think we all get the point but after this problem is solved, who is next on the hate list I wonder?

Considering the offensive and provocative nature of these allegations, where is the extremism coming from now?

Thanks bb, but I’m now a bit perplexed. I know you mean it when you speak of Sharing the Blame. And I agree with it, not just to be diplomatic but because it’s accurate. However, the way you distribute criticism is different: you criticise only the US and Christianity, and this is helping to keep the discussion skewed and adversarial.

CJ Morgan and Wobbles, I’m not familiar enough with Islam’s scriptures to know if B_D has “cherry picked”, but I understand that countries that live under Sharia law are subject to the list in B_D’s post. So, it’s what we would have to look forward to if, perchance, we found ourselves in an Islamic theocracy, which we know is the ambition of some Muslims.

Where I see conflict is about the likelihood of this happening. However, there may not even be any conflict about this. See the last para in B_D’s post:

<Regarding the 'danger level'? Practically speaking I'm probably pretty close to Pericles believe it or not, but let’s KEEP it that low.>

For me, the questions are –

i) Besides issuing these necessary warnings, what else should we do to keep the likelihood low – eg behave in a very neighbourly way, if possible, towards Muslims in Australia.

ii) What other issues should occupy us (climate change etc)?

Pax,

Thanks for the compliment about sharing the blame, Goodthief, but you must know by know, as far as the US is concerned, taking the point of view of most political philosophers, America is powerful and strong enough to bear its own blame.

Possibly like a rich and powerful parent, whom a studious philosophical son or daughter, though the love is still there, sees the parent maybe as needing to be more humble, possibly needing to come down to size, somewhat, mentally, anyhow.

You must admit, GT, if I may now abbreviate, that the neo-con White House backers have come out with some outlandish statements about potential power, such as predicting an American 21st Century with Regime Change for many problem nations, Saddam's Iraq only the first, possibly Iran the next.

Such rhetoric on behalf of democratic leadership certainly does not please philosophical academics, even if it pleases many of the public.

America, possibly through George Bush, has now lost the former political support of two of its main leader allies, Blair and Howard, but with Bush lately shooting his mouth off about America having now pretty well won in Iraq.

I guess Paull will call all the above from myself, just Left Wing Hogwash, GT, so I guess you have your choice?

Still heartfelt thanks for your agreement on political blame-sharing, Cobber, Cheers, BB

goodthief: "CJ Morgan and Wobbles, I’m not familiar enough with Islam’s scriptures to know if B_D has “cherry picked”, but I understand that countries that live under Sharia law are subject to the list in B_D’s post. So, it’s what we would have to look forward to if, perchance, we found ourselves in an Islamic theocracy, which we know is the ambition of some Muslims.

Where I see conflict is about the likelihood of this happening. However, there may not even be any conflict about this. See the last para in B_D’s post:"

Goodthief, I appreciate that you're trying to mediate but the main problem I have with Boazy's continual vilification of Islam (and by implication all Muslims) is precisely that even he doesn't really believe that Australian society is in the slightest danger of being influenced significantly by Islamic values - let alone Sharia law.

However, he persists in slurring even moderate Muslims on the basis of his very biased interpretation of a few passages from their sacred texts. That would be like somebody cherry-picking the most violent and salacious aspects of the Bible and endlessly warning of the dangers of Christianity.

Surely you can see that?

CJ,

What concerns me most of all is the number of soft-lefters who point to Europe and Britain as examples of how multiculturalism should work. I have not bothered to check whether you are a proponent, although I have a feeling you are. I will of course apologize if you are not.

I’ve just finished reading the Islamist by Ed (Mohammed) Hussein. His descriptions bring into sharper focus the failure of the multi culti brigade in Britain, where they are more fanatical than in Australia. There can be little doubt that in Britain Islamist (as opposed to muslim) values are being forcefully pushed into the mainstream.

I accept that maligning all Muslims in BD’s manner is doing the Islamists work for them. I also believe that the soft-left’s behaviour has been extremely helpful to those Islamist organizations, allowing them to flourish. To argue however, that the Islamist organizations are somehow our fault is patently false and self-defeating.

Tolerance of organizations like Jamaat-e-Islami and Hizb ut-Tahrir and their front organizations posing as lobby groups, allowed the subversion of large traditional Muslim communities, through a mixture of lies, bullying and soft left support. When I say soft-left support, I don’t necessarily mean that the soft left accepted the ideas of radical Islamo-Fascists but they were always ready to support the cry of racism and religious intolerance which was obscenely ironic, given the hatred of the west and non muslims that is a hallmark of these groups.

It is rather a little late after events like 9/11 and 7/7 to say “ … we have laws against people harming each other.” And if you were even thinking of blaming the west for these acts you should note that these organizations were spewing their hate filled messages in Britain since the start of the Bosnian War in the early 90’s, before there was a War on Terror.

To this day Jamaat-e-Islami and Hizb ut-Tahrir are not banned groups in the UK, yet its members advocate violence against non muslims and support the introduction of sharia law in Britain. Seemingly Britains anti-vilification laws don’t work.

....take one youth, indoctrinated to believe that a woman should be covered when in public, and that she should be chaperoned when out. Add a dash of Hilalli style sexist bigotry....and a belief that females who display flesh are somehow cheap, and drop him on Cronulla Beach.....amongst kids who are brought up to believe (to some degree) in the equality of the sexes, in beach fashion and an openness in communication and sexuality that often shocks their grandparents, let alone my 'boy'.

There is a clash of cultural values going on here, and it is my and our kids who are dealing with this regularly. Name calling; Boaz, Morgan et al helps no-one. This conflict will take time to work out.

But it is a real conflict, at an individual level, not something that slogans and virtuous sentiment will solve. Sally N. and her ilk do Moslem Australian a disservice when they allow the excusing away of disgraceful behaviour under victim labels. Sally herself wouldn't last one hour in Bankstown as an anonymous citizen without extreme discomfort.

Beware the Nick Cohn syndrome, where we end up excusing the worst of one behaviour whilst we (rightly) bang away at the worst of another.

Equality of intolerance. Just say NO.

Paul.L: "What concerns me most of all is the number of soft-lefters who point to Europe and Britain as examples of how multiculturalism should work. I have not bothered to check whether you are a proponent, although I have a feeling you are. I will of course apologize if you are not."

If Paul had bothered to look outside his blinkered view of those who disagree with him, he might know (among other things) that I've never referred to Europe - including Britain - as any kind of successful example of multiculuralism. I've always regarded the European experience of grudging acceptance of their former colonial minions as a form of karma, actually. Sort of like Kipling's 'white man's burden' come home to roost. No wonder there's so much hatred on all sides there.

The Australian experience of multiculturalism is fundamentally different. I'll await Paul's apology.

palimpsest: "There is a clash of cultural values going on here, and it is my and our kids who are dealing with this regularly. Name calling; Boaz, Morgan et al helps no-one. This conflict will take time to work out."

Yeah well, one of my kids just graduated from what is probably Brisbane's most cosmopolitan high school, and he managed to navigate his way through his adolescent cultural clashes remarkably successfully, with minimal assistance required from his parents. My 11-year old daughter doesn't sem to display any major symptoms of cultural dissonance, and they even have Islam as one of the available religions for R.E. at her State primary school. Mind you, for some reason she has already decided that all of the R.E. classes are a crock - of entirely her own volition. I think she already knows some truths that some people here seem unable to comprehend.

I suspect that the 'cultural clash' is more evident in the benighted suburbs of Sydney - which is of course one reason I wouldn't to live there :)

"Equality of intolerance. Just say NO." I like it :) I suspect that old pal and I are closer on this issue than we like to admit.

Interesting comment in Google appears to point out that if America will not share the blame for Middle East problems it should rightly bear the blame for neo-colonialist intrusions which have annoyed the Arab peoples, but probably not so much the Saudi Shaiks.

CJ,

I apologise for lumping you in with those morons who think that Australia should strive for a more European style multiculturalism. It's hard to keep track of all the idiots on OLO who blame the west for the worlds ills. I'm glad you aren't one of them.

I am interested in your idea that Australia's multiculturalism is much different to Britains. Is that because Australia is not a multi-racial society?

best regards

Paull, as it seems you lump so many university trained thinkers among your morons, you might find in the end that you are among the biggest of the morons yourself - especially as regards a recipe to bring peace to the Middle East.

You can bet your life, Paull, that invading Iran with the help of Israel, won't fix it, unless you believe in genocide for the bulk of the ME Islamics.

Such might be the femme fatale for Americana and little Israel as well.

Cheers - BB.

I think we should be very careful about immigrants. But how does that affect our Muslim population? Most of our Muslims were born here and are aged between 15 and 30. If we keep referring to them as migrants, we are just showing our own ignorance and stupidity.