Interesting to read so many sweeping claims and unexamined references to an old and vastly diverse faith - Islam - from a loud minority clique of avowedly "Christian" critics who are themselves so obviously part of an identity that has its own serious problems. I refer to an aggressive Christian lobby that is often culturally in-bred and backward due to long-term stigmatization and neglect, and also confused and challenged from within its ranks. Do not expect such critics to apply the same absolute, context-free or ahistorical regard for Koranic and Hadiths translation to Old and New testaments. Forget too any fair expectation that they would (or even could, in most cases) deal with the religious texts in their own authentic linguistic terms; they could not summon the respect needed to even consider the classical Arabic, just as they could not deal with the ancient Hebrew or Aramaic. In the broader historical sense, the tired anti-Muslim rants on OLO's discussion amount to just another recent instalment of properly and literally defined “anti-Semitism”.

In the Australian political context, what we really witness here in the fanatical Islam-bashing is the result of a "clash of lobbies". On the one hand, there is an avowedly secular branch of imperialism which promotes its own particular anti-moralism, inevitably hypocritical, under a banner of supposed "diversity". This lobby's imperialistic nature is betrayed by its very divisiveness: various religions and ethnicities are to be allowed their public space and influence, provided they do not contribute any substantial common foundation for law-making and other leadership, including that of dynamic and most relevant hybrid cultural production. So tokenism is made big, while its degeneracy is clear from its promotion of such bizarre, alienated and inefficient cottage industries as baby-making via same-sex IVF, and other similar marketing of human beings as mere commodities or “lifestyle choices”. In the same context of cynical, imperialist, and anti-democratic manipulation we need to reflect on the often blinkered nature of "Sharia" within the UK courts, and that system's own premature claims to legitimacy and diversity thereby.

(cont.)
Therefore, against the west's imperialist crowd of haughty in-flight degenerates and their often triumphant rainbow banner we see the reaction of a large-C Christian lobby, which realizes that it cannot hope to survive - much less grab power and privilege - unless it out-demonizes Islam. The lobby's hysterical response to Muslims is due to the lobby's own identity crisis: issues of gender and sexual identity have undermined, and continue to undermine, the lobby's sense and understanding of its own mission.

But a powerful further motive behind this reactionary lobby is that many of its Christians have much in common with the most caricatured of Muslim preachers in the west. But they strenuously avoid comparison. Thus we read of their passionate, new-found liberal feminist convictions, for one absurd example. Of course, women face brutal threats like mutilation and acid attacks across cultures but the west's media has fed us a selective sensationalism there, seizing on even isolated cases in the Middle East, to remind "us" of "the threat". Oh, and then there is, of course, Afghanistan - a country smashed into the Stone Age and kept there as the largely western pushers' very own smack factory.

Apart from their support for various large-scale war crimes, the vilest act by the reactionary and revanchist Christian lobby in Australia was its acquiesence and promotion for nasty policies meant to persecute, torture and vilify Middle Eastern migrants fleeing the desolation and misery of their war-ravaged homelands.

Thus did that misguided – and I would suggest misnamed - “Christian” lobby condemn itself, by its own holy texts.

'But when you say “What counts is”..... that's a subjective approach which is simply reporting how you feel about religious peoples actions.'

complete nonsense. it's a pragmatic and respectful decision, to consider only how these people affect me. and, my measure of that effect is substantially objective.

there is nothing subjective about my approach. by comparison your approach is totally subjective, completely dishonest and self-serving. i wish mil-observer had said it in fewer words, but i think he got it right: you attack the muslim religion because you're concerned by the marginalised stance of your own religion.

and once again with the cherry-picking. it's incredible. do you pick your nose in the same uncontrolled manner? because to watch you do it is so much like watching a toddler digging deep. it has the same hypnotic effect. and the same intellectual content.

if i quote the new testament happily talking about slaves, you think that means anything?

What most of the Islam apologists here don't seem to understand is that Islam is not just a religion. It is also a way of life with its own customs, legal system and finance etc...

It is incompatible with western democracy, and Muslims should not be allowed to settle here or anywhere in the West.

All those apologising for and promoting Islam should read KatieO's post again and feel ashamed of themselves.

They are nothing less than traitors.

Please don't think that Islamists will applaud you for your "openness and tolerance". They merely laugh and think about you as the weak-minded idiots you are, and call you infidels, kuffirs etc, some sort of "untermenschen", not willing to stand up for their own culture and people. In fact, they are very much like the Nazis.

Hitler thought they were wonderful, read about it.

Religion of any sort should not be part of the 21st century, when are people going to grow up?

froggie, i'm sure katieo is just thrilled with your last sentence.

i don't see any apologists here. what is lacking in the discussion is evidence, as opposed to guilt by association, and the kind of mindless slagging off in which you are engaging.

once again, trad's post was inspired by the islamic women's report. i asked the thread if anyone had a copy of that report, so that the exact claims could be discussed, as well as the evidence for those claims. it seems that no one has access to that report

You are completely deluded Bushbasher. You should do a bit of research, but how you could have escaped noticing the constant stream of news about Islamist extremism and terrorism, I don't know. Given the events in Mumbai, I would have thought that even someone as obtuse as you would have realised there was something wrong with Islam.
There are none so blind....