meredith, mil-observer is an absolute pro at reading people's minds. you don't get to declare what you think: Mil The All-Knowing does it for you.

It is 20 years since the Islamo-fascists in Iran issued a death sentence on Salman Rushdie. And to my knowledge this death sentence still stands in 2009.

Therefore, in such a thread as this it seems fitting to post a short video of Rushdie reciting 'The Satanic Verses';

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v20VvP19kCI

Brilliant. No wonder religious nutcases foam at the mouth.

Yeh, poor bloody Salman Rushdie, dare I say it:

*Islam the religion of peace or we kill you!*

Fancy ordering someones death for writing a flipping book. Also I spose we should bring up the censorship and banning of Hollands Geert Wilders from England... For a critical look at the Koran...

Poor old England... what a tragedy of spine this is.

http://www.geertwilders.nl/

"It is easy to tolerate the views and behaviour of those we agree with, but the true test is being able to tolerate the views and behaviour and even the trenchant criticism of those whose views oppose ours."

So true. Who recalls John Howard describing the hijab as "confronting"? This was practically an invitation to Australia to take affront at its existence.

Bennie,

That's just paranoid... It's actully very off if your into woman's rights... A lot of people find it very offensive and sad... I hope others opinions on the face sack aren't to difficult for you to accept?

I wouldn't allow kids to see a woman so demeaned.. let alone try and tell them it was ok..

Yes, we seem to have identified a touchstone and litmus test in that nasty, creepy concept "race".

There now seems to be an increasing number of liberalists who oppose the universalism, equality and justice pioneered since the early foundations of our religious traditions. Such aggressive liberalists often instigate that opposition because of their own preference for a contrasting gross inequality in fictitious, divisive and destructive notions of "race" and/or compatible oligarchical concepts of feudal networking via intermarried families and clans. Of course, corruption and provocation from those same secular and anti-religious quarters often encourages ostensibly "religious" fringe groups too - hence the delight with which liberalist fanatics identify those more reactionary, simplistic, misguided and caricatured exponents of humanity's religious heritage.

But the moral implications of such secular, liberalist endorsement of racism and oligarchical primordialism would be in clear opposition to that healthy guidance of humanity that we know from the great religions' moral codes. Such morality, as developed and imposed by the great religions at their best and most mature, is in stark contrast to the mystical, superstitious but actually anti-religious, anti-social and generally anti-human pursuits of those who wish to divide humanity as a precondition for further self-aggrandizement via conquest, enslavement and perpetual barbarism of "divide and rule". Of course the great religions' moralities still stand in opposition there, especially where evident in such essentially anti-racist taboos as those forbidding incest and similar reproductive degeneracy, or the primitive categorizations of any "race" other than "the human race".

Both in concept and practice, racism - like incest - is fundamentally poisonous for civilization and humanity.