Muslims feel right at home in Australia today because since 1952, Menzies introduced Sharia law into Australia by cutting the head off the High Court. As with all dictators from Pontius Pilate to Mugabe, he had to have a neutered and ineffective High Court, even if he was prohibited from doing so, by S 77(i) Constitution.

We have a resident Imam in every Magistrates Court, and resident Imams in all civil cases throughout Australia even though in some States they say you can have a jury trial. In these States the Imam is a public servant called a Registrar or Deputy Registrar who decides who can come to the Mosque.

Islam and the Roman Catholic Church have more in common than the Protestant Christian churches and the Roman Catholics. Both are oppressive to women, and both are male dominated. Both hate people reading the Holy Bible for themselves, and the real sin for the English in the eyes of Rome, was in printing and making the Holy Bible freely available to an educated public.

They compounded that sin, in the eyes of Rome, when they adopted the Gospels as their Constitution, in the Coronation Oath 1688 after a Roman Catholic fifth columnist King did a runner. The Roman Catholic Christianity and Islam both have roots in the Pauline scripture, and one of the influences on Mohammed was a Christian wife.

Islam is better than communism. Roman Catholicism was a rebel religion in Ireland, until the English left, and now is barely tolerated. Men and women are created equal in the eyes of Almighty God and a careful reading of the Gospels clearly shows this. If every Moslem or other criminal had to face a Christian jury, instead of an Imam appointed by the State, and face the punishment provided by Almighty God in the Magna Carta both in sentencing and adjudication of guilt, they would have to accept Christian Commonwealth authority..

An Imam and an elected dictatorship are absolutely at odds with Christianity and membership of the Commonwealth. While Judges and Parliaments set sentencing, prisons will remain a boom industry.

I think that the formal recognition of any aspect of Sharia Law in Australia would have negative consequences, both for those who availed themselves of it - particularly women - and for the wider society. However, I think this poorly-written article confuses the issue, by conflating it with claims about the misogyny of the more extreme forms of Islam.

If, as Andrew Bartlett suggests, the author's central point concerns the purported fact that "men still try to make women feel obligated to fulfil men’s sexual needs", then it is obscured in a mish-mash of Islamophobic dog-whistles and unsubstantiated 70s feminist dogma.

While such a claim is arguable, I think that contemporary Western societies have by and large moved beyond such stereotypical sexual patriarchy - directly because of widespread acceptance of the claims of second-wave feminism. I agree with those who have suggested above that we have moved to a general expectation in our relationships that men and women are responsible for fulfilling their partners' needs. Yes, misogyny still exists under the aegis of various religious, sporting and other patriarchal minority groups, but I think they are increasingly the exceptions to the norm.

If the author wanted to make the point that aspects of Sharia Law (and indeed fundamentalist religious belief of any description) are incompatible with the advances in gender equity that Western societies have experienced over the past 30 years or so, she could have done so far more successfully if she'd avoided the Islamophobic dog-whistles.

I was going to read this... but I had to stop after the first sweeping generalization.

Better luck next time.

I think this article is spot on. Women in Australia should be afraid of the gradual rise of Islamic extremism. As the women in the United Kingdom are realizing, Sharia law is totally unacceptable to most women. If it were not for the moral bankruptcy of a political system that went bad after World War II, and introduced the elements of Islam into the administration of justice, the English would not be having a problem with Islam and would insist all subjects owed allegiance to Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second.

Allegiance to Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second requires acceptance of the Holy Bible and the Gospels of Jesus Christ. It requires universal acceptance that a court is a branch of the Anglican Church, because Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second is head of that Church and the Presbyterian Church as well. The confluence of Roman Catholic ideas about women as chattels, and similar Islamic ideas, that resulted after Roman Catholic believers were admitted back into English public life, have found their expression in the Family Court, and one person Star Chambers formed by Judges and Magistrates throughout the United Kingdom and Australia.

The roots of the Anglican Church are Roman Catholic. Consequently in 2009, the Archbishop of Sydney will not allow female vicars. We think this comes out of Pauline scripture more than the Gospels, and is a position not adopted by the Pentecostal Churches. The hullabaloo about the separation of Church and State this emotional debate raises, is best fixed by not allowing a Priest of any description, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Muslim or State appointed to call together any court unless the Christian addiction to justice is satisfied by separating the power to judge from the power to act administratively.

The Peace of Christ was freely available in Australia until 1952, by having a Federal Supreme Court that anyone could access called the High Court, which like every other Supreme Court in all of the States, should have remained a Court of Judicature; So also the family court. Men, women and children are abused under Islam and in Star Chambers

The type of Sharia Law the author is referring to is the one expounded by Muhammed (May Allah Bless His Immaculate Soul!). Things like allowing sex with 9 year old girls, multiple wives, wife beating and so fourth. Things that are a bit of a concern.

palimpsest

Yes, I did use dramatic licence with the Pope's actual wording re condoms, which I believe were: 'AIDS cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.’

However, he was still using fundamentalist Church morality to interfere with a serious medical issue. More people having protected sex (even with the risk of condom damage) is still much safer than fewer people having unprotected sex.