Its heartening to see CJMorgan's passion for grammatical correctness, even if his foreswearing of the use of 'youse' could be taken by PC zealots as being a swipe at second-generation Australians of Maltese origin. His passion pricked my conscience as to an error in expression in my own post of Saturday, 30 May 2009 at 2:00:44 PM. It's last line read:

"Has envious non-Anglo-Christian organised religion been the real imposer of multiculturalism?."

It should have read:

"Has envious non-Anglo Christian organised religion been the real imposer of multiculturalism?"

Unlike Holy Writ, a jot and a tittle, so to speak, has had to disappear from my post for it to read unambiguously. Nobody can say I am being punctilious on the basis of this correction, but nuanced, maybe.

Glorfindel's post of Friday, 29 May 2009 at 12:09:26 PM in this thread, gave this link to Cardinal Pell's paper 'Islam and Western Democracies': http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/200627_681.shtml

It seems that since it was copied, this link has ceased to work as a direct link to that paper. On clicking it you now get this message:

"Page not found. You will be automatically redirected to the home page; or click here to go to home page."

The paper can be found, however, by clicking on the home page tab 'Our Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell' at top left of the Sydney Catholic Archdiocese home page, then 'addresses and statements' on the right, then the '2006' tab on the page to which you are delivered. The paper 'Islam and Western Democracies' is a clickable text link at the bottom of that list.

When you finally get to the paper, if you copy the URL from the address bar of your browser into your word processor or text editor, you get this link: http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/people/archbishop/addresses/2006/200627_681.shtml , which, as can be seen, is slightly different to the one available to, or used by, Glorfindel when he/she posted.

Webby,
I support multiculturalism only up to a point and that is, when the values of certain cultures/religions conflict with liberal democracy,the values of democratic society prevail,and are enforced by the use of sanctions if necessary. All democracies are "multiculural" by default,so there is no need for a "multicultural policy".I'm sure you know more about Church history than I do,however that's not relevant, the problem is the effect one dominant religion has on society,it's the ideal totalitarian instrument, as in Islamic societies.

A general comment-
Earlier generations were faced with a very similar problem, the threat of Communism, the difficulty was how to tolerate an ideology hostile to liberal democratic principles and respect the human rights of its deluded believers,sound familar? The author of this article is a promoter of tribalism and surely cannot criticise others for taking a similar attitude. Of course some opposition to mosque construction is motivated by prejudice,however the attempt by Moslems to equate opposition to Islamisation as "racist" is simply a propaganda ploy, there are unfortunately plenty of "useful idiots" who are duped by this technique.

I can't recall any incident that gave me a reason to be afraid of Australian Muslims. But gee, after reading the posts here I can imagine the Muslims watching their back whenever a non-Muslim walks by. I hope you guys restrict your activities to spouting off on on-line forums under pseudonyms.

Your principle argument for denouncing Muslims is to point out they have behaved badly in some countries. You ignore the inconvenient fact that in other countries they make great neighbours, and thus to convince yourselves they are the devil incarnate.

Well, who cares how Muslims behave in other countries - good or bad. How about commenting on how the Australian Muslims behave. That is all that matters, isn't it? We are after all talking about our fellow Australian's here. We all know that the Christians in Rwanda (95% Christian) went on a murderous genocidal rampage, but I didn't see anybody suggesting Australian Christians were about to do the same thing, or winging about new Catholic schools because of it.

Surely is guiding principle here is we are all Australians. We conduct ourselves like Australians - which is to say we are a tolerant and free society, who judge people on their merits on their behaviour here, not on how some distant relative in another country behaves. If the world started judging Australia on how you lot behave here, we would be in real trouble.

rstuart,

"Surely is guiding principle here is we are all Australians. We conduct ourselves like Australians - which is to say we are a tolerant and free society, who judge people on their merits on their behaviour here, not on how some distant relative in another country behaves."

Well said! The religions exist "within" Australia society and not "over" Australian core values.

rstuart, your post is blindingly naive and simplistic. I know of many Arab Christians, who will tell you about the stuff that goes on in their countries.

Is it relevant, OF COURSE! Why wouldn't it be? Muslims are Muslims first and Australians second, after all. That's true of a Muslim in Lebanon and it's true of Muslims in Australia.

I have no issue with that, per se, because as a Christian my values and worldview are informed primarily by being a follower of Jesus and secondly by my culture and upbringing in the democratic and free Australian way. So of course it'd be unfair for me to criticise Muslims for being the same with respect to their worldview and values.

What I do have an issue with, is if these Muslim values cause violence and intolerance towards others.

So, lets shift the focus off "Australian" Muslims vs "International" Muslims. That's a massive red herring. Muslims are muslims, and for any committed Muslim, their values will be primarily islamic, not Lebanese, or Australian, or American, or Egyptian....

Every society can be accused of racism, religious intolerance and parochialism to some extent.

1 I suppose, however, before Muslims start criticising the "tolerance" of the Christians in Australia to Muslim minorities, they might consider the tolerance displayed by Muslims to Christian minorities in countries in asia and the middle east.

People who live in Glass Mosques should not throw stones.

2 Maybe Muslim immigrants should be prepared to compromise their expectations to accomodate within a society based not on Muslim Values.