Wobbles: I don't justify the Guantanamo incident. The guards’ Islamophobia is reaction by uneducated people to perceived unprovoked attack on the USA by Muslims.

Belittling the core of other people's culture and mythos usually produces a hostile response. Who needs enemies?

I live in Brisbane and I haven't seen or heard of any harassing here of women wearing headscarfs. Of the different types of headscarf, the hijab (jilbab), al-amira, shayla, khimar and chador all show the complete face, and are not all that different from shawls worn by old Greek women or rural Russian women. It's the niqab (a veil for the face that leaves just the area around the eyes clear) and especially the burka (which leaves the woman just a mesh to see through) that are likely to engender hostility, because they go beyond "modest" and brand the woman "property - keep out". They deny the capacity of men to show self-control in the face of what Al-Hilaly so drolly referred to as "uncovered meat". Maybe Muslim men are just animals?

"Mainstream", visible Islam has become much nastier since Qutb founded the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab cultural imperialism through Wahhabiism started spreading, not just through the Muslim world, but into Western Europe and elsewhere, helped by Saudi funding. If (like these people) you regard the Koran as the WORDS of God, interpretable only absolutely literally, then Islam is a violent religion thoroughly offensive and insulting to non-Muslims. For example:

2.191 And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.

2.216 Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it....

3.28 Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends rather than believers; and whoever does this, he shall have nothing of (the guardianship of) Allah, but you should guard yourselves against them ...

Muslim schools anyone?

“I can only imagine what would happen if a large population of Westerners moved en masse into a Muslim country, … and demanded that the host society change to suit the newcomers……”

There’s no need to imagine Take your next holiday, as do millions of people from all over the world, in Bali. Anywhere in Indonesia or Malaysia, in fact.

Ask some of the bikini-clad or shirtless Aussies, Brits, French etc. who have moved there for the “laid-back” lifestyle how they are received.

In Malaysia, where topless women visitors drape the beaches, being sold drinks and trinkets by Muslim vendors, ask them how much harassment they receive from their Muslim hosts.

Get a grip, people. Our closest neighbors are Muslim, multi-cultural countries. They are inundated by millions of stoned, inebriated, sexually-active, half-clad visitors all year round, seeking the time of their lives. Thousands of whom stay on and demand pubs, strip-clubs, mushroom milkshakes, mixed-gender hostels and dormitories,

And get completely enraged when one of their number gets thrown into jail for importing drugs i.e. coming under the jurisdiction of the laws of the host country. (Until they forget all about her/him and move on to the next scandal).

Horus,

Thank you for your post.

Yes, I agree my cite was the passive eye-of-tornado, when Spain was playing musical chairs with the conflicting monotheists religions. Again, I agree branches of Islam were as destructive as the Christians. Islam's factions go back to arguments over whose geneology best claims the right to be the heir of Mohammed.

Christian enjoinment with Muslim Spain was significant in allowing the West caputure lost knowledge. In the dying centuries of the Roman Empire, knowledge of Attic Greek was lost to vulgar Latin, with dire consequences for Western progress.

O.

A key to answering the by-line question "What lies at the heart of the fierce opposition to the construction of mosques and Islamic schools in some parts of Australia?" can be found in the second paragraph of the article. In referring to sociologist Michael Humphrey's 1989 academic article in Migration Monitor, “Is this a mosque free zone? Islam and the State in Australia.”, Nursel Guzeldeniz brings to light Humphrey's use of the term 'Muslim communities in Australia'.

There, from the pen of what is in all probability a member of a perceived Australian elite, rather than that of any apologist for Islam, is the deal-breaker: the reference to 'Muslim COMMUNITIES', instead of a reference to individual migrants and/or their descendants who happen by circumstance of birth to claim, or be accorded, a Muslim affiliation.

So what is the 'deal' in relation to which the use of the term 'communities' constitutes a deal-breaker? The author comes very close to recognising it. She says: "What lies at the heart of this fierce opposition to the construction of mosques and Islamic schools is some Australians’ inability and unwillingness to accept and acknowledge that Australia is a multicultural society, and to come to terms with this fact".

Could it be that it has long been the expectation by the vast majority of Australians that persons who may desire to migrate to Australia should do so as individuals, abandoning all expectations as to any 'community status' for their erstwhile culture in the process?

It is interesting to see the use of the term 'Anglo-Christian' in the title. It is perhaps a most productive distinction. Australia is, after all, a constitutional monarchy under the peculiarly protestant Crown of Great Britain and Ireland. If there is one thing that such polity has achieved with spectacular success over recent centuries, it is the largely bloodless throwing-off of the claims of organised religion, whether purportedly Christian or otherwise, to any corporate say in the formation of public policy.

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

"the right to maintain their specific ethnic cultural and religious identity," That's acceptable as long these "communities" obey the mores of Western liberal democracy,the danger is of course is that they won't. It all still sounds like tribalism to me, the Anglos are simply playing the same nasty game,this is our future.

Dear Mac

'liberal' democracy is actually the problem and the elephant in the room. No fault divorce, topless bathing and immodesty is all anti Catholic. It is the Catholic Christian Church that is our heritage and which politically correct liberal/libertine legislation is fast undermining.
I believe in bi-cameral, multi-party parliamentary democracy as the best form of governance and we need to enhance and many palces restore this system so long as it is done UNDER acknowledgement to the Trinitarians and One True God ONLY.
Without this , whilst non Christian religions have their agendas, the average pagan Aussies who has ditched his/her Catholic and Christian way of living will continue to flounder.
'liberal' aka feral political correctness of the past 50 years in most Western nations is what is REALLY killing us and our way of life.