Well I suppose you could hide under your bed while he's here. Somebody will tell you when it's safe to come out.

It's ridiculous.

I see far more self-righteous religious hatred in these posts than anything some B-Grade celebrity is supposed to have said.

How about "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" for a quote from a well-known US commentator. No problem there. She'd be allowed in and treated as Alan Jones' honoured guest. I'm sure most of you would agree with the sentiment.

Wobbles wrote:

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" for a quote from a well-known US commentator. No problem there. She'd be allowed in and treated as Alan Jones' honoured guest. I'm sure most of you would agree with the sentiment."

No I wouldn't.

ON the other hand I'd be in favour of anything that could be done to persuade religios to stop taking their "holy" books seriously.

There is a little unwelcome turd of inconsistency in the swimming-pool of your argument, Proxy.

>>Islam specifically calls for the death of blasphemers, not to mention all infidels, whereas Christianity does not call for priests to molest children.<<

If this were true, it would leave you in a rather odd position.

Christians who molest children are, according to you, going against the strictures of their religion.

Muslims who are peaceable are, according to you, going against the strictures of their religion.

In both cases, however, it is entirely appropriate to describe those involved as "Christians" or "Muslims".

Which - as many people have tried to explain to you - makes the label itself entirely pointless, when discussing their behaviour.

Have a great day.

Dear dear Pelican.. you have just risen by a large degree in my 'respect' scale..THANKyou for taking the trouble to do a bit of digging. (Oh that Pericles and CJ would follow your wise lead)

It was most refreshing.

You expressed agreement that if it was taken literally it would be a problem...and you do not judge all Muslims by a book written centuries ago.

I quite agree. Simply because those most of us term "Muslims" are culturally so and have just enough religion to get themselves and families through the hatching matching and despatching parts of life.

Could we take this just a tiny step further and would you mind telling us exactly what would concern you from *13 if it was a fair interpretation and if that was taken literally? (last part of the first paragraph of point *13)

That's quite important for the discussion.

We can haggle over where it all fits later :)

I await with renewed interest.

Just a minor point of accuracy on Proxy :)

The Quran does not actually call for the killing of "all Infidels"

The specific call is to 'fight' until all non Islam is under Islamic rule. That is the only 'generalized' command which is also the most dangerous,(9:29) and is a valid reason for barring Cat Stevens unless he is prepared to publically denounce such calls.(after reading it allowed or course)

Even earlier in the same chapter references to "kill them wherever you find them" have a contextual limit which cannot legitimately be used to suggest 'kill all infidels'

Knowing what we now know about National Socialism and how it was applied to a rather sizable number of Jewish people... would we be comfortable with a represenative of that 'ideology' having a regular spot on 774 with John Fein ? I doubt that fein would be..given that he is Jewish.

Pelicans suggestion of a re-write is uttered from an "atheist" perspective and from that standpoint it probably doesn't matter much, but to a person of faith.. it would be impossible. Imagine asking Christians to revise John 14:6 "I am the way, truth and life, no man comes to the father but by me" to

"I am just one of many ways.. "

Or John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, He gave His only son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life"

We could remove the 'offensive' bits as follows:

"God loves the world, and showed us his love in his son Jesus, so all the people will have a happy life" :)

Errr.... somehow I don't think that's going to happen. Except if Bishop Shelby Spong gets his way.

Steven and others,
Glass houses folks,
Look at the issue from another way.
- Should we allow Israeli/Jews in to the country who advocate killing.
- advocate political occupation of another country like um PALESINE.
- advocate Apartheid government.
- How-a-bout Propagandist for the above country
- those who advocate breaching International law and human rights.
- Or those who advocate that abuse 3rd Party Passports for their extra territorial murder.

Why do we allow fund raising in Aust for groups that practice the above but ban the other side's needs?