Jayb, hundreds of millions of Muslims were born, bred and live in countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, France, Sweeden, Russia, Germany, Argentina, England, New Zealand, .... the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on. I'm so glad that I could educate you on this important matter. Education is a wonderful thing, and opens one up to the real world.

I have previously read about the Caliphate.
There is an international organisation of islamic countries and it is
their policy to introduce the caliphate.

Now my understanding is that the caliphate is an international
religious government to which all moslems will hold allegiance.
The idea as I read it, is that moslems will not be expected to obey
the laws of their country of residence but to sharia law administrated
by the caliphate.

You can see where this is going, and it was the aim of that conference
in Bankstown last weekend. Apparently it was declared recently in the
middle east somewhere.
One suggestion was that it would be an alternative United Nations.

It matches with the policy that islam is both religious and political.
Watch this space !

I am sure as we have talked of this subject in dozens of threads for years we will again.
Long after this one comes to an end.
And that some LIKE OUG will try to down play the act that bought us here.
Pete will not be the last who wants us to talk only about the good not the bad.
My states City, so far this weekend has seen three drive by gun injury,s, it some times gets more.
Same folk, not mainstream Muslims but yes Muslims.
What do it matter how many, why any.
Show me any other group that has ever done this.
And EVOLUTION! some who truly think it not a god bought us to life, still think we, all of us, should let MIGRANTS following a harsh God, should be respected even when they hate us.
I have been shouted at, insulted, by Muslims, by telling me to eat a hamburger!
Pigs bottom to those lot, not all just those who love to hate.

Jayb,

When have I been belligerent to you?

I called one of your responses "pathetic' after you labelled csteele "Ali bin csteel".

I certainly haven't been trolling you around for weeks seeking any opportunity to goad you or misrepresent your intentions - which is what I was alluding to in my response to Loudmouth. Nor have I called you, as he did after I posted on the FGM thread, "mealy-mouthed", "half-witted", "craven and gutless", amongst other things.

Anyway, I have no idea why I got sucked into this thread, with talk of "garbage" and "pork chops" and whatever else.

I'll leave you all to it.

Ah DiamondPete, if only things were as hunkydory as you claim.

Fact is as more muslim asylum seekers and migrants have been flooding
to the West, tensions have been rising, as where Islam goes, militant
Islam surely follows. So in country after country, from France,
Holland, Belgium, Britain, Russia, Spain, we hear calls for a
Caliphate, Sharia law and cries about Muslims being the poor
victims. Demonstrations and violence follow.

So perhaps it makes sense to note all this and realise that the
same problems don't occur with say Buddhist migrants.

I remind you that the OIC is against free speech as we accept it
in the West and they represent all Muslims and Muslim countries.

So perhaps its up to Muslims to adjust, if they want to live in the
West and not the other way around, as so many seem to think.

Sorry you're so offended, Poirot.

Now back to topic:

Eight or nine hundred years ago, substantial progress was made in Western Europe to delineate powers of religious, vis-a-vis, temporal authorities - to separate the management of religious issues from those of the secular, day-to-day management of a state.

In fits and starts, for many more hundreds of years afterwards, battles raged, often openly, between those (like Popes and Cardinals and Archbishops) who sought to re-impose a thoroughly reactionary religious rule over society - and those (obviously for their own personal interests and power) in control of armies and treasuries who wanted to exert secular political control over all of society, often fighting each other as well.

After many wars, and contemporaneous with the development of science, political philosophy, economic activity and technology, the separate of church and state was more or less managed. We are still living with the remnants of those bitter struggles.

But in the Muslim world, those battles have hardly yet begun. It even seems that the most extreme reactionaries, the Wahhabis, al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc., could win there this time around. Perhaps there will have to be a major series of wars between Sunni and Shia - with the destruction of minor sects as collateral damage - before the victors turn their attention to the rest of the world. Us.

Enlightenment values were very hard fought, through cycles of revolution and reaction, and bitter fights to introduce and defend issues of freedom and equality. Australia, imperfect as its systems may be, has been part of that long, bitter struggle, with early votes for women and Aboriginal people - including Aboriginal women - in South Australia, for example.

I hope people remember that, like Joni Mitchell says, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

Joe