"The issue of whether Australia should give formal legal recognition to Sharia law in resolving family law disputes involving Muslims will be canvassed in this paper. The case for and against such recognition is outlined. Debate on this issue has gained currency across common law jurisdictions due to several recent events. One was the legal recognition given to Islamic arbitration in the province of Ontario, Canada, in 2004. Although the enabling sections of the Arbitration Act were subsequently repealed, it did ignite the possibility that within a common law system there could be faith-based dispute resolution for family law and other legal matters. The second event was the Archbishop of Canterbury's address to the Royal Courts of Justice (Williams, 2008), in which he promoted the concept of Britain becoming a "plural jurisdiction" by accommodating aspects of Sharia law. Although this speech provoked opposition from some other members of Britain's legal, political and religious communities (including some Muslim groups), the Lord Chief Justice of Britain came to the Archbishop's defence by also supporting alternative dispute resolution using Sharia principles. Whether this is the right direction for Australia or whether we should retain the status quo needs consideration and debate."

Quote is from http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/fm2010/fm84/fm84h.html

In the past there has been Religious Law enshrined in Civil Law e.g.
The Sunday Observance Act in NSW.
There is every possibility that narrow sectional interests will succeed in imposing their will on the people again; the Greens are trying to do so all the time.

Dear CHERFUL and Hasbeen,

I can only go by my own experiences and those of
my family.

Of course I realise that the issue of immigation is
a controversial one and the question of whether
government should attempt to imcrease immigration
levels remains a controversial one. Nevertheless,
people continue to come from other countries and make
Australia home, and although over 90 per cent of
Australians are of European descent, (a direct result
of Australian immigration policies), the population is
slowly becoming more representative of the region.

Of course there have been and always will be problems
from within these diverse groups. However, most people
start families, buy homes, establish careers and make
a place for themselves. Most feel gratitude, as they
believe that migrating here allowed them to change
their lives and the lives of their families for the better.
Often too the children of migrants, who had previously
denied their cultural heritage, find an increasing
interest in precisely those things they had rejected, as
they become more confident in their new society.

To me one of the most unique and rewarding aspects of
living in this country and the nature of being Australian
is to be part of this diversity.

I think it was Suse who once wrote that of course there
are bad people amongst each group that comes to this country
the same as there are good people that come. The bad people
are a minority and we should not judge the majority by the
actions of a few. The same as we should look at the
underlying reasons of what causes their behaviour.
All Australians are equal under the law and that means
that nobody should be treated differently from anybody else
because of their race, ethnicity or country of origin,
because of their age, gender, marital status, or disability
or because of their political or religious beliefs.

We've had our problems in the past and we've always worked
through them. I firmly believe that we'll continue to do
so in the future as well.

cont'd ...

Dear Hasbeen,

I'm sorry about what happened to your son.

My nephew was bashed by several blokes on campus a few years ago
while coming to the defence of a young girl. He ended up in
a coma and eventually with
a plate in his head. - He still has quite a few problems today.
The guys who bashed him were of European descent.

As I stated earlier - thugs (bad people)
come from all nationalities. No one group has a monopoly
on it.

I think you will find this interesting. Two or parts.

By Dr. Tawfik Hamid

"I am a Muslim by faith, a Christian by spirit, a Jew by heart,and
above all I am a human being."

Dr. Hamid is an Egyptian scholar and author of the following article.
The world needs more people like him -
ones who have the courage to face-up to reality, and not fear those who oppose honesty.

By Dr. Tawfik Hamid
I was born a Muslim and lived all my life as a follower of Islam.
After the barbaric terrorist attacks done by the hands of my fellow
Muslims everywhere on this globe, and after the too many violent acts
by Islamists in many parts of the world, I feel responsible as a
Muslim and as a human being to speak out and tell the truth to
protect the world and Muslims as well from a coming catastrophe and
war of civilizations.

I have to admit that our current Islamic teaching creates violence
and hatred toward non-Muslims.

We Muslims are the ones who need to change.
Until now we have accepted polygamy, the beating of women by men, and killing those who convert from Islam to other religions.

We have never had a clear and strong stand against the concept of slavery or wars, to spread our religion and to subjugate others to Islam and force them to pay a humiliating tax called jizia.

We ask others to respect our religion while all the time we curse non-Muslims loudly (in Arabic) in our Friday prayers in the mosques

What message do we convey to our children when we call the Jews "descendants of the pigs and monkeys"? [Yet, both Arabs and Jews are descendants of Ibrahim (Abraham)!]

Is this a message of love and peace, or a message of hate?
I have been into [Christian] churches and [Jewish] synagogues where they were praying for Muslims.

Cont.

While all the time, we curse them, and teach our generations to call them "infidels", and to hate them

We immediately jump in a 'knee jerk reflex' to defend Prophet Mohammad when someone accuses him of being a pedophile while, at the same time, ....we are proud with the story in our Islamic books that he married a young girl seven years old [Aisha] when he was above 50 years old.

I am sad to say that many, if not most of us, rejoiced in happiness after September 11th and after many other terror attacks.

Muslims denounce these attacks to look good in front of the media, but we condone the Islamic terrorists and sympathise with their cause.


Until now our 'reputable' top religious authorities have never issued a fatwa or religious statement to proclaim Bin Laden as an apostate, while an author, like Rushdie, was declared an apostate who should be killed according to Islamic Shari'a law just for writing a book criticizing Islam.

Muslims demonstrated to get more religious rights as we did in France to stop the ban on the hijab (head scarf), while we did not demonstrate with such passion and in such numbers against the terrorist murders. It is our absolute silence against the terrorists that gives the energy to these terrorists to continue doing their evil acts.
Cont

Cont.
We Muslims need to stop blaming our problems on others or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

As a matter of honesty, Israel is the only light of democracy, civilization, and human rights in the whole Middle East .

We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them "Jews-free countries" while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have their own nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel, women cannot be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of 'apostasy,' while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights.

I agree that the 'Palestinians' suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel .

It is not common to see Arabs who live in Israel leaving to live in the Arab world.

On the other hand, we used to see thousands of Palestinians going to work with happiness in Israel , its 'enemy.' If Israel treats Arabs badly as some people claim, surely we would have seen the opposite happening.

We Muslims need to admit our problems and face them. Only then we can treat them and start a new era to live in harmony with human mankind.


Our religious leaders have to show a clear, and very strong stand against polygamy,

paedophilia, slavery, killing those who convert from Islam to other religion, beating of women by men, and declaring wars on non-Muslims to spread Islam.

Then, and only then, do we have the right to ask others to respect our religion..

The time has come to stop our hypocrisy and say it openly: 'We Muslims have to change !
---
Whew that took a bit of cutting and pasting.
I don't have the link for this, but it would be nice to think he is
not on his own. The question is will he survive assassination ?