T800,

Yes I read your comments and few of the others.
I just can’t see any culture as mono or Bi.
Australia in essence have a relaxed outback, outdoors culture which is very Mediterranean. It also has strong relations, ties and migration from Asia and its gradually changing the demography with mixed marriages and rise of Asian life style and religious practises.
I think Australian’ culture is moving towards a HongKong type of culture.
Time will tell,

GZ Tan,

Inside the usual grudge, there is one nugget you mentioned which I agree with and I believe many Muslims do: ‘The Quran need to be re-interpreted from time to time in modern context”. When the Quran was re-interpreted in the context of innovation and research Muslims experienced their enlightenment almost 4 centuries before Europe.
I agree.

I am not so concerned with who celebrates what. In 50 years time If Australians will chose to become Bhuddists (as per the ABS stats) then we will celebrate chinese new year. In your scenario if they chose Islam then we will celebrate Ramadan, moer holidays on top of Christmas, whats your problem?

FH,

Call mine a grudge because you can never truthfully face up to how vile your own religion is.

What's my problem? As if you have difficulty grasping the obvious. So let me reiterate:-

1. Islam culture is 'fixed in time'. It does NOT and will NOT evolve, because

2. Quran will never, can never be re-interpreted, (trust my insight on this) and therefore,

3. Muslims do not integrate into another culture but tend to destroy and overwhelm others' culture over time.

Whilst sin entered the world during Adam & Eve times, evil entered the world through Muhammad. The Byzantine Empire Emperor made his most accurate observation back in the 14th Century.

Why don't you show some backbones and kick start a working committee to re-interpret the Quran and see how far you will get, instead of white-washing your religion every time.

Actions are meaningful, not vain hope and empty talk of pretense.

Australia has three cultures.The Aboriginal culture first and foremost, the white settler/convict culture and all the others who have come to our shores since.

To say T800 ,that Aboriginal people you know like the dominant western culture ,even prefer it is a nonsense..How the bloody hell would they know ay?They had their country ripped away from them and watched the mass genocide of most of their ancestors take place within a very recent history in the timeline that is Australias recent past ,a little over 200 years ago.

No arguement here makes any real sense as most every poster has almost completely ignored the existence of 60,000.00 yrs plus of Indigenous ownership.

It has not been given due consideration and placed in its rightful context as the traditional owners being the most responsible guardians of this country..in a space of 200 yrs the 'dominant culture' has poisoned every river..hacked up the forests..eroded preciuos topsoils..burnt a hole in the ozone layer..refuse the Kyoto protocol conditions..our reef is in peril..our wildlife..mate this is 'dominant culture' at work? the one you so proudly espouse on here?

Sixty thousand years of Indigenous culture and this land saw the 'dominant culture' inherent a pristine land and now this devastation?

Id like to know if poisoning our air and water makes us the smart culture...Id like to see just how dumb the white man really can be.

The black man knows you respect your country he takes care of you.

YARECKON
there is a story you might be interested in. Its about Greenland or Iceland, I forget which. Some Europeans arrived to see if they could settle there. The indigenous people told them "You have to be careful about such and such, and watch out for this and that" .. mainly related to food I think. Well the arrogant Europeans simply laughed off these 'ignorant savages' and paid the price by all dying out as a direct result of ignoring the locals.

Yes, we Europeans have made an almighty stuffup of a lot here. Much of what 'looked and seemed good' like massive re-direction of the Snowy, and its irrigation outcomes in the Murray and Golbourn valleys....great short term result, but has simply caused a long term salination problem.
We are so smart that we even try to prevent up stream farmers from collecting rain fall on their own properties..now that HAS to be an all time brilliant thing eh?

G.Z. and F.H. chill :)

F.H. has 2 valuable points, cultural evolution through intermarraige, and that culture is not static. G.Z.s comments about Islam do apply to some elements of the Muslim community, but not all. The more 'Islamic' a segment is, the more it will be resistant to cultural adaptation towards ours I feel.

I hope that in all this we do not at all lose sight of the reality of "Australian" culture. We don't list it,....we live it :)

BD, Thanks for your comment.

In fact my comments do apply to ALL in the Muslim community due to presence of a common Islam 'pull factor'. Whether a Muslim is moderate or fundamentalist is irrelevant.

To marry a Muslim, one must accepts the Islam faith, one way or another. One's children are expected to be Muslims. So intermarriage will never culturally evolve Islam. Rather, the reverse is true... eventual Muslim domination by population growth.

Some people will readily cite examples that contradict what I just said. But this is not because Islam culture is able to evolve. Sometimes such 'moderateness' has a very simple explanation - Muslim 'laziness' or more significantly a prevailing environment (like Australia) that permits such a 'laziness', due to a weaker effective Islamic pull factor.

I am sure some Muslims persuade us they are 'just like one of us'.... Muslims who drink alcohol, eat pork meat and FH even suggested celebrating Asian cultural events.

The critical consideration is that any moving object experiencing a constant and unchanging force (as Islam is) tends to be 'persuaded' to move according to the force.

In other words, given the wrong environment, a known moderate can exhibit an extremist side in a way that we never expected.

I am not aware of another culture that is 'fixed in time' like Islam culture is. Therefore as cultural evolution goes, the tendency of the world is towards Islamic fundamentalism.

Had human civilisation not already advanced significantly prior to the arrival of Islam, then in fact today's world culture is most likely a monolithic one - Islamic culture of the Taliban kind.

Count ourselves lucky.

I am sure almost all Muslims will disagree, unfortunately.

Boaz.

Yeah for sure..I dont know much about the Moslem community..Ive been otherwise occupied but it would seem theyve been in Australia for a long time and until the 911 thing we hardly knew they were there or even heard of them..so they couldnt have been doing to much wrong as an ordinary citizen.

I think too much is made of integration..yeah sure its necessary up to a point for understanding and respect issues..but beyond that I feel its alright for them to keep their identity from their native country.I think the Government cant say 'welcome, but as a right of entry to this country wipe your boots and leave your heart at the door.'

The settlers didnt leave their cultural practices behind when they came to these shores..instead they forced the black man to live his culture, took his land etc..otherwise we would all be eating kangaroos and living black mans law wouldnt we.

Seems to me there are a lot of double standards at work here..