RObert, precisely - and how many more Islamist atrocities have to occur, how many more innocents slaughtered, before our leaders call them 'Islamist atrocities' and stop going on about a 'religion of peace' ? There's no such thing. In any case, as you imply, ISIS' IslamISM is an ideology, with its roots in Islam. Ultimately, it is a cancer that only Muslims can root out. We should wish them well with all our hearts.

Hi Mikk,

You mean, like any club ? Not telling members what they MUST do, but what they MUSTN'T do ? Like any voluntary organisation actually. That's not really a court though, is it ? For breaches of rules, you might get ostracised or shunned or whatever, but that's really a function of the contractual arrangements between you and your particular 'club'.

No, Mikk, Shari'a is a very definite body of LAW, a perversion of Islam maybe but brutally enforceable in many countries. It doesn't apply to just the odd civic or community body but to entire populations, like it or not. It commands brutal punishments, controls people's lives and orders their deaths. Comparing Shari'a law to Mormon rules is like comparing a sword to a plastic knife.

Joe

If we did close the border to Muslims, it would at least force them to address the issue of the more radical elements of their own religion.
They would have to accept that a proportion of Australian voters do have legitimate concerns and it would force everyone to the table to deal with the issue properly.

I mostly agree with a hard line stance, if only to at least have the issue looked at seriously.

Hi Foxy, I was sorry to read you had another fall. I hope you have everything in place in your home now to help prevent any more falls. They really do affect people adversely in so many ways. Accept as much help as you can. Good luck.

JayB, the Indigenous Australians can't 'go back to the bush' to live again, as you put it. They mainly roamed the fertile coastal areas of Australia before they were invaded and displaced from these areas by early settlers. Remember, they took all the good land 'in the name of the King'?

I don't know what all this carry-on, ranting, raving and tearing of chest hair is about sharia law, which is nowhere near being lawful in Australia, and never will be.
Can anyone ever see our pollies agreeing to make these courts legal? They won't even agree to make gay marriage or euthanasia legal, something which the majority of Australians want!

Most of the usual paranoid blokes on this forum are trying to use sharia law and the worst passages of an ancient Koran book to frighten others into agreeing that we shouldn't allow those mainly brown coloured followers of Islam into 'our' country.
Dig a little deeper and you will find they don't want anyone here except white, Christian people. I am not sure where our original Australians fit in this picture...

//I don't know anything much about this.//

Crikey, what a surprise (sarcasm). If you're going to start threads about religions favouring their own religious laws and courts, do you not think it would behoove you to do a little research on the topic beforehand? Or perhaps even afterhand, once people have pointed to the gaps in your knowledge?

//Suseonline said something earlier - we shouldn't single out one racial group/religion for persecution, because it obviously doesn't turn out well.//

No, that was me that said that.

//Fear of what? I KNOW things will only get worse.//

No you don't. You cannot have knowledge of the future; it's against the Laws of Relativity. There are no seers, psychics, pre-cognitive mutants et. al.

There are only people who can guess at what the future will be like. Over a very short to short-term period, people trained in the hard sciences are quite good at predicting the future and everybody else is taking a wild stab in the dark. Over the medium to long term, pretty much everybody is engaging in random conjecture, especially those in the arts and the soft sciences.

//I have a couple of quarrels, with the halal killing of animals: it is brutal, slow and barbaric//

I wouldn't say that it's slow - severing a major artery in any large mammal will induce hypovolemic shock within seconds - but it is slower than modern methods of slaughter. It is quite brutal to my squeamish sensibilities, but so is animal slaughter in general. The beauty of capitalism is that I can pay other people to do the messy jobs that I'm squeamish about (animal slaughter, nursing, autopsies, etc.) I would have to say that on the whole it is no barbaric than shechita, which nobody seems give a toss about.

//if it's true that all of our meat currently has been killed this way//

It isn't true. Apparently it has never occurred to anybody in the anti-halal camp that halal pork is about as common as unicorn steaks. Muslims don't eat pigs. So there's quite a lot of 'all our meat' which is obviously not halal. I've never encountered halal kangaroo, either. I think you'd probably be quite safe with most game meats. I'm planning on a rabbit stew later in the week. But I also eat 'normal' meat that can be either halal or haram: chicken, beef and lamb. Here's how you handle those meats if you're sticking to a haram diet*:

Just read the bloody packaging if you're that worried about it. You should be doing that anyway to make sure it's nutritionally sound. Somewhere in the small print, near the nutritional panel, it will tell you if it is halal or not. If it is, and that bothers you, don't buy it. It amazes me that I am having to teach capitalism 101 to the right. Don't you people cover this in the induction?

//AND we are ALL paying for this 'service', why ?//

No, that's not true either. If you don't buy halal food, you don't pay for halal food.

Oh yeah, you were too busy with Marxism to attend your capitalist induction, weren't you Joe? My apologies. Basically, in Australian capitalism, you don't necessarily have to pay for things you don't want or need. Sometimes you do, and that's called taxes. And sometimes you don't, and that's called commerce. Buying food is commerce, not taxes. Does that clear things up at all?

* Although why you'd want to follow a haram diet if you're anti-Islamic is beyond my ken. By doing so, you are essentially allowing Islam to define what you should and should not eat. I just eat whatever tastes good. From where I stand, avoiding nice food just to make some stupid political statement sounds almost like an eating disorder.

//Then to quote the 20th century cleric, Sayyid Qutb, "It is Allah and not man who rules. Allah is the source of all authority, including legitimate political authority. Virtue, not freedom, is the highest value. Therefore, Allah's law should govern the society; not man's."//

If you change Allah for God, he sounds uncannily similar to runner.

//All Australians should come under Australian law in Australia, and nothing but Australian law. Even imams. Don't you agree ?//

Yes, they should.

There is no law that allows for the deportation of Australian citizens if they worship the wrong god. If the government wanted to make a law like that they'd need a referendum first because otherwise it would be unconstitutional. That referendum would never pass.

//Looks a bit silly this whole deport the moslems rant now doesnt it.//