"The revolution has begun. Just on the ABC, Trump declares..." ..blah, blah, blah...

There has always been a type of demagogue to whip people into a frenzy for their own ends...and always been types, like you Jayb and others here, who are diminished, quakey souls who'll buy into any divisive rhetoric if it makes them feel a little like they're actually "in control".

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/22/australia-once-banned-catholics-from-mass-and-vilified-the-irish-havent-we-learned-anything?CMP=share_btn_tw

"I was passing through airport security somewhere in North America in October 2001 when I realised it: I was no longer the face of terrorism, and might never be selected for one of those comprehensive “special clearance procedures” again.

Until then, that’s what a passport with a Northern Irish birthplace had got me – it happened often enough anywhere in the world, and was almost inevitable at airports in the UK. I’d be taken away to a side room, physically searched, swabbed for explosives and asked to unpack my suitcase entirely. Sometimes I even had to unball my balled-up socks. I’d adjusted to it being the price of travel for someone with a birthplace like mine."

"Irish people crossing the narrow stretch of water to Liverpool in the 1950s and 60s were met with signs in some boarding house windows reading, “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs”. Even before we were all terrorists, we Irish drank too much, got into fights and ducked out without paying our bills.

But NINA – “No Irish Need Apply” – went back well before that, appearing not uncommonly in US job advertisements in the mid-19th century. You might be a trained tailor or baker or upholsterer but, if you were Irish, keep walking."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Hi Poirot,

Yes, there were signs up in parts of the US back a hundred years ago proclaiming "No Bohunks [i.e. Bohemians, i.e. Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles and above all Jews] Allowed."

You have a point; there are probably no signs up in Muslim countries saying "No Jews Allowed." I wonder why that would be ?

As for the question, should Shari'a Law be ever recognised or allowed in Australia, many of us are keenly awaiting your answer:

YES?/NO ?

No rush, Poirot :) The longer you refuse to answer it .....

Joe

Loudmouth,

"As for the question, should Shari'a Law be ever recognised or allowed in Australia..."

No Loudy, that's not what the thread header asked.

Geez, will yer stop veering off track!

Poirot,

You know very well that the question goes to the heart of the topic, otherwise it wouldn't be the topic.

YES?/NO?

Thick as a brick & twice as dense, loudy. No hope what-so-ever of getting a straight answer from that crowd.

Just on the side-issue of whether Muslims are slighted or looked down upon by other Australians, and harassed every single day and other confected outrage bullsh!t, I was on the bus home today (I love the bus, it's like a 30-minute community) when an Australian bloke got on, pretty drunk, about forty but looked fifty. He tried to engage, rather belligerently, in conversation with all and sundry, but was politely ignored.

Around him were a middle-aged Iraqi lady, an Indonesian student, a Chinese woman, a Hazara bloke and a rather dark bloke (who turned out to be Welsh, from Cardiff via NZ) with his son. The drunk couldn't open the back door and got even more noisy.

BUT (for what it's worth) he didn't have a go at any of non-Anglo passengers, even though they were as anxious as the rest of us: for whatever reason, he didn't go cheap and start abusing anybody on ethnic grounds. He eventually got the door open and got off, swearing and cursing. Somebody later helped the older Iraqi lady off with her large bag of onions from the market. Community.

For what it's worth .....

Joe