Sprintcyclist wrote on Apr 25^th, 2009 at 9:29pm:


LOL sprint, ive always liked your straight to the point attitude.

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Who cares? It doesn't matter if it is obviously targetted at Muslims. The fact is, Islam is incompatible with Australian values. You have this strange notion that because Islam is also a religion, there is something wrong with criticising or opposing it. If someone wanted to set up a nazi school, would you fret that the opposition to it is based on Naziphobia? Why is Islam any different?

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Again, what is your point? Should we allow people to undermine our society because we are afraid?

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Just because they aren't militant doesn't mean they don't share the goal of undermining our society. They just approach their goals with a much longer and mroe realistic time frame. And besides, you are avoiding the question yet again. Other than making excuses and fear mongering, what is it you think we should actually do?

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That is pretty poor logic. Our whole argument is based on some unique aspects of Islam, yet you can only offer the example of other religions as a guide to what will happen with Islam. You are yet again avoiding the fundamental issue. If Muslims do manage to integrate, it won't be because of people like you insisting that the problems don't exist. You are a barrier to positive reform.

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Helian, it seems to me that you think we should allow people who oppose democracy, human rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech etc to go about their plans unchallenged because you are afraid of them. Is that right? Would you mind clarifying your position on this, because all I see is someone who wants to give up their rights because they are already scared.

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Mozz, you are only seeing one side of the issue. Yes only some Muslims are violent extremists, but they all want to see Islam dominate. They all want to see freedom of religion taken away. They all want to deny their fellow humans basic rights. They all want to see women and non-Muslims as second class citizens. That's what mainstream Islam is. The only difference between the mainstream and the extremists is that mainstream Muslims realise they are not in a position to achieve anything through violence at the moment. But they still think of Islam as an empire. They want that empire to return. The empire is not a fairytale, it is a brutal killing machine.

I am certainly not ignorant of the aspects of Islam that are concerning to so many, but I don't know that all muslims do want sharia law, or to see Islam become an all dominant world power.
I don't know that most of them do not look at it in the same way as many christians, who simply look upon their faith as a personal spiritual system that enriches their lives.

I don't suggest we ignore the ambitions of the loonies, just that we don't tar all muslims with the same brush.

mozzaok wrote on Apr 26^th, 2009 at 1:08pm:



It is perfectly OK and reasonable to tar self-confessed muslims with the brush of Islam. As it has been said before: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."


How is Islam an improvement on anything? What is new AND positive in the Book of Mohammed?

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Thanks for making a suggestion about what we should do. I see now why you were so hesitant to do so.

You seem a bit confused Helian. One the one hand, you complain about religious discrimination. On the other, you blame religion as the problem and want an extreme form of religious discrimination, and fail to appreciate that it is the political ideology of Islam that is the problem, not religion in general, or the spritual aspects of Islam. What you propose is a denial of freedom that seems more similar to Islam than to our society. You want to replace Islam with your own version of extreme intolerance. Again, you respond to fear by throwing basic freedoms away as quickly as possible. Is this how you respond to threats in general?

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I have met one Muslim who considers herself 'Koran only', which may match what you describe. However, if you take Sharia out of Islam, there isn't really much left. Muslims right here on OzPolitic back up our worst fears about Islam, though getting a straight answer out of them can be like pulling teeth. You are attempting to defend Islam by saying that Muslims don't actually accept the ideology of Islam. These bad things about Islam are not the lunatic fringe, they are the mainstream and modern interpretations. Imagine if the Pope came out and said we must destroy demcoracy, or that we must go back to stoning little grils to death who cheat on whatever dirty old man was chosen as their husband, or that apostates must be killed, or that blasphemers should be thrown to an angry mob. This is what they want to teach Australian children in an Australian school. Not a few centuries ago, but today. Why do you have such trouble accepting the vast gulf between Islam and other religions?

I think that most would realise, that when pointing out the many follies that make up Islam, they are preaching to the converted.

I have no regard for Islamic teachings, and find the majority of them, that I have seen, as bordering on being outright evil, and those that don't fall into that category, could, at the very least, be deemed as being grossly offensive.

Where I differ with some, is that I don't think the majority of people who call themselves muslims, follow Islam in the way that the extremists preach it, or in the strict sense that we have seen ascribed to it.

We see how often the extremist muslims denounce other muslims, as not being true muslims, to which that majority would contend the reverse to be true.

I fully agree with all that think strictly following the Koranic teachings, is a wicked political/religious system, based in violent, repressive, anachronistic ideologies, and Islam preached, and practiced in that way, deserves our condemnation, and opposition.

I just think that making the assumption that the majority of muslims do, or even wish to, follow Islam in that strictly literal sense, is not supported by what we see, with the unfortunate exception of the lunatic fringe, which are so evil, and so active, that they create a perception of being far greater in number, and influence, than they really are.

Now I accept that those who do follow Islam, could go either way, and if they did go over to the dark side, of the extremists, then we could well see the nightmare scenario predictions realised.

The thing is, we must choose a course of action that will see mainstream muslims withdraw any support for extremism, and continually demonising them, en masse, apart from being very unfair, seems a very poor way to try and achieve that goal.

I think the best we can do is support the everyday people who hold no truck with terrorists, or murderous zealots, by allowing them to live their normal peaceful life, and let the nutjobs condemn themselves by their own actions.

We do need to show the values we stand for, tolerance, peacefulness, and respect for the law, by tolerating differences which do not threaten us, allow peaceful co-existence of other religions, and strictly enforce all our laws, fairly and transparently.

If we do that, then young muslims will see the inherent value in our system, and respect it, and hopefully help to promote the same values in their Islamic communities.

When we accept that people are just people, with simple, personal goals, not just borg-like components of a vast Islamic mothership, then we will be one step closer to seeing the conflicts of the past, put behind us, for good, for good.

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I think we should start by preventing the immigration of those who are ideologically opposed to democracy, personal freedom, human rights, freedom of religion etc. This would be a good move even without the problem of Islam. It makes a lot more sense than jailing people for telling you about their religion. Secondly, we should be more open and frank about the evil aspects of Islam and not shy away from voicing our concerns out of fear of offending people who hold these evil beliefs.

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I don't. I was only exposed to it very recently, and very slowly, by Abu et al. When it was just sprint going off, I didn't give it much consideration.

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This is largely a disagreement over the use of violence in the short term. It is not a disagreement over long term goals, only how to achieve them.

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It is supported by what I see. All the Muslims who post here either back it up or insult me when I ask them their opinion. I see Muslim women getting around in the middle of summer wearing a tent. I see Muslims protesting violently about a benign cartoon on the other side of the world. I see Muslims remaining silent in the face of horrendous attacks on the freedom of women, like the pricks who throw acid in the face of women for dressing immodestly. I see Australian Muslims dismissing these acts as 'just another crime'.

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Mozz, what about the dark side of mainstream Islam? Do you deny that the four mainstream schools of Islam support the death penalty for apostasy for example? Abu's criticism of the lunatic fringe is not that their goals are evil, but that their implimentation of those goals is not technically correct according to Islam. There is a correct way to stone a 13 year old girl to death. That is what separates the fringe from the mainstream, not whether they should stone 13 year old girls to death.

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You draw a magical line between mainstream and extreme Islam. But you fail to appreciate the difficulty in getting Muslims to act on it. You imagine a mainstream that simply does not exist, or is at best represented by mute apostates. Witness for example, Abu's almost total refusal to criticise fellow Muslims, and his eventual admission that he will always take the side of Muslims because they are Muslims, not because they are right. Muslims do not divide neatly into extremists and mainstream as you imagine they should.

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But Islam opposes those values, fundamentally. They see personal freedom for example as an evil. I am not going to start respecting Islam because some of them manage to follow it's commands and refrain from killing me until the appropriate time. Nor could I expect a rational Muslim to respect my beliefs. They are incompatible. It's like you think we should be polite and welcoming to one group of neonazis and ignore the preaching of their evil ideology, in case we push them to an even more extreme version of Nazism.

Young Muslims will either respect our values or choose Islam if we confront them with the reality of their choice. Pretending there is no conflict achieves nothing. We have seen from Abu the lengths they will go to to delude themselves and others into thinking there is no compatibility problem.

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The way to treat them like real people is to be honest about what we think of their beliefs, not refrain from honesty because we fear the lunatic fringe, not turn a blind eye to their evil ideology because there are people around who are even more evil and we can't tell them apart. We are lying to them and misleading them. We are letting them think that Islam is somehow OK so long as they don't start slaughtering us just yet. We are letting them think that so long as they don't blow up buildings they are welcome to destroy our society gradually.

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Yeah right, because the whole Islamic world is such a beacon of tolerance and democracy, that is of course what muslims want.