freediver wrote on Mar 25^th, 2011 at 3:36pm:



I see the majority of Muslims as moderate.....However I agree there is an element within Islam that drives extremism and should be exposed and opposed....Islam needs to make it acceptable and defend itself against the extreme elements that are driving this belief that Islam promotes and accepts these extreme views!!!

These extreme views must be contested by Muslim leaders so that a culture of tolerance and trust will be promoted within these communities.....We cannot live apart so we must learn to live together...It is moderate Islamic leaders who oppose extremism that need to drive this debate not allow themselves to be shouted down by the vocal minority driving division!!!

I find it heartening that a glance over what's been said doesn't show anybody to be on another page. It's been said that 'Muslims are mainly moderate'. Well what does that mean? Moderate is a relative term. Most muslims don't fly planes into buildings, therefore ... I'm just saying that what you say, needs saying carefully.

This is a debate that needs to balance. I bloody well hate racism, I grew up in the most cosmopolitan part of working class London. There was a gang culture. but race didn't come into it. Racism and fascism are blood brothers; so I'm antifascist as well.

Hitchens coined the term 'Islamofascist'. Was he wrong? A bit, but only a bit IMO, a better term is theofascist, because there are people in Judaism and Christianity that are just as out there as the Taliban. As an Atheist I tend to regard most practising religious people as extremist. It wasn't so long ago that the religious burnt old ladies and their pets. Even less time ago I'd be imprisoned for blasphemy. After all the work that's been done to create tolerant secular societies like ours, should we be letting in committed religious anythings that stand as a danger to reversing our social evolution?

If it was up to me, and I'm not quite convinced I'm right, I wouldn't allow the Burkha. I don't care how many idiot women put their hand up to say otherwise, I know what the burkha is, it's a symbol of an outrageous and oppressive patriarchy. On the other hand, we give visas to mormons, that they may knock on our doors as missionaries and convert people into believing the most unrealistic codswallop ever concocted. You might just as well let Nigerian email scammers go on a door knock.

We have to let Islam in, anything else is damaging to Australia's international reputation. But we have to act against mullahs who do hate speech from the pulpit. By that I mean send them back and have the legal provisions in place to do that without fuss.

Anybody who wants to enter Australia should be allowed to do so. They shouldn't be imprisoned for being refugees. They should get provisional citizenship for 5 years revoked the instant it's shown that they brought too much baggage. People are a resource Australia is short of.

beware wrote on Mar 25^th, 2011 at 7:18pm:


I was born there Beware, I am seeped in its knowledges. You should go there yourself, it will teach you a thing or two.

I must admit that I pretty much hate people that follow Islam, and hate them coming into this country, I reckon they are cultural primitives, barbaric tossers. Islam is the most pathetic bogan religion.

I think it is very telling that people who knock 'Australian culture' can only ever cite restaurants as forms of cultural enrichment this country has had from non-European sources.

The very simple and indisputable fact is that this is a country made by Enlightenment Europeans and is still inhabited by them. That is what the Chinese and the Irish and Germans and English and Indians and all the rest are coming for (the ones that are not coming just for the money, that is). It is a country that is at home in the western enlightenmnt cultural tradition. It also dreams in the English language, which is a very important part of that western cultural tradition.

Australia may not have the artefacts but it has that western enlightenment tradition in its bones, much more than perhaps even Europeans,  many of whom are suffocated by the weight of all their dreadful history before and after the Enlightenment.
 
An awful lot of Europeans will trot out the 'how ridiculous to say Australian culture' and gesticulate towards European art and history and architecture, saying, 'look how much more culture we have'. However, the vast majority of Europeans have minimal grasp of their own cultural history and go to work in the shadows of those magnificent medieval cathedrals without a thought for them, dreaming instead of 'California' or 'Australia'.

AUstralia is at home in the country of the imagination that is the western cultural tradition. That's what matters. Both to its natives and its immigrants.

Foolosophy wrote on Mar 25^th, 2011 at 10:47pm:



I can't believe that there are such unbelievably stupid grown-ups as you. I say this with a lot of feeling.

You seem to me to be always on tap with the most stupefying, idotic, dead-end ideas. A complete drongo.
Marvellous word, that. You are a smacking drongo.

(You will be pleased that saying this has eased the pain somewhat.)

Australia has an older constitution than almost all European, (and Asian, African, Latin American) countries. It is 'young', constitution wise, only if compared to the AMericans and the British (who don't have one).