The weekend ge together they had recently to talk things through seems to have worked well. Members of the general public got to here a wide range of views from muslims to anti muslim protagonists. Afterwards they came out far more pro-muslim, and probably more aware of the true nature of any real threats.

What we need to do is stop alienating the entire muslim community and work with them towards the goals we have in common. The more we tar them all with the same brush, the more we push weaker individuals towards extremism.

Good query zoso.

My answer in one word.


Education.

I think its fair to say zoso..this is not fixable, nor should it be..What we should be concentrating on is fixing ourselves and as much as we hate hearing the word..the solution is called tolerance and eduaction..in that order.

being a Muslim is not a diesease. Just like we dont consider our culture to be a disease.


The solution is eduaction and tolerance..

Through eduaction comes understanding and tolerance..The only solution to our angst, and our angst is the real problem, not to the 'problem' of Muslims..I dont see them as a problem.

The suicide bombers etc are not real Muslims, they do not represent Muslims as a pple. they are fundamentalist extremists..like any society has its extremists..In Aust. these extremists are represented by whom?....not sure..but ultimately and in the end this is the only answer to that question!!!!!

Hi auzgurl.  My idea of education was not to educate nonmuslims about muslim
It is to educate muslims about the koran.

Tolerance - hahahahhaha

suicide bombers and child sacrificers ARE real muslims.
That is supported by the comments of the (ex)leading auss muslim, the Old Testament and the koran.

Education is the best and only practical answer I can think of.

zoso wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2007 at 8:42am:


Careful zoso, i think when sprintcyclist says "education", he means to educate the muslims in christianity as they are currently misguided. the only reason i'm saying that is because sprintcyclist seems to be an extreme practising christian.

Personally, i think the muslim issue is something the muslims need to fix internally, where the moderate ones should deal with the extremists.

But what the wider Australian community shouldn't do is label them all as extremist/terrorists and show hatred to all of them, since doing that will only make the situation worse and has the potential to create more terrorists. It basically becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

Thank you gavin..Ive heard a lot about the Exclusive Bretheren..and Sprint is an extreme Christain..you were right about sprint!!

Sprintcyclist wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2007 at 8:53am:

Suicide bombings have also been carried out by Christians and atheists, look up "cult of the suicide bomber". That guy through his studies found that Muslims only make up a portion of all suicide bombers, the key driver is more depression and political disenchantment than religious fundamentalism.

OLPC is the 'one laptop per child' organisation that has made a laptop that has a $100 USD value with the sole intention of selling them to developing countries to help their education. Its basically a cheap 'toughbox' that youcan kick around and it doubles as a digital book. Very low power usage, very cheap, flash hard drive, wireless internet and running linux. Bill Gates is not impressed

http://www.laptop.org/

They are so effective that the Northern Territory government intends to use its federal funding for computers to buy one for every child in school in the NT. The NT government can afford one of these for every child instead of one PC for every classroom. HOWEVER,  since it is federal money being spent, the feds have stepped in and claimed they will not permit the NT government to buy computers that do not run M$oft software... And you thought this wasn't a wholesale corporately owned environment... Last I head the NT was going ahead anyway and sticking it to the Howard govt.

Now, education is irrelevant to your religion, if their (whoever fits the bill for the sake of the argument) understanding of the world means they interpret their religion literally and use it as an excuse for violence then they will simply have to change the way they interpret their religion. Christians had to do it. I think a lot of Islamic fear and hatred comes from a misunderstanding of our culture fuelled by the propaganda of various extreme groups, the actions of the west of late have done little to disprove this propaganda. I see the internet, education and freely available western media in general as a good answer to this problem, once they realise that we are just people like they are things will be moving along.

This also requires that WE as western nations realise that THEY (whoever fits the bill) are people just like we are and should not be treated like some animal because they have differing views and poor education. I note that education is also key in settling down Australian, American and other intolerances as well, this is a double edged sword.

Trump I'm still eager to hear your words on this topic? AN what about you?