polite_gandalf wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 10:29pm:


I am sorry to insult your intelligence, but whatever 'proactive measures' you are taking, they are not working.

There is no 'moderate' Muslim crowd at the Paki, Afghan, Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian, Omani, Algerian, Pallo Embassies, protesting suicide bombings, attrocities, disgraceful behaviour. There is no peaceful demo by Muslim demanding an end to the Syrian civil war. There is no Muslim voice raised on the streets against Iran's push for nuclear weapons.

But make a youtube vid about Mohammed and you will have all the motivated Muslims demanding the beheading of all and sundry on the streets of every major city, East and West.

Whatever you are doing, pal, is ineffective. But mostly, you do nothing except stand by and do some special bleating afterwards. And that's because you are even more afraid of the 'motivated' Muslims than your garden variety infidel like me, because they know who you are- you go to mosque with them, you are part of their network.
You are the sea they swim in.

Soren wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 8:47pm:

Yes.  yes He should.

And if he won't - he should explain to us why Cory Bernardi is still in his party

Soren wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 8:47pm:

Cory Bernardi is not a member of Gillard's party, is he?

Yadda wrote on Feb 21^st, 2013 at 5:09am:

Could you point out where I suggested he be silenced?
I have simply said he is bigot and should be ignored

Soren wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 10:50pm:


what does that even mean - 'not working'? What possible measure is this based on? Its just a completely meaningless and ridiculous thing to say. For all you know, potentially hundreds of terrorist attacks have been prevented by proactive measures from muslims themselves: education at mosques, clerics and imams counseling impressionable young muslims, muslim leaders working with authorities (such a program has been running in the UK with great success). Please enlighten me as to what measure you are basing your claim that muslims are failing to rein in the extremists. Just because a handful still exist? That means nothing. You should be asking how many that handful has been reduced from, and how much extremist activity has actually been prevented from proactive work by the muslim community.

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you are wrong - all these things have happened, and continue to happen. The US islamic community is particularly active in this sort of self-criticism.

But yes, it is true, they are not very prominent or particularly big. There are two fundamental reasons for this: First and foremostly, the struggle is internal; inside the mosques, inside the muslim community and inside the family. This obviously comes before a symbolic public protest - which, if understood as a gesture towards the non-muslim community to "prove" our rejection of violence and extremism (eg people like you who constantly demand such symbolism) - should be considered redundant. Muslim leaders make it abundantly clear that violence and extremism is unacceptable to islam.

Secondly, muslims are fighting a war on two fronts. They understand perfectly well what drives extremism, and it is the actions of the west in muslim world: 9/11 (as well as the USS Cole and embassy bombing in Kenya before it), was expressly stated as a response to the setting up of US bases in the Gulf. London 7/7 and Madrid bombings were expressly stated as a response to Britain and Spain's contribution to the invasion of Iraq. Every single muslim terrorist or attempted-terrorist's modus operandi is revenge over occupation of muslim lands and killing of muslims. So of course all muslims have a duty to protest against these attrocities as a way of combating the terrorism that results from it. From the muslim point of view, it doesn't make much sense to protest the symptom and not the cause. Yes, of course we condemn terrorism, but we also acknowledge they are fueled by other attrocities - and its these attrocities that need to challenged as the best way of combating islamic terrorism.


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once again - this means absolutely nothing. What measure determines what is "effective" and what is "ineffective"? How many terrorist attacks has the muslim community prevented through various measures? You have absolutely no idea.

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Completely baseless. I suggest you look at the program in the UK that has muslim leaders working with police to prevent crime; similar schemes in the US, not to mention education programs where muslims work hand in hand with governments. And thats not even going in to the daily education and mentoring that goes on in mosques all over the western world. How much crime and extremism is being prevented from these every day measures? You have absolutely no idea.

rabbitoh07 wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 8:14pm:


It's probably a bit ironic that you inadvertently got that right in that Islam sees itself as an idealistic nation.

Of course ordinarily, the word "racism" would not apply when speaking of religions as there is no particular race involved.

But yes, it is true that many muslims are more loyal to their Islamic nation than their country of citizenship.

It's hard to tell if there are in fact any muslims who would be loyal to a western nation such as Australia as the quran calls for lies to the infidel (us and our government) to further Islam.

Soren wrote on Feb 21^st, 2013 at 9:07pm:

highlighted for irony.

Soren, I couldn't agree more! Why meddle in muslims lands and import their greivances and problems here? - why illegally invade sovereign muslim countries for oil? why support Israel unconditionally in their wars of aggression and ethnic cleansing? THAT is what creates the terrorist threat in the west Soren - no matter how much we try and convince ourselves its about them "hating our freedom" or whatever.

As it stands, the majority of law abiding muslims in the west are stuck between a rock and a hard place - fighting a war on two fronts. On the one hand they are doing absolutely the right and proper thing by protesting strongly against western meddling and aggression in muslim lands - because they know this is the root cause of terrorism - and on the other hand trying to keep a lid on emotional reactions to this western meddling from a minority of hot-headed impressionable muslims.

So yeah Soren, please promote this surprisingly enlightened message of yours to our political leaders loud and clear: stop the meddling in the internal affairs of the muslim world and importing their greivances and making it our problem as well!

ian wrote on Feb 21^st, 2013 at 10:00pm:



Ideology, religion, and culture are all intertwined. Each partly effects the other.
What does Islam have to offer the West? What of value can it give us that we don't already have? They've produced nothing of value in 800 years. There's a reason for that. Submission to a deity trumps pragmatic political and social concerns.
I wonder if you'd have any problem of Australia/Europe returning to conservative Catholicism? You probably would. And there we'd see your double standards.