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Did anyone in the public square approve unstintingly of Pauline Hanson’s parody of black-sack wearers? I didn’t spot anybody. Here is Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Aussie (19/20 August): “Pauline Hanson can and should be reprimanded for her unparliamentary behaviour.” Miranda Devine (Sunday Telegraph, 20 August) described “the stunt” as “repellent”. I chose Hirsi Ali and Devine because they are on the sensible side of the Islamic issue. Yet both took umbrage at Ms Hanson’s parody.
You will notice that I have left aside the unctuous remarks of George Brandis. After all, currying favour of Islamists is where the Labor Party has already gone and, where leftists have gone, modern-day Liberals are not far behind.
Take a step back. Our very values are under threat by a growing alien force in our midst and Hirsi Ali cares about unparliamentary behaviour and Devine uses a word to describe Ms Hanson’s dress-up which she might care to reserve for describing various Islamic barbarities, like throwing homosexuals from tall buildings.
This is my view. The burqa is an affront to civilised values and has no place in Australia. It should be mercilessly parodied. 
This is not to say that a free society should outlaw any particular mode of over dressing in purely public places. However, holding it up to continual ridicule is entirely appropriate. So, without qualification, good on you, Ms Hanson. But, at the same time, let’s face facts. The burka is a peripheral issue.
Islam is a real, present and growing threat to our way of life. Its values are not our values. It is a backward religiopolitical ideology. Those who hold to it, however intrinsically peaceful they happen to be, are part of the problem. Apologists and appeasers are also part of the problem. Our parliaments, our media, our churches and large swathes of Western populations have no will to fight. Arms have already been laid down. Unless things change and the will to fight rediscovered, it is only a matter of time before we are swept away into the dustbin of history.
People are mowed down in Barcelona and Wolf Blitzer, on CNN, wonders if the incident in Spain was possibly a “copycat” of the incident in Charlottesville, Virginia. Apparently, he has difficulty in seeing beyond white supremacists and Donald Trump and in connecting Islamic dots. These are the recent European Islamic dots: Promenade des Anglais, Nice (17 July 2016); Christmas Market, Berlin (19 December); Westminster Bridge (22 March); Central Stockholm (7 April); London Bridge (3 June). Blitzer might be a fool – he obviously is – but he is not an outlier among apologists for Islam among media hacks.
After Barcelona, I heard various security experts talking about the need for bollards in major pedestrian thoroughfares. A new report, “Australia’s Strategy for Protecting Crowded Places,” commissioned by Malcolm Turnbull, apparently suggests other barriers such as statues and planter boxes. We will not be “cowed”, the PM intoned. Really? Then perhaps the statues should be of Pope Urban II, Pope Innocent III, Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard the Lionheart, and other crusader notables who tried to push back invading Islamic hordes.
An insidious religious ideology is spurring Muslims to hate and despise Western values and barriers — barriers, for God’s sake! — are being installed to prevent religious zealots from mowing people down in the street. How many streets? For how long? It redefines the definition of pathetic.
Meanwhile, as the bollards are installed, Muslim migrants continue to pour into the West, form ghettos, institute sharia law, and multiply. Not one word or jot is subtracted from Islamic supremacist ideology; notwithstanding the forlorn appeals from dreamers for Islam to reform, whatever that means. Each day, multiple times, pious Muslims recite a prayer thanking Allah for showing them the path he favours, not the path of those earning his anger (Jews) or those who have gone astray (Christians).
And the answer apparently, apart from bollards, is beefed up surveillance and security, inconveniencing law-abiding grannies at airports and de-radicalization programs designed to dissuade Islamic youths from obeying the words of Allah and killing infidels. To wit, us. Hands up anyone who thinks any of this will provide an enduring solution for a fourteen-century old problem. If you have a problem with anarchists or with, say, the IRA then infiltrating, incarcerating and killing the enemy are large parts of a solution. But exactly what do you do to combat a religious ideology with fourteen centuries of history and 1.7 billion people behind it. The ideology is an ever-giving poisonous well. Only cutting off the well will do the job. And the easiest option to do that is now closed.
Limiting Muslim immigration to very few would have worked. Sorry, it’s now too late. Our vacuous political masters sold us down the river years ago.
As Muslims are now inside the tent in large numbers, the only option is to combat the ideology. This requires a concerted effort to marginalise and disparage discordant Islam values. Theoretically, if it can be done with white supremacism, it can be done with a pernicious breed of religious supremacism. Part of that effort will entail not providing a ridiculous escape hatch by distinguishing between good and bad Islam. It is bad in its entirety. Its scripture provides an untenable blueprint for the way 
we want our society to work.
Unfortunately, there is no sign of our society having the gumption to take on Islam. Milquetoast Christian leaders have already sold out with their pathetic one-sided inter-faith dialogue. You might as well negotiate with Hitler, Stalin or Kim Jong Un.
How about humanists? They are akin to nihilists. And if you believe in nothing, beside the fact that we accidently evolved from bacterium via ape-like creatures, exactly what do you fight for? Politicians would sell their mothers out for a Muslim vote. The media have been infiltrated by globalists with no sense of national pride. And, as we saw with Pauline Hanson, even journalists and commentators of conservative bent can’t resist virtue signalling – fiddling while Christendom is burning.
> “How about humanists? They are akin to nihilists. And if you believe in nothing, beside the fact that we accidently evolved from bacterium via ape-like creatures, exactly what do you fight for?”
Pathetic, Peter. Straw men abound here … a plague on all your superstitions.
I prefer rationality, evidence-based. Low level sarcasm such as your comment is the exact opposite.
Rationality? You totally ignore history ianl, and its rational interpretation. Christian faith is based on the direct eye witness accounts of hundred of witnesses. That is rational. If it weren’t, all knowledge would be untrustworthy. Instead atheists embrace the superstitious nature-worship of self-creation. That is far from rational as it is contrary to everything we experience of the world.
Isaiah understood the world. ‘
“I will make mere youths their officials;
children will rule over them.”
People will oppress each other—
man against man, neighbor against neighbor.
The young will rise up against the old,
the nobody against the honored.
Jerusalem staggers,
Judah is falling;
their words and deeds are against the Lord,
defying his glorious presence.
The look on their faces testifies against them;
they parade their sin like Sodom;
they do not hide it.
Woe to them!
They have brought disaster upon themselves.
Christopher Hitchens put it quite rationally at:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=christopher+hitchens+disproves+god&view=detail&mid=A82C9E4E4EC41A6FFBA7A82C9E4E4EC41A6FFBA7&FORM=VIRE
I am not a nihilist, but I am an atheist (and at my age I will find out in just a few years if I am right or wrong). Actually, it does not matter as I have taken advantage of the christian option of ‘free-will’. I chose atheism (after much research, deep thought and observation).
As that is a relative and valid choice, no god can say I chose wrongly as there cannot be a ‘wrong; choice under free-will. Actually, heaven and eternity sound incredibly boring, so I will pass, thanks anyway.
I also reviewed several of the main religions and found all of them farcical creations of their time, place and the sociopathy of people who heard voices in their head. Asylums are full of people like that.
I have skimmed through a book I bought that lists and briefly describes 5,000 religions, their central beliefs and their many sub-sect heretics. So many dead gods, like Thor,, Zeus, Ra – a whole supermarket to choose from. How can this be, if god(s) is not a creation of man?
Hitchens puts it well when he points out that the barbaric middle east (where three of the ‘great’ religions were founded) was god’s chosen place to ‘talk’ to the proles where he/she/it chose two illiterates as his chosen ones. Seriously? That is a showstopper for me as it would have been far easier to just contact everyone directly. The technology is available (now), but surely any god could just instantly create the internet?
An enjoyable film presaging this godly communication system can be found in the Ehrlichian documentary:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+kingsman+movie&view=detail&mid=4590FF66491A6C8BF5F74590FF66491A6C8BF5F7&FORM=VIRE0&mmscn=tpvh&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dthe%2bkingsman%2bmovie%26form%3dEDGSPH%26mkt%3den-au%26httpsmsn%3d1%26refig%3dacbdfe5c5d404cfb9519ef0891158c3f%26pq%3dthe%2bkingsman%26sc%3d8-12%26sp%3d1%26qs%3dAS%26sk%3d
So, what is the purpose of life and my life in particular? It has been fun, adventurous, interesting, a great love, family, learning, investigating, doing, etc, but I don’t know of any great design. My mother would have been 102 years old tomorrow and she was very happy with family as her sole interest.
Trust me, after we die, we have nowhere to go, thank god.
I agree with you Ian. PGang and Peter sound like a religious nutters. I may be a neo-con but I’m not stupid enough to believe in a god. I prefer science to superstition.
The science of self-creation. And you call us nutters.
> “The science of self-creation”
Straw man, I’m afraid. No one promulgates that, at least not to my knowledge, but falsely attributing it makes it easier to run dishonest sarcasm, I suppose. Perhaps you should actually read some of the hard science to evolutionary theory – it may help to grasp the enormous time scale involved (this leads to an appreciation of the gigantic number of generations of a seemingly infinite number of species and the variations/mutations/extinctions arising from that). But then again … maybe not.
What is really despairing here is that the religiously inclined group are proposing to substitute one set of superstitious beliefs for another (Christianity for Islam). Doubtless some will riposte that one is “morally” superior to the other, when in fact both are deluded. The essential issue raised by Peter Smith’s essay remains untroubled.
I will agree that Christian proselytising has become much less offensively “in your face” than that of Islam.
Don’t bother ianl there is no arguing with nonsense! I quote from the late great Christopher Hitchens “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”.
“…No one promulgates that…”
You’ve got to be kidding. Is is it willful ignorance or wishful thinking?
Abiogenesis – life from non life.
The Big Bang Theory – The universal singularity which caused everything to expand from nothing (and is based on some very questionable mathematical assumptions).
Time scales are absolutely no help whatsoever in resolving nonsense.
Lacebug
The logical connection of ‘stupidity’ with ‘belief’ is unfortunate as well as totally irrational. A lot of extremely smart people (including epoch making scientists) believe in God.
pgang is 100% correct in saying that the Christian faith is based on historical events. The interpretation of those events compels faith in some, derision on others but whatever the reaction, the proposition that the events happened and were witnessed by many people is a rational proposition.
Don’t tell me that the material universe created itself out of nothing or even if it matter always existed, it enough ‘mind’ to organise cells in such a way that ‘life’ would form…..stupidity is really only a matter of perception!
> ” … the Christian faith is based on historical events”
Which ones, precisely ? No straw men, please.
> “A lot of extremely smart people (including epoch making scientists) believe in God”
And a lot don’t. What does this demonstrate, empirically ? again, you are equating agnosticism with atheism. Since you do that quite frequently, there seems no way for you to distinguish the one from the other. Most unedifying.
> “Don’t tell me that the material universe created itself out of nothing …”
Nor would I try since this too is a straw man. Why do you think that the advent of the material universe requires all the superstitious minutiae attached to religion ? It may suit you to think so, but superstition it is.
Hi Ian
Q1 – The events recorded about the life of the historical person Jesus Christ.
Why do you think that this is a “straw man” argument? People look at the available evidence and then decide whether it’s compelling enough to elicit a commitment to this particular Person’s cause. Some say yes, some say no.
Q2 – Nothing other than, intelligence and knowledge are not the proximate causes of “faith”. One either “experiences” God or one doesn’t. That is why, contrary to what you say, I don’t confuse “agnosticism” or “atheism”. I know exactly what they are as standard ‘dictionary of philosophy’ definitions and I know exactly what they are in relations to Christian faith. Both are world views derived from a lack of “experience” of God.
Q3 – Either (i) the universe was always there in some form or other or (ii) it created itself out of ‘non-existence’ or (iii) someone/thing other than the universe created it. The first proposition doesn’t fit the available evidence, so we are left with the other two as the only viable propositions – take your pick? What “superstitious minutiae” are you referring to exactly?
I do appreciate the engagement
Charles Darwin made his conclusions despite his faith and struggled with how what he observed conflicted with what scripture told him. What to believe, that which is demonstrated before your eyes and through years of observations, study and examination or that which you are ordered to believe by divine authority?
Wow, you atheists will really believe anything. Darwin’s intent was to oppose Paley’s design argument. He had no faith, his grandfather saw to that. The ‘future’ evidences that Darwin said would prove his theory never appeared (transitional fossils) – quite the opposite in fact. Darwin didn’t see the evidence himself, he assumed it, which was one of the main criticisms of his theory in the day. He saw a bunch of animals that were adapting to their environments, and with that he concocted an anti-design fairy tale. Darwin took something very small, adaptation (the jury is still out on whether selection plays a role or whether it’s built-in reactive – probably a bit of both), and snowballed it way out of any rational proportion. A lot of people continue to be suckered by it because they think it gives them leverage away from God. It doesn’t.
Well, I think I can say what not to believe: Anything that doesn’t make sense to one. We should live and believe according to our understanding of the world around us not beyond that understanding. Words like “science”, “study”, “observations” especially hurled bullyingly should not be accepted blindly. The Big Bang Theory doesn’t make sense to me, so I won’t accept it as a belief to believe in (Doesn’t mean I reject it, I don’t accept it—considering it being called a theory to start with). Does it make sense to you? So on and so forth.
Here are a few other conclusions Darwin made:
.males are “more evolutionary advanced than females”
.as a married man he would be a “poor slave… worse than a negro”
.some of the traits of women are “characteristic of the lower races”
.”the child, the female and the senile white” all had the intellect and nature of the “grown up Negro”
.”the average of mental power in man must be above that in women”
All there in his writings, the result of “years of observations, study and examination”
Einstein (so famous for his genius that I don’t need to nominate Albert or Charles) said:
“I am not an atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds”.
If it’s too much for Einstein’s brain, it’s far too much for the brains of me and 99.999% of others, so I’d say anyone who proclaims him/herself an atheist is stupid, and, or, deluded. Even the self-promoting “famous atheist”, Richard Dawkins,in his farcical computation of the probability of God’s existence, assigned it a probability of 14%. Horses win at 7.0 every day.
I’m with Einstein
rationality, evidence based?
data point one: Christian Europe and Christian Ethiopia held off the Islamic threat for a millennia and a half.
data point two: Israel has consistently defied expectations by surviving the relentless hostility of the entire Islamic world.
data point three: Zoroastrian Persia went down like ninepins to the invaders
data point four: Buddhist lands invaded by the Muslims, such as northern India were completely obliterated.
data point five: Hindu states have had about a 50/50 chance of surviving Islam.
data point six: all of secular, humanist Europe has invited the Islamic hordes in.
Don’t be surprised with sarcasm when humanism is sitting at the bottom of the scoreboard tied with Buddhism as a failed option.
On the contrary, ridicule and laughter is the only medicine this lunacy deserves.
BTW, what does Milquetoast mean? I would venture 99 per cent of Quadrant readers would need to look it up.
You must be very young or have led a very sheltered life, Lacebug.
Assuming that you do need to look up Milquetoast, all you had to do was open another tab and put ‘Milquetoast define’ in the search bar. Would that really have been so hard?
Thanks to Project Gutenberg, we know have easy access to centuries of classics online: many from the era when it was assumed that you would know French and Latin, all with words that have fallen out of everyday usage. Checking as you go – and keeping a Translation engine in your toolbar – should be a basic habit for anyone who wants to enjoy the fruits of our age.
Look it up on Google.
Say it out load – sounds like Milk Toast, doesn’t it? And Milk Toast is, I believe, in contemporary usage with the same meaning as “Milquetoast”. Well, it’s in Urban Dictionary which I use to look up, to me, “all Greek” words my daughter uses.
Or better still, “out loud”.
You might be right about that. Macquarie Dictionary, Third edition marks it as Americanism. SOED, Sixth edition marks it as “chiefly North American”. Also no dictionary I checked marked it as a noun that is used attributively as well, as it is used above (I don’t mean that that use is incorrect, though!).
Not sure why you got slammed for asking. I don’t know what it means. But I do know that it’s the name of a great song by a hard rock band called Helmet.
What we need is less Lip-quivering Georgie Boy, and more attitude, as in: “Never Mind the Bollards: Here’s the West’s Pistols (and Nukes)”.
But Georgie’s boys were the real audience for the high theatrical farce. You don’t seem to get that!!
The real villain here is a little book – the Qur’an authored by Allah. Muslims are the unwitting victims of Allah’s subtlety.
An Application to classify the Qur’an as a banned book in Australia was sent to Brandis in March. Responded to with a ‘dear John’ letter from an underling. Not surprising given Brandis’ recent performance!
Following that sent to ALL Senators during the winter break with the request that the Senate review the merits of the Application. Very little apparent interest. The primary argument of the Application: There are no arguable circumstances under which it (the Qur’an) should play a role in shaping the character of any Australian citizen.
If readers are interested a copy of the Application can be found at http://www.ttwsyf.net.
Jim, if you get the Quran banned, you’ll just make it easier for Muslims to hide just how evil Mohammad was. Why would you grant them this victory? Why grant them the victory of *actual* suppression, given how skilled they are at exploiting imaginary grievances?
Remember that Mein Kampf was perfectly legal in the UK during WWII – and with good reason. Not just freedom of speech: the far more practical consideration of “know thy enemy”.
I wholeheartedly commend Peter’s forceful, passionate article. Unless western societies adopt and put into practice a similar attitude, Islam will succeed in subduing the world under its vile authority.
And now to the comments by the rabid atheists above, who all but disregard the primary message of the article in favour of their usual hobby horse. Once again, their latent insecurity concerning their “disbelief” is all too obvious. Why else would they so vehemently and enthusiastically “evangelise” their unassailably reasoned “faith” in the lack of a supreme authority in the world? Is it not unmistakable that they are eager to reassure themselves and one another of the “superiority” of their reason-based attitude? Not unlike those mindlessly and unceasingly repeating “Allahu akbar” for the same reason.
Bill:
I am afraid you are playing yourself right into the hands of your Islamist opponents. From Peter O’Brien’s threadstarter:
A visit to a site like http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ or any of those listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_critics_of_Islam can provide the critic of Islam with all the ammunition necessary for conducting a rational argument against Islam’s supporters. But rationality drops out in arguments over one religion vs another, because by definition both rest on untestable propositions. For once here I find myself agreeing with ‘ianl’*. Pgang* is wrong: Christian faith is NOT “based on the direct eye witness accounts of hundred of witnesses” or any other kind of evidence. It is based on faith, nothing more. Faith that the stories recorded outside of the lifetime of Christ relating to events inside his lifetime are true, and not a product of wishful thinking, collective delusion, ‘Chinese whispers’ or other phenomenon that can be studied rationally in a rational environment. The New Testament is NOT “rational”, being choc-a-bloc with stories based on hearsay and abnormal never-to-be-repeated and no longer operational physics, which is the only possible basis for Biblical miracles.
If we allow rationality and credibility for Christ’s miracles and his final ascension into the sky, then we have to do so for Mohammad’s as well; not to mention those of faith healers, voodoo practitioners, and self-proclaimed shamans of every kind.
Muslim immigration to the west has been allowed partly from the liberalism which forms the basis of modern western civilisation, and partly from awareness that much of the world’s petroleum is pumped out of the ground in Islamic countries. Western politicians are understandably reluctant to offend the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Iran, who control so much of the world’s oil supply.
Islam is a pernicious creed whose aim is complete subversion and overthrow of its rival: Western Civilisation. Because Islam’s clerics largely control its education systems, critical thought is not encouraged in any Islamic country. This has led to the remarkable stagnation of Islamic science and philosophy, which in turn has caused much irrational resentment of Western Civilisation amongst its youth, and particularly the Islamist fraction of same.
The only solution I can see starts here in the West: breaking the monopoly of the Islamic clerics over the education of Muslim youth, which means ultimately banning ALL religious education.
This should not be too hard for those not into indoctrination and thought control. But unfortunately that category does not include most Christians.
Thus, if Islam should ultimately triumph in the West, it will do so by piggy-backing on Christianity.
*or whatever his real name is.
Bill:
I am afraid you are playing yourself right into the hands of your Islamist opponents. From Peter O’Brien’s threadstarter:
“As Muslims are now inside the tent in large numbers, the only option is to combat the ideology. This requires a concerted effort to marginalise and disparagediscordant Islam values. (My emphasis throughout. -IM) Theoretically, if it can be done with white supremacism, it can be done with a pernicious breed of religious supremacism. Part of that effort will entail not providing a ridiculous escape hatch by distinguishing between good and bad Islam. It is bad in its entirety. Its scripture provides an untenable blueprint for the way we want our society to work.”
A visit to the sites in my next post can provide the critic of Islam with all the ammunition necessary for conducting a rational argument against Islam’s supporters. But rationality drops out in arguments over one religion vs another, because by definition both rest on untestable propositions. For once here I find myself agreeing with ‘ianl’*. Pgang* is wrong: Christian faith is NOT “based on the direct eye witness accounts of hundred of witnesses” or any other kind of evidence. It is based on faith, nothing more. Faith that the stories recorded outside of the lifetime of Christ relating to events inside his lifetime are true, and not a product of wishful thinking, collective delusion, ‘Chinese whispers’ or other phenomenon that can be studied rationally in a rational environment. The New Testament is NOT “rational”, being choc-a-bloc with stories based on hearsay and abnormal never-to-be-repeated and no longer operational physics, which is the only possible basis for Biblical miracles.
If we allow rationality and credibility for Christ’s miracles and his final ascension into the sky, then we have to do so for Mohammad’s as well; not to mention those of faith healers, voodoo practitioners, and self-proclaimed shamans of every kind.
Muslim immigration to the west has been allowed partly from the liberalism which forms the basis of modern Western Civilisation, and partly from awareness that much of the world’s petroleum is pumped out of the ground in Islamic countries. Western politicians are understandably reluctant to offend the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Iran, who control so much of the world’s oil supply.
Islam is a pernicious creed whose aim is complete subversion and overthrow of its rival: Western Civilisation. Because Islam’s clerics largely control its education systems, critical thought is not encouraged in any Islamic country. This has led to the remarkable stagnation of Islamic science and philosophy, which in turn has caused much irrational resentment of Western Civilisation amongst its youth, and particularly the Islamist fraction of same.
The only solution I can see starts here in the West: breaking the monopoly of the Islamic clerics over the education of Muslim youth, which means ultimately banning ALL religious education.
This should not be too hard for those not into indoctrination and thought control. But unfortunately that category does not include most Christians.
Thus, if Islam should ultimately triumph in the West, it will do so by piggy-backing on Christianity.
*or whatever his real name is.
For critique of Islam, visit a site like http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Or any of those listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_critics_of_Islam
Ian M
Jimbob is not my real name but faith always has an object. You “believe” in “something” (such as catastrophic AGW) on the balance of the evidence available to you after you have been through the process of deciding what evidence you will accept and what evidence you will reject. There are many others, equally intelligent as you obviously are, just as learned and equally cognizant of the available evidence to form the diametric opposite view of catastrophic AGW.
The object of Christian faith is this historical person called Jesus. We know about him and continue to be influenced by him because many people saw him, heard him and recorded what they remembered of his teachings. I don’t get your point about the timing of the writing of the NT. Are you saying that just because the reminiscences of eye witnesses were written some time later, they are ipso facto of no value? If that is what you are saying, then that is flatly contradicted by around about 2000 years or so of discernible evidence.
Miracles are no problem if the fundamental proposition about Christ is accepted; that is that He was God. Of course you don’t have to accept that proposition at all but many people do and there is nothing irrational about this. Rationality is simply “the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic”. So if I accept the premise that Jesus was God, then it follows that He can choose to suspend the laws of nature as they are currently perceived. That is quite rational. What you and Ianl are saying is that you don’t accept the premise. Of course, you obviously draw your own rational conclusions…they’re just different to mine.
So, the response of most posters to an existential threat to Western Civilization…is to throw insults at each other. Yeah, that’ll help.
Makes the defeatism of the original article understandable. Wrong, but understandable.
Firstly, the Islamic world is just as determined to rip itself apart as this forum. And unlike ourselves, instead of using cheap insults, they are quite happy to blow each other up.
Secondly, it is not ‘too late’ to close the gates. Have you forgotten the willingness of the fanatics to travel to fight for ISIS etc? Give them free plane tickets to ‘the Caliphate’ in return for them forswearing their residency/citizenship. Sure, that’ll only get rid of 1% of them directly – but how many families will leave OZ because they won’t want their kids to take us up on the offer?
Thirdly, the spinelessness of our ‘leaders’ is nothing new. The obvious example is the gutlessness that started WWII. Going further back, would the Great Fire of London have been so bad if the mayor of the city had had the guts to tear down buildings without the owners’ permission? This is a long and ongoing problem – that we survive, although at great cost – that we need to work out how to fix. We don’t want the flip side of the wingnuts who gave us the 1st World War, but with centuries of stuff ups to look at, a decent analysis may show us a solution.
Ridicule is the best response to Mormons and Shiite-heads. Much better than prayers or candles, or Malcolm’s “diversity bollards’.
But our politicians are asleep while the vandals are at the gates. Nasty people require a nasty response, as Mr Chamberlain eventually found out.
Diversity bollards. I love that!
My yardstick is this: Until someone can publish a cartoon lampooning The Prophet without being subjected to death threats, Islam must always remain a threat to western values.
Until a rock group can call themselves Allah-La without someone wanting to blow them and their fans to smithereens with a van filled with gas bottles, Islam must always remain a threat to western values.
And so on…
You are WAAAAY overthinking this. The whole episode and the existence of the shroud are surely the stuff of high comedy. We need to laugh long and hard; only THEN will you find an effective form of dissent for this and everything else the Left advocates. I nominate ridicule and laughter as THE most powerful weapons to use against adversaries. Why do you think satire is effectively finished? Because of the threat it poses to PC and the world view of ideologues who are also loonies. So, more laughter please.
Jody,
you will laugh yourself into the grave as mockery is a death sentence in the islamic cult.
I am afraid it will take the ways of ‘rough men’ to allow you to sleep peaceably. At least until the Political Appointed Lawyers have reviewed their actions and recommended prosecution for not reading the dead terrorist his rights.
If the purpose of the Burka is to provide modesty for women and, or, prevent men from lusting and, or, handling, why does its colour matter? Why is it always black when white is a more sensible colour in hot weather?
Black clothing is in many cases intimidating, and often worn to be deliberately so. I remember Bob Jones’ karate school adopting Jet Black – when you got a black belt, you were entitled to wear black attire, until then white, and Jones (he guarded the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bowie, Abba, Cocker ….) said that was to intimidate, or at least make wary, an opponent.
Quote: “..inconveniencing law-abiding grannies at airports..”
I arrived at Tullamarine airport from a Muslim-majority country as a Caucasian male sexagenarian, no criminal convictions, no security alert, Australian born, travelling on an Australian passport, never had citizenship of another country, both parents born in Australia.
My luggage was gone through with the proverbial fine toothcomb and I was interrogated by 4 men for around an hour. I was eventually allowed into Australia with the parting words “It’s nothing against you, it’s just where you came from”. “Sure, the same place those young Muslim Arabs males you just waved through without checking”.
A pathetic farce, wasting taxpayer money pretending to effect enhanced security.
Sheeesh, “male Arabs”
Someone bloody tell me why the universe hasn’t always existed?
Now there is a novel thought.
Well, the advocates of the Big Bang Theory thing will tell you that it didn’t existed before the Big Bang, since the Big Bang was the cause of the universe’s coming into existence.
The advocates of creation will tell you it didn’t exist before God’s decision to create it, since he created it.
That’s the answer to your question I could think of.
Like every potential big bang, I suspect the first one ended up much like the fizzer of many of its namesakes!!
Very funny.
Jody, I’m not sure why the page doesn’t show my reply. Still, your comment is very funny. Thanks.
Because according to the nature of nature it’s impossible. Heat death. There’s no coming back from that unless there is supernatural intervention.
I think you will discover an infinite number of big bangs, going ever backwards for eternity. Wait long enough and there’ll be another.
There was no time or space (Steven Hawking) prior to the “big bang.” Most Christians would concur with “prior to creation.”
Yes, you’re right. Thanks Homer Sapien. So, based on The Big Bang Theory, the assumption Keith makes in his question (the universe hasn’t always existed) is invalid to start with, i.e. the universe has always existed, right?
As an aside: Whatever Steven Hawking’s claim means that there was no time or space prior to the Big Bang. (I think it is a bit problematic to use “prior” in that sentence).
I agree Mr Mohsen,well spotted! Must blame the “prior” on the Homer Simpson part in me;-)
Wish me luck fellow Quadrant readers. I am off to Auburn tomorrow to see the beautiful cherry blossom festival in the local botanic gardens. I may be some time.
I have never heard of Auburn or its cherries, but are you sure such a place will welcome somebody with the very high quarantine risk name “Lacebug?”
If men lust after men, they should wear the burka too!
This must be one of the most disappointing responses to an article that I have ever read in Quadrant.
Peter has written a consdered contribution to the challlenge of Islam, which we are free to contemplate and critique.
And this is the response – for Christians and Athiests to start to abuse each other about their personal beliefs. How ill mannered, and pathetic..
If anybody wonders why the conservative cause is being swept aside, and our culture being destroyed, just look at the behaviour of those above who profess to believe in it.
You are behaving like spoilt teenagers. Believe it or not, This is not all about you. The whistling you are hearing is the sound of scimitars and your particular variation of Christianity or Atheism is irrelevant to them.
Yes RayM, I too feel as though the comments got off the point. Serves me right, I suppose, for suggesting that atheists have little in their arsenal to fight Islamic religious zealotry. I might put that differently in future to avoid distracting debate.
Ray and Peter
I beg to differ! The “war” with Islam is not just cultural. It’s a war for the possession of minds and hearts and where secular humanism, violent war, and left wing ideology have all failed to make inroads or have capitulated, quietly and without fanfare and indeed, often with ridicule, demonization and considerable ill-will, one world view is making profound inroads in the Islamic world, just as it is in atheistic, communist China. Just a brief overview;
“…..But there is a third story about Islam that most of the mainstream media is not reporting, and that is a very significant story indeed. It involves not just the conversion of one Muslim, like Allam, but many, indeed millions. The truth is, there has recently been a tsunami of Muslim converts to Christianity.
In a recent article Andrew Walden offers some amazing statistics: “In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every day, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity.” These are some remarkable figures indeed.
As already mentioned, the rise in numbers in Islam is mainly due to demographics, not conversions. “This is more than the normal flow between two large religious communities. Islam can point to little in the way of recent conversions. Its claim to be the world’s fastest-growing religion stems mostly from the high birth rate in Islamic countries, whose infant mortality rates have been cut by the introduction of Western medicine. Christian growth is based on adult conversion. As leading Christian evangelist Wolfgang Simpson writes, ‘More Muslims have come to Christ in the last two decades than in all of history’.”
Walden looks at a number of Muslim countries where significant conversion rates to Christianity are occurring. He also looks at Western nations where Muslims are leaving their faith: “Islam is also losing adherents in areas where Islamist harassment is heavy on the streets. The London Times estimates 15% of Muslims living in Western Europe have left Islam – 200,000 in the UK alone. Those who leave often face harassment, threats, and attack” (https://billmuehlenberg.com/2008/04/05/islam-and-christianity-looking-at-the-numbers/)
http://www.economist.com/node/12868180 (that’s right – The Economist)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/05/european-churches-growing-flock-muslim-refugees-converting-christianity (yes – even the Guardian reports with much cynicism and grinding of teeth)
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/isis.seen.undermining.islamic.faith.as.more.muslims.convert.to.christianity/55622.htm
http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/June/Ex-Muslims-Lighting-the-Way-for-Islams-Collapse
I don’t want to go on and on. The greatest enemy of secular, atheistic humanism is the Church; the greatest enemy of Islam is the Church. Because of this, I’m going to assert that rather than being “irrelevant to them”, Islamist know that they are in mortal danger from the Church (all branches of the family so to speak). They are in very little danger if any from Atheists or secular humanists. That’s why they can make common cause so easily and ludicrously against the “common enemy” – just have a look at our Aussie Labor Party and that complete sell out a man, Bill Shorten.
We don’t need guns, politics, culture wars or even the press to win this war. It is enough that a few speak up when necessary.