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Politics : FREE AMERICA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (3569)	4/14/2006 10:08:31 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14758

Muslims here who say democracy is a no, no (... Australia's Muslims ) Herald Sun ^ \| 14 Apr 06 \| Andrew Bolt heraldsun.news.com.au ANOTHER speech by another Muslim leader, and I ask -- who's kidding who? In February Treasurer Peter Costello was monstered for saying Muslims shouldn't come to Australia unless they accepted basic Australian values. And he listed them: democracy, the freedoms of a secular state, and "loyalty first -- loyalty to Australia". For this he was called a Muslim-basher by most of our leading Muslim groups. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils declared "Islam law teaches that when you go into a country you embrace the laws of that country". The Islamic Council of Victoria said: "Muslims are Australians first." The Lebanese Muslim Association claimed the "majority of Muslims . . . accept Australian values". And maybe they do, indeed. It's a good sign, in one way, that so many felt hurt by Costello's remarks. But I wonder if they should take far more offence at the many other Muslim spokesmen who seem determined to make them seem dishonest, or at least deaf to what a significant minority of other Muslims here say. Last Saturday a small Muslim group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, held a public meeting at the Bankstown Town Hall to discuss whether Australia's Muslims really should subscribe to those values Costello mentioned. The answer was: No. No to democracy, a secular society and Australia first. For instance, Usman Badar, president of the University of NSW Muslim Students Association, told the 300 or so people that "Western values are not worthy of human subscription". Take democracy: "Democracy sounds nice enough, (but) not to a Muslim . . . Sovereignty is for none but Allah." And "Allah did not say . . . whatever the people want, we'll have this." As for a secular society, "it relegates Allah to the margins of public life and places human beings above him. This, to put it blatantly, is as blasphemous as it gets". Nor was any overriding loyalty to Australia possible. "The overriding commitment of a Muslim is to Allah, and Allah alone." I expect to hear the usual protests -- that Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Students Association are small, representing few people. But surely it's now clear that far too many Muslim activists and leaders have at times seemed to reject Australian values and even Australians themselves. To remind you of some of them: Melbourne cleric Abdul Nacer Ben Brika: "This is a big problem. There are two laws -- there is an Australian law and there is an Islamic law." Melbourne's Sheik Mohammad Omran: "We believe we have more rights than you because we choose Australia to be our country and you didn't." American Sheik Khalid Yasin, then based in Sydney: "There's no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend." Khaled Cheikho, now on terrorism charges in Sydney: "Sharia law is gonna prevail through this land, it's gonna be ruled by it, you tell Howard this." Sheik Faiz Mohamad, of Sydney's Global Islamic Youth Centre: "A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself." The Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj el-din el-Hilali, who called the September 11 attacks "God's work against oppressors" and blamed "Australian society" for pack rapes by gangs of Muslim Lebanese youths. Keysar Trad, of the Islamic Friendship Association: "The criminal dregs of white society colonised this country and . . . the descendents of these criminal dregs tell us that they are better than us." There's more, but you get the message. Perhaps it's time more responsible Muslim leaders got it, too, and realised they'd do more good by criticising their radicals than by attacking those who confront them. The real battle is not, or should not be, between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is as Arab-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan bravely put it in a debate on Al-Jazeera two months ago: "It is a clash between civilisation and backwardness, between the civilised and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship." The hard truth is more Muslim spokesmen need to join us on the right side of that battle . . . and to fight with us, not against.