That is why people with strong beliefs are opposed to our modern society and modern science! Modern science tells us that when you try to discover if something is true or false that you have to gather evidence and approach that evidence with an open mind and not pre-judge the outcome until you have enough evidence to say that within the laws of probability that what you are trying to discover is true under certain specific conditions and as long as those specific conditions that are known remain somewhat the same the outcome will be somewhat the same!

I do not live in fear that I will be judged by a higher power that will cause me to burn in hell for an eternity, because I don’t worship him and kiss his feet!
That kind of an egotistical god can kiss my ass!

I respect all life! All living things! As far as I know, this is it! There is no life after death!…So it becomes my passion to respect and love all living things because we are all here together at this moment in time and when that moment is over we will all become dust and we all will in time be forgotten!
Unless science can prove otherwise!
Richard Walters

I still think there’s a subtle distinction to be drawn between being offensive (which the Pastors certainly were) and inciting hatred. If the Pastors had been telling their congregations that all Muslims should be disliked, shunned, violently attacked, made to wear yellow crescents, thrown out of Australia, put into detention, or anything like that, I would have thought there was no question that the offence of inciting hatred would be made out.

It is a difficult line to draw, though. It is true that the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the like were able to be committed because people had been persuaded that one particular race or religion was inferior. In an earlier post, I have said in comments that my heart tends towards banning any offensive material of the sort promulgated by the Pastors, but my head tends to think that it should be allowed.

Do you think that the legal action has made the Pastors, their congregations, or indeed, any member of the public feel any differently about Islam? I suspect not.

I, too, would love it if you could walk down the street with your partner, and not be abused. It makes me feel very angry to think of you having to put up with that. But I’m just not sure vilification legislation would achieve that (without introducing some kind of discrimination police - which opens a whole can of worms). The only thing which will achieve it is societal change, and I don’t think vilification law can change society - all it can do is respond.

I think education and an increased openness to difference is the future. Certainly, I will be bringing my daughter up to be accepting of every race, religion and sexuality - as long as someone is a nice person, they’re okay by me!

I have read what Catch the Fire and the Pastors said, and with all due respect, I think it was pretty bloody offensive and definitely likely to incite seriously negative thoughts about Muslims!! This so-called distinction between inciting hatred towards Muslim beliefs as opposed to towards Muslims is too cute by halves. And in any case, they did say things about Muslims, not just Muslim beliefs. I think when you tell your audience that Muslims are going to breed until they have the numbers to take over Australia, you’re going beyond talking about religious beliefs and vilifying people simply because they are Muslims.

I am, unlike you, a supporter of anti-vilification legislation. I agree with you that suing someone for what they said it not always the best way to deal with vilification or bigotry, but then again, legal action is not a great solution to a whole lot of problems. But anti-vilification legislation does send an important signal to the community that such conduct is not considered acceptable, and over time this can change people’s attitudes to such conduct - effect what’s in their heads, as you put it. For example, there was a huge outcry about anti-sexual harassment legislation when it was first introduced, with many arguing that we should work to eliminate such harassment but not try to legislate against it. But I would argue that the legislation has been extremely effective in helping to change attitudes to what was once considered normal conduct – it is not considered ok anymore (which unfortunately doesn’t mean it no longer happens, but that can be said of all crimes and legislatively sanctioned conduct, really). Also, sometimes legal action can be very useful (which having the legislation enables), as it not only helps an aggrieved person in serious cases, it also allows test cases to be run which raise public awareness of the issues and further communicate that the conduct is not acceptable.

Freedom of speech is important, but it has simply never been an unfettered freedom. Defamation and perjury are longstanding examples of limits on freedom of speech that our society has accepted. I personally think that preventing extremely harmful and offensive speech is a reasonable limit on freedom of speech. In fact, I am hopeful that at some point in time we can have further anti-vilification legislation, as I can imagine it would be nice to be able to walk down the street with my partner and not worry about being abused – governments sending a message that homophobia and homosexual vilification are not acceptable would be wonderful!!

‘Sharia’, the Quran and Hadith aren’t against the advancement or progression of individuals or society.

Two saying of Mohammed come to mind.

1. Attaining knowledge is compulsory upon every male and female.

2. Seek knowledge even if you have to travel to China.

The first 5 verses revealed from Gabriel to Mohammed were:

Read! In the name of thy Lord and Cherisher who created.
Created man out of a mere clot of congealed blood.
Read! And thy Lord is Most Bountiful.
He who taught the use of the pen.
Taught man that which he knew not.

Now, the above Quranic verses and Hadith are part of the Shariac foundation. They encourage the seeking of knowledge. These definately played a part in the emancipation of previous Muslims.

If the Hizb ut-Tahrir want to progress i dont think, as you mentioned, its done by “turning things back to the past.”

They have to start using their women population as half of societys talent lies with them. They have to allow free enterprises. Freedom of religion should be brough back, political dissent and freedom of speech should be allowed, the traditional Islamic welfare system (Bayt al Maal) should be re introduced. All Royal families should be made powerless and symbolic, father to son presidency should be removed, oil revuneus should be fairly distributed etc…Muslim countries are so much blessed with mineral and resources, yet all their GDP’s combined is less than that of Germany.

Simply, there is lots of room for change.

I also studied Crusader history - at that time Islamic culture was liberal and open minded in comparison to Frankish culture, from what I read. Perhaps this is what made Islam great, rather than Sharia law? If I were a Muslim today, I’d be pushing for a return to that open mindedness and liberalism rather than a return to Sharia!

The Ottoman Caliphate, like the great majority preceeding it, did not implement the Sharia as a perfect whole.

There is a saying of Mohammed which goes: The best of my community (Ummah in Arabic) will be in my life time.

So if we take Mohammeds reign as the ideal, each one succeeding it will be so much more in error than the previous. However, the four caliphs following Mohammed are also widely viewed as being ideal.

Moving on to Hizb ut-Tahrir…
There was a time when Islam and Muslims made many advancements in many areas including military technology, medicine, music, finance, greek philosophy, postal systems etc…This is widely labelled as Islam’s Golden Age, which was then passed into Europe and resulted in the Renaisance (spelling??). Hizb ut-Tahrir want’s to get there again and thinks the avenue to do so is via the Sharia.

I find that argument incorrect. Why? because sharia implementation during this age was far from being perfect.

For example, Music was rife and embraced widely, despite having sexual themes. If Sharia were to be implemented, then sexual themed Music should have been banned and the musicians dealt with accordingly.

Another example is that Muslim scholars interpreted Greek philosophy into Arabic then into the European languages. As a result, they were exposed to Greek theology and simultaneously influenced. There are numerous books written by still-much-praised scholars that tantamount to blasphemy and question the oneness of God. However, they weren’t sanctioned for blasphemy as many people would think required by the Sharia due to widespread encouragement of free independent and creative thinking amongst scholarly circles, and many Muslims who know them still praise them 700 years on today.

Sorry for the essay.