I love Australia. I’ve lived here all my life. But in the past decade a few things have had a negative impact on my enjoyment of this beautiful place. Let me list just a few.
- People being stabbed in the name of a religion.
- People being held hostage – same motivation.
- Plans laid to blow people up.
- Fortunes spent each year by governments to keep a lid on zealotry.
- ‘Experts’ telling us people who do these things are mentally unstable, marginalised or poorly educated, even when that is clearly not the case.
- Needing to be ‘alert’ but not ‘alarmed’ to potentially catastrophic threats.
- People who refuse to stand in court.
- Special treatment and dedicated religious amenities for some at public facilities.
- Women shrouded in garments testifying to their status as mere possessions.
- Being called upon to know the difference between a burqa and a niqab, when each is equally offensive.
- Watching a publicly funded broadcaster accept and implicitly endorse arranged and consanguineous marriages.
- Being distressed by bollards sprouting in public places.
- Having to pay extra for everyday food because manufacturers are held to ransom.
- My taxes being given to a specific community to encourage participation in a sport.
- Having my bag and person searched at public events.
- ‘Honour’ killings.
- The unlawful practice of female genital mutilation.
- A welfare system that indulges the practice of polygamy.
- Witnessing the subjugation of women and a veritable Stockholm Syndrome among oppression’s defenders.
- Watching my government fete a minority community, but only one minority community.
- Taxi drivers who decline to carry guide dogs for religious reasons.
- People seeking to advance the secular authority of their religious laws, rather than accepting the law of the land.
- Being told that Islam is basically the same as Christianity when it is the diametric opposite.
- Being told by ‘experts’, especially those seeking further grants, that deradicalisation works when it obviously does not.
I don’t want to accept these things. I don’t want to accept that a small, noisy, discordant minority is changing the way I live, and changing it for the worse. And I particularly will not accept that a concern for women’s rights and being appalled by clerics who call for the death of homosexuals makes me “intolerant” or consumed by bigotry.
Oh, and one last thing: I loathe being smeared with that ridiculous confection “Islamophobia” when I suggest that, as a secular Western society, we should never, ever tolerate the intolerant.
I object to being lectured about my lifestyle and valuesand having the understanding of them twisted by Islamic sophists and their stupid fawning supporters in our media.
Islam is a terrible and totalitarian religion. But most Muslims (ie born to it) in my experience live at their ease in Australia despite that fact.
There is no push by them or anyone else to clear out of here and go live in Islamic countries, like that basket case called Pakistan.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/lakhmir-chawla/india-and-pakistan-what%E2%80%99s-difference
There is a fatal flaw in your argument. If they “live at their ease in Australia” (by which I assume you imply they accept many or most of our societal norms) then they are not true Muslims. Once the Caliphate is declared, they shall sing a different song, inshallah. I prefer to see the situation as “the terrorists are the snakes and the Muslim community the grass in which they live.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDg8sP_atIA
My feelings exactly and so very well expressed.
I think the numbers here with a similar viewpoint are growing in number and exasperation.
Small point. Whilst I disagree with the Halal tax, why isn’t it being used to fund deradicalisation? We don’t need Buddhist, Christian, Sikh, Hindu, Taoist programmes. Why is this so?
Unless Islam is completely eradicated from within the borders of western countries, those countries will be subsumed and subjugated by it within 2 or 3 generations. It is alarmingly astounding that while terrorism by Muslims is a much discussed and debated topic, there is practically no awareness of the existential peril of western countries being taken over by Muslims, making them their own.