Waiting for the Aussie backlash

An excellent opinion piece from the Sydney Morning Herald 

HAVE we Sydney-siders got this straight?
Because on the other side of the Pacific, somewhere in California, some loser has thrown together some kind of amateur internet video insulting your particular god, you think it justifiable to:

• Take over the Sydney CBD.

• Cause willful damage to property.

• Throw rocks at police officers who are doing nothing more than their duty.

• Hold up such ludicrous signs as “Behead all those who insult the prophet.”

We have to ask: Do you have the first clue as to the ramifications of your actions? Do you not understand that the net result of such irresponsible, appalling action is to give ample fuel to every racist in the country to reinforce every bad stereotype they have ever had of you, and that will affect badly the hundreds of thousands of other peaceful and law-abiding Islamic Australians?

I agree completely this is so far out of line that it is almost unbelievable. I wonder how many of the protesters are Australian citizens ? It is not unreasonable for a nation state to expect people who have immigrated to play by the actual and perceived rules of the society they have joined. Should the Australian government wish to deny future citizenship to people involved in this insanity they now have cart blanch, further more I suspect that identifiable trouble makers with Australian residency could expect to face deportation.

In short, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!

Get this straight, and quickly: some of you may be from countries where this kind of thing is acceptable. But it is NOT acceptable in this country.
In this country you are free to worship whatever god you damn well please. Others are free to worship their gods.

The truth is this stupid protest has offended deeply the people of Australia as a Kiwi it has pissed me off. Australians and New Zealanders spend a lot of time and effort teasing each other but with this you have managed to enrage not only Australia but Australasia.

And I am free to say it is all nonsense over imaginary friends.
But you are not free to create the mayhem you did yesterday, simply because you don't like a freaking video!

Exactly and what is worse you morons have done exactly what the makers of the video wanted,  a group of hate filled American racists have lead you down the garden path by your noses. That they could expect the Arab world to act so predictably is tragic but that Muslims in Australia, one of the worlds most stable, fair and just nations behaved so stupidly must have them congratulating themselves.  

Racists have said for years, “If you don't like the way we do things here, go back to where you came from.” The net result of your actions yesterday is that – for those people specifically disgracing themselves in the CBD yesterday, not the vast bulk of Islamic Australians – much of the country now feels the same.
Nice work.

The truth is that if you want to change the way Australia does business so fundamentally that you carry a sign saying " Behead those who insult the prophet "  you have no future in Australia. That isn't cultural intolerance by Australians that is reality and your signs display a breathtaking intolerance if not to say, racism.

Lets Kill Children for God

From The Guardian

" An 11-year-old Christian Pakistani girl could face the death penalty under the country's notorious blasphemy laws, after she was accused by her neighbours of deliberately burning sacred Islamic texts.

Rifta Masih was arrested on Thursday, after complaints against her prompted angry demonstrations. Asif Ali Zardari, the president, has ordered the interior ministry to investigate the case.

As communal tensions continued to rise, about 900 Christians living on the outskirts of Islamabad have been ordered to leave a neighbourhood where they have lived for almost two decades."

It is interesting that Muslims demand we tolerate their religion but if you expect me to tolerate the stoning to death of an 11 year old girl you are joking.  

" On Sunday, houses on the backstreets of Mehrabadi, an area 20 minutes' drive from western embassies and government ministries, were locked with padlocks, their occupants having fled to already overcrowded Christian slums in and around the capital.

One of the senior members of the dominant Muslim community told the Christians to remove all their belongings from their houses by 1 September. "I don't think anyone will dare go back after this," said one Christian, Arif Masih. "The area is not safe for us now."

A few brave souls have stayed behind, but shopkeepers have refused to serve their Christian neighbours or supply them with water. Locals say only about 10% of families in the area are Christian, renting cramped houses from Muslim landlords. They tend to do dirty, menial jobs such as sewer maintenance."

So in effect Christians are second class citizens.

" Relations between the communities had been simmering for months after complaints were made about the noise coming from three churches in the area during religious services. Two of the landlords who owned the buildings had already ordered an end to worship and some services were forcibly broken up.

But there was no indication that all the Christians would be forced out so suddenly until Rifta was accused of the provocative act of burning the sacred words of Islam.

It sparked immediate demonstrations by crowds estimated at between 600 and 1,000 people, some of whom blocked the nearby Kashmir highway, the major road running west out of the capital.

The police, initially unwilling to take action, eventually charged the girl with blasphemy and took her into custody. The rest of the community, including her parents, fled."

Police  behaving appallingly isn't new as we know from the USA.

" As with many other aspects of the incident, there is disagreement about exactly what was burned. Some say it was a small pocket book of Qur'anic verses. Others claim it was pages of the Qur'an. Either it was a relatively small quantity of ash carried in an earthenware dish, or it was around half a kilogram of refuse that filled a small plastic shopping bag.

Hammad Malik, a 23-year-old with a shaven head and bushy beard who is deemed a "scoundrel" by the Christian community, said he saw Rifta walking out of the tiny, single-room dwelling where she lived with her parents and sister at some time after 6pm. He said it was pure chance that he noticed her bundle.

"I looked at it but did not know exactly what it was but I could see it had words written in Arabic," he said."

So in fact no evidence what so ever

" He concedes that no one actually saw her burning anything as the offence allegedly happened inside the house, and she was caught while finding somewhere to throw away the remains. However, the local mullah claims there was a witness: another young girl who caught her in the act and then ran to the mosque to raise the alarm.

One thing the Muslim community does agree on is that claims in the local media, sourced to the police, that the girl has Down's syndrome are false.

"She is a completely normal girl," said Kamran Khan, cousin of the Masih family's landlord. As the largely male and grownup crowd gathered outside the house, a girl who said she knew Rifta said she did behave oddly – she talked to herself and walked in a peculiar way.

The other point of general agreement is that "the law should be followed". Unfortunately, the law in question is Packistan's blasphemy law, which has a proven track record of ensnaring people on the flimsiest of evidence and being cynically used to intimidate communities or settle quarrels over money and property."

Yes laws that allow you to kill children should be followed ? Well Hitler did it. 

Even though no one has yet been executed for blasphemy in Pakistan, long prison terms are common – one Christian couple was sentenced to 25 years in 2010 after being accused of touching the Qur'an with unwashed hands.

There have also been cases of people killed by lynch mobs demanding instant punishment. Daring to criticise the law is incredibly risky and few do it.

In 2011, Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab province, was gunned down by his own bodyguard after he spoke out against the case of Aasia Bibi, another Christian woman accused of blasphemy.

" The Christian community of Mehrabadi says the whole thing is a plot. They too have conflicting accounts of what happened. In one version, according to priest Boota Masih, a Muslim neighbour asked the girl to throw out the ash into which the desecrated pages had been placed.

I so like tolerance.

Either way, one hotly contested incident involving a very young girl looks set to change the complexion of the neighbourhood for ever.

"They have done this to provoke the Muslims, like they have with their noisy banging and singing from their churches," said a local mullah, who would not give his name. "We are not upset the Christians have left and we will be pleased if they don't come back."

So a little girl is accused of burning a  religious text with no evidence what so ever  to provoke Muslims.