Islam illegal under Australian law, court told

theage.com.au ^ | February 20, 2004 | Barney Zwartz

[Destro]

Islam illegal under law, court told

By Barney Zwartz

Religion Editor

February 20, 2004

Islam was an illegal religion because the Koran preached violence against Christians and Jews, a Christian group told a judge yesterday.

The group's barrister, David Perkins, said that Christianity was established under Australia's constitution and had special protection, especially through the blasphemy law.

Mr Perkins told the Victorian and Civil Administrative Tribunal that if the state's new religious hatred law intended to fetter the teaching of Christian doctrine it was invalid.

Victoria's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 referred to lawful religion, and it was in that sense, he said, that by preaching violence Islam was disqualified.

"The Koran contradicts Christian doctrine in a number of places and, under the blasphemy law, is therefore illegal," he said.

In the first case under the act, the Islamic Council of Victoria has complained that Catch the Fire Ministries, Pastor Danny Nalliah and speaker Daniel Scot, also a pastor, vilified Muslims at a seminar in March 2002.

Opening the defence yesterday, Mr Perkins said Christianity was embedded in the constitution.

He said the law still entitled Christian religious principles to a special place.

He said the reference in the constitution to the people "humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God" referred to Christianity and was inserted at the request of Christians.

He said Australia's blasphemy law - still in force, if little used - took precedence over the state act, and the Victorian Parliament could not legislate away protection given by the blasphemy law.

Mr Perkins cited the Choudhury case in England, involving Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, which held that the blasphemy law protected only Christianity, not Islam.

Judge Michael Higgins asked if Mr Perkins meant that the Victorian law did not protect Muslims? Mr Perkins replied: "Yes."

Judge Higgins: "So it might protect Christians but not Muslims from vilification?"

Mr Perkins: "Yes."

Judge Higgins said a no-case submission claiming the seminar was exempt as a religious activity would fail "at this time", so Mr Perkins withdrew the application.

The judge said it was "strongly open" that the seminar breached the act.

He based this on listening to the tape of the seminar, evidence of the effect it had on the complainants, expert evidence about Pastor Scot's references to the Koran, and that the seminar was not limited to academic study of what the Koran says about jihad.

He said the seminar described the attitudes of a small group of fundamentalist Muslims who "lack association with those Muslim people who live and work peacefully in this community".

Judge Higgins also mentioned an attempt to influence the court, when a member of the public sent a letter and two CDs to him.

"I want to make it clear to all here it is not appropriate conduct," he told the gallery.

"What took place was not sinister, but a failure to understand not only protocols but the most important aspect, the independence of the trial judge."

Judge Higgins said the sent items had not influenced him.

[Destro]

bump

[bjcintennessee]

Comparisons have been made on numerous of the Bible to the Koran. The Old Testament includes some very barbaric practices that todays Christians do not adhere to.

The best explanation I have heard is that Christianity has progressed, whereas Islam has not. My daughter attributes this difference to cultural changes, rather than religious.

I would be very interested in other viewpoints.

[Bobby777]

the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament ... Christians are never told to be barbaric ... not once in the New Testament ... not once ... simple

you can't make a true convert at the edge of a sword anyway ...

[Paleo Conservative]

the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament ... Christians are never told to be barbaric ... not once in the New Testament ... not once ... simple

Plus Mohammed is about 600 years after Christ, but his mentality is 5,000 years prior.

[ApplegateRanch]

U.N. aid agencies insist the door-to-door drive to inoculate 63 million children in 10 west and central African countries, including Nigeria, is critical to stemming a growing polio outbreak spreading out from Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

Islam spreads filth in more ways than one.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1083510/posts

[Bobby777]

yeah, just the comments showing his exploits show that he was not sent from the God of Israel ... it's the army that Hitler wished he could have spawned ... even if it's only 10-15 percent, and that's probably fairly accurate, that's about 150 million people ... aye carumba ... it sure isn't just a few thousand guys as the spin doctors would have us believe ...

[atomic conspiracy]

There was quite a commotion in the Commonwealth back in the 60s when Zambian president Julius Nyerere banned the Jehovah's Witnesses for as a "public nuisance."

Just imagine the worldwide uproar if the Australian courts somehow accepted this argument and moved to prohibit Islam. I am not a legal scholar but it does appear on its face to be constitutional.

[King Prout]

it might be, acc. to australian law.
break out the popcorn, watch and see I guess.

[King Prout]

"Leading proponent of nuclear propulsion in spaceflight (see homepage)."

Nice to know I'm not alone in favoring updated kiwis :)

[bjcintennessee]

the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament

Thank you both. I wish I could convince my brother-in-law, a Baptist minister, who believes the whole Bible is meant to be taken literally. He never would answer my question about whether or not we should go out and kill all homosexuals, or whether a father should turn his disobedient son over to the town council to have him stoned to death.

I really hate comparisons between the Koran and the Bible where scriptures from the Old Testament are used to imply that there is a modern day equivalence.

[Paleo Conservative]

I really hate comparisons between the Koran and the Bible

Well you really need to thank Bobby777. I was responding to his response to your origianal post.

Remember Mohammad claimed to be the last prophet. So anyone who comes along later contradicting Mohammed is a blasphemer according to Islamic theology. The Bible was written over generations by many differrent authors. I have a distrust in anything that is the word of just one man.

[Destro]

He never would answer my question about whether or not we should go out and kill all homosexuals, or whether a father should turn his disobedient son over to the town council to have him stoned to death.

The Old Testament is harsh for infraction of the law. But that is not the same thing as uriging its followers to be always waging a holy war to spread the faith and to kill those who refuse to convert like the Koran says.

[King Prout]

my writing on this basic topic, from an argument some weeks ago, elsewhere on the web:

(edited as per netiquette)

A while ago, M_____ floated the notion that the fundamentalists/islamicists in contrast with some notional “mainstream” Islam are roughly comparable to the Ku Klux Klan’s relation to the various flavors of Christianity. More accurately, he stated that moderate Muslims would make such a comparison. Of this I have no doubt – I am sure some moderate Muslims would indeed attempt to divert criticism of Islam with such a statement.

While I disagree with the intent of this comparison - I believe that fundamentalist extremism is the heart and soul of Islam, incomparable to the marginal and alien KKK’s remote link to Christianity - I did find it an interesting point of departure for more thorough thinking.

First off, let us dispose with the general marginalizing comparison. Islamicists have quite literally hundreds of explicit and clear-text lines of sanctified korannic suriyah and hadith from which to draw their legitimacy. The Klan has, what? One highly debatable interpretation of one passage of Genesis (the flood, and Ham)? While there can be no doubt that Klansmen were and are Christians (or espousing believers in that creed) the Klan itself is derived extrinsically to the Christian scriptures. ON THE OTHER HAND, Islamicism is INTRINSIC to Islam.

Secondly, let me revisit my original and consistent statement, that “Islam is intrinsically incompatible with secular government such as our constitutional republic.” The text of the Koran and Hadith are quite explicitly clear on this. Islam demands the creation of Islamic temporal government everywhere. This cannot be disputed, yet some have tried – by arguing against what I did NOT state.

What I did not state, yet what some disputants here (the site of the original thread -ed.) seem to believe I meant, was that MUSLIMS are intrinsically incompatible with secularism. This is either deliberate misconstruction on their parts, or a very typical intellectual slovenliness of the sort I find entirely too familiar. This sloppiness of intellect - which confuses the creed with the behavior of the adherents - has led to the great display of silly savagery I have been saddened to witness on this thread.

Allow me to end this nonsense: I have known moderate Muslims, and have no doubt that they are many in number. I have known IMMODERATE Christians, and am under no illusions as to their numbers.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Christianity itself is intrinsically moderate in terms of temporal matters, and ISLAM is intrinsically IMMODERATE.

Now, when M_____ spoke of the Klan, I am sure he was referring to the current anemic, low-membership, heavily-surveilled, and politically impotent gang of bedsheet-wearing cross-dressers… oops, cross-BURNERS. Had he meant the Klan at its peak of power, in the 1920’s, he’d have been closer to the mark, though still off-base.
There are some hefty differences...

First, the islamicists are internationally funded and staffed, in a way and to an extent that the Klan never was.

Second, the Klan had an extremely narrow focus of interest: the South, period – whereas the islamicists have interests and operations spanning the entire globe.

Third, and most important, the Klan was/is not a “religion” protected by law and shielded from thorough infiltration and investigation by the law - whereas at the moment, unfortunately, the islamicists ARE.

I would think that a better Western comparison would be to say that the islamicists are like unto the Sicilian La Cosa Nostra, or Mafia.

The similarities between the groups and the etiology of their spread into host organisms (cultures and nations) are great indeed, as are the tactics of bribery and clandestine infiltration under the cover of licit and innocuous “fronts”, the invasion of new lands in the midst of demographic flow, the internecine betrayals, the infighting, the penchant for murder, for extortion, and the ever popular beating-of-chests and declamations of innocence... Indeed, both act behind the walls of their homes and centers of power as very temporal shadow-governments - with their own leaders, laws, and enforcement arms, with their own domestic and foreign policies, and with total disregard for the legitimate laws of the lands in which they take root.

Very similar, indeed, are these two groups.

However, like the Klan, the Mafia is not a religion, and thus can be and is heavily pursued by the law. If only La Cosa Nostra had been witty enough to declare themselves a spin-off of Catholicism… then RICO would never have been able to touch them. [ /sarcasm ]

Now, if you folks (those originally addressed - ed.) have any intellectual integrity, it may amuse and enlighten you to try the following textual exercise:

1. Select a few of the hundreds of excerpts I provided several posts ago (LITERALLY hundreds -ed.)
2. Remove therefrom all iterations of “Allah” and “Mohammed” (they are essentially interchangeable, de facto if not de jure), and replace all said iterations with the words “The Leader”
3. Do what you can to ignore or delete the ritual figures of speech, the incessant “peace be upon his name” et omnia generis alia, with which all Arabic is rife
4. Now, read the edited version you have just created, aloud and with gusto, and ask yourself, “What does this awful hate-filled crap most sound like?”

Yes, exactly: Nazism.

Now, I ask you, have you ever heard of “moderate, mainstream Nazism”? If you did, would you be instantly willing to accept this undemonstrated (and amply counter-demonstrated) notion?

No, I rather thought you hadn’t, and rather thought you wouldn’t.

Let us continue this line of inquiry:

I am willing to accept as fact that, just as there are moderate individual Muslims, there were moderate individual Nazis. Nazis who would not themselves have been happy to pack Jews and Gypsies and Catholics into boxcars and ship them off to death-camps. Nazis who would not themselves be happy to gun down prisoners of war with machine-guns. Nazis who, though convinced of German supremacy, may have thought that going to war with the whole world was foolish or excessive. Nazis who, though they may have bought into the notion of the supremacy of the “Aryan Race”, may have thought that old Adolph was a little too rabid and went a trifle too far...

I can see that such moderate Nazis may well have existed.
But would their existence have indicated that Nazism itself was moderate?

No. Of course not.

So why is it that so many people in the West point to some handful of identifiably moderate Muslims and exclaim “Eureka - Here is Moderate Islam!”? Why, then, are so many people so very eager to accept the totally undemonstrated and amply counter-demonstrated notion that there exists such a thing as “moderate, mainstream Islam”?

It is a puzzlement.

[Bobby777]

I recommend going to TheBereanCall.Org and Carm.Org ... there you will find (especially at the first site) books, videos and pamphlets on many of those subjects and can provide proper refutation on many levels ... good luck ...

Carm.Org is mostly articles, but a few good reads there ...

[Siamese Princess]

Here was a man who claimed to be the last prophet of God who basically made up all his rules to fit his lifestyle. ... I could go on, but these stories just turn my stomach.

Somebody writing in Chronicles magazine described Mohammed as "part John Gotti, part Charles Manson." In Muslim eyes, Mohammed is the model for humanity, so the ideal Muslim is part John Gotti, part Charles Manson -- in other words, a psycho with no compunction about commiting mass murder.

Mohammed killed those who simply mocked him -- thus, from a traditional Muslim perspective, it is perfectly proper for a ruler to kill a subject who simply mocks him. The idea of "the loyal opposition" is foreign to traditional Muslims -- anyone who opposes the ruler is by definition an enemy and must be destroyed. From the top on down, Islamic society is extremely authoritarian -- you do what you are told or else! As a matter of course, husbands beat their wives, parents beat their children, employers beat their employees and rulers beat their subjects. The ideas of limited government and the right to dissent are tough rows to hoe in the Islamic world.

One danger that genuinely reform-minded Muslim rulers face is that traditionalists will take advantage of the greater freedoms enjoyed and one way or another seize power and re-establish despotism.

[Siamese Princess]

In fact, Mohammed's attitudes towards "polytheists" were worse than towards Christians, Jews and Zoroastians. Polytheists (pagans, Hindus, Buddhists) could legitimately be ordered to convert or die. Christians, Jews and Zoroastians were to be reduced to second-class status and suffer all kinds of legal disabilities, personal humiliations and pay a poll tax. They were not to be killed as long as they obeyed, but the modern-day Wahhabis ignore this.

[archy]

you should add the Koran itself to the list of must-reads.

Yeah, but it's hard to read. It looks sooo much like Japanese Kanji...

[dennisw]

Rock their casbah and then some. They want it, give it to 'em.

[Alouette]

Catch the Fire Ministries

They should call themselvws Fight the Fire Ministries