An extreme minority of Muslims advocating replacing the government with a Caliphate will achieve nothing but resentment and sanctions against all.

That’s likely the goal. (At least of a few of the leaders hoping to exploit the already fragile cultural fault lines and cause Aussie alienation of more Muslims.)

Agree with Shloky. The goal of extremists in the short term is to collapse the political center. Empowering the extremists on the other side is a great way to do this, as it can force people vacillating in the middle to choose whether you are “with us or agin us!” Hizb ut-Tahrir’s first obstacle to victory are all the Muslims that aren’t willing to kill themselves for the cause.

Because of the very real threat that such groups pose, now is not the time to be politically correct. The threat of a one-way ticket home should shut up some of the worst preachers of violence. As for homegrown traitors, watch them like a hawk and if they step over the line from talk to action, slap them in jail.

Jason W: I won’t yell. I would only comment that I don’t see much defense of this group under the banner of multiculturalism, and that most Western countries have legal remedies for those who seek or conspire to overthrow the sovreign democratic order. It’s up to the police and prosecutors to see if there’s a case.

It is, however, a mistake to say that defending the (implied) right of people to live their own cultures and traditions can be compared to not defending the KKK. The KKK was singled out for condemnation, not all white people, or all Christians, or all culturally conservative white Christians.

If there had been a response from a hypothetical society-at-large that blamed, say, all white Christians for the actions of the KKK, then a lot of people would have pushed back, I reckon.

Or imagine that all athiests were blamed for every marxist insurgency.

Oh, and Curzon: “Sydney Lebanese gang rapes”? This is the first I’ve heard of this. News reports on the riots in Sydney (if that’s what you’re referring to) don’t mention any kind of sexual violence. If you’re going to mention it in your post, include a link so we can tell if it’s true.

Just psychotic ranting and raving. Did not the Third Reich start with psychotic ranting and raving?

Jason W: Are you sure you wouldn’t be more at home on LGF or JihadWatch?

I’m not seeing in the article where it actually says this guy called for rebellion against the state. What am I misreading?

Anyway, I don’t know much about Australian law, but if their concept of free speech is the same as ours, my take would be. . . As long as there’s no evidence of anything more serious than bluster, their speech is protected. However, the speech of government officials, journalists and other private citizens are also protected by the same laws. If one side is allowed to be incendiary, the other is too. If one side goes further than words, the other will too. My guess is, the Islamists wouldn’t win that fight.

Thank you for the clarification, Curzon. Brings a little more background to my understanding of the 2005 riots in Sydney. Though what I said in my first comment still stands.

“Anyway, I don’t know much about Australian law, but if their concept of free speech is the same as ours”

From memory, Australia only has constitutional protection for freedom of speech in connection with political matters – this is implied from the constitutional requirement of elections and representative government (hence may not apply to all “political” matetrs rather than being an explicit guarantee and was considered in the Theophanous case in the mid 1990s. There’s no general right of free speech and are various legal concerns which cut across free speech eg anti-vilification laws, anti-incitement laws, defamation laws. Australia has had a few referenda to incorporate a right to free speech in its Federal constitution since Federation in 1901, but each has been rejected by voters.

Ergo – no protection for the speech, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the speech is in contravention of any laws either.

On the state of free speech for those looking for a “clash of civilisations” narrative in Australia, see also the case of some Christian preachers in Victoria (different state – different state anti-vilification laws) who were (initially) successfully prosecuted for making statements about Islam in the last few years. However, the nature of their statements was different to those under consideration here. See: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5362 for background.

From my perspective (formerly in Australia, now an interested viewer from afar), the Australian context for this sort of stuff is one of various interest groups:

1. The urban “elite” non-centre Left – very vocal and with some MSM outlets (eg the Fairfax press, ABC and SBS (public broadcasters)) strong presence in secondary and tertiary education, very antagonistic to the current Liberal (Australia’s centre to mid right party) led Federal government, generally sympathetic to minorities who are seen to be victimised (in order of sympathy – refugees, Australia’s one prisoner at Guantanamo, Muslims); anti-Iraq war (although pro-East Timor intervention) and generally anti-US; would prefer to watch a BBC comedy to a US comedy. Generally the Left has taken (intentionally or not) a Gramsciian (sp?) approach in Australia.

2. The commentariat Right – also vocal, with some MSM outlets (eg the News Media press, 3 main free to air commercial TV networks), sympathetic to the current Liberal led Federal government; varying levels of antagonism ranging from skepticism to fearmongering to the above mentioned minorities.

3. Bogan Australians – part of the silent majority that doesn’t get much a voice other than through tabloid-style “current affairs” programs on commercial TV. Hard to get a real feeling for what their like, as I had limited contact and never discussed politics or other issues with them. My feeling was that there was lingering class and racial-based tensions here, which could flare up for different reasons. For example, a year or so before the “Cronulla riots” were the “Macquarie Field riots”, which were a class-based event – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Macquarie_Fields_riots

4. Non-bogan mainstream Australians – by and large their views are a mix of the Left and Right dominated media and their views probably rarely coincide with any one MSM outlet in Australia.

When it comes to reading Australian MSM reports, you should read most stuff in the context of a “culture war” between groups (1) and (2). Many issues are picked up and used as tools to criticise the other group within a conceptual framework based on the culture war, even if the issue is not explicitly linked to criticism of the Government/Right or criticism of the Left in many articles. Hence statements by people in group (1) defending Muslims are also partly being used as a critique of the ‘fear-mongering, Bush-loving xenophobic Howard Government’.

The Australian culture war is a bit amorphorous, but largely centres around the following footballs which both sides (ie (1) and (2)) kick around in the MSM and other fields to score goals against each other and the incumbent government:

1. Indigenous Australians
(a) how Australians generally see their history – something to be proud of, or should it be fixated on the treatment of aborigines (this was a big issue a few years ago when historian Keith Windschuttle took on the left-dominated Australian history academia’s “black armband” view of history)
(b) how to remedy the current situation – through statist welfare or through pushing personal responsibility

2. The view of Australian history generally (there was a national summit last year on the teaching of history)

3. The Iraq war

4. Muslims’ place in Australian society

5. The nature and role of multiculturalism in Australian society

6. The place of patriotism (see recent articles about the Australian flag and “leaving it at home” on Australia Day – http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21095538-2,00.html)

7. David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay

8. The environment and climate change (although group (2) is now starting to come around on this issue, such that it isn’t really that much of a lack of consensus)

9. Whether Australians are becoming too materialistic and American-like (on both sides of politics, becoming American-like is generally seen as “not a good thing”)

In this context, most MSM coming out of Australia on this event will partially reflect the view of group (1) (to provide a caricature view: “The bogan mainstream is always persecuting Muslims because the Bush-lovign HoWARd Government is stirring up white Australian racism and if we withdrew our troops immediately from Iraq and didn’t support Israel so much and were all more kind and loving and let in more refugees and brought David Hicks home, then they would probably happily fit into multicultural Australia and wouldn’t be forced into such extremism. Then we could all eat kebabs as well as Thai food and the other cuisines that multiculturalism has given us.”) or the view of group (2) (a caricature view: “This is one more step in the clash of civilisations and the kids attending this lecture will either be bombing the Sydney Opera House next week or raping our daughters – or both!”).

I have a few Australian friends who are opinion writers and reporters for the Fairfax press (group (1)), and the caricature of their views above is not that far from the truth!

Also relevant is that Australians historically have a statist mentality, much closer to (my understanding of) the UK post-WW2 perspective than the US perspective. Hence a common and knee jerk reaction to most social problems is (1) the government must be at fault (stressed a lot more than individual responsibility) and (2) the way to fix the problem is more government spending and intervention (again, rather than individual or communal responsibility). This type of thinking is common among the Australian Left, but also present in the Right.

Apologies for this tangential comment on my reading of the Australian commentariat/media reporting landscape, but I find the general context of “culture wars” interesting (and not something I see much of here in Hong Kong – we’re too busy just trying to get a right to vote). I suspect that other Western nations have similar culture wars – is this true?

By the way, when exactly was it that “aussie” came to refer exclusively to WASPs? Or has it always had such a meaning, rather than simply “Australian” as I had always assumed. These days, I rarely see it used except to contrast white Australians with minorities (regardless of their citizenship).