Of course I don’t want sectarianism in society and we should be promoting dialogue, this isn’t done by watering down the truth.

Simon Crowe

A moderate Christian is one who attends church on Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, and occasional funerals. He probably owns a Bible but it never is opened. The moderate Muslim is one who has found his power and authority more intoxicating than memorizing the Qur’an. He knows the Qur’an but he is too busy making money to pray five times a day.

In thinking about Islam, I would say it is more accurate to describe muslims by the degree of passionate hatred they show toward the west and Israel. These are purely my own thoughts. The awkward definitions above are exclusively the ramblings of my own mind, biased as it is.

I don’t know if it is true in Australia, but here in the US our liberal news media created the radical Muslim label through lack of understanding of the differences between Islam and Christianity.

Bill Stafford
Marietta, Georgia, USA

What Jack fails to understand is that his preferred secularists also have a religious worldview. Just because they never use the term ‘faith’ to describe themselves doesn’t mean they don’t have any. The faith of the secularists is extremely godless and dangerous and deserves to be kicked out of political power because they’re nothing but trouble.

Ewan McDonald, Victoria.

1. Ayaan Hirsi Ali—see these you-tube showings of the Jewish Conservative Dennis Prager blasting anti American Christ-hater interviewing Ali, who was mutilated as a child under Islam, then driven from Holland by politically correct politicians:

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq5xV0p4l-0
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4KnP_32SNo&feature=related

2. Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychologist from Los Angeles, interviewed on Al Jazeera TV http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=nul.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

Jack, other atheists do not seem to agree with you.

“Let’s stop pretending all faiths are equal” – Minette Marrin, UK times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article2801033.ece
“Fear of offending is killing our culture” – Minette Marrin, UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article2604019.ece

Ironically it seems that the most secular European country, France, is telling the Muslims “if you don’t like it keep out or go somewhere else” whereas the UK is falling over itself in political correctness to ‘integrate’ them into it’s culture. When you have completed the destruction of your country from within with political correctness and multi-culturalism, and Muslim’s have completed their takeover by peaceful means through your schools, businesses and parliament and they start outlawing the freedoms that Judeo-Christian foundations gave to you in the first place, you will recognise that you have brought this upon yourself. And, the irony again is that Muslims don’t tolerate atheists.

When you promote the line of mandating that people can’t choose, as in a Christian school can’t choose who it employs, or a business can’t choose who best suits its vision and culture, then you are removing the very essential freedoms to choose how you wish to be diverse, to be different than others. The UK was built on a Christian foundation which teaches self-respect, respect of others and freedom and equality for men and women, black and white etc. And yet you wish to remove this very teaching.

Now you mentioned that “School prayer isn’t just allowed, it’s compulsory to offer it and it’s compulsory to take lessons in religion.” like you are being denied your right to choose. Well, this is different to ‘freedom of choice’ – you have the right to choose whether you agree with what is taught or not – not so in a Mulsim world, and farcically, if atheists had their way, not so in an atheist world which does not want different worldviews taught and progressively legislates against it. In the more aggressive secular states they punish and discriminate against those who are religious. You only have to look at Marxist Russia, China and North Korea to see the extreme intolerance toward any religious thought. [The devastation and immense loss of life caused by atheist regimes over the past century has been detailed in other posts on this website if you care to look.]

So how is compulsory items at school different? Well, my example is this… Australians do not have an option of avoiding sending their children to school – yet we do not see this as a restriction of our freedoms because it, like teaching our culture and ethics, is a foundational principle of of our country. In those schools, evolution and increasingly creationist (or intelligent design) thinking is taught in science but as of yet we are not persecuted for not believing in one or the other. That’s freedom.

As an atheist you seem to want to rid yourself of the very foundational principles that the UK was built on and exported to other countries, and you’re recommending the dismantling of the education of this in favour of acceptance of other cultures and worldviews that have proven destructive, discriminating and divisive.

Garth Penglase

Your comment was an excellent illustration of the category mistake I spoke of in a parallel piece, and you thus have very nicely made my point. By seeking to equate Christian influence in the UK with the dangers of sharia law you have provided yet another example of muddled thinking and mushy moralising.

Your secular ideology has simply blinded you to historical facts and moral distinctions. You peddle the silly line that there are no moral or social differences to be found between religions, and all result in social decay and loss of freedoms. Such a simplistic and misguided attempt at moral equivalence cannot be sustained. Those on this hobby horse are seeking to argue that any religious influence on the state or society is only always bad. Sorry, but history and the facts are not with you on this.

The influence of the Christian church in the West today is largely waning and minimalist, thus nothing to get veryworried about by folks like you. It is a far cry from the sort of thing envisaged by those pushing for sharia law. When sharia is fully implemented, there is no church-state division, full stop. There is no sacred-secular division. Criticism of the state then becomes criticism of Islam. The penalties are not good.

Secularists like you living under such a regime would not last long. Yet how many atheists and humanists are being beheaded in nominally Christian nations in the West today? I am not aware of any. And even with a state church as in England, so what? Are secularists being put to death there? Are Muslims and Jews imprisoned in “Christian England”? There is complete freedom for religious minorities in the UK, and there is clear division between religious and political authority as well. No such division exists in Islamic nations under sharia law

Your blind hatred of anything religious poisons your reasoning ability here. As I have argued here, and social historians such as Rodney Stark have fully documented, the Christian worldview led to the separate spheres of church and state. The political and religious freedoms we enjoy today are a result of the Judeo-Christian worldview. They certainly are not a result of the Islamic faith.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Um … no. Hate to interrupt a rant about how all Muslims are evil with facts, but there’s no church/state divide in England. The Church of England is the established church and the Queen is its head. Rowan Williams has a seat in the House of Lords and lives in a palace. School prayer isn’t just allowed, it’s compulsory to offer it and it’s compulsory to take lessons in religion.

As such, the Church of England has a privileged position in the British constitution.

What Rowan Williams wants isn’t to cave in to Muslims, it’s to preserve that position, while extending it to other faiths.

It means that Catholic adoption agencies would be free to be homophobic, Muslim kids wouldn’t have to learn about the Holocaust. It’s not some woolly liberal surrender, it’s a theocratic land grab. The government have already told him, as we like to here, to sod off.

The irony is, of course, that we’re all atheists here in the UK and any politicians who bang on about religion get jumped on. As Rowan Williams found out.

There’s a message for Americans in this. It’s not ‘the Muslims are coming, arm yourself’, it’s ‘kick out anyone with political power who’s ever used the word “faith”, they’re nothing but trouble.’

Jack Duckworth

“As an atheist, I should be happy that our ‘established’ church is led by such a limp-wristed moron. But I’m afraid Mr Williams only paints the Islamic faith in a better light. At least it has a backbone. The Anglican church has suffered a total collapse of confidence – symbolised perfectly by Williams’ comments here, and on the back of his refusal to countenance the existence of hell – and I feel nothing but contempt for it.”

Garth Penglase