How Australia Addressed the Islamic Issue

OJR · May 11, 2006

How Australia addressed the "Islamic" issue

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.

A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown. Treasurer Peter Costello hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the

country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament."If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or

a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on

national television. "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another, the Islamic law, that this is false. If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law, and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said. Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other country. Education Minister Brendan Nelson

later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should "clear off." Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically "clear off," he said. Separately, Howard angered some Australian muslims on Wednesday by saying he

supported spies monitoring the nation's mosques.

BRITS, AMERICANS and CANADIANS.....ARE YOU LISTENING?

This is Leadership with guts! The way it is. The way it should be. Our men and women died in two world wars to get us this country and we are giving it away.

May 11, 2006