In the BBC News article "Australian Muslim Party's tough road to representation," Jon Donnison tells us that, despite the timing following the ISIS attack on Paris, Australia's 60 plus federal political parties have now been joined by the Australian Muslim Party, which hopes to improve the under-representation in politics of the Muslim population of Australia, although their likeliest chance of election is to the Australian senate (2015).
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| Australian Muslim Party founder Diaa Mohamed |
After the bombing of Paris by religiously inspired terrorists, I saw a lot of comments on the internet blaming all Muslims and saying immigration should be stopped. This is wrong. It is true that Islam, like other religions, can be a terrorist inspiration, but not all Muslims are terrorists. Most are decent people who want to live in peace, to follow their religion in a mild and peaceful way, and live productive lives that help society. In particular, immigrants desperate to escape the holy states of ISIS and the like are people in great need and we should not treat them more harshly because they share a religion that some people use as a political weapon - that would be like saying all Buddhists are bad because monks in Myanmar use Buddhism as a political weapon against the abused Rohingya minority, or because some Thai Buddhist monks use Buddhism as a political weapon to oppose some groups of Thai citizens.
In my reply to a comment by Union earlier this morning, I also commented briefly on the security issues, specifically official access to encrypted personal information online, raised by the Paris attacks, and before I'd finished my morning coffee, I came across a great article on that in the New York Times, but that blog post can wait until tomorrow, or maybe later this evening, or maybe for eternity.
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This is also the topic I'm interested in, the consequence of the incident in Paris. I agree that they are wrong about stop helping immigrants from Syria; coming from Syria dose not mean they are necessarily terrorists. I read the news about Trump's speech and he said somewhat like " the immigrants seem strong and like a warrior, so they should not be allowed to be in the states", and that is ridiculous. Sometimes people have trouble distinguishing being reasonable from being emotional.
ReplyDeleteI do understand Toon's and Peter's opinions, but I would like to know what you think are the root causes of these incidents. I hope that the governments of those countries letting those refugees in will provide enough effective security equipment and methods to protect their citizens. One more question: if those security matters are not good enough to prevent those attacks, what should we do to protect ourselves? I support that we should help those desperate refugees, yet I am still concerned about other lives as well.
DeleteI think a good start would be to teach philosophy, not religion, from primary school onwards to develop a healthy habit of questioning, of checking, everything. One reason religion and similar ideologies like Maoism in China, Kimism in North Korea and Stalinism in Russia inspire terrorism is that they make amazing claims that are false, but that are never checked and it is such false beliefs as an afterlife in paradise or that some "divine" leaders teachings are the perfect moral guide to be mindlessly believed, followed and obeyed that lead so easily to sincere and devoted terrorism by true believers in false and morally evil ideologies.
DeleteWhenever I see the word commandment in a moral teaching, I'm very suspicious. And lists of "values" that all must follow are the same, especially when written as dictates that command unthinking conformism.
It's much healthier for society to have discussion that seeks better understanding of the important and difficult to find truths.
And such free inquiry to seek and speak truth is typically criminalized to protect false beliefs from the investigation they deserve. Stronger legal protection for free speech is a healthy start to getting rid of the ideological foundations of terrorism.
Now my coffee is cold.
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