Hostage Crisis in Sydney

Really??   The guy was an Iranian refugee that was some sort of wanna be cleric.  He wrote letters to Australian families that had soldiers killed in Afghanastan and Iraq and told them that their family members were rats an infidels and deserved to die.  Pretty sure this had something to do with Islam.  

Wow. Really?

I didn't hear about that.

Jeez.

But we should start a Twitter campaign about how we support his community...

Tell me again how Australia doesn't have gun violence anymore because of their new draconian gun laws. That is one of my favorites stories you tell.

This absolutely had to do with religion. If you define insanity with being a murderous Islamic zealot then yes it was just because he was crazy. Sure there are some good ones but I paraphrase Denis Miller when I say, "The problem with Islam is that it is the couple billion that ruin it for the other 11."

Even if you take the conservative estimate that 25% of the 1.6 billion Muslims hold extreme views and support terror that leaves 400 Million Islamic nut jobs in the world. Now add in the ones who ignore the nuts and let them run rampant in their religion or the ones too afraid to talk and that bring it closer to 800 million culpable. There are only ~300 million citizens in America today an 23 million citizens in Australia to put that number in perspective.


But sure, you go drive them around but make sure there is no alcohol or pork in the car because some of them might take offense.  

Look fellas, its clear you have set views on this, I respect that, but let me make a few points.

This fella was rejected by his own community - the Muslims wanted to have nothing to do with him. Likely this had something to do with what happened - frankly I think thats the one issue the Islamic community here has to look at - could they have been more accepting of this guy despite his clear issues and so averted this situation. He basically was a fruit-loop. Anyone who thinks they can get their point across by writing abusive letters to the families of dead soldiers clearly is not right upstairs.

The 9/11 attacks were an attack on America and Americans - but there are many American muslims who do not hold extremist views, and some of them were killed in that terrible tragedy. Some of the people currently fighting ISIS in Iraq are muslims, for example a lot of the Kurds are - clearly they are anti-extremist and prepared to put their own lives on the line to fight extremism. That doesn't really fit the narrative that a great deal of Muslims are extremist - clearly some are but a great deal are not.

As far as our gun laws go we've had no massacres since we changed them. If you have a legitimate need for guns, say if you are a farmer or sporting shooter, you can still get them. But guns are basically off the street - its very hard to get one if you are a criminal (yes, they can still get them in rare circumstances), or deranged - I have no doubt there will be a very thorough investigation into how this guy got this weapon, because its unusual for someone like him to get one. At this stage we don't know if it was he who fired the fatal shots that killed the victims or if it were the police that did that, but lets assume it was him - if he had a semi-automatic the carnage would have been much greater. A semi-automatic you can buy at Wal Mart over there for about a $1k would cost about $40k out here on the black market but only if you had the right connections. We have a much lower death rate by gun then you do in the USA as a result, and our streets are far safer. We do shark, snake and spider deaths out here, gun deaths less so.

Anyway, leaving the gun argument aside, I think people should be able to practice whatever religion they believe in. I'm an athiest but if you want to believe in the invisible sky monkey I reckon go for it. If you want to wear religious clothing or whatever, I have no issue with that. I do have some issues with Islam in the fact I believe it pretty backward in a lot of ways, especially its attitude to women, but frankly if you look at other religions they aren't much better either. One of the major Christian religions out here is the Catholic Church and recently they've been exposed as sheltering quite a number of pedophiles within their priesthood, so all religions have some pretty significant issues.

The upshot is me and most of my fellow Aussies think Muslims should be able to practice their faith without being hassled by bigots on public transport or wherever. I was brought up a Catholic and a lot of my friends are Catholic, and it would shit me no end if they got hassled for being Catholics, and frankly I feel the same about any other religion people want to practice, provided they aren't hurting anyone else while doing it.

Ugh

Reporter finds out live one of the people killed was a friend