Hostage Crisis in Sydney

Its not the ideology because there are a stack of muslims here who are not like him. If it were the ideology they would all be like him, and they aren't. One of my all-time sporting heroes Muhammad Ali is a muslim, there are muslims who play in the NFL. I play golf with a muslim fella who is one of the nicest people you could meet. How bad can these people be? Probably as good or bad as the rest of us. Any group of people is not perfect.

Clearly we have different views on guns, I respect that. The mainstream Australian position on guns can probably be roughly summed up here (excuse the swearing and the fact this guy is a bit over the top):

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.

The pedophile priests really is a piss poor comparison.  When news of that broke there was so much outrage among Catholics and it was universally denounced.  I know people that stopped going to church.  I have never gotten over that.  

Whenever these savages kill someone its crickets.  

Catholics, Christians get pissed on everyday in America and every other fucking country, but our belief system is God is the Judge and vengeance in his alone. Its even commonplace to take one of our most cherished holidays and remove the christ right out of it because you like lights and christmas trees too but want nothing to do with our stupid make believe God. Try doing that to a Muslim community on Ramadan. See how well they go with it. In fact mock their God in their communities see how they handle that. Atheists favorite target is the christian belief . Your full of shit on many issues or just ill informed. Also as far as getting a gun illegally its easier then getting a legal one anywhere at least in the 4 different countries i visited. Criminals love the black market it makes their life so much easier, many more hands out to accept bribes and look the other way. I suggest some light reading on Prohibition in this country

What countries have you been to?

How do you know they are taking the Christ out of Christmas maybe they are just putting the Saturn back in Saturnalia.