Posted on 02/05/2006 12:55:28 PM PST by naturalman1975
STANDARD Islamic prayers in mosques may be illegal under new anti-terror laws, international law specialist Ben Saul told a conference in Melbourne.
Dr Saul said yesterday it could be against the law to pray in Australian mosques for victory for the mujahideen in Iraq.
The conference also discussed the legality of showing training videos recruiting Muslims to fight in Chechnya.
The sedition laws applied only where Australia was at war with a country or group — so training videos for al-Qaeda, the Taliban or Iraq would be illegal. But if the Australian Government had proscribed some Chechen organisations, recruiting for them would be illegal.
Dr Saul, of the University of NSW, said the new sedition law criminalised some things said in a religious context, such as the standard prayer "may God grant victory to the mujahideen in Iraq".
"The legislation is very ambiguous. You don't necessarily have to encourage someone to fight Australian troops — even contributing blankets to mujahideen could be criminal."
Dr Saul told The Age the anti-terrorism laws were an excessive and unjustified over-reaction to the threat Australia faced, and some provisions breached human rights under international law.
"The risk to the US and UK is undoubtedly far greater than the risk to Australia, but we've adopted far more invasive orders. And unlike those countries, we don't have the protection of a bill of rights," he said. People could be subjected to house detention for the 10 years the legislation lasts without ever being charged.
"If one person in a mosque says something outrageous in support of terrorism, these laws allow the government to close down the entire mosque — an extremely disproportionate reaction which collectively punishes every worshipper," Dr Saul said.
He said there was confusion and uncertainty among Muslims about the new laws. Muslim leaders did not know what they could say until they saw how the laws were used.
Precise information about the terrorist threat to Australia had not been made public, so justification for the laws was hard to judge, Dr Saul said.
"Australians are deprived of information and asked to trust political judgements when we know they have been manipulated in the past," he said.
About 70 Muslim leaders and others attended the Darebin conference, which was funded by the Federal Government's Living in Harmony program.
I intended to "ping" you on #40.
The Inquisition began in 1482 before the fall of Moorish Granada to Spain, Granada returned to the Spanish crown in 1492.
Absolutely ignorant.
Like you said, the Inquisition had the right idea when it came to dealing with Muslims. So right that the murderous anti-Jewish "afterthought" wasn't a big deal for you and your ilk.
Or, if you find my figures of 340+ years of Jewish persecution at the hands of the Inquisition problematic in light of the 1858 revocation of the ban on Jews in Spain, I will elaborate.
The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 by Pope Sixtus IV and ended in 1826. Jews and "New Christians" of Jewish origin were targeted, as were Muslims, Protestants and others.
Spain's unconverted Jews were expelled in 1492 and only allowed to live in Spain after constitutional changes in 1858. Approximately 200,000 Jews were forced to flee Ferdinand and Isabella's Spain. Today about 15,000 Jews make their homes in Spain, which is as little as hald the Jewish population of Iran.
Let me make this perfectly clear: Unless your intention was to give me an example of Antisemitism alive and kicking in the modern world, there is nothing to be learned from your "teaching". Historically, theologically, rhetorically, it's all garbage.
Straighten up, fly right, leave your genocidal impulses back in the 7th century and then you can contribute to FR as a good faith conservative rather than a violent bigot with an axe to grind.
Interesting.
Luis, zim, thanks for taking up the cudgel and posting the accurate, factual history, to the person who imagines that he knew it, but didn't, until you two replied.
The first victims of Pope Urban II's Crusade (The First Crusade) were Jews.
It seems that the Crusaders had difficulty distinguishing Jews from Muslims.
Why were they the "primary" target? Because they constituted the largest non-Catholic population remaining in Spain after the reconquista. If half a million muslims had remained, they would've been the primary target.
I know that.
Oh, STFU. I'm not a muslim and I don't hate Jews. Never have, never will, unlike you and your murderous pals.
The Inquisition began before the reconquista ended. The Jews fled the Inquisition by moving to Moorish Spain.
You continue to display your ignorance with every post.
Yawn. Who hasn't know that for their entire lives? You must've just picked it up and think you'll impress someone with your "deep knowledge" of the subject.
Yes, dippy, I know that. Have always known that. You continue to display an inability to think logically and learn from your mistakes.
Muslims are to blame for the Spanish Inquistion and all its suffering.
You can't possibly be serious, can you?
You're absolutely INSANE!
And I am no damned apologist for islamofacist (sic) murderers, you uneducated waste of space!
Look, no one in his right mind can argue that the long, bloody cruzado to retake the Iberian peninsula didn't have a profound influence on subsequent Spanish law and Spanish social policy. The reconquista led directly to the Inquisition. No muslims, no Inquisition. So, yes, Muslims are to blame.
IQ alone, no matter what you might imagine, isn't the sole criteria for intelligence, nor the acquiring of and the comprehension of knowledge.
Roman Catholicism had been horrifically anti-Semitic for centuries, by the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The expulsion and purging of Jews, from most of Europe, was an ongoing thing; not solely relegated to Spain, by any means, but the SI, was far more nasty and brutal than just expulsion!
Gee.....care to explain the Jewish purges and expulsions, that took place, where NO Muslims ever lived, then? Wanna try the one in England, first, or would you prefer to talk about the later Medieval prosecutions in Germany and Poland?
You are downright proud of your ignorance, aren't you?
The Inquisition's main opposition came from none other than Pope Sixtus IV, who begrudgingly sanctioned the Inquisition in Castile and believed that Ferdinand's persecution of Jews was a ploy to confiscate Jewish properties; historians have argued that it was a way for Ferdinand to wipe out heavy debts to Jewish financiers who had lent Ferdinand's father many of the funds which he had used to pursue the alliance by marriage with Castile; many of these debts would be wiped if the note-holder were condemned in court.
Once Granada was brought back to the Spanish crown, Muslims came into the cross-hairs of The Grand Inquisitor.
It was in 1502, ten years AFTER the expulsion of Jews from Castile, that Queen Isabella issued an edict giving Muslims in the region the choice between baptism and expulsion.
Noteworthy point that makes your entire argument worthless, is the fact that while it was illegal to be a Jew in Ferdinand and Isabella's Spain, the Treaty of 1492, signed by Ferdinand, guaranteed Muslims the freedom to worship Allah.
Jews were slaughtered in Cordova in 1013, in the Jewish quarter of Castrojeriz in 1035, in the Kingdom of Grenada in 1066, in Castile after the death of Alphonso VI in 1109, in Toledo in 1180, in 1196 Alphonso VII orders the destruction by fire of the Jewish Quarters in Leon, in 1390 a consensus of Jews in Spain is ordered and consequently all the synagogues and all Jewish religious books in Castile...all these things happened 100 years BEFORE the Inquisition.
The persecution of Jews in Spain continued for the next 100 years, INCLUDING edicts ordering Jews to wear markings on their clothing distinguishing them from Christians (sound familiar?) and a pogrom in Navarro were some historians claim that as many as 10,000 Jews were killed.
The Inquisition was the culmination of Spanish anti-semitism, and addressed Muslims only as a matter of political convenience insofar as there was a war to claim back the Iberian peninsula from Muslims occupation.
Jews an "afterthought" of the Inquisition?
Only to the educationally challenged.
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