Trad doesn’t speak on behalf of Muslims, you can’t even compare him to say George Pell speaking on behalf of all Australian Catholics (a proposition with more evidence, but still not really true).

I do like the comparison to Christopher Hitchens at the start of the article! I refer to myself as an atheist, but shudder to think that anyone would assume I agree with Hitchens on almost any point simply because we share a common absence of religion.

“extremist”: someone who considers their beliefs to be so unconditionally infallible that anyone who’s not with them is against them and therefore an enemy.

So for example, when Joseph Stalin began killing off both Christians and Muslims in direct violation of the USSR constitution, he was an extremist. Either an anti-religious extremist or a religious extremist, depending on whether you consider atheism a religion or not.

Richard: what “Christian terrorism”? A regular Crikey reader could be forgiven for thinking there’s more Atheist bigotry around than Christian.

Irfan: you lost me. Come again?

There is an old saying that “one swallow does not make a summer”. I am aware that there are some very intelligent moderate Moslems, but they seem to be outnumbered by the more radical and vocal extremists. I would be happier if issue more moderates would actually speak up.

Australia should be a refuge for all moderate points of view and we should not be held to account by the extremist views of a few.

eva cox

I can’t think of one time he’s foamed, or spat or indicated a hateful attitude to anyone. Now maybe his words in or out of context are arguably wrong or maybe even hateful, however I have to say in all honesty I haven’t seen it.

And I do get around a bit. Frankly I think his capacity for cross cultural communication is quite a resource. One example that came to mind was a role he played in a truce between Leb bikers and Bra Boys down after the disgraceful white power race riot down at Cronulla with violent ethnic backlash of some kind some after.

Trad was in none of that. What most of the attacks on Trad, like the attacks on Lowenstein seem mostly motivated by, are his real politik analysis of colonial fascism by Israel backed by US arms dealers in the name of squatter so called ‘settlers’. About that I reckon probably a good 50% of Australian would agree with him. I reckon about 95% of the Aboriginal community would too for obvious historical reasons about land theft in the name of a superior God.

The vast majority of Australians value equality for all this is an and these unpleasant individuals wishing to force their narrow values down our collective throats unfortunately take advantage of opportunities for free speech in Australia which of course do not exist to the same extent in the countries referenced above. However if they value the social institutions of these countries so much would they please migrate to these environments where they would be much more home and leave us alone.