Found this missive in my in-box this morning from a rather het up Mohamad Elomar, frankly I think it is a very good reason to continue to critique a faith that sprouts this sort of belligerent triumphal-ism. The email of course begs the question of how tolerant do we have to be of the intolerant in a multi-faith and multicultural society?
Cheers Comrades
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 
He seems a bit het up! Hey at least he didn’t write in bold, caps and underlined!
Is there any point asking who “Mohamad Elomar” actually is?
There are spiteful little trolls everywhere and it’s hardly surprising that one of them happens to be Muslim.
As I said recently of somebody else with a propensity to talk shit — spare us the propaganda! I think you agree, Ian, that this is precisely the type of attitude that generates so much bad blood toward the Muslim community as a whole when, in fact, it’s numbats like this who are the problem (and in the minority).
Still, It’s nice to know we’re pigs…isn’t it?
FFS…
Iain, that email you received doesn’t even sound like it’s from an authentic muslim. Sounds more like some juvenile twat looking to stir you up. Anyway, I get a lot of trash emails too (not about being anti-muslim though) and they’re usually just as pointless, incoherent and badly spelt as that one. I just delete them.
(Maybe Kman sent it?)
Yes, on reflection I think it might be someone pulling Iain’s leg. A couple of readings and it doesn’t sound kosher… sorry, halal.
Firstly race is what you are born with, but religion is what you choose for yourself. Race does not give you a life perspective and philosophy, but religion does. Race does not make you behave in certain ways, but religion generally does insist that people behave in certain ways. I can live with people of any skin colour, but there’s a limit to the types of behaviour I can live with.
Calling someone “racist” because they don’t agree with your religion is pretty stupid IMHO.
Secondly, Christianity is growing faster than Islam, mostly in Asia and middle and South America. Atheism is the fastest growing “religion” in Europe because the Europeans are basically losing patience with religion all together. Even the people who are nominally religious don’t take it particularly seriously.
Lastly, I live in an area where there are lots of Muslims and lots of Christians, and most people are not like Mohamad Elomar. Most people just want to do their job, go home to their families and do NOT go around trying to start trouble. There are always a few who think that they will big note themselves by being militant and pushy, and these people are the ones who make life hard for everyone else. One of the things I like about Christians is that if they see someone going out of their way to be a nuisance, they will put some peer pressure on that person to do the “right thing”.
If you look at what is going on in North Africa (e.g. Timbuktu, Mali) where we have Islamic uprisings, you don’t see much moderation of behaviour. Gangs go around smashing stuff and killing people and they do it in the name of religion, but under the veil they are just gangs of thugs and nothing more. You generally don’t see Christian gangs doing that sort of stuff (maybe long ago in the Middle Ages, but not any more).
Brian: on reflection I think it might be someone pulling Iain’s leg…
There was a Mohamed Elomar sentenced to 28 years for terrorism in Australia, maybe he gets email access from time to time?
I don know how genuine the writer is but I thought a small note to them might be interesting so I sent him this:
And this was his response:
And this is my reply
Tel it looks from the subsequent email that the writer might be a nephew of the convicted terrorist so perhaps he is genuine after all.
Well, maybe there’s some connection, Iain, but he’s still an idiot juvenile. I wouldn’t bother arguing with him though – you see, he’s not actually talking “religion” per se, he’s talking about a “belief”. A belief that somehow their religion should dictate to society. It’s a nutso theory (religion should be a totally separate & joyous matter and not used as a doctrine to rule by) but you’ll never convince them to change their ancient ways. Only time, progress, democratisation/westernisation and evolution will eventually do that. Give it another generation or so, I’d suggest.
Well Ray I think that there is value in confronting even juvenile opinions from the likes of Mohamad because with out challenge such shallow and rather pernicious thinking is very likely to become totally calcified and the change that you think will happen is impossible.
I’ve been doing a bit of reading, it happened under the Howard years, and these guys were on record as saying it was payback for our invasion of Iraq (or words to that effect). I always thought it was a dumb idea for us to get involved in oil wars in the Middle East, and as the years go by, that is just more and more obvious.
Seems that uncle Elomar had purchased a bunch of anti-tank rockets (stolen from the Australian Army by persons unknown). You don’t need new and special anti-terrorist laws for a case like this. Just ordinary laws like “don’t go running around with stolen rocket launchers” would probably be good enough. The case went in front of a judge and jury and it seems the law enforcement came up with eves-dropped conversations where the little Jihad group discussed their plans so I guess that probably didn’t endear them to the jury.
Some of the tracking was done by ASIO, who operate secretively and basically zero public oversight. I’m not entirely comfortable with that because it comes down to “just trust us” like we are always told. I’m really over being told to trust people just because they have some official title. It’s the professional organized thugs vs the amateur organized thugs, as far as I’m concerned, but the professionals generally win these fights so that’s where my tax money goes.
Just for the record, I think Howard was a bit of a fascist. He was good for the economy (because he had the amazing power of not feeling the urge to piss money up against the wall) but there’s at least some evidence that Howard manipulated the police process for his own political gains (e.g. the Muhamed Haneef case). Also, we have stacked on a whole lot of completely unnecessary legislation in the guise of fighting terrorism. Don’t forget that statistically speaking police and governments kill thousands of times more of their own citizens than terrorists do (read R.J. Rummel). I can kind of understand why the nephew might be a bit pissed off, but if he is trying to encourage people to rethink their view of Islam, he is doing it wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwiche-Razzak-Fahda_family_conflict
Very interesting to read the connections to drug dealing “Australian families of Lebanese descent”. There’s yet another place the lawmakers screwed up. For God’s sake just make marijuana legal and get it over with, the prohibition has failed, it gives huge amounts of money to criminals and corruption, and helps no one at all.
https://iainhall.wordpress.com/tag/mohamed-ali-elomar/
Poor Mohamad. Whoever he is, he obviously mistook you for a noteworthy, informed, serious writer, despite your emoticons, animated gifs, simplistic politics, and stunted prose. Soon enough he’ll realise you’re just a bored old one-trick-troll and then you’ll have to find a new way to keep yourself amused.
Find below my latest email to Mohamed the blockquotes are his words.
Mohamed
Why do you need to have an answer to that question? I take the attitude that such unanswerable questions are a waste of time. Will knowing the answer to that question make any difference to my life? I don’t think so.
Your analogy is an old and tired one that I have heard many times from christians arguing for their creation myths (which I understand is shared by Islam) I accept the explanations of science about the origins of life and such explanations do not contain the influence of any sort of supernatural entity or god.
Well I have done more than many unbelievers do when it comes to reading about Islam and the history of your faith is very far from being either “humble or modest” it is a story of conquest and war to spread your faith with the sword where as if those prophets were as you say so humble and modest why did they need armies to spread their teachings by force?
In the first instance Mohamed I find the idea of any deity needing his adherents to supplicate themselves to him five times a day rather silly and needlessly time-consuming. But more than that I have no need of any religion I live a righteous life; I don’t drink or smoke and I am honest in my dealings and pay my debts on time with everyone, I am faithful to my wife and I am raising my children to be fine and moral human beings. In the unlikely event that I find that there is any life after death I will be delighted to have a continued existence and I have no fear of being judged for the way I have lived this life. However I am not going to waste a single breath trying to buy myself a place in the heaven with religious ritual of any sort.
Because I have no need of God to be a good man and to live a good life.
.
Women are not considered equal to men in Islam, they are required to be forever subservient to the men in their lives, this is unacceptable to me and most modern people.
What do you mean by ” the cleanest religion of them all” is that a reference to ritual washing before prayer of having the hand with which one wipes their bottom prescribed by your scriptures?
Even those who think that in our society are willing to let homosexuals live in peace with out harassment and scorn Yet in Islam homosexuals are persecuted and killed for who they love. Do you support homosexuals being hung as they are in Iran?
Cheers
Iain
Damian
I think that Mohamed is far from being a sophisticated thinker,but I am being polite and friendly in our conversation even though I don’t agree with his world view. What more would you expect me to do?
further how can you possibly know what motivates him to correspond with me?
Give me a break, Damian.
Idiot Muslim attacks Iain, Iain responds thoughtfully. Same idiot Arab, whose uncle is in jail on terrorist charges, attacks Iain repeatedly, calling Australians ‘pigs’. Iain defends his views on religion and homosexuals without malice or malignity.
Damian sticks up for idiot Arab. Go figure!
Summation: Damian is just another d*ckhead loonie green who is in favour of selling out our country to those who believe in a one world government, open borders and power blackouts.
He also supports terrorist incursions so long as they are directed at Israel or the US. He hasn’t gone gone so far to include Australia, yet.
Yet.
Iain publishes the email on his blogue, then replies to its author by saying “your religion is such a nasty totalitarian and pernicious ideology that seeks to enslave the world” and you guys reckon that’s polite and thoughtful.
One interesting thing to come out of this, though, is Iain’s abandonment of his argument that he is critical of violent Islamic fundamentalism, not Islam as a whole. No pretending anymore. Iain has completed his transition from internet troll to ignorant, hateful bigot, happily regurgitating the anti-Islam rantings of his latest pin-up boys.
GD, I’m not sticking up for anyone, I’m just commenting on Iain’s inability to grow out of his troll act. Mohamad is wasting his time engaging Iain because all that will happen is Iain will go around and around in circles, repeating the same rubbish, all for the sake of an argument and something to do with his time. You, on the other hand, are sticking up for Iain by calling me names and accusing me of supporting terrorism. Polite and thoughtful.
Damian
It is polite and thoughtful and honest, especially when Mohamed has said that Islam will rule the world in his email. Do you think that I should have pussy footed around what I think about the agenda of the faith? That is the problem with you and those like you, you are so scared of giving offence that you kid yourself about the true nature of Islam and give its adherents undue deference.
I have never said that I am uncritical of Islam as a whole Damian I am critical of all religious belief from fairies at the bottom of the Garden to the Green faith in AGW but that does not mean that I “hate” believers in any of theses religions I feel precisely the same about Islam I think that the tenets of that faith are bonkers and its ideology is utterly pernicious and I think that its terribly sad that so many people follow such a faith but that does not mean that I hate those people. At the risk of invoking a scream of “Godwin’s law” I liken it to pretending that abhorring the Nazi’s and their ideology means that one hates Germans, or as the Catholics would suggest I despise the sin rather than the sinner.
How is me discussing the issues with Mohamed anything but polite and thoughtful? Just as a thought exercise would mind telling us all how YOU would have responded to his initial email if I was the sort of person that you think I should be? Come on Damian please explain just how I should have responded to meet your standards.
Cue some sort of angry cop out from Damian 🙄
Find below my latest response to Mohamed, as before, his words are block quoted:
Hi Mohamed
Why are you so willing to accept without question what your religion tells you? Surely that makes for a rather empty and pointless life? We all have minds that think and if you don’t truly consider the the questions that you posed to me in an earlier email rather than just being sheep like and believing what you have been told to believe?
Are you really that scared of having to think for yourself that you would surrender all of your autonomy to others who claim certainty?
Assuming that there will ever be a judgement day why should I regret anything that I have done or the way that I have lived my life?
Regret is pointless
Cheers
Iain
After watching these pages for some time, I feel it is time to dive into the mire perhaps ?
Why should mankind bow to the demands of religion ?
One only has to look back into history, to see the damage that actions, done under religious zealousness, have done to this little planet ?
If a religion, (or perhaps even more apathetic), a person representing that religion, tells you to blow up a few hundred innocent people, to ensure devotion and even observance of antiquated and cruel laws and covenances, should not that be challenged ?
A person with only average intelligence, can ascertain, that this is then not a religion, rather a cult ?
Before the followers of this religion sign in, and go right off their tree,
Islam is NOT the problem,
The people running it, ARE ?
And another one:
Hi Mohamed
No I view religion as an irrelevant thing, something that is of far less consequence than you think it is.
Its sounds to me like you are a very happy slave to your faith, but blind obedience to any authority secular or religious is an anathema to me and to most thinking people
I said before that I neither drink nor smoke but what gives me or a religion the right to enforce abstinence from alcohol upon others or to impose severe punishments upon those who want to have a drink? There in is the problem that I see with Islam, not so much what is suggested for its adherents but the brutal punishments that so many Muslims want to impose for those who fail to live their lives to an arbitrary set of rules invented in the middle ages.
You are wrong on two counts here Mohamed, firstly you do not have to have sexual intercourse at all to acquire the HIV virus and many people who do get this horrid disease can live quite long and productive lives.
The evidence of this life is all around me Mohamed but I see no evidence at all that there even is any afterlife. So why should I think that something that I can’t even be sure exists is more important than the life in the here and now that I am experiencing with every breath that I take?
To me a belief in any sort of afterlife is motivated by a fear of death and the hubris that any individual is important enough to have a supernatural existence beyond the span of our lives.
Frankly its the belief within Islam that ” after life is what matters” that causes it so much trouble with the non Muslim world because if it were not for a few individuals trying to buy their place in paradise with the gun or the bomb ordinary people might just respect and Muslims more than they do now.
Cheers
Iain
Oh and finally what made you chose to write to me in the first place if you don’t mind me asking?
Hi again Mohamed
Its not my stubbornness that is in play here it is the weakness of your powers of persuasion and the fact that you can’t seem to conceive of someone not feeling the need for any sort of a god, to worship or the need to have answers to the unanswerable questions.
Firstly which piece in particular at my blog was it that so upset you? Because its hard for me to respond to specifics without you telling me that. How much kerosene did he have at his house Mohamed? 1 litre, 10 litres or hundreds of litres? and did he have other chemicals as well, like fertiliser? The courts found him guilty after a fair trial so maybe you do not know him as well as you think you do.
Well not so much these days and seldom in large quantities. Did he have a legitimate reason to have a quantity of kerosene?
There you go again thinking that the next life is more important than this one. I don’t believe there is any sort of next life so what should I live this life as if it is nothing but an insignificant prelude to heaven? That makes no sense to me at all.
Mohamed I am no fan of promiscuity, but it is contrary of my notions of the right of an individual to live and love as they please to insist upon enforcing any sort of social control on other people and the way that followers of your faith want to punish people for “adultery” is entirely unacceptable to me. Likewise the other manifestation of Islam’s view of sexuality in “honour” killings utterly disgusts me. Having a view that marriage is the best place for sexual intercourse is laudable but its insisting upon that under threat of death is not.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this Mohamed but there are actually 164 instances in the Koran where the faithful are instructed to kill unbelievers and the Islamic attitude to the Jews is not something to be proud of as far as I can tell.
Good people to not contemplate “retaliation” for those who “insult” their religion or question their beliefs, they accept that others may believe in or worship the God of their choice in any manner that they chose to do so. I get the sense that you really want to be a good person Mohamed but I think that your vision of what makes such a person is rather clouded by the tenets and prejudices of your faith maybe you could start by considering just how counter-productive the efforts of the Jihadists to intimidate the western world has been for the ordinary peaceful followers of your prophet or how unsuited your faith maybe for a modern world that values free will and the autonomy of the individual above the collective. I have no trouble seeing that Islam does have some virtues, just as other faiths do, but the tendency of many Muslims to take excessive offence at what it considers “insults” will never win it friends in a largely secular world.
Cheers
Iain
Ian, this is all very amusing, but ask your “mate” whether he agrees with religious violence. Then ask whether he was in Sydney in September taking part in the pack-mentality mob that rampaged through the streets hurling bottles and rocks at Police. If the answer to any of this is YES then he, and his Muslim world, can go somewhere else. Because irrespective of the rights or otherwise of his religion, religious violence is not welcome in this country, and neither are those who perpetrate or condone it.
Irrespective of what Allah says!
Sadly Yale I have not received any new emails from Mohamed but it is Friday so I expect that he at the mosque today. But You pose some good questions which I will be happy to put to him when he writes back.
Thanks Tel I can always use a good word 😉
or at Centrelink 😦
Readers may just notice that I have allowed two spam comments that promote Islam. I have done this so that my readers can learn just what it is that we have been considering here and how the followers of Islam think.
Ray’s correct with his comment on the 5th @ 1:37.
Personally, I think it will take longer than one generation.
Whatever happened to those lovely religious terms, such as tolerance, understanding, patience and all the others, that the religion supposedly teaches ?
Sadly missing ?
I hope you’re correct Ray, but sadly, I think it will take longer than one generation to see that tolerance etc come into being ?
Thanks for your comment Paul while I share hope that Ray may be right I think that unless we engage with people like Mohamed so that they can come to understand why we (as a secular society)can not endure the intolerance of Islam for our more open views on sexuality and personal autonomy then we will never advance as a society that values tolerance above all else.
Over to Nick Lowe:
That is the difficult part though isn’t it ?
How do you do that, when every attempt, at peace, or even understanding of their point of view, results in the personal belief that they are under massive personal attack, and religious persecution ?
I think, as soon, as the “ratbag” element of the religion, begins to attempt a similar tolerance, the world should righfully be wary, and as I said, the religion is not the problem here, those running it are ?
Sadly I think that too many people think that “understanding” their point of view means that you have to just quietly accept their ideas and religious notions without any sort of challenge. I hope that by engaging with people like Mohamed in a polite and friendly manner as I do in our correspondence is helpful to that end. Its very easy to confront and to denounce however its more valuable to try to persuade those we disagree with that they are wrong.
The problem is that in Islam there is none who is running it at all unlike say the Catholic Church there is no centralised authority essentially anyone can be an Imam and they are not really answerable to anyone.
This one may be just as appropriate perhaps ?
Btw, you’re right. The damage is being done by locally, unorganised imams. If I didn’t know any better, one may think all ego driven perhaps ? Again, the threat of violence, is always good to “control” those who may be thinking about standing up to be counted, or the weak minded ?
Iain and Paul, while I appreciate your tolerant analysis of Australia’s burgeoning Muslim influx and subsequent problems, I tend to stand by the old adage, once bitten, twice shy.
Islam has trashed its own countries as well as European nations, such as Germany, France and Holland. It has no redeeming features.
Why should Australia give Islamists another go here, at the remaining successful, healthy Western nation?
Unfortunately GD, it is in our natures to continue to give them another go ?
That is why the situation is getting worse. We continue to mollycoddle these groups, for the sake of free speech, free religious practices, and condone any or all interference, whatever the upcoming consequences of that action may produce ? Not just Islam either ?
Before we know it, we are strangers in our own country ? Don’t laugh, it is already beginning to happen, regardless of the diehards claiming racism whenever someone comes up to challenge the Muslim rhetoric.
How do you stop the influx though, without becoming what we most fear, or as bad as those we are trying to stop ? A difficult rope to walk don’t you think ?
That is why they are successful, all over the world. They “invade” (?) those societies that are tolerant, and begin their propaganda and violence, against all those that would oppose their lifestyle and religious practices.
Again, it is not Islam that is the cause of the secular violence I feel, rather, it is the local imams stirring up the local youth, to do their violent bidding for them. That idiot in Sydney (who fortunately, has obviously learned/been told to keep his big mouth shut ?) is a classic case/example of what I refer to.
As Iain rightfully states. He is an atheist. Not my belief personally, but who the hell am I, or in fact who the hell is anyone else for that matter, to sit and make judgement on Iain, or me, as to who or what we should believe in, by the threat of a gun or a bomb ? They pray on this well mannered, well meaning apathy in an attempt to “control” and “manipulate”.
Pretty scary if you ask me ?
Sorry about italic. Iain can you fix for me. The italic finishes at end of first line. Sorry
Paul
Your HTML has been fixed and I also corrected a couple of typos while I was at it 😉
Cheers