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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:30 am
The Age’s Alan Attwood rejects John Howard’s burqa views—it’s “just another outfit,” he writes, “no more or less disturbing, even outrageous, than the lairy-coloured costumes that Howard has worn all over the world”—and claims:
I have boundless admiration for anyone whose outfit reflects, or is dictated by, their individual religious or cultural beliefs.
Presumably Attwood admires these guys, and also this colourful bunch:
That sign reflects their individual religious or cultural beliefs. Admire them boundlessly! Pakistan’s Supreme Court hasn’t quite gone so far as hanging, although authorities directed to block Motoon websites should be concerned at the possibilities should they fail:
“We will not accept any excuse or any technical objection on this issue as it concerns sentiments of entire Muslim Ummah,” said Pakistan’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry adding that all the authorities would have to appear in the court with a report of concrete measures for the implementation of the court’s order.
(Via reader Andy, who notes: “Not only are the left obsessed with moral equivalence, now we have ‘attire equivalence’.”)
- Its not “just another outfit”. Does he support my walking around in a rather fetching pair of stillettos, and a pair of arseless trousers?
This might be considered good attire in a gay nightclub, but Im much less fond of it in the streets.
It is worn as a visible sign of submission, a nulification of the person underneath as a “breeder” marked for her own tribal group.
No problems with religous attire as such, as long as he eaqually supports my “Church of the grossly overweight nudist hairy men” (fleas be upon us).Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 03 04 at 04:26 AM • permalink
- I want to know who paints their signs –
Do you really think that the inbred freaks holding that up sign can spell ‘blasphemous’?
I ask you!Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2006 03 04 at 04:35 AM • permalink
- ’holding that sign up’
I even previewed!
I goin to watch telly now.
Bye bye.Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2006 03 04 at 04:38 AM • permalink
- Has anybody heard Alan Attwood on the radio . . . . he’s just a whiny effeminate bitch. Absolutely matches his compassionate head tilt picture.Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 03 04 at 04:50 AM • permalink
- I have boundless admiration for anyone whose outfit reflects, or is dictated by, their individual religious or cultural beliefs.
That is, without a doubt, the biggest load of steaming shit in the world.
What is more admirable is someone who chooses an outfit based on practicality and to reflect their own individualism, not because it’s something foisted upon them by a religion/culture that they were born into and hence had no choice to join.
If, say, there was no dress requirement in Islam, does anyone really believe women would say, “Lemme see…I think I might wear a stifling burqa in the heat of summer. Yeah, that sounds fun!”
Posted by Quentin George on 2006 03 04 at 05:05 AM • permalink
- So the burqa is just another crazy ensemble like zoot suits, flairs and platform soles.
Part also of the incredibly rich tapestry of world cultures. Why can’t we just relax and be more accepting of difference? It’s just a big hippy carnival out there, boys and girls, if only we could stop pining for Howard’s ‘50s monoculture and white picket fence.
Next comes the glib analogy. Howard’s tracksuits are no less ‘confronting’. The mindnumbing dumbness of this, the refusal to see in this inhuman garment the wider oppression and humiliation of women in some Muslim countries never ceases to suprise and anger me.
Real curiosity about other cultures and therefore real knowledge of them is forbidden the multicultural relativist because in his enthusiasm for ‘diversity’, he must be completely undiscriminating. All cultures are to be mindlessly ‘celebrated’ – except his own of course.
- Is it acceptable to strike Alan Attwood with the open hand, so as not to leave a mark? And if he leaves his house unescorted by a male family member, is it appropriate to kill him to restore family honor?Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 03 04 at 08:43 AM • permalink
- Dear Tim.
You make a valid point with your many references and links to stories about people of the Islamic faith acting with seeming intolerance to essentially harmless provocations. I suppose the question is ‘how tolerant can we be of intolerance?’ Your answer seems to be ‘not at all’, and your ceaseless reportage of the worst of excessive Islamic zeal leads one to think you’d have us all believe there is no salvation for Islam and no way the West can ever get on with Muslims, bar them being forcibly dragged into the current century.
You ignore, of course, that there are extremists in every culture and that Christians have, over the centuries, been responsible for as many atrocities as any other religious group. Oh, all jolly good that during the twentieth century Europe divested itself of its colonies, abandoning brutal imperialism in favour of covert manipulation and economic strangulation.
The fact that the support by America, the inheritor of the British Empire, of brutal dictatorships such as Saddam Hussein’s (prior to the first Gulf War) in many countries around the world has been conducted at (barely concealed) arm’s length may be enough to assure you of the essential righteousness of western liberal society, but I can see the same rat that many in the Middle East, for example, have been smelling for about 100 years.
The history is there plain enough for any of them to read. The British, the Americans, the Russians etc. have been slicing and dicing, wooing and destabilising, installing monarchs, supporting war lords (including Osama bin Laden) and openly invading and occupying countries in the Middle East for decades, draining the last of their main tradable resource and benefiting the general citizens, in the main, zilch.
Is it any wonder that the extremist Middle Easterners are possibly a little more extreme than some other extremists? Don’t you ever think about what these guys are really angry about? Or do you believe that they’re jealous of our ‘freedom’? Or are they simply raving lunatics, the only solution for whom is abject submission to greater force?
Like Muslim culture or hate it, or, as most people in the West do, remain in complete ignorance about it, but don’t blame it for causing the War on Terror. Give a person freedom, good work to do, a share of their nation’s resources, a stable life and a comfortable home and they soon forget their anger at others, whatever their religion.
There is a big problem in relations between the West and the Islamic world. Unfortunately you, Tim, rather than presenting any whiff of a solution, are part of the problem.
- So, loadedog, where are all the African terrorists? Many of their countries are a good bit more of a hellhole than even the Arab peninsula, and have been just as much subject to that bogeyman, imperialism.
As for your “but look at the Christians, they’ve done it too, some long time ago!” yapping, that doesn’t even deserve a response anymore, it’s that tired and played out.
As for your little catalogue of leading questions:
Don’t you ever think about what these guys are really angry about?
I used to. Fortunately, it has now been more than four years since 9/11, so I’m pretty confident I’ve found the answer by now. But keep up the valiant search, loady, maybe you’ll eventually figure it out, too.
Or do you believe that they’re jealous of our ‘freedom’?
Jealousy is a concept that lefties like to trot out in any and all circumstances, no matter how ludicrous. (Perhaps because you don’t know or understand any other motivation?) A little more creativity would go a long way to finding the answer to your previous question, I dare say.
Or are they simply raving lunatics, the only solution for whom is abject submission to greater force?
That would work for me, yes, as long as it ends with the extremists being very dead. And because you’ll surely accuse me of hypocrisy or racism or Islamophobia or whatever if I don’t make explicit the following: Yes, I would suggest and support the same if a band of lunatic Christian terrorists was roaming the planet. But, you know, there isn’t.
Thank you for playing, now feel free to go back to that Great Satan-hosted website of yours.
- The Ku Klux Klan white robe and pointed hood with built in mask does remind one of the burka. By the fashion statements expressed above, the Klan has introduced, according to the fashion conscious Atwood, an alternative outfit that certainly is more appealing than the burqa and less revealing than the chador. The Klan’s outfit surely reveals the cultural and religious(together with the accessory of a burning cross) beliefs of its wearers. Something to be wildly admired. Perhaps Atwood can wear one while gamboling about in Africa.
- loadedog
Thats right Tim supports Bob Mugabe. Just last week he suggested Bob kill a few more of his own citizens, much the same way he has been doing for many years since independence.
Colonialism, the fall back shibboleth of the left rears its ugly head again. Much of southern Africa was, living standards wise, better off under their evil colonial overlords.
The people in the middle east have been screwed over BY THEIR OWN RULERS you silly chap.
Some are finaly getting stable govenance, but for the most part, 1 ruler, 1 party adn civil wars has been the norm.
“Draining the last of their tradeable resources” This is some of the biggest pile of dingo droppings ive ever read. Can you put in a violin playing sad music to back it up?? Their “last tradeable resources” price is at an all time high, the families running those countries are able to make multi billion dollar purchases of entire companies (P&O), and you want me to “care”.
By the way, rule of law and promotion by merit wouldnt hurt either.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 03 04 at 09:33 AM • permalink
- #15” Loadedog.”Give a person freedom, good work to do, a share of their nation’s resources, a stable life and a comfortable home and they soon forget their anger at others, whatever their religion.”
Yeh, Osama B_L is one of the richest jackasses on the planet. This monster is in the killing business to make money and gain power and he uses “religion” to convince idiots like you that he’s some sort of spirtual guy. The Muslim world has bought it and, being bloodthirsty in nature, they line up behind him and party whenever there is a 9/11 and 7/7.
You speak of tolerance of intolerance. Should we be tolerant of the kind of intolerance that calls for the most savage kinds of violence, or haven’t you been following the activities of you co-intolerance lovers over the last many, many years. Since your memory is short, only consider the rampaging of the intolerance lovers, the burnings, slashings, killings, over some lousy CARTOONS. I suppose the JEWS and the CHRISTIAN should WHISTLE THE TOLERANCE FOR INTOLERANCE TUNE waiting for the day when the Mus-lies get over the cartoons and come for them.
As for who started the “War on Terror”. Hey, I just spoke to some Unitarians and they confessed to sending those planes into the Towers, and blowing up US Embassies before then, and hanging US soldiers in Lebanon, and…So, you’re right, Osama is a Unitarian, but still a very rich one.
Hey, loadedog, your new nom de plume is not as good as your predecessors, PB2, et. al. But you make the same sounds. Whose payroll are you on or do you have multiple personalities? Anyway, you’ve managed to change the subject of this post, to your liking, as you have many other posts.
- loadedog, you are part of the problem, with your refusal to accept that evil people wish evil to befall those who will not submit to their retarded death cult.
And save your “Christians have, over centuries…” moral equivalence. The fact that to find similar examples of intolerance requires you to go back several centuries apparently means nothing to you. I live in today, and today there are between ten and fifteen percent of the world’s Muslims who sympathize, if not outright support, the filthy beheaders and torturers. Explain your utopian fantasies to the charming yet quaint folks busily sawing your head off.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 03 04 at 10:14 AM • permalink
- Hey, why aren’t those women wear mesh over their tempting eyes? That is so wrong.Posted by wronwright on 2006 03 04 at 10:14 AM • permalink
- Oh god, here’s loadedog to bore us again with a long and pointless comment about ideas Tim has never expressed. You fellows seem to be taking care of him just fine so that’s all I’m going to say about it. Except: thread hijacking will get you banned, so stick to the subject of the post.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 03 04 at 10:14 AM • permalink
- #15 loaded dog you are an a-grade fuckwit. to give an example dubai, one of the more enlightened despotates in the ME, makes $15 billion in oil revenue in about 2 & a 1/2 weeks. even if evil westerners were to be ripping off the oil states as you say, there would be still more than enough cash sloshing around to feed, clothe & house all the arabs in considerable still, send all their kids to university, run a fabulous health system, etc etc. if they were done over by the brits, yanks & russians, they’ve had time to learn some strategies to avoid being brutally bumfucked. but have they bothered? nup. because it’s allah’s will that shit happens. people who can’t get past blind obedience to a backward cult created by a criminal will never work out the path to self-determination. and guys who make their slaves women wear burqas will never understand freedom & democracy, never be able to countenance a functional civil society where the ballot box is preferred to the gun & the semtex underwear
- excessive Islamic zeal
– is this how you describe murder, riot and rape, loaded dog?I suppose the question is ‘how tolerant can we be of intolerance?’ Your answer seems to be ‘not at all’
– this is nonsense; one either caves in to intolerance (like you) or one does – and should – not.no way the West can ever get on with Muslims
– the contrary, tragicallythere are extremists in every culture and that Christians have, over the centuries, been responsible for as many atrocities as any other religious group.
– I’m sure the relatives of the Bali bombing victims will come round after we’ve told them about the Crusades. This is just ridiculous.abandoning brutal imperialism in favour of covert manipulation and economic strangulation.
– the Great Capitalist Conspiracy and half-baked marxist bromides. The paraylsis and economic stagnation in many countries of the Middle East is due almost entirely to corrupt, authoritarian elites and the quietism bred of new puritan strains of Islam.wooing and destabilising, installing monarchs, supporting war lords (including Osama bin Laden) and openly invading and occupying countries in the Middle East for decades
– a bad habit but maybe you should take a leaf out of this book as well and stop supporting killers and the states who back them.Don’t you ever think about what these guys are really angry about?
– got hairs on it. Do you think these guys are ‘concerned hippies’, loaded dog, just like you – only a little more irritated? Do you ever really think about what they actually say? Do you ever really think about what they DO?Give a person freedom, good work to do, a share of their nation’s resources, a stable life and a comfortable home and they soon forget their anger at others, whatever their religion.
– the governments of Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudia Arabia, Indonesia, etc might like to look into this.Unfortunately you, Tim, rather than presenting any whiff of a solution, are part of the problem.
– as long as you play useful idiot to Islamist fascism, loaded dog, you strengthen their ‘cause’, help deepen the silence of Muslim moderates and put the rest of us at more risk. The whiff I get from you begins with ‘s’ sure, but only runs to four letters.
- Seeking to understand the motivations of one’s ‘enemies’ is not the same as supporting them.
Getting people to fall into line with the propagandists’ dehumanisation of the enemy is sadly as easy now as it was in the nineteen-thirties.
I might be painted as an appeaser, though I assure you I abhor realising political ends via means of violence against civilians, but no-one will ever confuse me with a brown-shirted follower of a populist demagogue.
Pay some attention to history and you may find views similar to those expressed above about Muslims, uttered by good German citizens about Jews, by Boers about blacks, by the Japanese about the Chinese, all taught them by hateful and greedy men in pursuit of ends that require unspeakable means.
- #32 loadedog, you are comparing Western dismay to the raging violence of frenzied Muslims around the world to Nazi Germany and the Jews? That’s like comparing the attack on the World Trade Center to the explosion of the Hindenburg. You are among the folks I spoke about in another post that would most likely get their throat cut by the ones they think they are defending. While you’re straddling the fence, watch out for the barbed wire.
- Weren’t the einstatzgruppen pretty snappy dressers? Someone see if Flavius Antonius has any pictures…Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 04 at 03:46 PM • permalink
- #32 Loaded dog: There you go again, self-congratulatory, “Gee,no-one can confuse me with a brown shited follower.” Who gives a flying f**k what great thoughts you have about yourself? “Seeking to understand blah blah blah I’m so good ‘cause I care blah blah blah, and the Nazis said this,blah, blah.” If you can spare a moment on the suject of this post, answer some simple questions. Have you spent anytime in a Persian (Iran) or Arab country? If so, have you spoken to any woman not in fear of retribution as to their thoughts about the garb they are forced to wear by the mullahs?
Do you believe that women in Australia should be forced to wear such garb? Do you have any substantive direct knowledge about how women are treated in Muslim countries? What are your views of female castration? Please share all the same with us.
- I might be painted as an appeaser, though I assure you I abhor realising political ends via means of violence against civilians, but no-one will ever confuse me with a brown-shirted follower of a populist demagogue.
No, I’d say more self-congratulatory and entirely too full of your own perfect self. You’re just too good for us, dog. Better move along to where they can appreciate the likes of wonderful you.
[/sarc off]
- Why aren’t all Muslim men wearing head coverings? Have they no respect? No humility to go thus uncovered in the sight of G-d?
They do not want to be that easily indentified. Pity.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 03 04 at 07:27 PM • permalink
- # 32
Pay some attention to history and you may find views similar to those expressed above about Muslims, uttered by good German citizens about Jews, by Boers about blacks, by the Japanese about the Chinese,This person is equating dislike of an oppressive and murderous culture with racism. Therefore, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I suppose the question is ‘how tolerant can we be of intolerance?’
Multiculturism is best defined as “One culture’s tolerance of other cultures intolerance.” So I see that the answer to your question to “None, unless they are in another country, and then damned little”…..a manifesto that I believe started with the left.
But I would not enforce tolerance, it being something that one really can’t enforce. I would expect a mature reaction to constructive criticism. Not riots and killings.
But even asking the question tells me that you are tolerant of intolerance. This comes of no surprise (you being an ardent follower of leftie memes and all), but it’s good to see you come out of the closet. Even unintentionally.
As for the rest of your comments…..others have responded to your (unoriginal) drivel, and responded well. I can only point out that “brown-shirts” is so 2004. I think the current leftard insult of choice is “Islamophobe”.
Get with the program, dude!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 04 at 08:30 PM • permalink
- #32 we are all very well aware that muslims are humans just like us, who do not spring from their mothers’ wombs waving placards calling for the beheading of cartoonists or clutching knives to saw off captives’ heads
we are also well aware that in most of the islam world, the imams capture their victims young, instilling in them, before they reach the age of reason. cultural values that are inimical to western democracy & the freedoms we want to preserve in australia
you will notice our comments are usually directed at islamic regimes that oppress their people, mad mullahs who orchestrate violence, & those apologists who deny those regimes & mullahs would like to wipe us infidels from the face of the earth sooner rather than later
arrrrr fergedaboutit – you aren’t a rational being so why do we bother responding
- Well done Dog, you have managed to weave virtually every shibboleth of the left into one magnificent manifesto. Colonialism, oil, economic imperialism, oil, religious and cultural moral equivalence, oil, past western support for unsavory non-communist regimes, relating consensual governments to Nazis, poverty causes terrorism, the GWOT is a western construct designed to perpetuate all of the above, if we would only stop to talk and understand… Have I mentioned oil? So, in the words of your boy Lenin, what is to be done? If support for Saddam and OBL was wrong in the ‘80s then why is it wrong to do something about it now? For that matter, if oil is the root of all evil, what is the Left’s beef with vehicles which use oil faster so that we can move on from it? If poverty causes terrorism, then as mentioned above, what accounts for the absence of African terrorists? What are the solutions of the left side of the spectrum?Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 03 04 at 09:47 PM • permalink
- So what does Attwood have to say regarding the proposal to ban bikinis, exposed navels, and bosomy Hindu statues throughout Indonesia???
I wonder what kind of say the West Papuans and Balinese will get???
We’re talking about Moslem conservatives as opposed to Christian conservatives here, so it’s probably gonna be fine with a coward like Attwood!
- Just a little note about Pakistan and it’s Islamic PM.
Musharraf says rape easy way to Canada.
Outrage mounted in Pakistan and abroad on Friday over President Pervez Musharraf’s comment that many Pakistanis felt that crying rape was an easy way to make money and move to Canada.
You must understand the environment in Pakistan … This has become a money-making concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.
Berqua doobee’s on sale now, cover up and hide the 6 year old Allah girl, know-one will no you are a ped. Cover up and call it a religion. OUt Now Out now
- I wonder whether Attwoood is sexist?
He welcomes women in masks.
How does he feel about men in balakavas?Posted by pog-ma-thon on 2006 03 05 at 03:52 AM • permalink
- #47 Balaklavas.Posted by pog-ma-thon on 2006 03 05 at 03:53 AM • permalink
- #15
Give a person freedom, good work to do, a share of their nation’s resources, a stable life and a comfortable home and they soon forget their anger at others, whatever their religion.
I thought that’s what we all had here in Australia… but we have to get up off our arses and work, not blame everyone else for not doing anything enough for us..
- 15 loadedog
You ignore, of course, that there are extremists in every culture and that Christians have, over the centuries, been responsible for as many atrocities as any other religious group.
Speaking as probably the meanest, prickliest, and most belligerent atheist posting to this blog, I cordially invite you to eat a big old bowl of fuck. The Christians’ main, large-scale atrocities were over a quarter of a millenium ago, and the biggest, oldest, and most successful of the Christian denominations has officially repented of all that shit and apologized for it. Which, at this late date, what more can they do?
If you’ve got a complaint about medieval Christianity, you only need to look at the contemporary Islamiverse to see ALL of that stupid shit being acted out in real time, today, this week. So blow your moral equivalence out your leftard ass, eh?Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 06 at 06:23 PM • permalink
- KK 24
enlightened despotates
Is that an original coinage? I like it, either way.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 06 at 06:27 PM • permalink
- RebeccaH
I have boundless admiration for anyone whose outfit reflects, or is dictated by, their individual religious or cultural beliefs.
I think the key words in that sentenced are “dictated by”.
On second look, I think the key word is “individual.” As in: herd-mentality collectivist uniformity is not so respectable, and herd-mentality collectivist uniformity under pain of death (i.e. chicks in chadors) is downright DISrespectable. Bruce Wayne dressing like a bat, however, that I can respect.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 06 at 06:32 PM • permalink
- PW 36
That “brown-shirt” line gave it away – loadedog is Al Gore! Same pointlessly droning style, same self-congratulatory tone on his imagined moral superiority, same lack of any actual ideas that aren’t straight out of fantasy land.
Plus the earth tones! Don’t forget the earth tones!
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 06 at 06:35 PM • permalink
- More low mongrel tarring of an entire culture with a cheap shot from the blog head…Posted by Miranda Divide on 2006 03 07 at 11:21 PM • permalink
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Such as, say, a Klansman?