CANBERRA AUSTRALIA: Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks. A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.
Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament. "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television. "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that is false.
If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to other country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said. Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other country.
More here http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/australia.asp.
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Now if we could only get a current politician with the guts of Jefferson or Madison to make the same statement about American values. They're all so spineless though; Kucinich is probably our only hope...
"Our values are:
- democratic government
- an independent judiciary -- not a politicized one
- goverment by the people, for the people -- with transparency to the people
- checks and balances
- separation of church and state (secular state)
- fair application of the rule of law
- equality
- freedom
- privacy
