Round-up

1. I suppose I better cover this civil rights case (very briefly) - the infamous Jena 6 trial, in which six black youths were sentenced to life in jail for attempted murder of a white kid, after what seemed little more than a schoolyard fight. I just want to clarify that I have no position in this case; I do not know what happened or didn't happen and am not taking sides. I am simply on the side of whatever is the right course.

2. This study about "racism" says that in an initial Australian poll, 45% of those surveyed thought Muslims were a threat to national security (of course, Islam isn't a race, but people keep ignoring this fact). After a series of small group meetings about religious differences, only 17 per cent of people who had Muslims in their groups thought this. For those groups without Muslim participants, it was 30 per cent.

No doubt part of the change in attitude comes from the Muslims or their sympathisers telling the "racist" Australians during the seminars that Islam is a Religion of Peace (TM) and using abrogated Meccan suras and out-of-context quotes like Qur'an 5:32 to make this point. But in any case it is interesting that only one sentence of the article is devoted to Muslim attitudes towards all this:

"After the discussions, the number of Muslims who thought being committed to the Australian way of life was important rose from 32 per cent to 44 per cent."

Good. But that's still less than half.