Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"The Government may have acted quickly last year to quash any backbench discussion about banning headscarves from public schools but it is an issue that needs to be discussed in depth, not only for the sake of the children involved, but for the sake of our society in general." Roslyn Ross

"If you wanted to be a top class European jurist, you had to study Arabic. You would then study the great works of Muslim jurists, philosophers and doctors. Much of what you studied had little to do with Islamic theology, but it was certainly studied through Spanish Muslim-coloured glasses." Irfan Yusuf

"I will be reminding them [Muslim leaders], as I remind all Australians, our common values as Australians transcend any other allegiances or commitments, and I will be talking in practical ways about how these goals might be achieved." This controversial statement by John Howard is discussed by Greg Clarke

"The marketing of modern Christianity is an interesting object of study. Churches under the benign and supportive aegis of conservative administrations here and overseas have seen their role expand and intertwine evermore closely with the government bureaucracy. The dismantling of the CES and the awarding of lucrative financial contracts for those services to the private sector had the churches scrambling over themselves to get their share of the financial spoils." Roger Fedyk

"Sharia is a concept that scares the shut (as they’d say in Otago) out of so many of us accustomed to living the good life in the lands of the free. Sharia conjures up a life with no privacy, where bearded morality police in long robes patrol the streets searching for spare limbs to amputate." Irfan Yusuf

"I seriously hope reading Van’s story doesn’t spoil your Valentines Day. Most of us find love in more conventional ways. But as Van’s story and Brokeback Mountain powerfully illustrate, unconventional love can be just as real even if the pressures of society and circumstance don’t allow it to be fully requited." Irfan Yusuf

"When you fight with the rels, it tends to be nasty. What makes it worse is that you often can’t help ending up feeling the pain you joyously inflict on them. It’s a bit like scratching your face to squash a mosquito sucking the blood from your cheek." Irfan Yusuf

"If you have lived in such a society all your life, it is easier to presume every other place is the same. It is therefore little wonder that so many Arab and Muslim groups are calling for such crazy things as a ban by governments on the publication of the cartoons." Irfan Yusuf

"Jensen uses his high profile position to make some extraordinary claims. He claims to speak for God. He claims prescience as to the ultimate fate of the Anglican Church. He calls for like-minded person’s to engage in a struggle where either the Anglican Church perishes or those Anglicans who are homosexuals do." Roger Fedyk

"If Byron Bay locals thought they had it bad with visitors, they should spare a thought for the people of Mecca in central-western Saudi Arabia. Each year, over 5 million people visit this sacred Muslim city." Irfan Yusuf

"Buddha talked compassion before that, and throw in a few other luminaries, and we live not alone at times of calling. But JC brought the word into the world, and such is the power of love, it creates myths and magic, real and unreal, daily still. Here we are today, and while today we talk about love, we don't always live it. And as we don't fully live the life of love, we know and understand fear and live it much the same. The two are partners, love and fear, dancing a duet through our minds and hearts. We are at times partner to one and then the other, and spending more time in this dance by that process we'll come to better know both." Robert Bosler

"Australian society takes its benign secularism for granted, but it didn't occur by accident. It's an end result of centuries of political and social struggle and while Australians blithely go about their daily business in this safe and unified nation, few thoughts are spared for the sequence of events that have brought us to this fortunate situation." Phil Uebergang

"A group of conveniently accommodating imaginary 'experts' are invoked by Duffy, who claim that we are fighting a war against terrorism - a spurious claim in itself - largely for the sake of 'evolutionary theory'. Having mentioned the war for dramatic effect it is immediately discarded, to be replaced by a quote from a noted historian who supposedly legitimises the imaginary experts by claiming that Darwin's theory of evolution is the 'most important idea of all time'. Apparently it is more important, to Duffy at least, than the idea of brotherly love and tolerance." Phil Uebergang

"Recently Australia's Minister for Education, Brendan Nelson, gave his qualified support for Intelligent Design (ID) to be taught in school science classes alongside neo-Darwinian evolutionary origins theory. The debate that has been occurring in the U.S. looks set to come to Australia. The fundamental question seems to be - is Christian doctrine forcing its way into the science classroom at the expense of scientific teaching? But is this the appropriate question? Ignoring those who contribute nothing more than mindless disparagement of religion, there are interesting ethical issues underlying this controversy." Phil Uebergang

G'day. I'm in Parliament House writing this as a Senate Committee formed when the Senate had the power of numbers to investigate government misdeeds interrogates officials over Chen and Alvarez. Tomorrow the new Senate sits and the dance begins with new steps. Today Webdiary's faith and values columnist, Phil Uebergang, writes of our dreams while asleep.

"You see we do not freely examine the texts that Ayman Zawahiri and his student Osama bin Laden would have themselves read closely, because such an exercise is deemed to be dangerous. And in many ways it is very dangerous, especially in the hands of naïve and easily manipulated people. On the other hand, if intelligent people in the community did freely access such material - in the same way as we could freely access the Al Qur'ān Al Karīm, the Biblical Canon or the Hebrew Bible and all the related literature - we might together come to a better understanding of what makes a suicide bomber tick. We might even begin to see what they think they see and 'Bingo!' we might find a way to defuse the ideas that form in their minds." Craig Rowley

On both sides of the Creation/Evolution debate there was character assassination, wilful misunderstanding, deliberate misrepresentation, unqualified intellectual arrogance, childish insulting, and all without much effort to really listen to the other side. So how does a person go about having a belief, and defending it, without falling into the moral quagmire of intolerance of another’s belief?" Origin of the species debate organiser Phil Uebergang