Andrew Bolt, Muslims and Australia

I don't read too much of The Advertiser when I'm not at Uni. At Uni I can get the paper for free, so I get it. The Internet has allowed me to get my news from sources like the BBC and the ABC (the Australian one obviously). If I go shopping I'll usually pick up a copy if there are any available, since sometimes it's good to get some idea of what is going on in the state.

Anyway, I seem to have missed something very interesting. It seems that there has been some debate about multiculturalism since David Cameron made his speech saying that it had failed and some people read an article by Andrew Bolt. I'm assuming that the Bolt article is this one.

Of course Andrew Bolt being Andrew Bolt has of course managed to tie this to Muslims because, well I don't really know, they... do... different things? It really is more a rant against Sheik al-Hilali and Muslims in general then actually discussing "multiculturalism".

The only real comment I want to make about the article is that "they teach funny sounds that aren't English" is not a reason to be angry at a group. Seriously, it isn't. Maybe Bolt is happy to live in a monolingual world but other people aren't. It doesn't mean that they're going to not speak English.

I honestly find this really ironic that The Advertiser decided to publish this. Islam has a pretty long history in South Australia. The camel drivers that were brought to Australia in the 1860's were Muslims. They transported goods through the outback to the various towns there and were vital to the development of the region. Of course they needed places of worship and built mosques. The first mosque was built in Maree around that time and the oldest mosque in a major city was built in Adelaide in 1888.

There have been Muslims in this state for about 150 years and clearly they've utterly ruined it. Oh wait, they haven't. They've been here living their lives peacefully and helping to build the country and there wasn't a problem.

Then we see everything change and all of a sudden they're a bunch of people who refuse to integrate at all, won't learn our language and want to destroy our way of life. That's not the case at all. History has shown us that it's quite the opposite.

I missed Monday's letters in the paper. I'm glad, however, that I got to read yesterday's. At least enough people who had their letters published showed that we aren't all morons.