Let's not be intolerant, like the Shiites and Sunnis.

Submitted by Mary Connor (Australia), Jan 2, 2008 at 21:34

Dear Peter,

Rest assured that the Catholics are not going to behead you or force their culture (theology) upon you. I thought that all this animosity between Christian faiths had finished and had become the "Live and let live" philosophy. Likewise our attitudes towards the Jews, who after all supplied us with the religion upon which Western Society has been built and which has given it some measure of peace and prosperity.

Personally, although a Catholic (my father was a Presbyterian and my two stepfathers were Anglican and Methodist respectively), I live in a secular state where Anglicans are a majority. But people here regard (at least at this point in time) religion as a personal matter, between ourselves and God. At the moment we are grappling with the problem of Muslim migration, and they have a different take and seem determined to force their ways upon us by demanding many special privileges and once again their reproductive rate has caused demographers to be concerned of a' takeover'.

While Australians, who are by and large environmentally concerned and have a fairly low birthrate, some Imams have publicly forbidden Muslim women to have less than four children. In an arid country like Australia, with poor soils and continual droughts and consequent erosion and water shortages, we simply cannot afford this kind of population growth.

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