The Muslim community has problems. Why not accept governemnt help to solve them? Just about every other community and interest group in Australia gets government help, and so they should. It’s what the government is FOR.

in the UK, they have managed to prove they are a non-violent organisation opposed to terrorism, whether it be individual or state sponsored.

to sum up, they are waste of time, and people – muslims and non-muslims should not be worried by them

how can anyone possibly suggest that it is the responsibility of government to now fund a Muslim organisation to come up with counter-arguments to ideas …?

I don’t think it is being suggested that government should fund arguments. Obviously, constructing arguments is relatively cheap. Rather, it is institutions for dissemination and for various kinds of social support that are costly.

Providing the good to accuring to society arising out of such institutions is greater than the bad, then expenditure on such institutions would be a rational investment for the government. And that requires no appeal to ‘responsibility’ – only to the interest of the commonweal. (That, of course, doesn’t preclude non-governmental, civic institutions funding themselves – and may in some cases be prefereable to government funding if politically-loaded conditions are attached.)

For my money, the ‘real’ story here is one of either incompetence or faux-concern. Incompetence if, after such a long engagement in public life, Dr Ali doesn’t know that funds are already available for all sorts of community-based welfare programmes (which include ‘information services’). Faux-concern if Dr Ali does know this, but is pretending he doesn’t so as either to gain some self-satisfying publicity or to get some funding without having to go through normal application processes, rather than just going about the business of actually doing something productive.

Asked if he wanted sharia in Australia, Mr Doureihi said yes, by peaceful means.

HT may not want to establish sharia in Australia but that is what non-muslims are being told in the media so you can understand people’s anxiety when they see videos like the one linked above.

i am sure you can confirm this with one of their members.