Now churches are targeted (Aussie Lebanese Churches attacked)

FOUR churches in Sydney's southwest have been attacked in 24 hours as the city's riots spread from race to religion.

A community hall linked to a Uniting church was burned to the ground early yesterday, carol-singers were spat on and church buildings peppered with gunfire.

In response, members of the Arab Christian and Arab Muslim communities have called for a curfew for all Lebanese youths over the weekend.

Police believe the attack on the hall, in the suburb of Auburn, was intended to destroy the Uniting church next door, while nearby StThomas's Anglican Church, which has a primarily Chinese congregation, had all its front windows smashed. Three of the attacks were on churches within minutes of each other. The night before, Molotov cocktails were used in an attack on an Anglican church in Macquarie Fields in the city's far southwest.

Arab Christians have suggested the attacks on churches may have been meant as a violent attempt to "shame" the city's Lebanese Christian community into supporting Lebanese Muslims in the race-hate war, which began as a battle against young white males over use of suburban beaches.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17572776^601,00.html

Now they have problems. I hope the peaceful Muslim groups step-up and denounce the bombings.

No group in their right mind would feel bombing the other sides churches would help their agenda.

I can't help wondering if they were set up.

However, as usual, the mob is going after the wrong people.

It's tragic.

If the cops had done their fucking jobs 2 weeks ago and assigned high priority to tracking down the fundy thugs, this would likely not have happened.

jail before the Sunday night violence even got started.

...the Aussie government's slut-like embrace of Bush and his war, furthering the notion that Arabs and Muslims are "the enemy." :-(

I would expect to see this with 100 or more replies.

.

O.K. - what's a YOB? Doesn't sound complimentary.

But these days it means an uncouth person, a lout. Something close to trailer trash.

same thing.

Lebanese Muslims?

Australian yobbos?

Sounds like the yobbos might be the guilty ones...

exclusively in the passive voice. That means that it is almost impossible to figure out who did what.

I tried to read the whole article carefully, and it seems to me that a small extremist or gang-like faction of the Lebanese Muslim population may have done some of the damage, but again, it is difficult to tell.

to take their soccer playing elsewhere on the beach.

Apparently Lifeguards are a sort of National Hero in Australia, second only to Yahoo Serious and The Wiggles.

It's that they're white.

There has been heaps of violence on the beaches for ages (by all colors, to all colors).

The "final straw" (ie, catalyst for Sunday) was the bashing of the lifeguards. It wasn't a shove, it was a many to two bashing including hospitalisation. The lifeguards asked a group of people to leave the beach because they were causing trouble and copped a flogging for it.

They do have exulted status in our community. Surf Lifesaving is a volunteer activity that works all around the country. Almost every beach, almost every day, public safety is in the hands of these volunteers. More often than not they are teenagers who are just trying to help out and learn some skills along the way.

I don't support either side of this nonsense, but it wasn't because the lifeguards were white, it was because they were lifeguards.

Wow, what illustrious company! GACK!

Lebanese were calling on a curfew Lebanese to end the violence. The Sunday night violence was white Aussies. The Monday night violence was, in the main it seems, committed by Lebanese. The third night, churches were attacked.

The churches were assumed, by Lebanese Xians and Lebanese Muslims, to have been bombed by Lebanese. Hence the call for the curfew and for Xian and Muslim (Lebanese) community leaders to take action. It makes little sense for the white Aussies to try to shame the Xian Lebanese into taking the opposing side, or for Muslims to make pronouncements about Xianity. The police remained agnostic.

I'll leave it to other people to impute reasons and motives for the necessarily intentional ambiguity and fuzziness on the part of the newspapers' reporting.

who first made derogatory remarks to a couple of young women, and then bashed two lifeguards when
asked to leave the beach.

But it was definitely fuelled by talk-back radio hosts - in particular one Alan Jones, a slimy
piece of work (think Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly) - and neo-nazis who'd like to see everybody
but Anglos leave the country. IMO, some of these people deserve to be charged under Howards's brand
new incitment to riot laws, but of course those laws are really meant for anti-war protesters or
trade unionists fighting for their rights, not for ugly right-wing racists.

And we might also ask how much Howard has contributed to the current climate with his continual
warnings about Muslim terrorists around every corner. He's deliberately encouraged a climate
of fear and xenophobia, and some people are taking it to extreme levels.

Interesting.