IT’S intriguing that the lands that brought so much to the world many moons back have turned into a hotchpotch of hatred.
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The lands described as ‘The Cradle of Civilisation,’ where learning was encouraged, the lands that brought us writing and mathematics, now seem to be a whole cesspool of national and tribal wars, where everyone seems to hate someone else, where tribal and inter-religious squabbles seem to dominate their lifestyles.
Maybe this image is quite wrong but that is the image we receive regularly from our international news sources, images of bearded men most of whom carry guns which they shoot recklessly into the air, seemingly unconcerned where those bullets might land.
We get the feeling that there is trouble in just about every country in the Middle East. No wonder many of their residents get fed up and decide to leave for more pleasant and less warlike lands. They tend to aim for countries such as America, Australia and most European countries where people seem to exist peacefully with their neighbours – but then some of them apparently dislike living in a peaceful country and try to introduce the customs and cultures of the countries they left because of those customs and cultures, even including possible terrorism.
The problem seems to apply only to those people who come from troubled Middle Eastern countries, we don’t have the same image of the large number of people from South East Asia who have come here and settled peacefully. They and their children make very good Australians.
I think I would be talking for most Australians when I welcome a steady trickle of immigrants from all sorts of countries; we welcome people from different cultures and learn so much from them, but we object when some groups want to impose their traditional hatreds on us.
We were warned recently that there is more danger from so-called home grown terrorists than imported ones, of small groups sitting in cars or other secluded places talking about different forms of terrorism and we shouldn’t have to be silent on this real problem because it might hurt some feelings.
If there are these small groups in our community we should be asking why these people want to bring their cultural problems and hatreds into our country.
We don’t seem to have a similar problem with people who come from South East Asia, so it must be a cultural thing.
We have to ask if our officials are asking the right questions before we offer any families, of whatever race or culture, the opportunity to live in our country?