Religious Freedom and Muslim Terrorism, by Augusto Zimmermann. The general principle is for religious freedom, so long as it doesn’t harm others:

The High Court of Australia has consistently recognised that the right to religious freedom is not absolute in this country. … This is the understanding that in 1898 led many of the Australian framers to resist any idea of absolute freedom of religion as posing unacceptable risks to the community. …

Justice Latham, in the Jehovah Witness’s case, turned to a catalogue of the evils and horrors sometimes practised in the name of religion that should not be tolerated at all. Latham fell back on a variation of the classical liberal formula which permits limitations on freedom only in the interests of freedom itself. The particular version of this formula quoted in Latham’s judgement was taken directly from John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty: ‘The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any or their number, is self-protection’. …

Accordingly, any steps to be taken to outlaw extremist teaching that incites religious violence and disregard of the rule of law are entirely compatible with the freedom exercise of religion under section 116.

How about Islam in Australia?

When it comes to religious extremism, few organisations compare with Hizb ut-Tahrir. It describes itself as a global political party whose ultimate goal is to create a caliphate to rule all Muslims around the world according to Sharia law. Hizb ut-Tahrir’s spokesman, Mr Uthman Badar, claims that Muslims should not have to submit to so-called ‘forced assimilation’ – such as pledging support for human rights and democratic values in the citizenship oath or singing the national anthem. Moreover, Mr Badar believes that singing the anthem is also forcing Muslims to integrate into society, and that the values of Islam are not negotiable even if they are incompatible with Australian values, laws or culture.

Although former Prime Minister Tony Abbott promised to ‘crack down’ on the radical group, which is banned in some countries, it has not been proscribed and the Turnbull government appears to side with those in the security establishment who argue it is best to keep it legal. This is so even after Hizb ut-Tahrir released a statement declaring that Australian Muslims should refuse partaking in any of the government’s counter-terrorism programs and initiatives, since it believes that co-operation with spy agencies in their fight against terrorism ‘is outright haram (forbidden)’.

Sharia law is a totalitarian philosophy touching all aspects of life, and it has a religious bass. It is also in deep conflict with our culture.

In this sense, it is reasonable to assume that a committed Muslim who migrates to a western society might have no intention to assimilate into the host society. Professing ‘an all-encompassing way of life in which the whole of reality falls under the sovereignty of Allah’, such immigrant will not desire to assimilate but demand that ‘the host society must change in line with their beliefs, or grant them separate rights and privileges’.

This is the nub of the problem. Immigration with no intent to assimilate is of course invasion or colonization.

Daniel Pipes, a well-known expert on Islamist ideology and President of the Middle East Forum, .. explains that … the Islamists should be legally prohibited from entering western countries such as Australia. In Pipes’ opinion, Muslims who embrace the Islamist ideology should not be allowed to immigrate because they seek to apply Islamic law, oppress women, and establish a worldwide caliphate. They make about 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the Muslim population. According to him, countries like Australia ‘should engage in serious research into all would-be visitors and immigrants, not the pro-forma review that prevails these days’. Doing so, Pipes concludes, ‘requires money and time as well as creative inquiries to smoke out ideological proclivities, but each person entering the country must be checked to make sure no Islamists are allowed in at all, even for brief visits, thereby increasing our common security’. …

But how do you know what a person truly believes, especially if their religion permits and encourages them to lie to nonbelievers?

Australia has a population of approximately 24 million and around 500,000 of its people are Muslim. The number of Muslims in this country has risen dramatically for over the last thirty years. Over 300,000 of them normally use Arabic at home.