If they don’t like our lack of sharia law, our love of beer and wine or that parking metre girls in the Gold Coast wear bikinis, then they can always move somewhere there is sharia, parking metre attendants are old men and you can’t get a good bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to save yourself.
And yet in Australia you will be arrested for going about naked, and we do restrict the availability and consumption of certain other substances for reasons similar to Muslim concerns about alcohol. These features of Australian society are not derived from respect for abstract principles such as ‘freedom of expression’ (p.s. I thought you were opposed to idealism?) but rather reflect the equilibrium values of the dominant cultural group in 2013; they are features which can, in principle, be altered at will. If the demographic make-up of Australian society were to change sufficiently so as to enable the dress and consumption practices favoured by orthodox Muslims to prevail at the ballot box, the changes thus wrought would be no different — that is to say, a requirement to wear e.g. conservative clothing is fundamentally no more objectionable than the requirement we currently do have to wear clothing at all. Of course, it is no less objectionable either: those who argue that folk should be allowed to go around naked and consume narcotics at will, etc. need not trouble themselves with this point.
Sign In
