Radical Muslims told to leave Australia

Yahoo! News reported Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law have been told to get out of Australia. A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown. Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament. "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television.

That makes a lot of sense. If Muslims are foolish enough to want to live under Sharia law, there are countries they can go to where they will find exactly what they are looking for.

"I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false. "If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practises it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said. Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked move to the other country. Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should "clear off". "Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off," he said. Muslim schools will have to denounce terrorism as part of an effort to stamp out home-grown extremism under measures announced after Howard's meeting with 14 Islamic leaders Tuesday.

Glad to see it. We should do it here, and other European countries should do the same.

The prime minister called the meeting in the wake of last month's London bombings by British-born Muslims, amid fears that Australia could be the target of a similar attack by disaffected members of its small Muslim community. "The purpose of the meeting was to identify ways of preventing the emergence of any terrorist behaviour in this country," Howard told commercial radio Wednesday. "You won't change the minds of people who are hardened fanatics and hardened extremists. You have to identify them and take measures to ensure that they don't become a problem." Asked if he was prepared to "get inside" mosques and schools to ensure there was no support for terrorism, Howard said: "Yes, to the extent necessary".