From: pedro1940@progression.net   
      
   Get out if you want Sharia law, Australia tells Muslims   
      
   CANBERRA: Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told   
   on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in   
   a bid to head off potential terror attacks. 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. "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 practices 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. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by   
   saying he supported spies monitoring the nation's mosques. agencies   
      
   AMERICANS.....ARE YOU LISTENING? and reading   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)