Bring them calamity

On Christmas Eve the papers here in Australia feature guest columns by Christian religious leaders. They are nearly always of the "kumbaya Christianity" type.

This year Isabel Thomas Dobson, the Moderator of the Uniting Church, decided to devote her column to the cause of refugees. I couldn't help but notice one line of her column in particular:

there are unsubstantiated fears of them being violent

Why was that line so striking? Well, just a few pages prior to this was a story about a group of men charged with plotting a terrorist attack in Australia. Three of the five are Somalian refugees.

One of these men was caught on tape celebrating the death toll from the Black Saturday bushfires:

The next day fires broke out in the whole country ... Allah bring them calamity.

And this:

The bushfires was all good, man, Allah willing. No Muslims.

No Muslims died in the fires, but 173 others did. Our Somalian refugee thinks that is "all good".

The same Somalian refugee described Australians as "filthy people".

But is this just a one off? Well, in the same week Dutch police arrested 12 Somali terror suspects, British police arrested 9 terror suspects who had planned a London Christmas bombing blitz, a suicide bomber launched an attack in Sweden and two embassies in Rome were attacked.

We are relying right now on our security services to keep the violence in check.

I'm not suggesting that most of the refugees will become involved in such activities, but it does show that our kumbaya Christian leader is being way too trite in her claim that fears of violence are "unsubstantiated".

Here's another odd feature of Isabel Thomas Dobson's call for open borders. She has lamented elsewhere the decline of Christian worship in Australia. What does she think will happen, though, as Australia's intake of Muslim refugees increases?

You can't have it both ways. If you want a large, indiscriminate refugee intake then you have to accept a declining Christianity. Christian churches will be replaced with mosques. In effect, Isabel Thomas Dobson is calling for a lesser future for her own faith in this country. Is this really the responsibility she is charged with?

She is a Christian leader but she wants to give up on the idea of Australia as a Christian country. Would you really do this if you sincerely felt that Christianity had something important to offer that other faiths did not?