Storm Track Appeasement: Hope Over Experience

The saying goes that a second marriage is the conquest of hope over experience. That adage applies 100 percent to the following story out of Australia.

Here's the experience.

Several hardcore Islamists have been invited to a taxpayer-funded Muslim leader’s conference run by the Howard Government. The hardliners who have been invited to the conference, believed to cost taxpayers around $300,000, practice Wahabbism, a fundamentalist teaching of Islam that is preached by Osama bin Laden, and inspired by the fanatical Taliban regime in Afghanistan.€

Here's the hope.

The Prime Minister's Muslim advisory board chairman, Ameer Ali, says invitations to the Conference of Australian Muslim Religious Leaders next month were sent to extremist clerics including the ultra-radical Sheik Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, The Australian newspaper reported today. Dr Ali said the aim was to help bring the clerics into the mainstream. Once you marginalize these people, keep them outside the fold, then they will continue with their opposition and with their radical ideas, Dr Ali told the newspaper. “Once they come into the fold and realize that the vast majority, mainstream imams are against those views and they are minority views, there's a good chance of them turning to new views (on) life.€

Really? I wonder what the chances are of converting the Wahabbies to €˜mainstream Islam?. Wanna take bets?