Aceh Sharia office forbids Chinese dance of the lions

You mean like the Native Indians of North America, the indigenous populations of South America, the Aborigines of Australia? CULTURES AND POPULATION ALMOST OR COMPLETELY WIPED OUT, LAND NOW CONTROLLED BY INVASIVE POPULATIONS. And you hypocritical fascist dare accuse Islam?

Also if Islam wiped out cultures and natives then all Muslim regions would have a homogenous culture and race!!!

This is not the case with countries where Islam took hold, but it is the case for countries colonized by the West, e.g North, Central and South America and Australia all of which racially and culturally are almost identical to Western and Spanish Europe

Of course, this is a feeble argument. The actions of one party (long since condemned by that party) in no way justifies the actions of another. "Jowen" quickly realizes that such an argument puts Islam on an equal footing with the decadent West and quickly resorts to some taquiyya to cover up.

"Also if Islam wiped out cultures and natives then all Muslim regions would have a homogenous culture and race!!!"

Well, I don't want to be the first to tell you this, but yes, all Muslim regions have a homogenous culture and a population that considers itself superior to all other cultures.

Is there a region where the Qur'an is modified and some of it's teaching discarded? Is there a region where women have the same rights as men? Is there a region where kuffars have the same rights as believers? Can a muslimah walk down the street in any Muslim region and wear whatever she likes? If her clothing is judged improper, what will happen to her? Is there any Muslim region where polygamy is outlawed? What region of Islam denies jihad and arrests jihadis?

Most importantly, is there any "Muslim region" where the infidel past is preserved?

And now for the bonus question - How many people have been killed by the relentless conquerors of Islam, tasked with the submission of all the world's peoples to Islam?

(Answer - 270 million in the past 1400 years. This carnage continues today.)

Sorry Jowen, your dragging of Native North Americans doesn't wash, particularly for a Canadian. I can't speak for the American experience, but I can speak for ours.

First of all, think on this: When Europeans first discovered North America, the Natives (I shall also use the word "Indian", as they still use it themselves; people from India are often referred to as "East Indians", and I ahall use that convention) lived in Stone Age conditions. If the Americas had still not been discovered by now (or left strictly alone), they would still be in Stone Age conditions. If you think that living in such a condition is romantic and pure and wonderful, think again. Imagine yourself put in Canada, far from civilization, with no modern clothing or implements. What you have is what you can make yourself - weapons of stone (and bone, once you manage to kill something), clothes of hide, etc. Then, if you can survive the summer, try surviving the winter when the snow gets several feet high, and temperatures dip to -20C or colder for months at a time. No guns, no snowmobiles, no thinsulate, and no central heating.

The vaunted "respect for nature" that Indian culture and religion supposedly held did not stop the tribes from overhunting, or even driving species to extinction. Most North American megafauna, that once did well both during ice ages and in between them, suspiciously disappeared within one or two thousand years of first human contact with them - from the mastodon to giant beavers, as well as the large predators (such as Smilodon and the dire wolf) that preyed on them. Hunting advocates will often point out that white-tailed deer were nearly extinct in the eastern US when whites first came there, also apparently from Native over-hunting of that species. And we'll not even get into the sheer wastefulness of the buffalo jump. In any event, it doesn't make them much better than the whites who decimated many species here, but we did it with much better weapons. And the Natives were also complicit in this destruction, gleefully engaging in commercial slaughter for their own ends, with nary a thought for the consequences for their animal "brothers".

The French were the first to seriously explore and colonize what is now Canada. They came for reasons of trade; when it discovered that fur-bearing animals were abundant here, they wished to tap into trade in them for sale in Europe (where fur was still a necessity to keep warm, and not just a vile status symbol of the rich and ostentatious.) Many of these French trapper/traders - known as Voygeurs or couriers-du-bois, adopted Native clothing, customs, and language, and married Native women. Many of them made their way to the prairies long before the "frontier" was opened up to Americans, and thus established the Metis population. Many Natives/Metis in western Canada still bear French surnames. The most well-known white man to assimilate into Native culture was a Scotsman known as Grey Owl; he did actually manage to fool even prominent people into believing he was, in fact, an Indian, born and bred.

The British and Dutch saw the success that the French were having, and established formal trading companies - the Hudson Bay Co. and the Dutch North-West trading company, respectively. Trading posts were established all over what was once known as Rupert's Land and later the North-West Territories (which until 1905, comprised everything west of the Ontario border (except for Winnipeg, which made up the totality of Manitoba at the time). These companies still survive in the form of Bay stores (a middle-to-high end department store chain) and Northern stores (general stores that sell everything from clothing to camping goods; these ar usually only found in north-western areas of the country, where the Dutch used to trade. These companies often fought amongst themselves, but not with the Natives. As for the Natives, they took to the idea of trading furs for modern implements - such as guns and steel tools - like ducks to water.

Of course, missionaries went wherever the traders did, and wherever white settlements were established, but for the first few centuries of Canada's history, conversion was not forced (but I'll get back to this in a bit.)

It was all very orderly, in the Canadian fashion. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (originally called the North-West Mounted Police) was established not to fight Indians in the west, but to protect them from those (generally Americans) who would prey on them and sell them alcohol (the selling of whiskey to Natives was discouraged here, as it was recognized as being damaging to them and their communities.) Not far from where I live is the first such Mountie fort, which started out as the notorious Fort Whoop-up, an American whiskey post.

The same pattern of peace, order, and protection was followed even during the Klondike gold rush (yes, the Klondike is ours.) Google Sam Steele for more info on that.

Then Confederation happened in 1867. In order to bring the colony of British Columbia into Confederation, Sir John A MacDonald promised to build a rail line between Ontario and BC. And so he did. What are now the Prairie Provinces were nearly empty of whites (except for the descendants of the French and half-breed Metis) until this time. When the railroad, which was finished in 1885, was built, land speculators came in and all of a sudden, settlements such as Brandon, Calgary, Regina, Moose Jaw, etc - everything along that original line, and now along the Trans-Canada Highway, which parallels it - popped up almost over night. And as they say, if you build it, they will come. And come they did, both from Eastern Canada and Europe. Ottawa recognized the difficulty of farming the tough prairie sod, and offered free land to Eastern Europeans - primarily Ukranians - who knew how to farm in that kind of stuff, if they would just come and farm to feed the influx of western settlers.

In the rush of all this, Ottawa signed many treaties with the tribes who were being affected by this tide of immigration. Those treaties still stand today, and are often the subject of court cases, and, quite often, large monetary settlements. While both whites and Natives may dislike certain "apartheid" aspects of these treaties - but which aspects that are disliked will vary from person to person - the fact remains that both sides signed these treaties, and as long as tribal leaders stand by them, and wish to see them honoured, then Ottawa must, by law, honour them.

The indigenous peoples of Canada were _never_ a conquered peoples (though Quebec is, in fact, a conquered entity, resulting from a French-English war that that the French lost.) Today, they do enjoy certain land rights and special status (above whites) in terms of employment, freedom from taxes, post-secondary admission, and hunting and fishing privileges.

Canada only has two, maybe three, really black spots in its dealing with Native people. First was the extinction of the Beothuk tribe, which happened shortly after the English first arrived on the Island of Newfoudland. However, there are still some (Newfies, mostly) who contend that most of them simply left for the mainland and were absorbed, either there, or on the island once other tribes started moving in, with the Miqmaq and other east-coast tribes.

The maybe spot is when the feds ordered certain northern communities moved even farther north in the 1950s. This was done for reasons of sovereignty. When it comes to land, if you don't use it, you can lose it, and our government has been, for a long time but off and on, concerned about keeping our northern islands in Canadian hands, rather than losing them to the Americans or Russians, both of whom would probably like to have them very much. Our current prime minister is very concerned about this issue (and is one of the things I do like him for.)

The WORST thing that was ever done vis a vis Natives was the residential school fiasco. While they were meant to give Indian kids a Western-style education, so that they may function and assimilate in our society better, they went much too far, denying children the right to speak to one another in their own languages, not allowing their traditional stories to be told to each other, and other culturally-imperialist things. Some languages have actually been lost because of this; fortunately, there have been efforts to preserve those langauges amongst the remaining speakers, by teaching them now to young people (and anyone else who is interested in learning them. While living up north, I seriously considered taking a Cree language course, but circumstance forced this idea to be put aside. However, I got a small start on it through Cree friends.) There have also been serious allegations of physical and sexual abuse wrt to these schools. However, this matter is still going through the courts, waiting for settlement. The government and the Anglican church (both of whom were responsible for these schools) at first tried to shift blame to each other.

The federal government did eventually issue a formal apology; however, I am quite upset that they chose to apologize to the Chinese and Sikhs first. (This has to do with a head-tax imposed on Chinese immigrants until about the 1920s, and the returning of illegal Sikh immigrants aboard the Komagata Maru in 1914. However, the governments of the time had legitimate reasons for doing these things - Asian immigrants were known to depress wages for Canadians, and shove them out of jobs, in the time before minimum-wage laws. Chinese were coming in droves, to accept any little pay they could get, and the Sikhs aboard the ship were, well, illegal immigrants, period. I don't believe Harper should have apologized for either of these things at all, but he was pretty much forced to, due to having a minority government, by the strongly PC/MC Liberal and NDP parties.)

The settlement and Westernization of Canada was, for the most part, peaceful. The only real wars involving Natives happened because both French and English recruited allies amongst the tribes for wars against each other. There was also the Riel Rebellion, which didn't have anything to do much at all with Native rights, but was a political matter revolving around a reactionary Manitoba Metis Member of Parliament who had committed kidnapping and murder.

And as far as modern Native attitudes go, A lot of their land and hunting claims really do appear to be based increasingly on greed and selfishness. There was no good reason for them to capture Ipperwash (both the provincial park and the federal reserve military base); the government had traded for that land fair and square in WWII. There was no reason to allow them to slaughter freely in Ontario provincial parks. They also insist on calling what is obviously commercial fishing as "subsistence" fishing (ie, a Native can catch a netful of fish, and sell it, and it's "subsistience". If I catch one fish, to eat myself, because I am hungry and broke, I will be arrested and fined if I don't have a license for it.)

However, many aspects of Native culture are now part and parcel of overall Canadian culture, especially if one travels to northern and north-western parts of the country. And we do have the territory of Nunavut, which is an Inuit-majority, Inuit-run territory, and recognizes Inuktitut as a third official language. The Dene Indians of the north also have quite a degree of power, and many are financially successful, exploiting the oil and gas industry up there.

So save your PC/MC whining. It won't work on Canadians, at the very least.

Oh, and BTW, Canada has a rather different culture, on the ground, from the US .. and Australia .. and anywhere in Europe. Yes, we share certain common values - such as equality of women and men, equality (more or less, in the case of Canada with its special status for Natives and Metis) between races, and basic human rights.

But then, Muslim countries can ALSO be said to share certain basic values - and those values are diametrically opposed to Canadian and Western values in general.

The real lesson in all this long story? The Natives of Canada were victims of unfettered immigration by people who held a culture and values and lifestyle different from their own. They quite simply got swamped. And this is a lesson the rest of us Canadians MUST learn before we, in turn, are swamped by people who would make life miserable for Natives, whites, Chinese, East Indians, and other groups who have successfully blended themselves into the Canadian mosaic, without wanting to be the one piece that stands out from and above the rest of the crowd.

Spirit Wolf - excellent posting. Especially your final paragraph. Substitute 'Australian' for 'Canadian' and it's pretty much my own position as an Aussie.

THank you :) Took a long time to type all that. :S

Yes, I've heard about the situation in Australia as well; immigrationwatchcanada.org often has articles from down your way about problems with similar immigration policies to Canada's.

ANd an addendum to the above, which I forgot to add in:

When the French first started interacting with the tribes, the French were made fun of. Why? Because pure-blood natives don't grow facial hair (or body hair in general), whereas the French had beards, and such were in fashion in Europe (after all, all the great people of the past had beards, from Socrates to Jesus). So the Indians laughed at them for having hairy faces, like animals.

In response, the French (who had not yet started bringing their women over) told the Natives that French women had beards, too. :)

Oh you mean the Native Americans with their fat casinos, pow wows, own nation etc... you mean those rich fat cats. I don't see that happening in the middle east. Remember the middle east had if not a majority but large christian nations. I don't see Iran apologizing to libya for undeermining their Christian heritage.... don't forget the palestinian terrorist that blatantly target citizens with rockets... oh yeah the daily oppression of non-muslims (dhimmis) what about the stoning of women and homosexuals that don't tow the muslim line. I think the west has learn alot and grown since its civil rights, trail of tears day....when will your beloved muslims grow out of the dark ages. May God forgive the unrepentent radical islams.