From the ABC

Howard should convert to Islam: Bashir
By Geoff Thompson in Solo, Central Java

Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir says Prime Minister John Howard should become a Muslim if he wants to avoid going to hell.

The cleric was speaking after his release from a Jakarta prison where he had been serving a sentence related to the 2002 Bali bombings.

While holding a late night press conference in his Ngruki religious boarding school, Abu Bakar Bashir was asked by the ABC if he had a message for Mr Howard when the Prime Minister visits Indonesia later this month.

"I think John Howard should convert to Islam," he said.

"If he wants to be saved from hell, he needs to convert to Islam and God willing, he will be forgiven by Allah."

Secondly, he warned Australians to never try fighting Muslims because they will definitely lose.

"Maybe with God's permission, they can kill us, but they certainly can't beat Islam," he said.

He then warned Australian journalists not to twist his statement.

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Well, Gus will not distort his statement... But Gus invites Bashir to convert to peace-loving-ism without beliefs and so should our prime Minister. Then humanity can start being good for real.

Whether it's Allah, God or the Wicked Witch, these beliefs cause trouble. They destroy our greatest asset — curiosity. They destroy peace because by ways that are very humanly perverse we distort these beliefs' "teaching" of peace by creating war in the name of peace.

Through fear or arrested inquisitiveness, "beliefs" become "certainty" but this "certainty" is the enemy of seeking knowledge via understanding, thus this kind of "knowledge" is foul.

As soon as one of us say that our "master" in the universe is better than yours, we invite all kind of creepy-crawly spiders in our existence.

God-willing this — or god-willing that —brings on illusions of knowingness, yet the earth is not flat anymore. A gun and a bomb are not the tool of the gods but the rotten inventions of twisted minds.

The users of bombs and guns on all sides are not fighters for god, but fighters for illusions of good and evil on all sides — when good and evil do not exit, except in the illusions. War, or terrorism, in whatever form they take are only expression of conquering and stealing from someone else. War and terrorism are never expression of seeking peace and sharing...

Mr Bashir, you need to change your petty illusions and the same goes for our triumvirate war trumpeters, you need to put peace in your heart by peaceful means...

Salaam.