{"id":935,"date":"2011-08-09T18:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T08:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/?p=935"},"modified":"2017-11-05T08:03:45","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T08:03:45","slug":"census-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/countries\/australasia\/australia\/935","title":{"rendered":"Census Night"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src=\"http:\/\/www.cornwall24.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/census2011.jpg\" title=\"census logo\" class=\"g2image_float_left\" \/>There&#8217;s a lot of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.diveoz.com.au\/discussion_forums\/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=25577\" title=\"includes a sample of the emails going around\" target=\"_blank\">excitement<\/a> in Australia at the moment over tonight&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/stream0.census.gov.au\/eCensusWeb\/welcome.jsp#Sys\" title=\"census website\" target=\"_blank\">census<\/a>.  Many fear that our growing Muslim population will cause the government to cater overly to their religion and culture.  I&#8217;ve seen a number of posts on facebook urging non-Muslims to declare themselves as Christian rather than entering a joke answer.<\/p>\n<p>I can understand the importance of providing accurate data, but I don&#8217;t understand the fear.  It&#8217;s not even just the usual stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists.  Now we&#8217;re even worried that the government will ban Christian traditions in schools.  Perhaps that&#8217;s valid.  A Japanese friend once told me that her daughter&#8217;s kindergarten class <a href=\"http:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/?p=284\" title=\"multiculture\">didn&#8217;t make christmas decorations<\/a> because not everyone in the class was Christian.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"http:\/\/resources1.news.com.au\/images\/2011\/07\/24\/1226100\/906661-jedi.jpg\" title=\"jedi vote is common\" class=\"g2image_float_right\" width=\"200\" \/>I don&#8217;t know whether the fear of our government taking a similar stance is justified, but I&#8217;d be disappointed if it was.  We should be celebrating our multiculturalism, not removing all traces of our identity.  I&#8217;ll welcome the celebrations of Hannukah and Ramadan and whatever else can be shared in our schools, but I hope that immigrants will accept that we have a Christian history that we are proud of.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be declaring myself an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news.com.au\/national\/atheists-assert-themselves-in-census\/story-e6frfkvr-1226101012120\" title=\"push for people to mark 'no religion'\" target=\"_blank\">atheist<\/a> tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a lot of excitement in Australia at the moment over tonight&#8217;s census. Many fear that our growing Muslim population will cause the government to cater overly to their religion and culture. I&#8217;ve seen a number of posts on facebook urging non-Muslims to declare themselves as Christian rather than entering a joke answer. I can&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/countries\/australasia\/australia\/935\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Census Night<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[46,88,89],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1728,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/1728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}