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Author: Ruby Hamad

  • RELIGION

    Community fear feeds Fox News Muslim bashing

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 02 August 2013
    10 Comments

    The now notorious Fox News interview in which host Lauren Green quizzes academic Reza Aslan as to why he, a Muslim, 'would be interested in the founder of Christianity', is mind-boggling in its casual persecution. A similar mistrust of Muslims is evident in Australia, as the Ed Husic debacle demonstrated. Even I, a non-practising Muslim at best, encounter hostility when I write on certain issues.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    McGuire ape gaffe exposes Australian tolerance as myth

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 31 May 2013
    29 Comments

    Those who object to Indigenous people being called 'apes' and to white men painting themselves black are dismissed as being politically correct and denying free speech. But how can Adam Goodes choose not to be offended by comments conceived for the very purpose of justifying crimes against the racial group to which he belongs?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Exceptional Thatcher and the feminist fallacy

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 15 April 2013
    26 Comments

    Whereas feminism realises the inherent potential and worth in all women, Exceptional Women succeed because of their perceived likeness, not to other women, but to men. Consequently, they make things harder, not easier, for other women. Margaret Thatcher was many things, but she absolutely was not a feminist.

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  • RELIGION

    A feminist reading of the Koran

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 23 October 2012
    33 Comments

    For centuries, Muslim women have accepted the fallacy that they are inferior to men. Sadly, the jahaliyyah (ignorance and irascibility) Mohammed railed against is alive in the Muslim world, notably in the mentality that sees the Taliban try to justify shooting a 14-year-old child for supporting women's education. 

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  • MEDIA

    When rape is a joking matter

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 20 July 2012
    6 Comments

    US comedian Daniel Tosh sparked a furore with his now notorious rape joke. Many women have at least one story about being inappropriately and non-consensually touched — it first happened to me when I was 13. While jokes like Tosh's perpetuate such a culture, other comedians' 'rape jokes' seek to enlighten as well as entertain.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Save the world with salad

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 09 December 2011
    26 Comments

    As a subject that inflames passion on both sides of the debate, meat eating is up there with abortion and religion. Yet animal agriculture is responsible for a quarter of all emissions. Labor's carbon price is unlikely to produce significant results while animal farmers are exempt.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Israel's gay rights sleight of hand

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 14 November 2011
    16 Comments

    Israel is using its positive treatment of gays as a means of 'selling' its campaign against Palestinians. Before automatically siding with Israel, the international gay community would do well to consider the ways in which all forms of discrimination are linked.

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  • MEDIA

    Syria's hopeless democracy dream

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 14 October 2011
    8 Comments

    My family belongs to the same Alawite religious minority as beleagured Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. There are great and legitimate fears that Assad's downfall will result, not in democracy, but in civil war and large-scale massacres of minorities, including the Alawites.

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  • MEDIA

    Julian Assange's problem for feminists

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 09 December 2010
    36 Comments

    Julian Assange claims to be fighting for freedom of speech and government transparency — ideals that feminists also hold dear. But Assange has been arrested on rape charges and many feminists will find it hard to reconcile their defence of him with their support of rape victims.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hilary Clinton and Hollywood's gender war

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 04 March 2010
    3 Comments

    Remember the man who yelled 'iron my shirt!' at Hillary Clinton? No doubt Clinton knows the problems women face in their fight to be taken seriously in the workplace. Acclaimed The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow has similarly found that male peers seem more interested in her body than her body of work.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    New Moon and other dumb films for women

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 27 November 2009
    13 Comments

    It may be a box office boon, but critics have slammed the Twilight series, and feminists complain that lead character Bella is a subservient drip and the vampire she loves, Edward, is a stalking patriarch. Why are smart films for women in such short supply?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Good Aussie films a thing of the past

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 04 December 2008
    4 Comments

    'New Wave' Australian  films of the '70s and '80s, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and Breaker Morant, wooed audiences and critics. This weekend, four films that few Australians have seen will vie for top honours at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards.

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