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Author: Irfan Yusuf

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Inconsistency in the treatment of foreign fighters

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 12 April 2022

    In a space of 40 years, Russia has been our enemy, then our friend and now is an enemy again. Russia is again attacking Ukraine. We are convinced the Ukrainian cause is just. But we also know that we face a domestic far-Right terrorism threat at home. What if young impressionable foreign fighters with little knowledge of Ukrainian history, politics and internal conflicts find themselves fighting with and influenced by anti-Semitic and Islamophobic neo-Nazi groups?

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  • MEDIA

    Will we ever learn from the war on terror?

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 22 September 2020
    10 Comments

    The strange thing is that those chest-beating about terrorism rarely made an issue of when terrorists of the modernist Islamist variety (such as al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah and ISIL) attacked mosques, Muslim shrines and Muslim congregations. Nor do they report of just how fringe and hated these groups are in their own countries where the bulk of their attacks take place.

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  • RELIGION

    Prayer and community during COVID-19

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 08 April 2020
    17 Comments

    For millions of Australians of varying degrees of religiosity, prayer will play a key role in dealing with the novel stresses associated with this novel virus. Religions bring us not just closer to our creator but also to each other, especially in times of crisis. And you don’t have to be devout to feel the blessing.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Delhi's spirit resists divisive ideology

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 05 March 2020
    8 Comments

    The divisive and foreign Hindutva ideology goes against the culture and spirit of Delhi. Recently Modi’s party were trounced in local elections. Almost always the violence and hatred is caused by outsiders and resisted by the Dilli-walas.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dancing in the dark of western culture

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 09 December 2019
    6 Comments

    Politicians love to remind minorities to integrate. Minority kids by and large resent these calls, because they are desperate to integrate. South Asian kids like me and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor were among those wishing to be Australian or British. Our idols were Bruce Springsteen and Jim Kerr, not Abu Bakr Baghdadi or Osama bin Ladin.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Tim Fischer, champion of Palestinian rights

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 30 August 2019
    7 Comments

    My views on the Middle East have somewhat mellowed since then, due to my own reading and notwithstanding the harassment I and other supporters of Palestinian rights have experienced over the years. Having the then Deputy Prime Minister on our side certainly provided us with the strength to continue speaking our truths.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dictators, democrats, and Egypt after Morsi

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 24 June 2019
    2 Comments

    Egypt's first and thus far only democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi died in court while being tried for espionage following a lengthy period in prison. He is described as an 'Islamist' but never as a democrat. It's as if the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. Must they be? Was he any less democratic than his predecessors?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons from GetUp in how not to do activism

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 23 May 2019
    9 Comments

    The most successful political movements are those flexible enough to co-opt the rhetorical and ideological tropes of their opponents. The ones which fail are those which insist on ideological purity. They may be well-resourced, have plenty of volunteers and ambitious programs. But all this may count for little if they cannot sell their ideas.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    On romping racists and far-left extremists

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 25 January 2018
    4 Comments

    The antecedents of Right-White Nationalism have, over three decades, entered mainstream Australian discourse. In Romper Stomper, it is represented by far-right group Patriot Blue, and a TV shock jock resembling those that Peter Dutton speaks to. But Romper Stomper doesn't pretend violence is the monopoly of the right.

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  • RELIGION

    Pondering Palestine at a Tokyo Christmas Mass

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 14 December 2017
    4 Comments

    Last year I spent Christmas at St Andrew's. There was incense, holy communion and a whole heap of stuff that would horrify many Sydney Anglicans. Which is their bad luck because this St Andrew's was the Cathedral Church of the Tokyo Diocese of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai. I doubt Henry VIII imagined a diocese with a name like that!

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Yes-voting Muslims push minority solidarity

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 17 November 2017
    17 Comments

    During the month of Muharram, the No message was being handed out at mosques and spoken from the pulpits. Yet many Muslims voted Yes not because we wanted to reinvent the Islamic idea of marriage, but because the scriptures teach that we should stand up for justice even if it goes against our families and ourselves.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Ramadan: the fast and the flatulent

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 29 May 2017
    12 Comments

    You need not believe everything you read in the Herald Sun or an ISIS press release. Islam isn't just about armed jihad and violence against infant genitalia. Islam does have a spiritual side, and Ramadan is inherently spiritual, full of prayer and fasting and hardly any horizontal bedtime action. The theory behind all this deprivation is that if you're hungry and thirsty and sex-deprived between sunrise and sunset for an entire month, you'll gain a spiritual high that should last you the rest of the year.

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