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Keywords: Islamic State

  • RELIGION

    Laughing at Islam

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 10 October 2013
    4 Comments

    Tax consultant turned satirist and comic Nazeem Hussain's SBS series Legally Brown does more than just poke fun. Perhaps the most effective and most difficult ways to tackle prejudice and fear is to laugh at it. Chris Kenny's objections in The Australian that Hussain's appearance on Q&A was 'highly disturbing and dangerous' and 'an apologia for terrorism' show that Hussain and his fans continue to have plenty to laugh about.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Problems with jihadi tourism

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 26 September 2013
    1 Comment

    Jihadi tourism is big business, oiled by a global recruit base from which various diasporas can be tapped. The attackers on the shopping mall in Nairobi were linked to a Somali based outfit calling itself al-Shabaab, a standing affiliate of al-Qaeda operating in the Horn of Africa. But the Somali case is far from unique. The Afghanistan and Iraqi conflicts netted their fair share of foreign recruits in the fight against US-led forces.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Egyptian democracy a long way off

    • Evan Ellis
    • 05 July 2013
    3 Comments

    President Mohamed Morsi did not govern particularly well. Egypt's rating on the Failed State Index has slipped from 45 to 34 since the fall of Mubarak. But the truth is that this crisis was not merely 12 months in the making, and Egypt's democracy was merely grafted on to a structure in which the military was the real power.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Obama no 'wuss' but at what cost to Syria?

    • Evan Ellis
    • 18 June 2013
    4 Comments

    Alluding to his own military style intervention in Kosovo, Bill Clinton warned Obama not to look like a 'wuss' on Syria. Still, Obama's decision to start providing arms to Syrian rebels is an enormous risk. Australia's history of state interventions to tackle Indigenous disadvantage provide surprisingly apt criteria for evaluating the decision.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hope for a Malaysian Spring

    • Lily Zubaidah Rahim and Sven Schottmann
    • 29 April 2013
    1 Comment

    Amid democratic transitions in Asia and protest movements in the Middle East, a growing number of Malaysians are unwilling to countenance any further their government's paternalistic politics. Whoever wins next Sunday's election will have the task of forging a new consensus on what it means to be Malaysian. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shariah-compliant swimming in Geert Wilders' world

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 22 February 2013
    27 Comments

    Suddenly some young lads started swimming across us. One even swam under me, and joined his friends at the other end of the pool. They were giggling and speaking to each other in Dari. In a few weeks, these kids will join other Hazara Australians for a massive 'new year's' festival. Should Wilders and his friends be afraid?

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Nuns, gurus and rebels: the best of Eureka Street TV

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 14 December 2012

    For the past three years video consultant Peter Kirkwood has produced a fortnightly series featuring some of the world's leading figures of faith and spirituality. We take a look back at some of his best Eureka Street TV interviews, including Hans Kung, Anwar Ibrahim, Peter Kennedy and more.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Nuns, gurus and rebels: the best of Eureka Street TV

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 13 December 2012

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conscientious Catholics come around to contraception law

    • Fatima Measham
    • 20 November 2012
    23 Comments

    Last week the UN declared access to contraception a universal human right. The Philippines Church's opposition to reproductive health legislation is hollow because it is doesn't address identified social problems. Many conscientious Catholics are arriving at the conclusion that they can support the bill without having to renounce their faith.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Militancy trumps education on Pakistan frontier

    • Farooq Yousaf
    • 25 September 2012
    9 Comments

    With militants firmly holding the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the already low literacy rate of 29 per cent has nosedived to 17 per cent in the region. Religious madaris are perceived as places of affordable education by common rural dwellers, while to the outer world, they remain breeding grounds for militancy. 

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  • RELIGION

    Religious freedom and the law

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 September 2012

    'The common law leaves a gap between the mandates of the law and the conduct that we choose to engage in according to our individual moral standards. We call that gap 'freedom'. The challenge is determining the width of that gap for groups bound by religious faith which differs from the Australian majority.' Frank Brennan launches Carolyn Evans' Legal Protection of Religious Freedom in Australia. Full text

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Separating art from war in Iran

    • William Gourlay
    • 26 April 2012
    3 Comments

    Sabre rattling, both by the Iranian leadership and by Western politicians and pundits, dominates the headlines and steers public discourse about Iran. A recent film, and a current art exhibition, remind us of the country's 'rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics'.

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