Eureka Street

Keywords: Jihad

ARTS AND CULTURE

The past is prologue: Lewis Lapham’s enduring editorial vision
- Warwick McFadyen
- 30 July 2024
2 Comments
Lewis Lapham's work was a rigorous autopsy of American culture, exposing the chasm between our pretensions and our realities. With a historian’s depth and a satirist’s wit, he illuminated the follies that sustain our collective delusions.
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INTERNATIONAL

Accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza
- Binoy Kampmark
- 25 January 2024
1 Comment
Proving genocide is an onerous task, notably on the issue of intent. The acts alleged must be specifically intended to destroy the group members in question. The UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect considers this element ‘the most difficult element to determine.’
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INTERNATIONAL

The uses of violence: The Israeli-Hamas war
- Binoy Kampmark
- 26 October 2023
5 Comments
Following the Hamas attack on October 7, the world is forced to grapple with the profound complexities of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a mire of historical grievances, selective narratives, and devastating violence. With both sides weaponising the weight of their tragedies for the international stage, the tragedy's core remains: innocent lives lost in a perpetuating cycle of violence.
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INTERNATIONAL

Inconsistency in the treatment of foreign fighters
- Irfan Yusuf
- 12 April 2022
15 Comments
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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INTERNATIONAL

Slaying Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
- Binoy Kampmark
- 28 October 2019
13 Comments
Here, al-Baghdadi seemed to reprise a previous villainous role: that played by Osama bin Laden, the recognisable face of Al-Qaeda. It was similar in another respect: slaying the symbolic head might provide some form of catharsis, but it would hardly redress the logistic realities on the ground.
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RELIGION

Christianity tells stories; Islam finds designs
- Michael McGirr
- 31 October 2018
21 Comments
My year ten class studies Islam, one of the most formative influences in the world that my students will inhabit and hopefully improve. I have a profound respect for Islam. Westerners often fail to acknowledge the debt they owe to Islam, a tradition that had a huge role in bringing Europe through the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.
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AUSTRALIA

Fraser Anning's enemy twin
- Susan Connelly
- 17 August 2018
3 Comments
We see the occasional extreme Muslim cleric railing against the west. This week we witnessed a similar incident in Parliament, with a senator calling for a return to the White Australia policy and a ban on Muslim immigration. An insight of René Girard's assists in interpreting this incident and the resentment and fear which lies beneath it.
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INTERNATIONAL

They're not lone wolves, they're canaries
- Rachel Woodlock
- 14 November 2017
7 Comments
These lone-wolf terrorists are more like miners' canaries. Whether it is a paranoid loner, an enraged ideologue, a jihadist or a white supremacist, they are screaming out at the top of their lungs that something is terribly wrong.
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RELIGION

Muslim forgiveness jars circle of prejudice
- Andrew Hamilton
- 13 November 2017
5 Comments
Last week we saw the magnanimity and depth of Raeed Darwiche. While travelling in the hearse carrying the body of Jihad, his eight year old son, he pleaded for an end to the vituperation directed at Maha Al-Shennag, whose car had crushed his son. Darwiche appealed to his Islamic faith in explaining why he forgave Al-Shennag.
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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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RELIGION

What the sharia is all the fuss about?
- Rachel Woodlock
- 24 February 2017
29 Comments
Once upon a time, a proud dad in Dandenong could name his son Jihad, with its ancient meaning of 'striving' in the path of God. Now he might choose a different name to avoid future discrimination. 'Shari'a' has come to mean the forced imposition of medieval punishments on cowering populations, while 'halal' is the torture of sheep and cows. These words have been stolen from ordinary Muslims, the vast majority of the world's second largest religion. I blame three groups for this.
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RELIGION

Sheikh Fehmi talked me out of going to war
- Irfan Yusuf
- 04 October 2016
11 Comments
Fehmi Naji El-Imam, the former Grand Mufti of Australia who died last month, taught us at a time when we had no internet and books on Islam were limited. Politicised religion was all the craze. In Afghanistan, a coalition of local militias and foreign fighters, the Mujahideen, were receiving support from Western leaders. Conservative politicians praised them for taking on those nasty Soviet Communists. It was easy to be carried away, to have one's faith shaped by overseas events. I almost did.
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Keywords: Jihad