Terrorism
En masse Muslim resignations a setback for healing in Sri Lanka
This year’s Eid-al-Fitr festival has been a bleak affair for Sri Lanka’s Muslims in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings. The steep increase in retaliatory Islamophobic…
The relativity of the death penalty
Opposition to the death penalty has a long and quite public history in Australia. Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug smugglers received…
Masood Azhar – a global terrorist – and the implications for Pakistan
Four times Masood Azhar escaped the formal designation as an international arch-terrorist. Each time India had sought to add his name to a UN Security Council blacklist as the…
Caliph emerges without his caliphate
This week, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the world’s most wanted man, appeared in a 20-minute video released by al Furqan Media, the official media outlet for ISIS. This is only the…
Sri Lanka attacks: Still many puzzles to solve
It is very early in the aftermath of the Sri Lanka terrorist attacks and like all such attacks, more information will emerge in the coming days and weeks. But a few early…
ISIS: the generational problem
The fate of perhaps as many as 70 children born to Australian mothers and caught up in the Iraq-Syria conflict has been the focus of Australian media attention. There are calls…
ISIS: children should not pay for the sins of the parents
The fall of the so-called ISIS caliphate and resultant outflow of fighters’ families into temporary refugee camps highlights the plight of Australian women and their children who…
The cost of terror: two tales of country life
One country town, two people. One of them a hero who added to the legacy of the uncomplicated stoicism and selflessness that Australians popularly associate with “the bush”, and…
The case to prosecute “jihadi brides” at home
A woman believed to be Melbourne-born Zehra Duman has recently resurfaced among the thousands of women and children at al Hawl refugee camp fleeing the last vestiges of the…
Christchurch enters a nightmare peculiar to our times
“The nihilist … acts out the violence that so many others perpetrate verbally and virtually on the web: he is, in that sense, the avenging angel of post-truth and the rant made…