Rendering those accused of ‘Islamic terrorism’ stateless sends out the message that a Muslim’s citizenship is conditional, further ostracising parts of the Muslim community that may struggle with their Australian identity. It is also blatantly Islamophobic and racist.

On Friday, Tony Abbott raised Australia’s terrorist threat level to high, readying the country for a new normal of intensified anti-terror policing and security screenings. Less noticeable amid the media noise surrounding terrorism and the IS was the fact that two days earlier, vice-chancellor Michael Spence did the on-campus equivalent, by citing a hastily commissioned ‘security assessment’ to ban a visitor to Sydney University.

It was a gruesome image: Barbie tied to a burning white cross, engulfed in flames, charred and melting, brandished like a weapon by a topless blonde activist standing atop the giant pink stiletto which greets visitors to the new ‘Barbie Dreamhouse’ at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. Across her chest were the words ‘Life in plastic is not fantastic’.

Without questioning the real and pervasive presence of Islamophobia in the West, including Australia, I would like to have a more careful look at Yassir Morsi’s arguments in his ‘Disguising Islamophobia’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘Saving the Muslim Woman, Yet Again’.

There is a problem of ethnic persecution in Sri Lanka. The civil war, which began in 1983, was forged by the persecution of Tamil communities, and when the civil war ended in 2010, it was terminated in violent acts that targeted the ethnic Tamil minority.

Edward Said once said: ‘Malicious generalizations about Islam have become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign culture in the West; what is said about the Muslim mind, or character, or religion, or culture as a whole cannot now be said in mainstream discussion about Africans, Jews, other Orientals, or Asians.’

The defining moment in The Dictatorcomes when Sacha Baron Cohen sings ‘Ebony and Ivory’ with the decapitated head of a black man.

An interview with Mattias Gardell Mattias Gardell is professor of comparative religion at Uppsala University, Sweden. His research focuses on the interaction between religion and politics, and is the author of a number of publications including In the Name of Elijah Muhammad and Gods of the Blood. Following the terrorist attacks that occurred in Norway […]

The following thoughts came to me after a recent Melbourne Free University lecture on the Future of Feminism. The insightful presentation given by Melbourne Feminist Collective’s Neda Monshat and Alexia Staker led to a fascinating discussion in the second part of the event. Two points in particular finally convinced me to write about feminism and […]

Until Boris Kelly popped up on the weekend with his usual lucid description of things, I was starting to wonder if Utoya would pass uncommented by the Overland blog. The Overland blog is often punctuated by some odd silences (nothing to date on SlutWalks or the implosion of the Murdoch empire), and any conversation in […]

By his own admission, Anders Breivik’s act of mass assassination was politically motivated and designed to ignite a revolution in which a lengthy war would be waged against Muslims in Europe. Breivik’s motives have been outlined in a 1500 page manifesto containing a farrago of political and historical influences laced with thematic resentments and prejudices. […]

That’s a clip from a Fear of a Brown Planet live show. In Overland 200, Jacinda Woodhead investigates the FOBP hip-hop workshops in Footscray, Melbourne.

Late last month, the Age published a piece by Sushi Das re-opening the so-called ‘burqa debate’. Das argued: The burqa is not just confronting, it is frightening because of what it looks like and what it stands for. You simply cannot discuss it without at least a passing glance at what is happening to women […]

The politically conscious hip-hop group The Brothahood ask ‘Why?’ Five Muslim spoken-word/rap artists born in Australia with Lebanese backgrounds, The Brothahood are smashing stereotypes with their album Lyrics of mass construction, and tracks like ‘Why?’ When I accidentally stumbled across them a few months ago I was asking myself why haven’t I heard of these […]

Last month in Switzerland, a mountain guide owned up to desecrating crosses along the mountain trails near Gruyere and was subsequently arrested. The mountain guide declared he acted because he wanted to start a public debate about the relevance of crosses in the mountain setting. He believes the cross to be a symbol of death, […]

Suddenly the world is awash in burqa suspicion and vitriol. In the past fortnight, headlines have been dominated by bans and proposed bans in Belgium, France and Denmark (home to only three women who wear the burqa), to our own shores, and the boorish postulating of Cory Bernardi: In my mind, the burka has no […]