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27 Nov Paris attacks: Islamic State sees its attacks as sacred strategy

Posted at 14:18h in Changing World, Faith and Culture, Religious Literacy, Understanding Islam 0 Comments

This was published in the Australian Inquirer. It is a more general version of a longer article posted previously on Lapido Media. As the expressions of shock and solidarity subside after the Paris killings, the challenge to understand will remain. Much commentary of the past week...

20 Nov Love alone is not enough: a response to Waleed Aly

Posted at 14:34h in Changing World, Understanding Islam 0 Comments

Waleed Aly is a well-known Australian media commentator. This week on Channel Ten’s The Project he produced an impassioned and compelling speech about the Paris killings. This went viral, achieving 27 million views on social media within just a few days. That is more hits...

17 Nov Paris attacks were not ‘nihilism’ but sacred strategy

Posted at 14:54h in Religious Literacy, Restoring Worldviews, Understanding Islam 0 Comments

Leading commentator Janet Daley's article in Saturday's Telegraph ‘The West is at war with a death cult’ stands for everything that is woeful about European elites’ response to Islamic jihad. It is a triumph of religious illiteracy. The jihadist enemy, she asserts, is utterly unintelligible, so beyond...

03 Jul Sex Slavery and the Islamic State

Posted at 11:20h in Freedom, Marriage, Understanding Islam 0 Comments

Jamie Walker, Middle East correspondent for The Australian, asked two critical questions in a recent article which discussed the involvement of two Australian citizens, Mohamed Elomar and Khaled Sharrouf, in Islamic State sex slavery. In 2014 Elomar purchased sex slaves, of whom four, all Yazidis,...

06 Jun Philip Adams on Violence in Mad Max

Posted at 10:14h in Faith & Worldview Blog, Faith and Culture, Restoring Worldviews 0 Comments

While reading Australian journalist Philip Adams’ despairing rage against cinema violence – and he's not wrong! – I was reminded of the words of polymath David Goldman, commenting on the rise and rise of horror in films: "If you do not believe in God, you will...

25 Mar Challenging Islam’s Warrant to Kill

Posted at 11:34h in Understanding Islam 0 Comments

Last week the Islamic State’s ‘Hacking Division’ released the names and addresses of one hundred US military personnel. It urged the ‘brothers residing in America’ – i.e. American Muslims – to ‘deal with’ them, which is to say, it wants them killed. There is much talk...

21 Feb Bearing the cross: a letter to the Islamic State

Posted at 11:57h in Understanding Islam 0 Comments

This is the first of a two-part post on the 21 Egyptian martyrs killed in Libya. This first part is a reflection, as a Christian, on aspects of this event and reactions to it. The second part, ‘A message signed with blood to the Nation...

21 Feb “A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross”

Posted at 11:36h in Understanding Islam 0 Comments

This post is a analytical explanation of a film produced by Al-Hayat Media of the Islamic State, which portrays the ritual slaughter of 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya, in the film “A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross”. ...