Overland is one of Australia’s finest literary journals. Punchy, provocative, topical, relevant and interesting, the magazine re-launched its website this week and is currently running a Subscriberthon. Do it for yourself and the country. Get into it! I was asked to write an original piece for the festivities: Antony Loewenstein is a prominent blogger, and…
Showing all posts tagged Islam
Jews should understand Muslim pain
Tariq Ali on the curse of Islamophobia: It sometimes irritates people but I do compare it to the anti-Semitism that existed in the 20s and 30s and 40s of the last century. And I do wonder whether all the education that people are being given, and rightly so, about the killing of the Jews and…
Millions of Muslims dead and the world wonders why the West is hated?
Stephen Walt asks why the US is so shocked when Muslims want to kill their citizens: Some degree of anti-Americanism may reflect ideology, distorted history, or a foreign government’s attempt to shift blame onto others (a practice that all governments indulge in), but a lot of it is the inevitable result of policies that the…
Bill Clinton reads Friedman and thinks Palestinians love being bombed
Need evidence that Bill Clinton is part of the problem and not the solution, utterly disconnected from facts on the ground in the Middle East? This Foreign Policy interview will only confirm the bankrupt ideas that marinate in the American political elite (and are merely copied around the empire, including Australia): I still think there…
Palestinians in Gaza can’t even mark their holy days
Gaza journalist and teacher Rami Almeghari – his work perfectly captures the day to day toughness of life in the Strip – explains the reality of this year’s Muslim holiday of Eid: Daoud Suleiman Ahmad, 48, an unemployed construction worker, has been unable to find work for almost three years due to the Israeli blockade…
No entry, says Israel, because you’re Arab
Gideon Levy reminds us in Haaretz that only Israel gets away with discrimination on the basis of being Palestinian: In no other city is access to holy places restricted according to the believer’s age, as Muslims who seek to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque are restricted.
America loves you by killing you, argues Thomas Friedman
The New York Times bubble has helped Thomas Friedman for a very long time (like here). But his latest pronouncement from the mount maybe takes the cake: Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur,…
The Jakarta Post: Changing people’s perceptions about Jews
The following feature by Desy Nurhayati appears in yesterday’s Jakarta Post: His recent visit to Aceh made Antony Loewenstein the first Jew that most people in the country’s devoutly Muslim province had ever met or engaged with. Some Acehnese he met were surprised to learn that the Jewish-Australian journalist, author of the controversial and best-selling…
Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran (says Jewish historian)
Israeli historian Benny Morris, a man with a serious dislike of Arabs and Iranians, yesterday unloaded in the UK Guardian and urged nothing less than a military strike against the Islamic Republic. Once again, a leading Zionist voice defines his ideology as nothing other than violence and devastation: The talk in Israel, explicit and open…
South Africa seemingly infested by friendly Israeli agents
Sometimes, certain stories need no introduction: South Africa deported an Israeli airline official last week following allegations that Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet, had infiltrated Johannesburg international airport in an effort to gather information on South African citizens, particularly black and Muslim travellers. The move by the South African government followed an investigation by…