Painting Fakes

So I finally have time and brain space to blog again, and I've been thinking: what do Brexit, Pauline Hanson and Donald Trump have in common? To my mind, there are at least three similarities. The first is that each of them represents a response to perceived threats to the wellbeing of their nations from people who are labelled "terrorists". These terrorists are pictured as an existential threat and mainstream political forces are portrayed as being too weak to respond to these threats. Hence, a certain proportion of our population turns to someone who will be "strong" and act decisively.  In Britain, a majority turned against their more moderate leaders and voted for a movement led by the right-wing UKIP and the far-right elements of the Conservative Party.  In the US, establishment Republican figures are rejected in favour of an outsider who promises to fix their broken nation.  Here in Australia Pauline Hanson remains a marginal figure but after 18 y...

I've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of David Kilcullen's Blood Year, and finally got to read it this week.  Kilcullen has been appearing a lot on ABC current affairs shows recently giving expert opinion on terrorist-related issues, and he always seems so knowledgeable and articulate. And so he ought.  Not only does he have a PhD in guerrilla warfare, he is a former Australian military officer who, during various phases of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, served as an analyst in the US State Department, an adviser to General David Petraeus in Iraq and on the staff of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  These days he runs a private research company which, among other things, advises humanitarian organisations about security issues in war zones and maintains a network of contacts in trouble spots around the world. The "blood year" of the title is 2014-15, when Islamic State emerged from the pack of extremist groups fighting in Iraq and Syria to claim large s...

If you were to watch the world news and listen to the pronouncements of our leaders, you would think we were at war with Islam.  Almost every night we see images of fanatical people brandishing flags with Arabic slogans and proclaiming Allahu Akbar (God is Great) alongside images of bombed out building, beheadings and abductions.  We hear stories of Christians and other religious minorities fleeing for their lives to avoid the choice of execution or forced conversion.  Is this an inevitable result of Islamic dominance in society, or is something else going on? I have been convinced for long time that Islam is not the problem.  Not that Islamic extremism isn't a  problem, but that this is an historical anomaly not an inevitable result of Islam. I want to try to explain briefly why I think this. When these persecutions and religious cleansing efforts first became headline news and various commentators and friends started suggesting they were a logical ...

I'm late to the party as usual but I've just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, originally published in 2005, thanks to a tip-off from my clever niece Alisha . The bombing of the World Trade Centre is becoming old news, but its effects are still with us and even more so still with our Islamic communities.  Last night I went to the launch of my friend Dave Andrews' book The Jihad of Jesus  which deals with dialogue and common ground between Christianity and Islam.  That's a whole other subject, but  Dave's friend and local Islamic community leader Nora Amath shared her own story of how, in the wake of that event, she and her friends and family in Australia experienced increasing suspicion and aggression as they went about their daily lives.  They had nothing to do with it and were as horrified as everyone else, but were still blamed and vilified - and continue to be to this day. How can we see this event in perspectiv...

So, I've been too busy to blog lately and it has taken a real piece of political idiocy to draw me out of my cave. No, it's not the controversy about Zaky Mallah and Q&A, although it's related.   Zaky Mallah is a 31-year-old Australian man of Lebanese descent who is currently in the headlines here in Australia for his appearance on an ABC talk show. Back in 2003, at the age of 20, Mallah was charged with terrorism offences after making a video in which he threatened to carry out a suicide bombing on ASIO headquarters.  After two years in remand, he was acquitted of the terrorism charges on the basis that he was incited to make the video by an undercover ASIO agent.  He was convicted of a lesser (non-terrorism) charge of threatening Commonwealth officials.  Two years in jail is a long time for making a stupid video. These days he is an outspoken Islamic activist of independent mind.  He is an firm opponent of Islamic State but also a fierce critic of...

A few weeks ago I wrote about the idea of "lone wolf terrorism" .  Now we have had our own version of the same thing, a terrifying and spectacular act of violence in which an Iranian immigrant called Man Horan Monis held a group of staff and customers hostage in a cafe in Sydney's Martin Place for 16 hours.  The standoff ended with Monis' death and that of two of his hostages. In its wake, government leaders and commentators have been asking the same question I did.  Was Monis a terrorist, or was he just a criminal?  On the one hand, he had a history of espousing radical Islamism and claimed to be acting in support of the Islamic State.  On the other hand, he didn't even have an IS flag to display, and had to ask police negotiators to bring him one.  His previous crimes appear to include writing hate letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan along with violence of a less political nature including a string of sexual assaults ...

Over the past few weeks we've been hearing a new term in interviews and statements from government ministers and the heads of national security agencies - "lone wolf terrorism".  I've been trying for a little while to come to terms with this concept and what it means. I think it's helpful to think about the deliberate killing of human beings as taking place along a continuum, as shown below. I'm not suggesting this is a moral continuum.  All these forms of killing are awful.  The continuum is related to the public or political nature of the act. Murder is essentially a private act.  When Brett Cowan killed Daniel Morcombe he was indulging his own twisted enjoyment of seeing someone else suffer.  When Carl Williams killed or arranged the killing of various members and associates of the Moran family he was protecting and extending his family's control of Melbourne's illicit drug trade.  When Adam Lanza shot 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary Sch...

I had an epiphany the other day.  I was watching ABC's  7.30 report on Mohammed Ali Baryalei, the Afghani-Australian man who is reputed to be the most senior Australian member of Islamic State.  I had a profound moment of identification. Baryalei is a man with a colourful history.  He arrived in Australia in the early 1980s as an infant after his family fled Afghanistan, and grew up in Sydney in the home of his violent father.  The trauma of his personal abuse was exacerbated by the World Trade Centre bombing (he would have been about 20 at the time) which made him feel like an outsider in Australia, and his young adulthood included bouts of depression, periodic drug abuse and possibly petty crime.  On the brink of suicide, he turned back to Islam and within a short time became a fervent preacher, evangelising young men on the streets of Sydney. The 7.30 story included some Youtube footage (which has been cut from the on-line version) of Baryalei ta...