Edition 7
The Lure of Fundamentalism
- Published 1st March, 2005
- ISBN: 9780733315480
- Extent: 268 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm)
Fundamentalism has become a metaphor for dogmatic solutions to complex problems from schooling, to the environment, foreign relations and health.
The desire to be safe with certainty is shaping decisions in unprecedented ways.
Writers include: Murray Sayle, Hugh Mackay, John Carroll, Michael McKernan, Tom Morton, Nick Earls, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Lee Kofman, Michael Wilding, Gideon Haigh, Meera Atkinson, Glyn Davis and many more.
In this Edition
Sharp hot fantasies of a better world
We had come down now to the warm south coast, to a small fishing village which I shall call Castillo –though this is not its name. Many years ago, in the summer of 1936, I had lived in this place. I was there when...
Dry rations
A human being survives by his ability to forget.– Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma TalesIN THE PAST decade or so, no country has learned so much about its past as Russia, and no country has been so little moved. From its declassified archives have flooded tales...
Watching the sparrow
Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows fall? Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home? When Jesus is my portion, my constant friend is he His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me....
Beyond the cathedral doors
ST ANDREW'S CATHEDRAL, the symbolic heart of the Sydney Anglican Diocese, has an enviable location in the centre of the city's CBD. On George Street next to the grand Sydney Town Hall, it is just a stone's throw from the main public transport networks,...
God wills it! The bitter fruits of fundamentalism
In any case history, insofar as it keeps alive the memory of past wrongs, is not helpful for the future.– Antony Black, Muslim Political Thought, 2001PAINFUL TO LOOK at, impossible to look away – the Holy Land of half humanity holds us all in...
The search for moral security
THE SUICIDE BOMBER who carried out the September 9, 2004, attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta was Heri Kurniawan, known as Golun, a 30-year-old from the village of Cigarung in west Java. As he travelled to Jakarta to carry out the attack that...
Something better: fundamentalism, revolution, loss of faith and the future
THE CITY IN which I grew up was famed for its part in resisting the militant fundamentalism that swept through Britain three and a half centuries ago.Worcester was called "the faithful city" in commemoration of its loyalty to the Stuart dynasty. The doors to...
Poems that kill
Children Beneath Our Skyafter a 'cartoon' by Michael LeunigThe sky was one of the redeeming features of the war– Sigfried SassoonHere it billows and slides in from the west in waves blown and broken above the Southern Ocean. Sheet metal one day ice driving...
Living in a material world
Winner, 2005 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public DebateThis is not a comic-book plot. This is not a Paul Jennings tale. This is real. There are pieces of material floating around in Australian stores, in your well-known fabric...
Songs of childhood
How do you make a terrorist? I can't pretend to know the definitive answer to that question, and I'm not at all sure that there is just one. But I can see that it's possible that some people who had childhoods not unlike mine...
The magic door to Judaism
I GREW UP in a Jewish Orthodox family and my first memories of Kabbalah flow from my childhood in the early 1980s. Kabbalah seemed like Salome – an alluring silhouette blurred by seven mysterious scarves. It was so available, in the next room, where...
That prolific mother of strife
he grand statue of Daniel O'Connell – the Liberator – interrupted the view of the city of Melbourne in 1941, just as that of Daniel Mannix does now, showing that for bishops, as for all of us, fashions may change among our heroes. It...
The new campus ideology
Attention, Ladies and Gentlemen: a message from the Sydney University Christian Evangelical Union. Make sure you leave Tuesday 1pm free in order to hear three talks on the Book of Isaiah from the Old Testament of the Bible. Carslaw Lecture Theatre 287 at the...
Manufacturing ancient hatreds
"Can the West, which takes its great invention, democracy, more seriously than the Word of God, come out against this coup that has brought an end to democracy?...Can the West endure any democracy achieved by enemies who in no way resemble them?"– Orhan Pamuk, Snow,...
Not crying wolf
Robert Gelbard had no trouble getting in to see CIA chief George Tenet. As United States ambassador to Indonesia, Gelbard was concerned about emerging terrorist threats in South-East Asia. It was November 2000; nearly a year before terror attacks would kill thousands in New...
Featured Contributors
Lee Kofman
Lee Kofman is the author of three works of fiction and the two memoirs Imperfect (Affirm Press, 2019), which...
Nick Earls
Nick Earls is the author of twenty-seven books for adults, teenagers and children. His novels have won awards in...
Murray Sayle (1926–2010)
Murray Sayle was a distinguished Australian journalist, television documentary maker and novelist.His long career in print journalism began with...
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Randa Abdel-Fattah is a research fellow in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University. She is also a multi-award...
