![child bride](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/child-bride-1.jpg)
People Can Hear You
Gabrielle Lord: In 2014, I published a novel titled Dishonour, about an Iraqi girl in Australia who is desperate to avoid a forced marriage to a cousin back in Iraq and the female police officer who tries to help her. The fictitious 18 year old Rana fears she will be taken out of the country against her will and forced to marry a man who is almost twice her age and who is “traditional” in his religious observance. This means that the intended fiancé lives his life under sharia law, and that Rana’s position back in Iraq would be that of a subservient, second-class human being, a servant subject to the domination and sanctioned violence of her husband and his family, relegated to childbearing and endless cooking. Rana rejects this; she wants that most basic of all human rights: the right to self-determination. She wants to complete her pharmacy degree, as well as follow her heart. She has become attracted to Christianity, is in the process of converting, and is in love with a…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins