The constructions of Sydney’s ‘Muslim ghettoes’

Abstract

This paper concentrates on various present day constructions of supposed ‘Muslim ghettoes’ within Sydney, Australia. Several Australian anti-Muslim activists usually envision these ‘ghetto’ regions as overpopulated, contaminated slums overrun with ‘unAustralian’ criminals. These racist images surfaced in the recent controversy over a proposed Islamic school in Camden, located in Sydney’s far south-west. Between 2007 and 2009, opponents of the proposal organised anti-Muslim rallies, wrote protest letters to newspapers, distributed several protest leaflets, attracted the support of politicians and even placed severed pigs’ heads on the proposed site with an Australian flag (see Al-Natour 2010). These events of protest collectively make up the Camden Islamic school controversy. While arguing that Muslims have no place in Camden, protestors often contrasted Camden’s rural and white identity with Sydney’s urban and culturally diverse qualities. Opponents referred to Sydney’s ‘Muslim enclaves’ when they forecast Camden’s future with an Islamic school. These constructions of ‘Sydney’ ss lums’ formed a dystopian imaginary of Camden’s future, drawing on racist imaginative geographies of ‘Muslim ghettos’. The racist imaginative geographies of Muslim ghettoes in Sydney are apparent in the Camden Islamic school controversy. I argue that the many constructions of Sydney’s Muslim ghettoes, as explicit during the controversy, resulted from an existing network of intertwined cultural meanings and identities. These included discourses of ‘race’, ethnicity, religion, class and deviancy, which fed the visions of Sydney’ sw est as a crime-infested, densely populated space where white Australians are excluded. In order to make sense of the many shapes of these ghettoes, this paper firstly examines Camden’s place in the Sydney region and its contrast to the culturally diverse communities which are also located in Sydney’s West. It then explores the many narratives of Muslim ghettoes as expressed by protestors against the school. The final section of this