Australian Muslim Research Articles

What’s in a Term: Can Feminism Look beyond the Global North/Global South Geopolitical Paradigm?

What’s in a Term: Can Feminism Look beyond the Global North/Global South Geopolitical Paradigm?

Grafting Eco-Diasporic Identity in Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Selected Novels

This paper is based on three selected novels entitled Does My Head Look Big In This? (2005), Ten Things I Hate About Me (2006), and Where The Streets Had A Name (2008) written by Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979), a Palestinian-Egyptian Australian Muslim diasporic writer. In this article, we examine the manifestations of grafting eco-diasporic identity by Abdel-Fattah in order to address how identity graft is operated by interacting with ideology, culture and nature in the contexts of the host land and the homeland as represented in the three selected novels. Using Colin Richards’ theory of graft as a framework, we explore identity contestations of Muslim young adults in the novels from an ecocritical and diasporic perspectives. In the novel Does My Head Look Big In This?, the images of Amal’s sense of being marginalised in the semiosphere of the host land and the sense of self-respect of her Muslim rootedness and heritage of the homeland semiosphere frame the fractured graft of identity. The character of Jamilah, in Ten Things I Hate About Me displays genuine manifestations of the collective emblem of the grafted identity. Finally, the symbol of the iconic jar of the homeland soil and its potentiality of regenerating Hayaat’s identity in Where the Streets Had A Name exhibits the ecological semiosphere in which the grafted identity is shaped. The current discussion, therefore, offers fresh insights into allowing a new horizon for identity grafting in Abdel-Fattah’s works as well as other writers within the tradition of Muslim Diasporic Literature.

Shari’a in Everyday Life in Sydney: An Analysis of Professionals and Leaders Dealing with Islamic Law

This article explores how Shari’a is conceptualised and experienced by 27 Muslim legal professionals and leaders in Sydney. It analyses qualitative data on issues with regards to the experience of Muslims with Shari’a, on how it can be improved in Australia and on how compatible is Shari’a with the Australian legal system. It also discusses Shari’a tribunals and financial opportunity. While we do not find any convincing arguments for the push to the further implementation of Shari’a in Australia, we find that despite political objections Shari’a is a vital part of everyday life for observant Australian Muslims. We are arguing that the popular political debate around Shari’a is in critical need of more exposure to balanced Muslim voices that can be heard above the popular political resistance to any manifestation of Shari’a.

Whither Minority Jurisprudence?

This study explores the notion of fiqh al-aqalliyat (minority jurisprudence) in Western societies with a focus on Australian Muslims. It argues that, despite enabling Western Muslims to formulate a contextspecific jurisprudence to their newly adopted homelands, fiqh alaqalliyat remains fiercely debated in Islamic studies. Critics of minority fiqh reveal several contention points relating to its lack of applicability in certain social and political contexts; exploitation of legal maxims relating to easing hardship for Muslims; and its overly integrationist mentality. Proponents of minority fiqh, on the other hand, argue these very facets are circumstantial and designed to help Muslims appropriate Islamic teachings to new and unfamiliar settings. This study therefore looks at the socio-political and situational circumstances of the minority population in question, whether it is a well-established migrant community in the West or one that holds a less favourable minority status elsewhere. It assesses these contexts in light of the scholarly and juristic arguments at hand, before moving into how minority fiqh issues are deliberated and contested in Australia.

Muslim Memories in Victoria

There is no history of Islam in Australia without a history of Muslim communities; there is no history of these Muslim communities without the memories of Australian Muslims. Within Australia’s religiously pluralistic mosaic there is no history of the Muslim faith without sharing universal values with other faiths.
 This paper is primarily based on empirical research undertaken in Victoria. It is a pioneering exploration of the building of multiethnic Muslim communities and interfaith relations from the 1950s to the 1980s. It is part of much broader research on the history of Islam in Australia. It is kaleidoscopic in its gathering of individual and family migrant memories from Muslims in all walks of life. It includes an older Muslim generation as well as those who came later, in subsequent waves. Muslim interviewees in the research were migrants of various ethnicities from Albania, Bosnia, Cyprus, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Syria, Turkey, Tanzania and Kenya. Muslim men and women are represented, and also those born in Australia. This research was enhanced by consulting Islamic and Christian archival sources.

Islamophobia and Australian Muslim Political Consciousness in the War on Terror

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the forms of consciousness that inform Australian Muslim responses to Islamophobia in the context of the War on Terror, particularly since the emergence of Islamic State (‘IS’). As my responses cover a plethora of political action, resistance and conduct, my sites of enquiry are specifically confined to the forms of consciousness that inform the tendency for key Muslim community organisations to issue condemnations of terrorist attacks involving Muslims, on the one hand, and Muslim individual and activists’ responses to Islamophobia on the other. The essential argument I advance is that internalised Islamophobia is one dimension (among many) that works quietly in the shadows of a certain politically reactive consciousness.

Attitudes of Australian Muslims and Australian Wider Community Towards Muslim Institutions

Abstract Islamic (community) schools and mosques are extremely important sites for religious education, language and culture maintenance and religious rituals and practices for a large number of Muslim Australians, These institutions remained significant and symbolic of Islamic identities despite rampant anti-Muslim sentiments: attacks and threats against Muslim institutions (mosques and Islamic schools) and individual members of the Muslim community and negative media portrayal. Despite these hostilities and tensions, a case study conducted in Adelaide and Darwin shows that the Muslim community holds the view that the attitudes of Australian wider community toward their institutions are mixed with more positive than negative attitudes for which they blamed the media. Abstrak Beberapa sekolah (komunitas) dan tempat peribadatan Islam merupakan bagian yang sangat penting untuk pendidikan keagamaan, pelestarian bahasa dan budaya, dan praktik keagamaan bagi hampir semua masyarakat muslim di Australia. Beberapa Rutinitas seperti ini masih signifikan dan menjadi simbol identitas bagi seorang muslim terlepas dari sikap sentimentil terhadap kaum muslim yang merajalela: seperti serangan dan ancaman terhadap institusi muslim (masjid dan sekolah islam), individu muslim itu sendiri dan penggambaran negatif terhadap islam itu sendiri. Terkait permusuhan dan ketegangan yang sedang terjadi saat ini, sebuah studi kasus yang dilakukan di Adelaide, dan Darwin mengemukakan bahwa komunitas muslim masih berpandangan bahwa sikap masyarakat Australia secara luas terhadap institusi mereka bercampur dengan sikap yang lebih positif daripada sikap negatif dari apa yang ditujukan oleh media. How to Cite : Dialo, I. (2017). Attitudes of Australian Muslims and Australian Wider Community Towards Muslim Institutions. TARBIYA: Journal of Education in Muslim Society, 4(1), 1-12. doi:10.15408/tjems.v4i1. 5830. Permalink/DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/tjems.v4i1.5830

The Long Reach of the Riots: Denying Racism, Forgetting Cronulla

ABSTRACT1Sydney’s 2005 Cronulla Riots marked a watershed moment in race relations between White and Arabic-speaking Australians. In this essay, I reflect on how the riots now sit in the public imagination and explore how certain narratives on the riots have produced a series of problematic silences, disownings, and forgettings. I elaborate six modes of denial and disavowal – modes of sidestepping and disowning the racism that underpinned the riot and more contemporary attitudes towards Muslim Australians. The paper is framed around six ‘modes’ of silence: (1) Always Elsewheres, Always Someone Else; (2) The Spectacular; (3) The Narrative of ‘Past-ness’; (4) Twisted Tolerance; (5) Slippery Humour; (6) Interpolation of Non-Arab Subjects into the White Project. Some claim that the Cronulla Riots were an aberration and many in the ‘Shire’ wish that attention would move on. After all, the riots were a decade ago and the ‘kids’ who participated have all grown up. There has been no trouble on the beach since. I suggest, however, that the riots have a much longer reach – culturally, geographically, and temporally – than is generally understood.

Media Representations of Racism and Spatial Mobility: Young Muslim (Un)belonging in a Post-Cronulla Riot Sutherland

ABSTRACTYoung Australian Muslims living in Sydney have been influenced by the Cronulla riot. Online surveys (n: 76) and interviews (n: 10) reveal the impact on their engagement with the Sutherland region around Cronulla, detectable a decade after this event. The exclusionary intent of the rioters and their sympathisers was a racist form of spatial management that had both specific and general aims. The Australian news media contribute to the ethnic purification that was originally intended by the Cronulla riots. This reduces mobility among an ‘ethnic other’ in accessing spaces that have been portrayed as ‘racist’ – or, in the case of young Muslims, ‘Islamophobic’. Findings demonstrate the ongoing consequences of a wide-scale racist attack, like the Cronulla riot, on urban citizenship. Representations of the Cronulla riot are a repertoire of learning for young Sydney Muslims that rehearse what has been conceptualised as pedagogies of (un)belonging by Noble and Poynting [(2010). White Lines: The Intercultural Politics of Everyday Movement in Social Spaces. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 31, 489–505]. We have extended the application of this concept to a specific space and point to the means by which constructions of unbelonging are reinforced and made material. Processes of repetition and accumulations identified by Butler and Essed highlight how this enduring pedagogy of spatial unbelonging is maintained by media representations of places as Islamophobic.

Muslims in the Military

Australian Muslims rarely join the Australian Defence Force. There is no evidence this statistic is changing, no sign it is likely to change in the near future, and meanwhile the Australian Muslim population continues to grow faster than the general Australian population. If statistical trends continue, at best the situation will become far more noticeable, and at worst it will become an issue of national security and societal cohesion. This paper discusses the risks of long-term segregation of Australian Muslims from the nation’s defence forces, and considers them alongside the risks of acting to deliberately increase in numbers of Muslims serving in the ADF. Muslim jurists face a dilemma, where the scholar who is against Islamic service in the ADF risks being perceived as not supportive of Australia’s efforts to fight ISIS, et al, and the scholar who comes out in support of ADF service risks being perceived by their own community as endorsing Western imperialism and the collateral damage suffered by innocent Muslims in the same geographical areas. Similar dilemmas for ADF leadership also exist and are the cause of app

Religiosity, Attitudes on Diversity and Belonging Among Ordinary Australian Muslims

Islamic incompatibility is a core discourse of fringe political parties, mostly from the right of the political spectrum, who have agitated against religious diversity and also against immigration of Muslims, especially from certain parts of the world. Smaller scale political alliances, against mosque developments, private Islamic schools or halal certification, also draw heavily on this pre-supposition. Despite the preponderance of such despondent commentary, there is surprisingly little by way of empirical analysis of this assumption of incompatibility. This paper draws on a community survey (n:585) and the results show high rates intercultural mixing in workplaces, educational settings and socially, with little evidence for separatism. These Australian Muslims have very positive views about cultural diversity, most perceive there to be consistency between Islam and Australian norms, and they see themselves as Australian. Those with stronger levels of religiosity have even more positive views on diversity and consistency. We offer two explanations, one based on official multiculturalism, and the other on tenets of Islamic thinking on toleration and moderation.

News Media Coverage of Islam and Muslims in Australia: An Opinion Survey among Australian Muslims

Existing research has explored the ways the mainstream news media covers Muslims and Islam, but few studies have examined Muslims’ reactions to this reporting. Studies that have investigated this issue have identified that the responses of Muslims to news media coverage tend to be largely negative because of the lack of Muslim news sources, the stereotypical representation of Muslims in news coverage, the portrayal of Muslims as the enemy within, and the conflation of Muslims with terrorism. This paper further explores the attitudes of Muslims to news media coverage of Islam and Muslims by drawing on data from 14 focus groups (N = 104 participants) conducted with Australian Muslims. Similar to previous research, findings reveal that Australian Muslims are highly critical of news media coverage of Islam and Muslims and express concern about the divisiveness that such portrayal can have for Australian society. However, the study participants also had positive comments to make about the news media. Possible solutions to negative news media portrayals of Muslims are considered.

Australian Muslim Consumers and Takaful Products: an Empirical Study Investigating Awareness, Perceptions and Purchase Intentions

Australian Muslim Consumers and Takaful Products: an Empirical Study Investigating Awareness, Perceptions and Purchase Intentions

The Double Bind of Writing as an Australian Muslim Woman

I could have been rich years ago. Every Muslim woman writer knows this about herself. The Muslim woman as victim or escapee dominates the publishing world’s imaginings of Muslim women. Nothing titillates the literary world more than the Muslim woman “native informant” who bravely “bares all” to confess her journey from false consciousness to good liberal (preferably atheist) subject. In this article I share my experiences as a writer attempting to subvert this paradigm in the young adult and children’s literature world. The choices I have made and face reinforce the tensions and challenges of “writing Muslim.” Can writing be self-determined? Can narcissism be accommodated, or are the stakes too high? Can it be forgiven? How does one avoid double consciousness in a climate of Islamophobia? How does one negotiate the endless vacillation between “the universal” and “the particular”?

The role of religion in work-life interface

Although religion is central to the lives of many people, little attempt has been made to understand its role within work–life conflict, work–life facilitation and more broadly, work–life balance. This study advances current knowledge by examining the role of religion within these concepts, and exploring its moderator influence. This is achieved through investigating the experiences of Australian Muslim men and the religion of Islam, which encourages multiple roles for its followers and involves well-defined physical acts of worship. To test various hypotheses, data were collected in the form of survey questionnaires, either face-to-face or online, from 301 Australian Muslim men. The findings support the proposition that religiosity can be beneficial for work–life balance, rather than competing with work and other non-work roles for time and energy. Furthermore, religiosity can moderate the relationships between job demands and work-to-life conflict, and work hours and work-to-life conflict, but not between work flexibility and work/life facilitation, and family demands and life-to-work conflict. The findings suggest that religiosity can be important for work–life balance and stress the need for a change in research direction in this area, one that is broadened to include other roles besides work and family, including religion.

English

Randa Abdel-Fattah’s 2006 novel, Does My Head Look Big in This?, is about a teenage Australian Muslim protagonist who voluntarily chooses to wear the hijab to her elite private school in Melbourne, and the personal and social challenges that she faces after making this decision. In this paper, I suggest that the novel portrays the action of wearing the hijab as mainly apolitical, and that it is instead a spiritual and religious act which demonstrates aspects of the hijab as empowering to an individual’s life. This subverts the stereotypical understanding of the hijab, particularly by the West, as either a tool of control and subjugation of Muslim women, or as a stand against Western society and ideology. By using Saba Mahmood’s (2005) study of Muslim women piety, which argues that Islam and its practices can be used as a tool for women’s empowerment, particularly for achieving self-improvement and self-actualization, this paper pays attention to the representation of the hijab in the novel. The decision to wear the hijab opens a path for the protagonist to become more adherent to her religion, as well as improving her attributes and individuality as a whole. This creates a wholesome young woman who is not only committed to her religion, but is also mindful of her character. DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2016-1603-08

Problems, Challenges and Prospects of Indonesian Muslim Community in Sydney for Promoting Tolerance

This paper elucidates a map of Indonesian Muslim communities around Sydney in order to observe the possibility to promote a moderate and tolerance of Indonesian Islam worldwide. Indonesian Muslims who live in Australia are relatively small if we consider that we are the closer neighbor of Australia and have the biggest Muslim populations in the world. Most Indonesian Muslim communities in Sydney are in a form of kelompok pengajian (Islamic study group), which is commonly based on ethnicity, regionalism (province and regency), and religious affiliation with Indonesian Islamic groups. The main problems of Indonesian Muslim communities in Sydney are an ambiguous identity, laziness integration, and dream to home country. Most Indonesian Muslim diaspora in Sydney only consider Australia as the land for making money. Therefore, their inclusion to Australian community is just being “Indonesian Muslim in Australia” and it seems hard for them to be “Australian Muslim”, especially in the case of those who already changed to be Australian citizens. This kind of diaspora attitude differs from Muslims Diasporas from the Middle East and South Asia countries who are mostly ready to be fully Australian Muslim. Naturally, most Indonesian Muslim communities put their emphasis to develop their community based on social needs and try to avoid political idea of Islamism. In this case, the Indonesian government, through the Indonesian Consulate in Sydney, has great resources to promote moderate and tolerant views of Indonesian Islam to other Muslim communities, as well as to Western media. In optimizing resources of Indonesian Muslim communities in Sydney to envoy Indonesian cultures and policies, it is necessary for Indonesian government to have a person with integrated knowledge on Islamic Studies who are working officially under the Indonesian consulate in Sydney. It is based on the fact that most Indonesian Muslim communities needs a patron from the government to manage and soften some differences among them, especially related to problems of identities, as well as to link them with the wider Australian communities.

With God on our side: Christianity, whiteness, Islam and otherness in the Australian experience

This article discusses the whiteness of Christianity in Australia and the ways that Islam has been constructed as Other. Its starting point is the phrase used by a protestor at a Reclaim Australia event: ‘Jesus not Islam’. The article begins with a historical contextualization showing how Christianity became white in Europe from around the early seventeenth century. It then discusses how Islam came to be produced as a fundamental threat to Christianity, the moral order articulated through it, and the civilization built on it. The article argues that recognizing this is a necessary foundation for understanding why Islam has been singled out in Australia and the ways that the ‘Australian Muslim’ has been constructed.

Diversity Agendas in Australian Stand-Up Comedy

Diversity Agendas in Australian Stand-Up Comedy

Cultural Identification and Religious Identification Contribute Differentially to the Adaptation of Australian Adolescent Muslims

Australian Muslims are generally perceived as a devalued group in Australia and the public attitudes towards them are generally negative. This context raises questions about belonging and adaptation among Australian adolescent Muslims. The current study investigated how adolescent Muslims relate to their heritage culture, religion, and Australian culture, and which of these three factors is most important to adolescent Muslims’ psychological and socio-cultural adaptation. The study employed a mixed-method design. A total of 321 high school Muslim students (149 males and 172 females) aged between 14 and 18 years completed self-report questionnaires, and a subset sample of 18 students in the same age range, evenly split between males and females, participated in semi-structured interviews. The study revealed a hierarchical pattern of identification among Australian adolescent Muslims, with attachment to their religion being the most important, followed by heritage culture identification and being Australian in third place. Australian adolescent Muslims’ religious identification was perceived overall as more crucial to their socio-cultural and psychological adaptation, than their heritage culture identification or Australian identification. There was an overall modest contribution of Australian identification to adolescent Muslims’ adaptation. This might be connected with the relatively less attachment they show to their Australian identity due maybe to perception of being the target of prejudice, an issue that can be addressed by implementation of prejudice reduction strategies.