Islam In Australia Research Articles

History of Islam in Australia: Muslim Migration and the Evolution of Islamic Education

This study describes the history of Islam in Australia, highlighting the influx of Muslims and depicting the development of Islam in the country. This research employs the historical method, comprising four stages: heuristics for source collection, source verification or criticism, interpretation or analysis, and historiography for historical writing. The results of this study demonstrate that Islam began to spread to Australia in the early 17th century, primarily due to the regular presence of Makassar fishermen and traders searching for tripang. The next wave of Muslims who came and settled in Australia were Afghan Muslims, Malay Muslims, Indians, Albanians, Lebanese, Indonesians, and so on. The presence of Islam encourages Islamic education in the country, starting with non-formal Islamic education centered in mosques, homes, or offices of Islamic organizations. Various Muslim communities conduct studies and seminars on weekends, commonly known as 'Saturday or Sunday School.' The 1970s saw the establishment of formal Islamic schools in response to the growing Muslim population. The development of Islamic education in Australia gained momentum in the mid-1990s. Privately run Islamic schools adopt the entire local education system, with an additional six hours per week for religious content. As Islamic schools have developed, they have expanded to various states in Australia. The attitude of tolerance and openness that Islamic schools in Australia cultivate supports this

Muslim typologies in Australia: Findings of a national survey

Numerous researchers in the field of Islamic and Muslim Studies have proposed various typologies to categorize Muslims in relation to their understanding of and identification with Islam. However, to date few studies have conducted the necessary empirical work to determine the numbers of Muslims that identify with the typologies that have been constructed. This article is the first to present findings based on a comprehensive study of Muslims in relation to a spectrum of discursive typologies. The authors conducted a national survey of Islam in Australia among Muslim citizens and permanent residents in 2019. This article examines Muslim Australians across a spectrum of 10 typologies in relation to various demographic factors, questions concerning shariah and political Islam, sources of influence, preferences for interpreting the Qur’an, views on various ethical, social, and theological issues, engagement with non-Muslims, and openness to new knowledge about Islam. Contrary to stereotypical views of Islam and Muslims, the article’s findings point to a strong presence for liberal and progressive typologies and interpretations of the Islamic tradition among Muslim Australians.

Gender, Identity and Conversion: A Comparison of Male and Female Converts to Islam in Australia

ABSTRACT Over the past several decades, the phenomenon of conversion to Islam in Western societies has received a significant amount of attention, both in academia and in the mass media. Much of this attention has focused on the motives and experiences of female converts, a likely result of suggestions that higher numbers of Western women than men are converting to Islam, as well as pervasive views of Islam as a religion that mistreats women. Yet despite this fixation on conversion and gender, understanding of the compared experiences of male and female converts remains limited. This article seeks to address this key gap in the existing literature by examining the differences and commonalities in the experiences, beliefs and identities of male and female converts to Islam in Australia. It is hoped that this research will contribute to a greater understanding of the complex relationships between gender, conversion and identity, while encouraging further research in this area.

Islam in Australia: A National Survey of Muslim Australian Citizens and Permanent Residents

This article presents the findings of a national survey on Islam in Australia based on responses of 1034 Muslim Australian citizens and permanent residents. Knowing what Muslim Australians think about Islam in relation to Australian society is essential for a more informed understanding about Islam and Muslims needed to address misinformation, Islamophobia, and extremism. The findings presented in this article include typologies of Muslims; sources of influence concerning Islam; interpretations of the Qur’an; perspectives on ethical, social, and theological issues; issues of concern; social connections and sense of belonging; views on various Muslim-majority countries; and perspectives concerning political Islam, including jihad, caliphate, and shariah. While respondents’ understandings, interpretations, and expressions of Islam overall align with values and principles of equality, human rights, social cohesion, and social justice, a minority were found to understand and interpret Islam in ways that reflect the influence of late 20th and early 21st century ideas associated with Islamist political ideology, and a smaller sub-group were found to have views that could be considered extreme. This article discusses these findings in relation to the early 21st century time-period factors and the Australian social context.

Convertitis and the Struggle with Liminality for Female Converts to Islam in Australia

Drawing on ethnography among female converts to Islam who attended lessons at their local mosque in Melbourne, Australia, this article explores how new female converts navigate tensions between the secular and the religious, as they become Muslim. Conversion, for these women, is a series of interactions between religion, culture, gender and ethnicity, which work through, on and in their bodies. Through a framework of embodiment, I explore their struggle with certain aspects of the faith, which manifests in a phenomenon they refer to, jokingly, as convertitis. Convertitis, I argue, is a kind of “radical awkwardness”: an embodied reaction to liminality between normative models of Muslim/non-Muslim and Islam/the West which are upheld by symbolic and institutional power relations. Thus, in an attempt to better understand these women’s experiences of conversion, I explore their relationship with eating pork, listening to music, drinking alcohol and having a pet dog, to detail how perceived threats to their fledgling identity are managed through the adoption of literal and rational interpretations of Islam. By doing so, I aim to delineate the encounter between and co-existence of different sensory regimes, bodily nuances and moral registers that characterise the experience of conversion.

THE ROLE OF CENTRE FOR ISLAMIC THOUGHT AND EDUCATION (CITE): Correcting Negative Image of Islam, Spreading Moderate Islam in Australia

This paper discusses the participation of educational institution, Centre for Islamic Thought and Education (CITE) in promoting and campaigning moderate and tolerance Islam in Adelaide, Australia. The article also attempts to close reading of the discourse of moderate Islam itself to answer fundamental questions about what moderate Islam is, what CITE attempts to do, can do, and cannot be expected to do. This study is essential to fill the gap in the dearth literature discussing the role of educational institution in campaigning moderate Islam in Australia. This study was based on observation and interviews conducted with main figures of CITE and the staff members or the supporters of the group who actively involved in their activities in Adelaide, Australia. The result of the study shows that as an educational institution, CITE has significant roles in promoting moderate Islam and straightening negative image of Islam in the West.

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.

Pathways to Allah: Female Conversion to Islam in Australia

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the motivations for female conversion to Islam in Australia. To capture the diverse motivations and individual spiritual transitions of female converts, a descriptive phenomenological methodology was employed. Empirical data are based on two in-depth, semi-structured hour-long interviews with each of six female converts living in South East Queensland and northern New South Wales. Five key motivations and experiences were common to all participants during their pathways to conversion. All of the converts expressed a prior belief in God; were drawn to Islam after meeting Muslims; engaged in a process of individual interpretation, reasoning or investigation of Islam (ijtihād) to arrive at their own understanding of Islamic belief and practice; felt the values, principles and beliefs resonated with their own prior convictions; and experienced challenges that provided resistance to their desire to become a Muslim, mostly connected with family, friends, lifestyle and the public sphere of everyday social interaction. This is the first phenomenological study to investigate female conversion to Islam in Australia and provides unique insight and further depth of understanding regarding female conversion to Islam in the West as well as the dynamics of Islam in Australia.

Australia’s anti-Islam right in their own words. Text as data analysis of social media content

ABSTRACTIn recent years, far-right organisations have formed in response to what they believe to be the threat from the rise of Islam in Australia. Parallel movements have spawned an extensive literature internationally. In this study I investigate this movement in Australia using automated text analysis of all public posts from two of the most popular Australian anti-Islam groups on social media. This approach complements traditional polling methods by offering access to large samples of the spontaneously generated opinions, allowing subjects to speak in their own words. My analysis finds evidence that concerns about terrorism and the perceived political threat from Islam are paramount in these groups’ discussion of Muslims. I conclude by discussing the implications for counter-messaging strategies.

호주 무슬림 이해 : 이슬라모포비아 현상과 기독교와의 관계를 중심으로

Australia is located in the Asia-Pacific region and also closely related to the cultures of India, China and South-east Asian countries. Furthermore, Asian people are the major of Australian immigrants since World War II. Nonetheless, Australia is one of the traditional western Christian societies, which has been dominated by Anglican, Anglo-catholic, and British protestants. It is not quite different from other western countries to perceive Islam as the threatening religion in Australia. After ‘9.11’, the discourse of Islam in Australia is under a bias toward Islamophobia phenomenon.<BR><BR> In response to the typical westernized perception of Islam, Australian Muslims are attempted to protect Islamic belief and religious life by promoting ‘multiculturalism’ which is one of the national policy in Australia. In addition, as members of Australian Society, Muslims are willing to contribute to the peace with a critical view to the contemporary Islamic extremists. <BR><BR> Obviously, Christianity is the thing that is like shy hope in the heart to Australian people. It cannot be denied that the values and belief of Christianity have effected to the political, social and cultural systems of Australia. However, the influence of Christianity has been weakened and the churches are suffering from the various issues which constantly occur in secular society. In particular, the relationship between Christianity and Islam is ambivalent about attitudes and perspectives, that is to say, some Christians perceive Muslim as ‘others’ to be proselytized or to be enlightened, some try to extend the dialogical opportunities on the basis of dignity toward each other faith.<BR><BR> This article discusses the perception of Islam in Australia, which is inclined to Islamophobia and analyses the experiences of Muslim communities in response to the anti-Islam discourse and also identify the change of ecclesiastical mission context especially in relation to Islam. By analysing the various interreligious encounters between Christianity and Islam, this article illuminates how a multidimensional approach can influence to the interfaith dialogue of Australia in the future.

HISTORICAL FABULATION: A FRAMEWORK TO RETHINK THE ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE OUTSIDE ISLAMIC WORLD

The current study offers a critical interpretation of the more transient traces of Islam in Australia, and their representation in the equally scanty tangible evidences. The scope of recent surveys in this field is increasingly inclusive. However, very few studies focus on the architecture of Muslim communities in regions where Islam is not the predominant faith, especially in the southern hemisphere. The historical Adelaide Mosque, and many others, is excluded from the historical record despite the instrumental role it played in the life of Muslim settlers. This absence raises questions about gaps, or histories untold, as well as myths received, in histories of ‘Islamic’ architecture that raise questions about the truth-value of the past. There is a need to examine hybridized forms and shared architectural narratives to counter the myopic but persistent representation—or fabulation—of supposedly authentic, largely Arab-centric, forms of ‘Islamic’ architecture. This paper argues, then, that new theoretical frameworks are required to interpret this architectural hybrid that is, we argue, typical rather than exceptional.

Praying Where They Don't Belong: Female Muslim Converts and Access to Mosques in Melbourne, Australia

This paper analyses the data from a sample of women converts to Islam residing in Melbourne, Australia, and the difficulty they face in accessing mosques. Although conversion requires structure and support through the performance of religious rituals, Muslim women converts are hindered in their ability to freely access and enjoy mosques. This is despite historical freedom for women to access the Prophet's mosque. It appears that the trend to exclude women from mosques has been imported into the Australian context due to the strong ethnic identification of mosques with immigrant communities that are used to greater degrees of sex segregation than is generally practiced in Australia. The paper briefly reviews the role of the mosque in Muslim community life and its importance for new converts in facilitating their transition as a source of support after conversion. After examining the pattern of attendance at the various mosques in the greater metropolitan area, the paper reviews the historical debate over women's presence in the mosques; analyses the challenges of gender discrimination posed by culture, ethnicity and exclusion; and relates it to the hardship for new women converts to Islam in Australia, prompting some of them to a passive boycott.

Fatwas

In Australia, there has been confusion and misunderstanding surrounding the term ‘fatwa’. This goes both to its meaning and also to the role fatwas fulfil for Muslims, whether in Australia or in other parts of the world. This paper seeks to address both of these issues, first by demystifying fatwa through exploration of the distinctive place the have in Islamic jurisprudence, and second by identifying the methodology used by jurists in ifta (the giving of fatwas), which has enabled Islamic law to be responsive to new developments and contemporary challenges. Given the recent expansion of technological, economic and medical advances and the pattern of migration of Muslims to secular societies, the paper argues that the need for fatwas is in fact increasing as Muslims strive to accommodate Islamic religious requirements within these new environments. The paper surveys the sources of Islamic authority in Australia, concluding that a process of collective ijtihad (independent legal reasoning) would best be suited to the diversity that is the hallmark of Islam in Australia. However, it is stressed that this would not lessen the primacy of Australian law but rather would complement it, as fatwas give guidance to Muslims Australians in the personal, individual and private spheres of life.

Recovering Public Memory: Politics, Aesthetics and Contempt

It's the weekend – leisure time. It's the interlude when, Guy Debord contends, the proletarian is briefly free of the 'total contempt so clearly built into every aspect of the organization and management of production' in commodity capitalism; when workers are temporarily 'treated like grown-ups, with a great show of solicitude and politeness, in their new role as consumers.' But this patronising show turns out to be another form of subjection to the diktats of 'political economy': 'the totality of human existence falls under the regime of the 'perfected denial of man'.' (30). As Debord suggests, even the creation of leisure time and space is predicated upon a form of contempt: the 'perfected denial' of who we, as living people, really are in the eyes of those who presume the power to legislate our working practices and private identities.

‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen

On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ from around the nation for a Muslim Summit in response to the London bombings in July of that year. One of the outcomes of the two hour summit was a Statement of Principles committing Muslim communities in Australia to resist radicalisation and pursue a ‘moderate’ Islam. Since then the ill-defined term ‘moderate Muslim’ has been used in both the political and media discourse to refer to a preferred form of Islamic practice that does not challenge the hegemony of the nation state and that is coherent with the principles of secularism. Akbarzadeh and Smith conclude that the terms ‘moderate’ and ‘mainstream’ are used to describe Muslims whom Australians should not fear in contrast to ‘extremists’. Ironically, the policy direction towards regulating the practice of Islam in Australia in favour of a state defined ‘moderate’ Islam signals an attempt by the state to mediate the practice of religion, undermining the ethos of secularism as it is expressed in the Australian Constitution. It also – arguably – impacts upon the citizenship rights of Australian Muslims in so far as citizenship presents not just as a formal set of rights accorded to an individual but also to democratic participation: the ability of citizens to enjoy those rights at a substantive level. Based on the findings of research into how Australian Muslims and members of the broader community are responding to the political and media discourses on terrorism, this article examines the impact of these discourses on how Muslims are practicing citizenship and re-defining an Australian Muslim identity.

‘Moderate Islam’

‘Moderate Islam’

Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?

Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?

Presenting Islam: The role of Australia-Based Muslim Student Associations

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the principles and prospects of da'wah and interfaith dialogue in an Australian setting, focusing on the role of Muslim Students Associations at university campuses and on the key issues essential for effective communication between parties thriving in a culturally diverse society where the Muslims make a minority and the nationals possess a certain mindset. Lessons have been drawn from case studies and attempts have been made at examining the success of an umbrella organization of Muslim students and youth in fostering the propagation of Islam in Australia.

The Settlement of Islam in Australia

Depuis 50 ans, une importante immigration en Australie a cree de profonds changements dans la nature et la structure de la societe ainsi que dans la culture australienne. Ces changements sont devenus d'autant plus visibles ces deux dernieres decennies que la diversite des groupes immigres s'est accentuee. Le champ religieux australien, apres avoir connu une predominance britannique (des la periode de l'immigration europeenne commencee en 1788), se caracterise par la pluralite des groupes qui le composent au nombre desquels il faut compter les musulmans, les bouddhistes et les hindous. Le concept de l'etablissement religieux a ete developpe pour analyser le role de la religion dans le processus d'etablissement des immigres et le changement genere a la societe d'accueil quand ces nouvelles religions sont presentes dans la vie quotidienne.