Muslims In Australia Research Articles

Water Savings in Places of Worship: A Case Study for St Mary’s Mosque in Australia

Water is used for various religious purposes, including ablution for billions of Muslims around the world. Water savings in ablution can make a positive contribution towards achieving the water-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). A survey-based study was conducted at St Mary’s Mosque in Sydney, Australia, to understand the water usage during ablution and how water can be saved by Muslims in mosques. It has been found that the participants of the survey use 4 to 8 L of water to perform one ablution. About 82% of the participants are careful about saving water in ablution. It has also been found that about 70% of the participants believe that wastage of water during ablution is ‘haram’ (unlawful). Some 95% of the participants believe that religious motivation can play a significant role in saving water during ablution, and Imams can make a notable positive difference by encouraging their followers to save water during ablution. It has also been found that 64% of the participants are willing to use harvested rainwater for ablution. The findings of this study will help Muslims in Australia and around the globe to save water and contribute to the circular economy, as saving potable water (by reducing water use during ablution and using harvested rainwater at the source of water collection) saves energy and encourages responsible consumption.

An Investigation of Australian Muslims’ Help-Seeking Pathways for Mental Health Problems

This research involves an exploration of Australian Muslims’ attitudes, perceptions, and experiences of mental health and accessing professional treatment services. It utilized a mixed-methods design consisting of in-depth interviews and a survey. The face-to-face interviews were conducted with practising Muslims in Australia (N = 20) and the online survey was based on the main themes that emerged from the interviews and was completed by the Australian Muslim participants (N = 200). Grounded theory was employed as the underlying approach for the qualitative data collection and analysis. The results revealed that the participants adopted distinct help-seeking pathways, which involved a range of religious and cultural influences. The participants highlighted a need for religiously and culturally appropriate treatment for Muslim clients. Overall, the findings draw attention to the need for theorists, researchers, and clinicians to understand the distinct pathways of seeking mental health when working with Muslim clients.

Fuelling contempt for police: explaining why procedural injustice and police ineffectiveness damage Muslims’ trust in police

ABSTRACT Research shows that discriminatory policing can erode public trust in police. Yet, little research has examined the role that contempt can play in explaining this relationship. Focusing on Muslims in Australia, we test whether procedural justice and police effectiveness are associated with enhanced trust in police across two policing contexts (general duties policing and counterterrorism policing), and whether Muslims’ level of contempt for police mediates these relationships. Using survey data from 504 Muslims, we show that both procedural justice and police effectiveness are positively associated with Muslims’ trust in the police and negatively associated with contempt across both policing contexts. We also find that contempt is negatively associated with trust in both policing contexts. Finally, our findings show that contempt partially mediates the relationship between procedural justice and trust and between police effectiveness and trust. These findings reinforce the need for police to draw on procedurally fair and effective service delivery when engaging with minority groups who report strained relations with police. Our findings also highlight the need for scholars to closely consider distinct emotions as an important theoretical mechanism linking discriminatory police treatment with public (dis)trust of police.

Young Muslims in Australia and their Identity Formation

This article examines identity construction among young Muslims in multicultural and multi-faith Australia. Multiculturalism and the social position of young Muslims in Australia has long been poorly perceived by many bigoted politicians and public intellectuals who all argue against social cohesion of diverse cultures believing minority groups form ghettos. In media presentations and political discourses Muslims are often constructed as the “Other” forcing many Muslims to reconstruct their identities around religion – Islam - as the principal marker of identity. It is suggested in the paper that young Muslims in Australia face multiple challenges to live out their principal identity despite Australia’s multicultural and democratic claims. Many young Muslims continue to experience marginalisation and “Othering” and even many Australian-born third generation Muslims struggle to gain general recognition as valued citizens of Australia. The article argues that young Muslims have a developed capacity to work through depoliticised, hybrid and contextualised identities in multicultural and multi-faith Australia, however, they still experience unreasonable and unequal burden to constantly prove their allegiance to Australia to be considered “true Australians.” Under such pressures sometimes young Muslims are forced to downplay or even conceal their Islamic identity in which they normally find comfort and security. Through forced espousal of secular values in an endeavour to be recognised as integrated “Australians”, some young Muslims suffer from identity crisis constantly re-evaluating who they are.

Buddhism in the Far North of Australia pre-WWII: (In)visibility, Post-colonialism and Materiality

Buddhism was first established in Australia through flows of migrants in the mid-nineteenth century, and is currently Australia’s fourth-largest religion. Yet Buddhists have received significantly less scholarly attention than Christians, Jews and Muslims in Australia. Previous research conducted on Buddhism in Australia has also largely centered on the southern states, and on white Buddhists. This article shares findings of archival research on Buddhism in the far north of Australia, focused on Chinese, Japanese, and Sri Lankan communities working in mining, pearling, and sugar cane industries, pre-WWII. It documents the histories of exclusion, resistance and belonging experienced by Australia’s Buddhists in the far north of Australia pre-WWII, during times of colonial oppression and Japanese internment. In so doing, this article challenges dominant narratives of a white Christian Australia, and also of white Buddhism in Australia, by rendering Asian communities in scholarship on religion in Australia more visible.

Exploring the Influence of News Consumption on Non-Muslim Australians’ Attitudes towards Muslims

Research into news media representations of Muslims and their faith has focused mainly on how Muslims are portrayed in various types of news media and how stories about or involving them are framed. However, there has been very little attention paid to the effects of news consumption on attitudes towards Muslims. Accordingly, we wanted to explore a range of issues associated with news consumption levels and attitudes towards Muslims in Australia. The three objectives of this article are to: explore whether the amount of news consumed by respondents to an Australian survey influences the level of animosity they hold towards Muslims; determine how political viewpoint and religiosity influence the relationship between news consumption and animosity towards Muslims; and see whether engagement with Muslims influences the relationship between news consumption and animosity towards Muslims. Through a 2018 nationally representative sample of Australians, we target these objectives by investigating whether the amount of news that non-Muslim survey participants consume in a week influences the levels of anger they feel towards Muslims and how their self-defined religiosity, political viewpoint, and engagement with Muslims affect that relationship, while controlling for known drivers of anti-Muslim sentiment, such as demographic characteristics and knowledge about Muslims. We set our study in the contemporary context of mostly lab-based research that helps us understand how news media consumption affects particular types of people and whether there are commonalities in like-groups’ responses to different types of news consumption; in this case, stories about Muslims and their faith. The findings of our research will be of interest to news media organizations and journalists wanting to know about the effects of their coverage of stories about Muslims and their faith and those wanting to improve that reportage. The results will also interest groups working on social cohesion efforts, those trying to improve inter-faith and inter-cultural relations, and academics investigating news media coverage of Muslims and Islam. Significantly, we find quantity of news consumption to lack effect on anger levels.

Muslim Secularism by Conduct: Attitudes of Young Australian Muslims to Legal Pluralism and Sharia

ABSTRACT This article examines young Muslim Australians’ attitudes toward implementing Sharia in Australia using 64 semi-structured interviews conducted in Melbourne and Geelong, Australia. We found that although the attitudes can be grouped under the main typologies of Legal Pluralist and Muslim Secularist, there were a variety of responses within each category. While Legal Pluralist A wants Sharia to be officially implemented for Muslims in Australia, Legal Pluralist B thinks Sharia would be beneficial for everyone in Australia. The majority of our respondents (Muslim Secularist) think that Sharia is not suited for Australian state, legal system and politics. Muslim Secularist A does not think that Sharia offer any benefit to modern societies in any part of the world. Muslim Secularist B thinks that Sharia cannot be applied in Australia that has to remain secular because of the religious diversity of the population and Sharia is more useful for Muslim-majority countries. Religiosity does not predict any of these typologies in our participant group since, with few exceptions, all identified themselves as religious Muslims.

Religiosity and Participation in Islamic Organization among Indonesian Muslim in Sydney and Canberra

Indonesian Islam has its own unique characteristics as it is inseparable from local traditions and has been connected to the role of Indonesian Islamic organizations such as Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah. This study observes the religiosity among Indonesian Muslims in Australia, especially in Sydney and Canberra in 2018. By conducting an online survey with 108 respondents, the study found that beside mandatory religiosity, Indonesian Muslims still very often perform nahdliyin-related religious activities such as celebrating halal bi halal, performing selamatan, requesting dua from ustadz, performing tahlilan and commemorating maulid an-Nabi. However, they prefer to pray teraweh with 11 rakaats and only very few respondents chose often and very often for teraweh with 23 rakaats. While most respondents felt being part of Nahdlatul Ulama, very few of them were an active member and a board member in Nahdlatul Ulama or Muhammadiyah. This is very interesting given the current rise of Islamism among Indonesian Muslims in Indonesia and overseas, as well as efforts made by some Indonesian Islamic organizations to spread moderate Islam throughout Western countries.

Characterising Australians who have high levels of anger towards Islam and Muslims

This article reveals the characteristics and demographics of non-Muslim Australians who express levels of anger towards Muslims and Islam. Using data from a 2018 national social survey of a random, stratified sample of Australians, we identify key demographic characteristics amongst those expressing above-average degrees of anger towards Muslims and the religion of Islam, separately. We identify the proportion of different typologies of people who hold anger towards Islam and Muslims. We aim to establish which combinations of demographic and personal characteristics are most strongly associated with the expression of anger so that policy and interventions targeted at reducing this emotion might be effectively directed. We draw on the literature about Muslimophobia and Islamophobia, along with key studies that have examined attitudes towards Islam and Muslims in Australia and elsewhere. Our findings are relevant to organisations and government bodies in Australia, with implications for policy and social cohesion programs.

Jan A. Ali, Islam and Muslims in Australia: Settlement, Integration, Shariah, Education and Terrorism

Jan A. Ali, Islam and Muslims in Australia: Settlement, Integration, Shariah, Education and Terrorism, Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2020, pp. 256, ISBN: 9780522877076 (hbk). $69.99.

Dealing with Islamophobia: Expanding religious engagement to civic engagement among the Indonesian Muslim community in Australia

The increasing Islamophobia in the Western world is worsened not only by global political issues but also by the stance of Muslims, who are perceived as exclusive and ethnocentric, particularly in the Australian context. This article outlines the strategies used by Indonesian Muslims in Australia to deal with the Islamophobic discourse, namely enhancing religious engagement to enhance solidarity and social cohesion between them and increasing civic engagement as an assimilation attempt with Australians. Religious engagement is carried out through enhancing Islamic lecture activities to promote a more moderate and open understanding of Islam. Meanwhile, civic engagement activities included increasing social involvement as a form of community service, collaborating more with other communities as a form of collective action, jointly proposing political policies as a form of political involvement, and working with Australians to create a better future as manifestations of civic engagement in the context of social change.Contribution: Although Islamophobia is mostly a political issue, the Indonesian Muslim community in Australia views it as a chance to open up and demonstrate to the Australian community that they can work together in a broader kind of civic engagement.

The negative implications of relative deprivation: an experiment of vicarious police contact and Muslims’ perceptions of police bias

ABSTRACT For decades, Muslims living in Western countries have experienced disproportionate scrutiny from police. Such scrutiny can result in relative deprivation; the feeling that they or their group is unfairly disenfranchised compared to others. Scholars have theorised that relatively deprived individuals may assess police-citizen interactions as more biased than non-relatively deprived individuals. Yet, limited research tests this relationship. The current study utilises survey data collected from 502 Muslims in Australia. The survey contained an embedded vignette experiment depicting a male Muslim driver being pulled over by a police officer. The officer’s behaviour was manipulated between participants in the vignette (as procedurally just versus procedurally unjust). Participants were asked if the officer in the vignette acted in a biased manner. Findings showed that officer behaviour significantly impacted perceptions of bias but was moderated by the degree of relative deprivation felt by the participant prior to reading the vignette. Compared to those scoring low on relative deprivation, those scoring high on relative deprivation showed less variation in police bias ratings between the procedurally just and unjust vignette conditions. Implications for the utility of relative deprivation theory in policing, particularly against the backdrop of a renewed focus on police bias, are discussed.

Islam and Muslims in Australia: Settlement, Integration, Shariah, Education and Terrorism. By Jan A. Ali

<i>Islam and Muslims in Australia: Settlement, Integration, Shariah, Education and Terrorism</i>. By Jan A. Ali

Muslim like us: mobilizing minority identities in popular Australian entertainment media as sites of transnational representation

In the context of sustained interest in the mobilization of Muslimness beyond generic and hence immobile identity tropes, I consider how Australian mainstream television and film productions work to challenge and disrupt essentialist representations of Muslimness. Case studies feature two television series and a feature film, examined through the lens of transnational mobility theory and in the context of mediated anti-racism. The productions I discuss, ‘The Spice Journey’, ‘The Mosque Next Door’, and ‘Down Under’, all turn on intra- and inter-communal mobility of Muslim identities. They are part of a larger trend in popular media productions in current Australian film and on television, which reacts to Islamophobic sentiments in the country by drawing attention to embodied multiple subjectivities. Findings suggest that Australian entertainment media can add meaningful input to the diverse and complex negotiations of culture and identity among Muslims in Australia but may sidestep other forms of racism like anti-Indigeneity in the process.

The Dynamic of Muslim Identity In Multicultural Politic of Australia

This research aims to explore the dynamic of Muslim Identities in a multicultural context. Taking Brisbane as a research locus, the research investigates modes of conflict resolution that are enacted in a Muslim minority area by considering the operation of Islam and Islamic modes negotiating identity within the wider society. The prime concern of the research based on the questions of how does the Muslim in Australia expresses their identity by developing the adaptation strategy as social action in a multicultural context?. Based on the questions, this article focused on the issues of the strategy of Muslim that used in responding to view and practices of multiculturalism. This research shows that Muslims in Australia have a wide variety of historical and social backgrounds. Amid Australia's multicultural politics, Australian Muslims have different responses to negotiate Islamic identity on the one hand and as Australian citizens on the other. The adaptation of Muslim in Australia then ranges from a moderate pattern, accepting a secular culture, to being reactionary as the impact of the feeling of being marginalized people as a “stepchild” in Australian citizenship.

Young Muslim Australians’ experiences of intergroup contact and its implications for intercultural relations

ABSTRACT Literature on intergroup contact shows that in the absence of the required structural conditions, contact is not necessarily always a positive experience and that when it is negative, it can lead to heightened conflict and increased prejudice toward outgroups. Therefore, this article examines intergroup contact between Muslims and non-Muslims. Specifically, we examine the experiences of intergroup contact involving young Muslims in Australia and ask how these encounters impact their experiences of discrimination and perceptions of Australian society. We conducted face-to-face, semi-structured interviews to collect rich, qualitative data from young Muslim Australian participants who live in Melbourne, a major cosmopolitan hub, where intergroup contact experiences are likely to be diverse and occur daily. Our findings show that even when met with prejudice and discrimination, young Muslim Australians were able to critically engage with and change the views of non-Muslim Australians through dialogue and creative exchanges about circulating public discourse.

The construction of national and religious identities amongst Australian Isma’ili Muslims

ABSTRACT Australian civic society has become increasingly multicultural and diverse. Nevertheless, in the current political climate, Australian Muslims may feel as though they live under a microscope of scrutiny with their sense of affiliation and allegiance questioned. The narrative regarding Muslims in Australia has largely focused on Sunnis and ethnic Arabs. This qualitative study examines the Australian Shi’a Isma’ili Muslim community – a minority within a minority – and how attachment to supraordinate identity markers of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Australian’ influence their identity construction. It utilised semi-structured interviews with 16 first- and second-generation Isma’ili Muslims to examine the intersection of national, religious, and cultural identities via the lens of Identity Process Theory (IPT). Religious identity was important to respondents, who spoke of how their ‘double minority’ status distinguished them vis-à-vis the broader Muslim community in Australia and Australian society overall. Nevertheless, respondents noted a strong sense of instrumental attachment to Australia which enabled them to develop a distinct niche of Isma’ili Muslim identity unique to the Australian landscape.

Muslims as Archetypal Suspect Citizens in Australia

Muslims as archetypal suspect citizens in Australia is a product of Australian state approach to manage a section of supposedly “rogue population.” Muslims have been increasingly framed as a security problem and, therefore, their securitisation. The horrendous atrocities of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States followed by a new period of similar attacks in various parts of particularly the Western world provided a new stage for an extensive range of discourses involving politicians, public intellectuals, academics, and journalists swiftly securitised Islam as an existential threat to Australian liberal democracy. This paper probes the politics of Muslim suspect and how securitizing and “othering” of Australian Muslims in the name of managing security threat to Australian national order are rendered Australian Muslims archetypal suspect citizens. It suggests that the politics of suspect and securitizing and “othering” of Muslims in Australia transforms security from the problem of producing national order to making Muslims feel unwelcome citizens.&#x0D;

The Semiotics of an “Islamic” Education: Engaging with the Concrete Realities of Muslims in Australia

Advertorials that are powered by aesthetic visuals and persuasive writing showcasing a school's offerings have become an integral feature of the competitive educational landscape. However, research interest has not taken into consideration the comparatively low-fee paying faith-based schools. This paper uncovers the claims Islamic schools make about their institutional identity by examining two websites and one prospectus of three selected Islamic schools in Australia. Drawing on Ahmed's conceptual framing of “institutional speech acts” and social semiotics as a theoretical framework, I argue that Islamic schools employ persuasive mechanisms to appeal to concerns of Muslim parents in Australia, who are looking for an education that is best aligned to them, by addressing and legitimizing ideological, social and educational concerns ranging from academic performance to identity issues and most importantly portraying schools as spaces of civil society. Also, the rhetoric used by schools attempt not only to allay societal suspicion but also help them compete for market position.

Dreaming Diversity: Second Generation Australians and the Reimagining of Multicultural Australia

Dreaming Diversity: Second Generation Australians and the Reimagining of Multicultural Australia