Consultations Homepage || Meeting Notes: 17 June 2003
Consultation with Islamic Women's Association of Queensland Senior Women's Respite Group, Brisbane, 17 June 2003
The meeting was chaired by Ms Galila Abdelsalam, Aged Care Coordinator of the Islamic Women's Association of Queensland (IWAQ), and facilitated by Omeima Sukkarieh (notes) from HREOC. It was attended by 81 invited participants from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Ms Hasnija Junuzovic interpreted the Bosnian and Omeima interpreted the Arabic.
IWAQ is the largest Muslim women's organisation in Queensland and has been active in advocating the rights of Muslim women. It currently has an ethnically diverse membership of over 280 families throughout Queensland and other states. IWAQ caters for the needs of Muslim women and their families encompassing welfare, culture, social and religious issues.
The Respite Group is an informal group of older Muslim women who meet weekly to form support networks, socialise and meet new people. In addition, group activities include English conversation classes, basic computer skills and regular information sessions on topics such as discrimination, Centrelink, role of police, and so on.
1. What are your experiences of discrimination and vilification?
All of the participants had either directly experienced discrimination or knew of someone who had. As Ms Abdelsalam said:
"Everyone here has been through an experience or heard about an experience somehow, and we can go on for days and days ... we all have that experience of feeling that people look at us as terrorists. As a Muslim woman, we are more a victim than any other."
It was difficult to cover all of the participants' experiences within the scheduled consultation time. However most of the experiences felt by the participants occurred in public spaces such as shopping centres and while driving. Other experiences described included attacks against mosques, by neighbours at home and direct and indirect discrimination based on misconceptions about the diversity of Muslims in Australia and about Muslim women.
Experiences in public places including shopping centres
One woman shared her experience of being prevented from shopping at her local fruit market, and spoke of how the police responded to her call for assistance.
"Two or three weeks ago, [I] went to [the local fruit market]. You know how you pay money to get in? Well the security didn't let [me] in the market, and [I] said 'Why?' And they said 'Because people wearing like you, they steal from the market and maybe you're going to do the same thing'. [I] said 'But I would never do it'. But he still refused to let [me] get in. So [my] son, he got very angry and called the police, and when the police came he tried to convince the man to let [me] in and asked why he wouldn't. And the man at the door, the security man, I'm not sure who he was, said that 'That's my market and I can let in whoever I want, and I don't want her to be here because she's wearing the hijab and people wearing the hijab steal.' The police didn't even say anything, he just left. [My son reported it to the appropriate agency]. At the end, [I] didn't even get in the market. They told [me] that [my] name was listed as someone who steals there. [I] was stressed out and for one week [I] couldn't eat."
This story prompted the following response from another participant.
"If a Christian stole something from the supermarket, are they going to not let all the Christians come to the shop?"
Another incident at the same fruit market several years ago was also described.
"The sister was talking about [that fruit market]. I went there about six years ago, before September 11, but I had an experience. Somebody there threw something at me, and they were saying 'Do you want bananas, do you want bananas?' while they were throwing them at me. It was the people who were selling. It was humiliating."
Verbal abuse was a very common experience for participants.
"After September 11, I went to the shopping centre and the man came so fast at me and he shouted at me and abused me and put his finger up at me. Since then, I have always had people screaming at me and this is very common."
A recent convert shared a threatening experience where speaking back to the perpetrator provoked even more anger. A shop assistant came to her aid.
"I 'alhamdulalla' [ie thank God] have been a Muslim for three years. I've lost count of how many times I have been hurled abused at, not treated the same in supermarkets, or people try and stay in front of you with the trolleys, and I don't know it's just a lot of little things. I wear a black hijab and one particular incident where I was actually threatened with violence when this man. He was with his family as well and probably middle-aged, and he said 'Why don't you go back to Iraq?' And it was just because I was wearing a black hijab. I said to him 'Are you having a go at me?' If anyone abuses me I answer them back. I don't abuse them but I speak to them and they get a shock. I said 'You shouldn't be talking like that to anybody'. And he proceeded to scream and I felt threatened for my safety. I had to run into a supermarket ...I had to run into a supermarket and go to a staff member and say 'Can you just stand here with me because otherwise I fear that this gentleman will hit me', because he was getting very angry and aggressive. The woman from the shopping centre was very good. And that's one incident of many."
This story prompted the following response from another participant referring to the perpetrator.
"That's no gentleman honey. That's evil."
Other experiences shared included.
"I remember a Somali lady being abused in the shop and people accuse them of not being clean. This is also common."
"I have been in a shopping centre with my son, sitting down and we were eating oranges and the lady next to me was sitting down and I felt a bit shy so I gave her some, and in the conversation, the lady asked me 'Where do you come from?', and I said 'Bosnia'. And the lady said, 'Oh, there's so many Muslim fundamentalists living in Bosnia'. And my son looked at the lady and said 'Are you sure? We are from Bosnia and we are Muslim'. And the lady says 'Sorry', and [she] didn't feel comfortable and stood up and walked away."
Experiences while driving
The discussion around experiences of discrimination and road rage while driving or passengers in cars was heated as over half of the participants agreed that road rage incidents were common and frightening as they could be potentially dangerous. The experiences took place often and mostly it involved the women being yelled abuse such as being called 'Osama' amongst other things.
One woman who had recently moved to Brisbane from Townsville said she had felt 'very safe in Townsville' and never directly experienced discrimination there. However, since moving to Brisbane she has had many experiences.
"I'm from Townsville. When I moved here I got abuse on the road while I'm driving, when I wear hijab where one group of teenagers scream and scream and scream, and this was at night and I was so nervous. I just kept quiet. Now I'm scared to drive."Other experiences shared included.
"My experiences have been that I am often shouted at when I'm driving the car and it's not my poor driving either. I've actually sat in my car waiting to go onto a main road and had people shout at me as they go across."
"Just the other day I was driving to my son's house and I had this man swear at me so badly, using the f ...word a lot and swearing at my hijab, and I was in my car. Lucky I could lock the door."
A few women had experienced other drivers trying to run them off the road.
"This happens so often, all the time. Like one time I was driving back from the city with a friend and these young boys, they were driving and they swerved on purpose towards us. They wanted to run us off the road. Lots of things happen while we're driving."
"They always beep the horn, or try and run you off the road and into the gutter or footpath, verbal abuse, and that's dangerous. And the fear is that people would leave you for dead."
Another participant had moved from Cairns to Brisbane and described three experiences in the space of a couple of weeks.
"I've just moved down here from Cairns and I've just started to wear the hijab. I think I'm the youngest here today. I get a lot of abuse from older people and younger people. In the last couple of weeks I have a few stories that come to mind, like in a shopping centre I have accidentally hit another car and she'd just sworn at me. Driving on the freeway last weekend, coming back from the Gold Coast, I had a man in a car driving next to me doing the most disgusting gestures to me that were really obscene. But walking to work the other day someone yelled out 'Go back to your country'. I was born in Australia. But my ancestors are South African."
One of the younger participants spoke of how, after an experience she and her sister had while driving to TAFE, her sister cannot walk to TAFE which is only two minutes away from her home for fear of being abused by men working on road works.
"It was just last week, and it was just me and my sister and we were in the car and we both wear hijab. I was taking her to TAFE and there's a lot of road construction and I think they were Council workers. We're driving and the man had stopped the traffic, and there was a lot of guys and you know how we stereotype workers to be rude to women, and quickly I thought they're not going to say anything because we're two girls in hijab. But all of a sudden, we're driving up slowly and they started to do really rude gestures and yell remarks and me and my sister were shocked. And when we're driving back, we were quite scared that they were going to do the same thing. I got really annoyed and thought, 'Do I go back and say something, or do I just keep driving?' Then my sister yesterday, dad asked her 'Why didn't you come walking home from TAFE?' because we live very close to TAFE, just a two minute walk, and she said to him 'I don't want to, I'm scared'. He asked why and she said 'There was men' and then I told him that there were stupid idiots standing there and it was quite dangerous, so she couldn't even walk from TAFE to our house because of those stupid men".
Experiences with neighbours
One woman who lives across the road from her local mosque felt she was forced to move house because of constant harassment she experienced by a neighbour whom she believed was clearly anti-Muslim.
" ...he puts his stereo up and he does it on purpose so he distracts the people so you can't even hear the Imam talking on the microphone inside, that's how loud it is. We used to live next to him and we moved house because of [him]. One lady came from the Council and he would abuse us and telling her that all these Muslims shouldn't come here and he would always abuse us and we lived next door. He told people they couldn't park on the road. I think there are a lot of people moving houses because of these things."One participant described a positive experience with her neighbours.
"A lot of people, about 70% of people are very kind and polite and when they talk to me they say 'ma'am'. For example my neighbours are so nice, and they collect my washing when I am away."
At home
Some participants were also quite fearful of things happening to them outside their homes or the homes of relatives because of their clearly Muslim appearance.
"My brother's house is on [a main road]. He looks like Osama Bin Laden and dresses in Sunna (i.e. Islamic dress). All his little boys dress in Sunna. Whenever we get off at his house, somebody shouts something at us. It happened to me, it happened to my mother; it's something to do with that house because they see people with this Sunna coming in and out of this house."
"One function my sister had at her place, and I think someone died, and the people parking in the street had come out after their visit and all their tyres had been slashed, and she won't have any functions anymore."
Experiences at the mosque
After September 11, Brisbane mosques were targets of violence and abuse, and participants state that this abuse continues today.
"Holland Park is the oldest mosque in Brisbane and the community around it is not a lot of Muslims and it is not in a low socio-economic area. Several women here are from there. So we all live around that area, but recently there has been a problem. Because when the men park their cars at the mosque, people just go around breaking the windows. Twice it's happened to my brother alone. This hasn't happened before and recently just started."
"It still happens at mosques. We go to Kuraby mosque and we still get people shouting at us. After the Bali incidents Kuraby mosque had got molotov cocktails thrown at it. And they break the windows of all the cars parked for prayer there."
"At the Logan Mosque also, many times people have thrown beer bottles and glass through the window while we were sitting inside."
Experiences using public transport
Although public transport was not a common theme in the discussion around experiences, one participant told of a conversation she had with a fellow passenger.
"The other experience is I met someone in the train, a black, a Fijian woman who asked us 'Where do you come from?', and I said 'From Bosnia'. And she was saying how many people ask her where she is from and I was talking and asked her if people ask her if she is black, if she is Muslim. And she said 'No, I am not Muslim, I hate Muslim people'. I looked at her and said 'Look, you are black, you are not Muslim and you hate Muslims, but I am a Muslim and I am proud to be a Muslim'. And the lady said 'Sorry'. And then I said to her 'what you are feeling is your problem, but I am who I am and Muslim religion doesn't teach us anything wrong, it teaches us to be a good person, an honest person, to be a good mother, and everything good'."
Experiences with police
One participant recalled her experience of being asked to take a breath test on return from prayers at the mosque. She felt the policeman was abrupt in his dealing with her.
"I had an experience where one policeman stopped me while I was driving the car. Two other women were inside the car where we were coming back from Ramadan time after prayer and as you could see Bosnian people are not much covered because we were brought up like that, and when it is Ramadan time when we coming back from prayer time we all cover. He stopped me for a breath test, and I said to him 'Where have you seen a Muslim woman drinking in a mosque?' And he said 'I didn't ask you anything, just do what I said to you'."
Other experiences
Being heard speaking another language was also mentioned as a reason people can be targeted.
"One lady that is not here that's been abused and discriminated against badly by one Australian man, telling her very bad things like 'shut your mouth', knocking on her door, screaming [because he heard her once speak a language other than English]. And I was personally abused by an Australian because I was talking another language and he said 'Why don't you talk bloody English?' and things like that. My husband was abused because he had a radio on playing in another language, not the English language, and that was in [our] own home, which is very scary."
" ...my aunty and I were together, we were at a car park in Woolworths Mt Gravatt and we had an Australian child with us. I was saying to my Aunty in Urdu 'Put the child here'. And this man said to me 'Can't you speak in English, you're in Australia?' and I heard him even though he didn't say it loudly. I heard him and I said 'What are you talking about?' and he said 'Go back home!' and I said 'You go back home'. He looked at me and he said 'Where are you from?' and I said 'Arnhem Land!' As soon as you say an Aborigine they run away."
The misconceptions and stereotypes of what it is to be a Muslim were also discussed.
"People think Muslim women are stupid, and when we go to comment and they hear our English accents, they're shocked and they're surprised. It kills them."
Two women from Zimbabwe talked about their two very different experiences of what people think a Zimbabwean looks like. One woman believes that the discrimination she felt in Zimbabwe based on her colour was not unlike that she has experienced in Australia.
"I'm very unfortunate. When I was in Zimbabwe, I was always spoken about my colour and I come to Australia it's the same thing. People ask 'What's your name?' and I say 'Sharifa', and they say 'Oh, that's a Muslim name, how come you're black because the Muslims we know are white?' I get that nearly every day and even if I wear hijab or scarf or anything they ask 'Are you trying to be one of those?' Even in Melbourne I got this."
"I come from Zimbabwe too and people ask me 'Where do you come from?' I say 'Zimbabwe' and they say 'How come you're not black?' It's always an issue of colour and it's all about lack of awareness."
Another woman recalled her experience waiting to be served at a bank.
"I had a negative experience where after September 11 I was in the bank in the queue, and a man came from the back [of the queue] and told me 'Why do Muslim men abuse their women and treat them very bad?' I looked at him and I said 'Do you know how many Christians all over the world get abused by their men, their husbands, their brother, their father?' Then he looked at me and he couldn't answer and he went right back. This is common to be asked questions about this and also about polygamy."
Other impacts
There was a general feeling in the group that the biggest impact their experiences have had on them has been their overwhelming sense of feeling unsafe, leaving them with a sense of insecurity and fear as a result. The group has many unanswered questions as to why this is happening to them and who is to be held responsible. Participants have different ways of dealing with this fear and the experiences they encounter.
" ...me and my sister we have this thing when we walk, we don't look left or right. Like I think how the Bosnian woman was saying, they're always under fear, where we are in fear but we walk to shopping centres with our head up high, but we don't look left or right in order not to catch someone's eye so not to give them an opportunity to talk to us. So we're not going to let them undermine us or limit us but we are under fear because we are looked at and we are the minority ..."
When asked if they go out more with male relatives to feel safer, one young participant responded.
" ...we don't go walking with our brothers. Because our brothers are like guards and if anyone goes to look at us they're going to look back at them and say something and we don't want trouble. They are very protective, even more now."
"This is the feeling of young women who were born or grew up in this country, and women who come as refugees also, there is always fear. They are not different like this."
Last year Brisbane City Council approved a development application for IWAQ's new premises, an old scout house refurbished into their new offices. However due to direct threats and graffiti on the new premises, the Open Day was cancelled and they took extra precautions in the future because the new premises are located deep in a park.
"It was a former Scout house and it was in a park and it was reconstructed into offices for us. It was in a park but you had to walk some distance from where we would park the car. Now we had an open day and we invited people down and everything was ok. There was an announcement put in the paper and at the very end it talked about that the Islamic Women's Association, and that would be our offices. The next day, we went there and there was graffiti on the cement, the wall of the building. It was very threatening. And we have the photos to prove it."One participant thought that September 11 had an affect on Australia's immigration policies and spoke of how this has impacted on her directly.
"I have put in an application to bring my husband here to Australia from Pakistan. It has been four years since I lodged the application and they haven't approved it yet because they said it was due to security reasons but there is nothing wrong, They are just delaying it without purpose."
The influence of the media
There was strong agreement among the group that media has played a significant role in the negative portrayal of Muslims. They questioned the use of terms such as 'fundamentalist' and 'terrorist' and the media's linking of these terms with 'Muslims'. There was a general feeling in the group that they felt most helpless when it came to media vilification, mostly because of the powerful impact of the media.
"If something happens in Ireland, they will never say a Catholic terrorist, they would say Irish, but when it comes to Muslims, they would say a fundamentalist group, or terrorists or whatever. And they say Islamic terror."
We asked how participants feel about the media.
One participant believed that the media was partly responsible for the fear of abuse that she feels even though she never experienced abuse while wearing the hijab."The media is doing us more harm than good."
"We have the discrimination every day from the TV. Media is the worst perpetrator of discrimination."
"I came as a refugee from Bosnia and [my neighbour] said to me 'Go back to Bosnia, why are you here?' Since I covered, I didn't have any abuse but I feel inside that at any moment someone will abuse me or say something to me because every day, every time on TV, it's Muslim fundamentalist, or Muslim Terrorists. Why are they looking at us as fundamentalist and terrorism? Do they really think that we are like that or if they do something, [the media] say all Muslims in the world are like?"
The influence of the government
One participant was critical of the government's stand on refugees at the time of the Tampa incident.
"My daughter had an experience inside a shop and this man said to her 'Go home you illegal immigrant!' She was in tears because this was the time when the government was trying to win that election and they were cashing in on the boat crisis at that time. So the government is also responsible in certain ways for our experiences."
"Someone said to my mum, 'Go home you terrorist, go home you illegal immigrant!' and she said 'Well, you go home you escaped convict!'"
This led to a discussion about the existing divisions within the Muslim community and how the government and the community play a role in creating these divisions.
"What do the government expect when they are all day saying terrorist, Muslim, terrorist, etc, etc, and then on TV. Even those that have nothing to do with Muslims people think they are. So now you have Muslims who wear the hijab sticking with Muslims who wear the hijab and that sort of thing instead of standing united."
One woman compared the community's experience in Sydney to that of Brisbane.
"I've lived in Brisbane and I've lived in Sydney. I was born and raised here and I found with living in Brisbane, 'alhamdulallah', if you go to the mosques, you have Pakistanis, Indians, Fijians, Lebanese, the majority will all pray together and will all go to school together. We'll all socialise together and we live in harmony. However you go to Sydney and what I saw was quite disappointing. The Lebanese community stick together and they won't like anyone else. I know like they say 'Fijian Indian, oh no I don't like them'. So you'll notice that they've got like sects of different nationalities, which is really sad because they're all Muslim. They don't recognise themselves as Muslim but they recognise themselves by their nationalities, different nationalities. [Whereas] in Brisbane ... we do not have that and we've all got the same mentality and we've got the one common thing which binds us together which is the [religion]."
One participant agreed but commented:
"Just to add one point to that. We have few people here, they have been here for 40, 50 years and it was only one mosque and they all prayed together and they never had that problem. But now unfortunately what you don't see I see, there is a mosque for Bosnian, South African, Arabs, and this will lead us to what happened in Sydney unfortunately. But there is no discrimination."
"I'm sorry I have to bring this up, but the Dharra mosque at one stage had a rule that you couldn't become a member unless you were Fiji born. Now it's cancelled and it's fine but can I just say that this is one of the reasons why we have tried so hard to promote the unity of different nationalities within this group and this is where we have a strength. In this group we are Muslims first and whatever else after; but Muslims first."
Causes of discrimination
Most of the participants have come to Australia either as migrants or refugees, escaping war and conflict in their own countries. Several members of the group believe that the conflict in their countries of origin has had a direct affect on the discrimination experienced by them in Australia.
One Iraqi woman said about the recent war on Iraq:
"The war has had an affect on us too and it has been really bad for us here and there. The missiles affect people in many ways, not just blood or death. What is happening here to us is because of what is happening there."
A Bosnian woman reaffirmed solidarity with the women in the room who feel fear and unsafe and likened their experience of fear with the fear felt in Bosnia. The participant also appreciated that in Australia even if you feel fear, you still have rights.
"We are always Muslim and sisters in Islam. What we have experienced in our life, being in our country ... without even having hijab, we understand how you feel and how you have a fear inside your heart. We have that fear here and still now in our country there are people who have fear and are abused and still day by day so many things happen. But down there they don't have rights like here where there are organisations like anti-discrimination places to say 'look, such and such happened to me, could you protect me?'. Still now it's happening that Muslim people are being abused and victims in Europe."
One woman believes that the government needs to recognise the community's political differences as these differences and experiences encountered overseas have a direct affect on their experiences in Australia.
"Does this government recognise the difference between Serbs and Bosnian Muslim people? I have been abused by Serb people here in the shopping centre, and they actually forced us to come out of our country and we suffered a lot. I lost my husband and my son and like all of us, I have so much fear from them here too, especially after September 11. I just want to know if people and the government know anything about the communities, who they are and who we are?""Of course there is. There is discrimination within the Muslim communities themselves. For example you have Bosnian Muslims under pressure from people around them as well as issues between Bosnians and Serbs. Some of us are not recognised as being innocent parties in the war. The communities are separate because of what happens overseas. It carries on here."
One participant held strong opinions about what she believed was the reason for the overwhelming attacks and experiences encountered by the community in Brisbane and compared this to Sydney and Melbourne.
"After September 11, what I noticed from the media and what was going on, which really caught my eye, is that most of the backlash came on Brisbane. Our Brisbane people, the community, the Australians, feared more than Sydney and Melbourne and what I thought about that was that in Sydney, Lebanese have already terrorised the community down there, that's just a known fact, where in Brisbane, we've always stayed quiet. So when this happened, they feared and thought 'They're quiet now but they're going to come up'. That's why our Holland Park mosque got attacked, our Kuraby mosque got attacked, the Islamic school, the Islamic bus with students, even myself I got attacked and I had never been attacked before. The community got scared because we've always been quiet and we've always lived in harmony with the non-Muslims. When this happened they thought 'Oh, no, something is going to happen', whereas in Sydney and Melbourne [the community was already afraid]."
Reporting discrimination and the law
Many of the participants had some knowledge and level of understanding of the new anti-discrimination law in Queensland regarding religious vilification and had obtained this knowledge through an information session organised specifically by IWAQ for the group. After the state and federal law was explained briefly, a discussion took place about the importance of the new law in Queensland.
"The law should cover me based on me being a woman, so when you discriminate against me I should complain based on me being a woman not Muslim if Islam is not protected."
"Of course it makes a difference for us."
Other participants believe that fear should not prevent people from using the law to protect them.
"Law is not protecting us enough. Unless we use that law, we will never be protected. Like if someone breaks in and you're not calling the police, then how will the law protect you?"
Another participant believed that if the law could not protect them as Muslims then it should at the very least protect them based on other anti-discrimination laws, notably sex discrimination, saying "I think [the law] will protect us as women".
2. What is being done to fight anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
IWAQ was funded to do a research project in partnership with Brisbane City Council (BCC) however the research was not completed due to limited resources."I was on a project as a Bilingual Facilitator with IWAQ after September 11, and I went to down to Milperra School, Brisbane Islamic School, the kebab shops, all Muslim organisations and businesses and personal people too in the area and I got a questionnaire as to what they are doing after September 11, have they been attacked or abused or whatever. Unfortunately the project stopped half way as I was just getting into it. IWAQ did do that but it stopped because BCC stopped resources half way because of the lack of resources, so this was being done in partnership with BCC."
'Celebrating Muslim Women' Day
One week after September 11, IWAQ organised a day called 'Celebrating Muslim Women' where people from mainstream and community organisations across Queensland were invited. The event was held at the Brisbane Showground and was entirely self-funded.
" ...we just wanted them to understand that Muslim women were just like them. It was a great day and was very successful and the newspapers had all our photos in it ...and we had people come from the Gold Coast, all the way from North Coast, Toowoomba, all came to support us. More than 500 people attended."
As well as being involved in interfaith dialogues "where we Muslim groups visit church groups", IWAQ also forged relationships with other religious and community groups which participants believed was very successful.
"Centenary Seniors invited us. It's a mixed organisation or social group and a church group and we all went. They welcomed us and they gave us lunch and we told them we're not having meat, and they were really surprised and you know what the comment was? 'You women are exactly like us'. Also, they did a very good article on us and another thing they didn't realise there was they thought that only Arabs were Muslims and I said 'No, not all Muslims are Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslims, there are also Christian Arabs'."
Information sessions and workshops
It was felt that it was important for IWAQ to continue to foster relationships between organisations such as police and the community and therefore to build trust between both.
"We had the police, Anti-Discrimination Commission and the federal police came and talked to us about what to do if you are ever caught in an incident, how to identify the person so that you will be able to get something done and the importance of recognising and learning the number plates on cars, so that if someone does anything, look at the number plate and you can do something. So we tried to be a bit proactive in that regard through education." "Going on that line, I think IWAQ getting together; we start with a small group of five or ten and then the group now we have at least an average of thirty people every week. And that number is not coming and having a cup of coffee only and coming together and having lunch. It is to empower each other, and to open dialogue between each other so when we have problem we know where to go. We share information, and it's about having an opportunity to talk to [the workers] here as well, where one of the workers will encourage them to learn some English, getting a speaker every week just to give women an awareness of what is available to [them] and the federal police, the police, the Crime Stoppers, the Anti-Discrimination Commission. When they come here they have that relationship with [the community]. You have that small card which you know how to call people when you really need help (referring to 'Know Your Rights Cards')."
Working with police
"And 'alhamdalallah', there was a young man who was a Bosnian police officer here in Logan. They gave out his number so people who were Bosnian and would have a problem with language, at least had someone they could call directly ...He was a Cross Cultural Liaison Officer I think. They were going to send him out west, but this is the thing with some of the police organisations; they waste good resources. He is a resource for them and they wanted to send him out where there were no Bosnians. But we lobbied to keep him here and now it has helped tremendously."
3. What more could be done to fight anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
Public education and education for service providers
Participants suggested that the general public and especially service providers need to be educated about Islam and about anti-discrimination laws. Promoting positive public awareness and the need for greater cross-cultural awareness between Muslims and the mainstream community were also mentioned. Other responses include:
"We need some education through the media about the laws and about what is happening in the community."
"No more propaganda on TV or other media about Muslims. Less propaganda and more friendship and love between people."
"The people who do this are a minority and it is this minority we need to put in the right spot and educate. When we talk about our negative experiences it doesn't mean we are not appreciated."
One participant talked about what she was going to do.
"I am a supervisor in a managing capacity at Woolworths, and I guess people do get shocked when they know I'm Aussie and Muslim. I see staff get shocked and react differently to customers who are Muslim. I will go back and recommend that staff be trained in anti-discrimination law and about the community they are serving, and I think that should be extended across all places."
School education
Better education for students at all levels was also mentioned.
"When we talk about education, I think we need to look at education in the schools, primary and high school, universities, because they're feeding them a lot of orientalist rubbish at the university level. So we need to have scanning of the curriculum at all levels."
Education in the Muslim community
Participants were also self-reflective about the Muslim community itself with a few suggestions for change.
"I think the solution is also in our hands. We blame the government, and they are to blame partly, but we have to take a step back, educate ourselves and be able to educate the community. Because I know from myself, I wore the hijab as a representative, as a Muslim and you have to be strong in your heart. There are people who avoid the problems as a mechanism of protection and there's nothing wrong with that."
"There is a saying that goes 'there is no smoke without fire', so we have to start with ourselves and our flaws. We have to respect our religion, behave well and demand respect back."
"The best way is to say that I'm from Australia. If you say from Australia, they will never ask anymore questions."
