Consultations Homepage || Meeting Notes: 21 June 2003
Consultation hosted by the Muslim Council of NSW, Sydney, 21 June 2003
The meeting was chaired by Mr Farouk Kassar, Chairperson of the Council, and attended by 18 invited participants including the Federal MP for Auburn, Ms Barbara Perry. Susanna Iuliano and Omeima Sukkarieh attended from HREOC.
The Muslim Council was established in January 2003 and has about 22 member organisations. It is recognised by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils and represents Muslims in NSW.
Experiences and causes of discrimination and vilification
The education system
The meeting heard that some parents were frustrated at the failure of public schools to protect or defend their children from vilification.
“I know that one parent went to the extent of taking the children out of school and sending them to another.”
“I know of parents sending their kids from my area [Liverpool] and pulling them out of public schools and sending them a far distance to Islamic schools. [It is because of 11 September.] Most of the women wear a hijab and they go to pick up their kids from school and remarks have been passed … and the kids have been bullied. Because they listen to the television they have been hammered by the words and when the mothers and the parents go to pick there kids up they all see who the kids are. You don’t even have to tell them she’s a Muslim. Because she is with the mother they just know and then they get bullied.”
“My kids were at a public school - a mostly Anglo-Saxon school - and I moved them to the Malek Fahed School. And really the feedback I got from them, my kids was that they were very good in school and felt safer there. You are accepted from teachers and kids.”
“The more your children go to - and I can understand why you would want to send them to Islamic school instead of general where they are discriminated against - but the problem is, it leads to other problems. The more they are isolated, the more they are going to be looked at by the general Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Celtic community as being different: different because not only do they look different but they act differently, they go to different schools, their women dress differently … The problem is, the more you segregate yourself into a different group that is distinct from anybody else out there, the more they are going to have reason to say you’re different from us, you’re somebody else, you’re a different culture.”
“The parents are saying they are moving the kids to Islamic schools not for the better education and that’s the tragedy. The kids have to be moved from one school to an Islamic school which may not be that good a quality. It’s about safety.”
“I might agree and disagree at the same time. Although I do realise that we are moving our kids because probably for security reasons, it does not have to be a quality school when you are moving them. But how long shall we wait and should it be at my kids’ expense that none of them will end up at some point of time learning to live with us. As a parent we can talk all hunky dory but, when it comes to the crunch, no parent will want to see their kids being pushed and shoved and nobody will want to be there.
The following history was recounted by one parent.
“My son defended a fellow Muslim girl at school from people bullying her about her religion and [the principal] suspended him and destroyed the future of my son. After another problem at school he is sent to a special school with his bad record. A cop called him a terrorist not long ago. Now my son goes to TAFE and yesterday he had a problem with another student trying to get him into trouble. In Bankstown, Lakemba, etc, there is a lot of pressure on young people and they are not able to do one wrong thing. Police must be better with young people and others in the community.”
The media
“[T]he media … are up against the Muslims. What happens around the world is that if there are any problems then straight away they are Muslim terrorists. By saying that word it means a big discrimination to Muslims all around the world. So that’s turning the public in Australia against Muslims. I think the first thing we have to complain against is Australian policy and then Australian media. We have to concentrate all our efforts into changing the policy and changing the way media deals with the public in here. Everything about what is happening in Kashmir, in Bali, or Sri Lanka or even Palestine which is not mentioned in your documents, you mention Israel rather than Palestine (referring to statistics) and you are ignoring our rights as being Palestinians for thousand of years. That’s the first discrimination against us.”
[HREOC explained that the fact sheets on Australian Muslims and Australians of Arab, Middle Eastern and North African ancestry – the documents referred to by this speaker – summarise Australian Bureau of Statistics data which do not provide separate figures for Palestine. The fact sheets are at: http://www.humanrights.gov.au/racial_discrimination/isma/fact_arab.html and http://www.humanrights.gov.au/racial_discrimination/isma/fact_muslim.html]
The media’s impact on the self-esteem and sense of belonging of Muslim children in Australia was of particular concern to participants.
“All of our kids watch TV all of the time. Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews, whatever - they watch TV. There is a news update and straight away they mention Muslim terrorists. So straight away it is stuck in the minds that Muslims are terrorists. So when they go back to school they will be discriminated against because they are ‘bloody Muslims’.”
“We have this problem too as we have been implanted with the word ‘Muslim terrorist’ and that’s what we are. It has been implanted into the kids … and that’s when you start to have these problems at schools.”
“The thing I hate is how Muslim girls take off their hijab after school. That’s wrong. We are Muslims.”
“I think the media is the main cause because kids are picking on Muslims at school and these kids get it from their parents and their parents get it from the media.”
Stereotype of women’s oppression in Islam
Ignorance or misconceptions about the hijab was mentioned as one cause of prejudice and discrimination.
“When I was in Franklins not long ago, a woman came up to me and just started to pull at my hijab and said to me that ‘Your hair is nice. Why don’t you take this off’? So I explained to her why I wear it and that it was my religion and I asked her ‘How do you know my hair is nice? You haven’t seen it’. Then my husband came to me and said ‘Don’t worry about it’. I felt that the woman is mocking me. I didn’t get upset about it. I just felt the need to explain to the women why I wear the hijab, but unfortunately I couldn’t because of my language.”
“The wearing of the hijab: … In my view anybody can wear whatever they want. There is no restriction. This is our way. We need it as protection for our women. It’s according to our beliefs and Islam belief so that nobody will look at her. If she has a short skirt with her thighs being shown everybody will be attracted to her. So it is just protecting.”
“They [the Anglo Saxon community] don’t understand why the women dress with the hijab. They don’t understand that that’s the reason for it. It’s not so much religion that they consider it to be. They think - the average Joe out there who is Anglo Saxon or Anglo Celtic, who is not a Muslim - doesn’t so much associate the hijab with religion. They associate it with men’s oppression of their women. They believe that it is a trait of the Arabic people and their focus is on the Arabic people. They say they believe that the women dress like this because their men insist on it not because they themselves believe it to be part of their religion and part of their religious duties but because they see it as being the men oppressing their women by hiding their faces so that nobody else can desire them or look at them. So you are always going to have that.”
Historical prejudice and the international context
“The media, the community generally in the west, Anglo Saxons, Anglo Celtics, they did not need any excuses of September 11th or Bin Laden or anybody else to dislike the Arabs and the Muslims. They didn’t need any of that. They always disliked them; they will always dislike them. If you ever want to overcome that discrimination start here, start with something like this. Help people understand what you are about. You will never ever change their attitude towards Middle East, or Arabic, my friend, whether you are a Muslim or a Christian. I have been a Christian all my life and I have been discriminated against all my life. I appear in court before Judges and Magistrates who discriminate against me because I look like this. It didn’t matter whether I was Catholic or Christian or Muslim.”
“Every one of us has a deadly virus inside of us, that virus we call discrimination. That discrimination is coming against everyone who is coming strangely or newly to another society. That’s exactly what’s happening within Australia. They have some type of discrimination but we add the fuel to the fire. How can we conquer that virus? How can we find a solution to that virus? I think it’s from long, long ages ago. Discrimination is from one country to another and one religion to another, from one village to another. The discrimination is there and is heated up because of political reasons. Australia is an ally of the USA and U.S.A is inflaming this situation all over the world against Muslims in general.”
Failure to make religious discrimination unlawful
The failure of federal and NSW anti-discrimination legislation to provide comprehensive protection against religious discrimination and vilification was discussed.
“We keep going around in circles. The people just say forget about it, no one wants to listen to us, it’s no use people are shoving us from here to there. That’s why you don’t hear of the complaints. That’s where I think the core of the problem is. Why just leave out religion? How do you expect us to complain? At the moment that is the missing link. If we don’t get that fixed we will still be going around in circles.”
“At the moment I think the best thing that could happen is if someone calls you a dirty something they better call you a ‘dirty Arab’ than a ‘dirty Muslim’.”
“When we all migrated to Australia they accepted us by colour, by race, and by religion as well. So how come we can complain about race or colour but not religion? How come this is not connected?”
National security campaign
The meeting also touched on the impacts of the federal government’s national security campaign.
“The book the government sent it to each house in Australia [referring to fridge magnet campaign], I read it and then sent it back. We can see the terrorist group: [they] just picked the whole Muslim group. The Jewish terrorist group is not mentioned; the Irish terrorist group is not mentioned there. This is our most concern for our women, our children, our people and this is our dilemma. The word Muslim has become discriminating as a word to make these people perceive us as bad. If you mention Muslim in a shopping centre or in the airport, we feel it. Every time ASIO wants to increase their power, they target Islamic groups. The community has a fear of Muslims and Muslims have a fear of being targeted.
“Terrorists is coming from the minority from all the communities not only Muslims. It is how they target Muslims in anti-terrorist campaigns. The Muslim people have never accepted terrorism as a religious duty. The government doesn’t realise that we see Osama not as a Muslim. If I ask my kids, ‘What do you think about Osama?’, they will say ‘he is an idiot’ and ‘he is not a Muslim’. In Islam if you want to even cut a tree it is not acceptable. What do we see our government - John Howard and the Attorney General - doing every time that something happens? They say Islam is an issue.”
What more could be done to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
“The Muslim Council – it is your job to try and get a proper education system to educate children at schools no matter what. John Howard should be the first one to be educated about Arabs and Muslims. And there should be community unity. We have all of us should put our comments against any TV channel, any newspaper, any magazine there comments any comments in a discriminating way. We have to put our comments to them, and say that Muslims are not terrorists, Muslims are Australians.”
“Someone from the Muslim Council New South Wales or other state councils should go out to public schools and educate the students and teachers at the same time about Islam and culture. Politicians need to be educated also.”
“It’s not just because of September 11 that this is all happening. It has been happening for a long time. We need television programs that encourage everyone to love each other. September 11 is just an excuse.”
“The media are looking for something controversial to make a big story to get more people to buy the paper. But I think we have more influence to control the government, to put pressure to our government to stop this silly behaviour, to stop John Howard. The government needs to know that this racism exists in this country.”
“I have been in this organisation for about 23 years and all these things that people keep saying about education, it has been done over and over. Then, when you think you have covered everything, something else comes up. There is a concentrated effort to keep bringing hateful issues to prominence and propagate and campaign against Islam. So how do you deal with these things? We have been trying to figure out answers for these for the last 25 years.”
