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A Study of Australian Muslim Youth Identity: The Melbourne Case

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602004.2011.583518

1469-9591

Nahid Afrose Kabir,

Migration, Refugees, and Integration

Abstract Australia is the home of 340,393 Muslims and they constitute about 1.7% of the total national population of 19,855,287 million people.Footnote1 Muslims have migrated to Australia from several Muslim countries on their own will for a better life. The Australian government also welcomed the immigrants because it needed labor for a sustainable economy. However, in times of crisis, for example, after the 9/11 incident the media and some politicians positioned the Muslims as the "Other". In December 2005 there was a riot at Sydney's Cronulla beach between some Lebanese-Australians and the mainstream Australians but the politicians and the media sided with the wider society. In September 2006, when the Egyptian-born Mufti al-Hilali presented a controversial sermon in Arabic in which he depicted scantily-dressed women as uncovered meat and blamed them for inciting men to rape, the rhetoric of "us" and "them" was final. The racial profiling of Muslims through the Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 has also caused unease in the society. Against this backdrop I interviewed 14 Muslim youths of diverse backgrounds, 15–17 years in Melbourne and tried to gain an understanding of their identity. Overall, the participants appeared to be peaceful, and their bicultural skills strengthened their Australian citizenship. Acknowledgements I express my sincere gratitude to all the students who participated in this study. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the NCEIS (National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies Australia) Conference "Challenges to Social Inclusion in Australia: The Muslim Experience" at The University of Melbourne in 2008. Notes Australian Bureau of Statistics: Population of Census and Housing, 2006. The unpublished census data was purchased by the author from the office of Australian Bureau of Statistics. Ibid. Ibid. A. 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Catherine McGrath, "Tension Mounts over Shoot-to-kill Provisions", The World Today, ABC Radio, 20 October 2005, available online at: Accessed 13 September 2008. See the movie Shoot on Sight, 2008. Shoot on Sight is a fictional political thriller based on London Police order to shoot the suspected terrorists after the 7 July 2005 London bombings. S. Poynting and V. Mason, "Tolerance, Freedom, Justice and Peace", op. cit. Amin Saikal, "Islam and the West: Containing the Rage", in Islam and the West, eds. Shahram Akbarzadeh and Samina Yasmeen, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005, pp. 13–25. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Shiv Malik, "My Brother the Bomber", Prospect Magazine, 135, June 2007, available online at: < http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9635>. Accessed 13 September 2008. S. Poynting, G. Noble, P. Tabar and J. 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Kabir, "The Cronulla Riot" op. cit.; Amelia Johns, "White Tribe: Echoes of the Anzac Myth in Cronulla", Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2008, pp. 3–16. The Australian, 13 December 2005, p. 4. The Australian, 27 October 2006, p. 4. The West Australian, 31 October 2006, p. 1; The Sunday Times, 12 November 2006, p. 3; and The Age, 3 November 2006, p. 4. The Australian, 27 October 2006, p. 1. Nahid Afrose Kabir, "Media is One-sided in Australia: Views of Australian Muslim Youth", Journal of Children and Media, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2008, pp. 267–281. Ibid. It should be noted that in 2000 the Australian-born Bilal Skaf and his brother Mohammad Skaf of Lebanese origin led groups of up to 14 Lebanese-Australian men who committed three gang rape attacks against white women, some of whom were as young as 14. Both are serving prison sentence. The West Australian, 31 October 2006, p. 1. Kabir, "Media is One-sided in Australia". 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It was a landslide victory, with the biggest landslide of all taking place in Oxley, where Pauline Hanson won the seat with a swing of 23%. T. Friedman, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World Before and After September 2001, London, New York: Thomas Friedman, Penguin Books, 2003. K. Baxter, and S. Akbarzadeh, US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Roots of Anti-Americanism, London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008. A. M. Rosenthal, "On My Mind; Clinton's Bosnia Choice", The New York Times, 16 February 1993, available online at: . Accessed 19 September 2008; Bill Clinton, Transcript of President Clinton's Speech on Bosnia, 27 November 1995, available online at: . Accessed 19 September 2008. Poynting et al., Bin Laden in the Suburbs, op. cit.; NSW Report, "Strike Force Neil", Kabir, "The Cronulla Riot", op. cit.; Greg Noble, "Respect and Respectability amongst Second Generation Arab and Muslim Australian Men", Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3, August 2007, pp. 331–344. Nahid Afrose Kabir, "Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Australian Media, 2001–2005", Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 3, December, 2006, pp. 313–328; Noble, "Respect and Respectability amongst Second Generation Arab and Muslim Australian Men", op. cit. Gillian Poppitt, and Ron Frey, "Sudanese Adolescent Refugees: Acculturation and Acculturative Stress", Australian Journal of Guidance & Counselling, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2007, pp. 160–181. Elizabeth Cassity and Greg Gow, "Making Up for Lost Time", Youth Studies Australia, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 51–55. Poppitt and Frey, "Sudanese Adolescent Refugees", op. cit.; Nahid Afrose Kabir, "Why I Call Australia 'Home'?: A Transmigrant's Perspective", M/C Journal, Vol. 10, No. 4, August 2007, available online at: . Accessed 10 March 2010. Cassity, and Gow, "Making Up for Lost Time", op. cit. ARACY, Multicultural Youth in Australia: Settlement and Transition, Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth, Canberra, 2007, pp. 24–26. N. A. Kabir, Young British Muslims: Identity, Culture, Politics and the Media, Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. N. A. Kabir, "Media is One-sided in Australia", op. cit.; See also, A. Saeed, "Islam in Australia since the 1970s", op. cit. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Population of Census and Housing, 1996, 2001, 2006, op. cit.