The Racial Hatred Act: Case study 1

Introduction:

• two different experiences of the media

Media report:

• 'Renaissance: why women and Christians are embracing Islam', The
  Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Fray, May 1995

Comment:

• Sydney Morning Herald journalist Peter
  Fray on producing a balanced article
• Maha Abdo, President
  of the Australia Muslim Women's Association, on visual cliches and stereotypes

Other:

• Religious tolerance in Australia:
  Australian attitudes to Islam

Please note that none of the reports in the case studies have been the
subject of complaints or queries under the Racial Hatred Act.

Renaissance: Why women and Christians are embracing Islam

Peter Fray, May 1995

Just for a second, let's try one of those psychiatrist word association
games. What next word comes to mind when someone says "Islamic"?
Odds on, it will be something like, fundamentalist, militant, or terrorist.

Cheap trick, really, but it proves the point: whether we admit it or
not, Islamic Sydney faces ingrained prejudice. Not only is the religion
largely misunderstood, virtually every day the media reinforces the idea
that Islam is somehow different, difficult, or even dangerous.

Bombing in the US? Muslims Australian killed in Somalia? Muslims.

Many Muslims here feel it is a battle they can't win. Wasim Raza, a
community worker at the Islamic Council on NSW, says the community is far
too easily maligned for political, economic or cultural struggles overseas.

"If we do not comment they (the media) will go and find someone
who will," he says. "If a Palestinian did it, the first thing
we hear is people saying where is Ali Roude (the council's chairman), we
need a comment."

But silence can be taken as tacit support. The Rev John Baldock, the
general secretary of the World Conference of Religion and Peace, an Australian-based
peak body for the world's main religions, says local Muslims should be
more active in condemning Islamic terrorism. Australia's non-Muslims need
to see that what happens here and overseas is unrelated.

"I think it is important when people misuse Islam overseas that
Muslims in Australia as this is not acceptable behaviour," he suggests.

Living in what Muslims perceive as an anti-Islamic society has provoked
opposite reactions within the community. Some Muslims have sought to get
lost in Australia's multicultural warp and weft and , in doing so, cast
aside their religion.

But for many Muslims, particularly women, the 1990's appear to be prompting
a return to their religious heritage. Community leaders estimate that more
than half are now choosing to wear the hajib, the traditional head covering
designed to protect a women's modesty. Many women, including teenage students,
told the Herald they were not being forced into wearing the hijab, as is
sometimes believed by non-Muslims. Less than a decade ago, many women were
too fearful to look so obviously Islamic. Times have changed.

So, too, is the view of Islam among some Christians. Feeling that Christianity
has somehow lost its way, a small, but growing number of men and women
are converting to Islam. While it is impossible to estimate numbers, Islamic
people put the figure at about 200 a year. Not a flood, but one that, like
the return of women to the hijab, is a signpost of Sydney's Islamic renewal.

 

Rediscovery

Maha Abdo doesn't shake hands with men. It's nothing personal, it's
just that Islamic teaching prevents physical contact between men and women
from outside their immediate family.

Strict and perhaps unnecessary as it may seem to non-Muslims, Abdo sees
it is a way of reaffirming her religion and womanhood.

"I do not have to physically touch you to be a friend, " she
ways. "so you become more faithful, there are certain things you do
not do. In Islam, there is no physical contact between men and women. For
me, it makes me more comfortable"

Not all women follow the teaching, just as not all wear the hijab, but
increasingly both are seen as integral to being a Muslim in Australia.

A social researcher, Gary Bouma, recalls meeting Maha and her colleagues
from the Muslim Women's Association while preparing his report.

They were, he says, "delightfully fierce" in stating their
views on women in Islam. "They're a very active group," he says.

For Abdo, the association's president, it was not always so. She rediscovered
Islam six years ago, almost 20 years after her family migrated from Lebanon.

Apart from wearing the hijab, she has made the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca
in 1993 and lives strictly to Islamic law.

Growing up in Coogee in the 1970's, as one of few Muslims in the area,
she was "expected assimilate", especially at school.

"When we were growing up, we were not allowed to speak a second
language other than English, " she say. At home, however, her father
would only speak Arabic. "Now I appreciate that."

Abdo never lost her faith, but neither did she fully understand it until
she married and had children of her own. Then she started looking for the
answer to what it is to follow the teachings of the prophet Muhammad and
the Koran.

"What do we have?" she asks. "We know we are Muslims.
But what does that mean? There must be something deeper than there is on
the surface.

"It is all about education and it is happening all over the world
with every religion. People are searching for spiritual back-up.

"I consider myself lucky that I'm a Muslim, that I have religion
and faith. It gives me an incentive to get up in the morning. Where would
I be without my faith?"

She says many non-Islamic men and women equate the hijab with discrimination
against women, rather than a method of ensuring women are not looked upon
as sex objects.

"It is very hard for them to understand
that a woman being covered is being freed. From an Islamic point of view,
I'm a woman of identity."

But there are some practices associated with Muslims which Abdo and
her association are trying to kill.

Arranged marriages, for instance, are a cultural hangover, and are,
in fact, in breach of the Koran. So is female genital mutilation. "It's
all about education. People have to realise these things are cultural,
not religious." she says. "They are not part of Islam."

Islamic women actually have many of the rights advocated by some Western
separatist feminists. They pray without men, don't touch men, and party
without men. Marriage contracts or pre-nuptial agreements are a requirement
of Islam. "I've had a lot more fun at women-only parties," she
adds.

Women do face some negative rules. According to the Koran, men can have
up to four wives, or, in a country such as Australia, one wife and three
defactos.

But, as Abdo points out, there is a catch, which effectively prevents
polygamy from widespread use: a man must be able to treat each wife equally
in all respects. "If you can't treat them equally then you get only
one." she says.

Women, too, are given the choice to dismiss the concept by not having
it in the marriage contract. "I would not accept it." she says.
"You are allowed to not accept. In this day and age it should not
happen."

Apart from educating its own, the association has turned its attention
to breaking down barriers to the employment of Islamic women. Wearing the
hijab, she says, should be taken as a positive sign. It indicates the woman
is not afraid of expressing her beliefs and taking on a role in the community.

"It (the hijab) certainly shouldn't hinder their performance. It
should be looked at as a positive thing because if they've taken on wearing
the hijab they've shown responsibility."

 

New Believers

Farooq Abdul-Rahim used to be just plain old Frank Portell. Raised and
educated a Catholic, a decade ago he found in Islam what had been missing
in Christianity. "I always perceived myself as a good Christian,"
he says. "I always tried to follow the Commandments."

The trouble was, Frank Portelli felt few other people did. Australian
society had forgotten its Christian roots, and cast off its own moral and
ethical guidelines.

"It's not that the rules have changed, it's that people have manipulated
the Bible, " he says. "Society had left its own teachings.

"The Koran is given to us as a complete
way of life. It's how we live, how you sleep, how we eat. As a Christian,
I did not know what to think. Islam gave me all the answers."

Abdul-Rahim, 35, is a fervent convert. When the Herald first met him,
at the former Jehovah's Witness hall-cum-mosque at Smithfield, he was extremely
agitated by the closeness of women.

In a purpose-built mosque, women pray on the second floor out of sight
of the men and enter it through a different entrance. At Smithfield, men
and women are separated only by a curtain. "This is far from perfect,
" Abdul-Tahim said that night. As he left prayers, he covered his
face to avoid seeing the women. It seemed odd behaviour.

Later, he explained about women in Islam: "we (men) do not cover
them up at all. God requires they wear a hajib and be covered. Men and
women are separated at the mosque so that men are not distracted, and neither
are women for that matter."

Being Islamic has completely changed the course of his life. He left
Swan Hill in Victoria for Sydney 2 & 1/2 years ago to be near a mosque
and to educate his son, Sam, at an Islamic school. He is now a pupil at
Malek Fajd Islamic school in Chullora.

Andul-Rahim knows the Koran as well as many born believers. He never
misses prayer - he prays five times a day. Outside of work, he wears the
distinctive Muslim smock, the cummis, and has made the pilgrimage, or hajj,
to Mecca, something a Muslim is compelled to do once.

He says being a Muslim is relatively easy at his work. An accountant
for the NSW Department of Local Government at Bankstown, at midday and
three o'clock he finds a vacant office or meeting room and bows to the
Kaba, the most holies mosque of Islam in Mecca.

The only downside at work is the method of payment.

Muhammad's teachings prevent the paying or gaining of interest on bank
accounts. It is believed to be corrupting. In these days of electronic
pay, Abdul-Rahim has had to find a non-interest-bearing account.

He must be a banker's dream, although he paid cash for his house, thus
depriving the bank of years of mortgage repayments. His mother helped out
with a loan - interest-free, of course.

Years of being a devout Catholic may have made it easier for Abdul-Jahim
to adopt a strict theology such as Islam, but, in the beginning, an ever
older ideal pushed him into the arms of Allah : love.

Working for the Australian Wheat Board in 1984, he was sent from Melbourne
to Sydney on secondment. There, he met his future wife, Molook Al-Fadly,
a delegate on a wheat mission from Yemen. Meeting her inspired him to find
out more about Islam.

"It fascinated me," he says. "I started reading all I
could bout Islam and , because I liked this lady, I read about Yemen."

Later that year, they were married. Just before, Abdul-Rahim converted.
A decade on, he took the final step and chanced his name. "There's
nothing wrong with the name Frank Portelli," he says, "I wanted
my image to change. I wanted it to be known I was a Muslim."

At first, the Portelli family was not too impressed. "my parents
did not like the idea one little bit," he says. But the power of his
example has taken the family a full circle: his mother and brother have
converted to Islam (His father died four years ago.)

Muslims here are not known as proselytisers. Islamic leaders estimate
there are about 100 to 200 converts a year. Abdul-Rahim would like more.
"We can't force anybody," he says, "but we are required
to spread the word of Islam."

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