Positive Muslim integration is possible

After being picked out of a hat as a “random Muslim” to fly to Canberra for the Issues Deliberation Australia (IDA) conference on Muslims and non-Muslims in Australia, I must admit I accepted the ticket with some trepidation. Glancing at the program I saw the first plenary session had former prime minister Bob Hawke chairing a session with Archbishop Cardinal Pell and speaking alongside Melbourne’s Sheikh Mohammad Omran. Other sessions included speakers such as Janet Albrechtsen, Wassim Doureihi from Hizb ul Tahrir and Denis McCormack from Australians Against Further Immigration. I thought to myself - this was going to be an interesting few days.

The idea was to gather 350 random Australians, add another 50 Australian Muslims into a steaming pot, stir it up with views from all sides of the political spectrum and leave it to simmer for a few days in Canberra. Far from turning ugly, the Deliberation ended up being a real eye opener for both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Before the deliberations, an initial survey by IDA and Newspoll showed nearly half of Australians, 49 per cent, thought that incompatibility between Muslim and Western values was a big contributor to terrorism. After the deliberations, the number who held that opinion dropped significantly to 22 per cent.

Asked whether Muslims coming to Australia had a bad impact on national security 44 per cent of Australia agreed: after the deliberations that figure nearly halved to 23 per cent.

Before deliberations, over a third of Australians, 35 per cent, thought that Muslims were a threat to the Australian way of life. After meeting Muslims, living with Muslims, being able to humanise Muslims that figure fell to 21 per cent.

It shows that when we humanise each other, deconstruct our conceptualisations of the “other” and address each other’s concerns as our own concerns, positive integration is possible. So if that’s the case, what’s the problem?

While I am the first to admit Australian Muslims need to make more effort, a large part of the responsibility lies with government policy. Our politicians are too busy playing politics because they don’t have policies to address the concerns of Australian Muslims.

Let’s be honest, many Australian politicians don’t want Australian Muslims to integrate, because in the broader scheme of things, scary hairy, bearded, Muslim bogey men help us define who we are not, plus they’re a great political football come election time. However, the prevailing fear that Muslims, constitute some kind of fifth column has found expression in serious institutional barriers to Muslim integration.

Just ask Dr Kevin Dunn, an expert on racism in Australia who has mentioned this fear in his ground breaking research: “There is a lot of community fear about Islam and when we compare people’s attitudes to Muslims, compared to their attitudes, say, to Asian Australians or Indigenous Australians and other so called ‘out groups’ you do find that right now it's Muslims who suffer the highest degrees of intolerance.”

So when the “John Howards” of this country talk about Muslim integration, what they really want is segregation. But the truth of the matter is, Muslims are integrating. A glance at all the “random” Muslim participants at the Canberra deliberations who are doing incredible things would attest to this, but it is at a regrettably slow pace.

It appears Muslims are knocking loudly on the door of mainstream Australia but the problem is many of us are too scared to open it. Because opening the doors would mean having to work next to Muslims, live next to Muslims, or God forbid, even allow our daughters to marry Muslims.

The problem is, if we don’t address these barriers to Muslim integration, we can all look forward to a disastrous future. One only needs to look at the French riots and the Muslim “ghettos” of Europe as a glimpse of what lies ahead should we choose to alienate and disenfranchise a large section of our community further.

The situation in Australia however, is far from hopeless. Positive integration is possible, but it takes political will by our federal and state governments. No longer can we afford to take the politically expedient avenue of putting the sole onus on Muslims to integrate through promoting vague discussions on values and head coverings. A more urgent focus should be on developing policies which address economic barriers to integration and facilitate upwards mobility of Australian Muslims within the broader Australian society.

If we are serious about this we would first of all increase education and employment programs. Clearly education programs are a priority, nurturing not only hard skills, but also soft skills that are essential to communicating and networking. These programs should focus on areas of geographic disadvantage, and specifically address under-serviced areas such as Muslim women and youth. Such programs will tackle some of the disproportionate unemployment problems suffered by the Muslim community.

One thing is to have the skills, another is to use them. Having skills does not ensure employment. One barrier is religious discrimination. Hence strong laws against religious discrimination will help Australian Muslims get jobs, keep jobs and gain promotion.

The UK, United States, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand all have legislation which prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, whereas here in Australia, it is not unlawful under federal law to discriminate against someone, or vilify them, on the basis of their religion. However, under state law, Victoria does have such a protection. Several studies have shown that it has worked in those countries and Australia should follow suit.

There is no doubt that the stereotyping of all Australian Muslims in the media and public domain as fanatics and terrorists because of the misguided actions of a few can lead to unnecessary prejudices and misconceptions. But ultimately, these underlying prejudices between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians must be tackled through community projects. Ones that work at a grassroots level with schools, service providers and welfare organisations are likely to be most effective, and extra funding for such programs would be a wise social investment.

Once meaningful policies are implemented, we can let the migration process run its course, and we will see Australian Muslims, like the Irish, German, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese and Chinese before them, become another colourful tile in the modern Australian mosaic.