Ideology paints itself into a corner

To my surprise, the students responded to the un-Australian theme with vigour. After a brief period of confusion, they settled down and started actively debating what the term meant and how they could make a piece of art that related to it. They wrestled with the concept, worked through multiple ideas and sent me numerous email inquiries.

One man, struggling to define the term to his own satisfaction, asked participants of an Internet chat room what they thought un-Australian meant. He was swamped with intently felt replies. Too intent, he said; it took him hours to respond to them all. The same student found an organisation that promoted correct flag etiquette announcing one morning that the way the university flagpoles were being run was all wrong.

Another student thought the term un-Australian represented a xenophobic fear of the unknown. She said she thought that Australians were becoming quite paranoid, particularly in relation to immigration issues. She tapped paranoid into a search engine and came up with pages about alien invasion.

The piece of work that she eventually created was a movie poster featuring Sigourney Weaver playing the indomitable Ripley in the Alien film series. Against a background of a huge, swirling Australian flag, Ripley stood proudly clutching a stun gun and surrounded by aliens. "Ripley will save us!" the headline pronounced.

It all seemed to be going well and I was looking forward to the multimedia event. It was our first chance to publicise the work being done in the creative arts courses and we intended to invite as many press contacts as we could.

Then things took an unexpected turn.

A couple of my students carefully considered the theme and came up with images that, viewed in a different context, would look identical to right-wing propaganda. They had both taken exception to the views of Taj Din al-Hilali, who was then receiving a great deal of media attention.

The sheik is no longer the Sydney mufti. But at the time he was being roundly criticised for his comments about women, foreign policy and nationality. Probably the most publicised translated quote referred to scantily clad women as "uncovered meat" and drew a link between rape and a woman's dress. There was also a clanger about Australia's origins as a penal colony that raised multiple media hackles.

Both students came to me to discuss their planned works. One wanted to make a sculpture, like a flavoured milk carton, call it The un-Australian Shake, and have a picture of the sheik on the side. The other was interested in having an image of the sheik, surrounded with a collage of his most problematic quotes, with a big red stamp, similar to what you would find on a passport, branding him un-Australian.

The reader may think this is trivial, given that both images are fairly innocuous and one is quite funny, but after my conversation with the students I agonised over my response.

On one hand, I had a left winger's knee-jerk reaction to anything that looked remotely right wing. I had strong reservations about encouraging students to create work that could be interpreted as demonising Muslims or that ridiculed their religious leadership. The Cronulla riots had exposed deep fault lines in our communities and I was against anything that would broaden this divide, no matter how minor.

On the other hand, if I honestly believed in freedom of thought, speech and expression, how could I possibly try to dissuade my students from pursuing their ideas? It seemed unethical to ask an individual to express their point of view, then attempt to undermine it. Such an action was also hypocritical on a personal level; privately I had railed against the sheik's comments. If I tried to influence these students, no matter how subtly, I would be gutless and dishonest.