HREOC Website: Isma - Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australias
Consultations
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|| Meeting Notes: 17 July 2003
Consultation hosted by the
Multicultural Education Committee and the SA Equal Opportunity Commission,
Adelaide, 17 July 2003
The meeting was chaired by Professor Jerzy Smolicz,
Centre for Intercultural Studies and Multicultural Education at the University
of Adelaide. The South Australian Equal Opportunity Commissioner, Ms Linda
Matthews, was co-host and guest speaker. It was attended by 32 invited
participants. Assisting were Mr Franco Parella, Manager of Education and
Training, South Australian Equal Opportunity Commission (notes), Mr Christian
Cifuentes, Policy Project Officer, Multicultural Education Committee (who
organised the consult), Vincenzo Andreacchio, Senior Professional Officer,
Multicultural Education Committee and Ms Omeima Sukkarieh, Community Liaison
Officer, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (notes).
In his opening remarks, Professor Smolicz made the following
points:
- Diversity
– even and perhaps especially with respect to ‘core values’
– is critical to Australia’s development and success.
“[The many groups represented] could only make a contribution
if they preserve their core values. If they are similar, they cannot
contribute anything, so it is very important that their core values
should be respected. Language, we see language as a carrier of culture
and undoubtedly language is very important.”
- There are
three kinds of racism. We do not deal adequately with the third kind.
(1) Visual racism identifies people by their appearance; (2) Linguistic
racism identifies people by their by accent; (3) Cultural racism –
“a link to discrimination on account of religion”. “So
that is a very important thing that we have to think about and one thing
we have to realise is that religious affiliation is not something which
can be assimilated away. If people think that it can be dissipated through
the main stream it will not, it is for many people a very strong core
value, for many groups and sometimes religion can be stronger and more
permanent than language ... So religion is not something which can disappear
and we must respect it through human rights. It’s not something
which we can wish away.
- One approach
to eliminating racism is to look for commonalities. “Islam
obviously has a great deal in common with Christianity and Judaism and
we have heard a number of speakers who always emphasise belief in one
god. People of the book believe in the prophets and common traits between
believing Christians and Islamic people against secularism and many
international organisations and conferences. The greatest allies were
some Christians and some Islamic people, they were arguing against the
same thing, against materialism, against secularism and against the
spiritual void against that kind of belief that there is some other
reality and that another reality transcends mechanistic world, transcends
this material world.”
- To change
behaviour, the first step is to address ignorance, including ignorance
of Islam. There is a fine line, however, between providing information
and proselytising, or the perception of the latter. “There
are two elements that I can detect, one being that the fear of terrorism
can lead to paranoia and to a degree hysteria, which is I’m afraid
some of our very new problems, and the second problem is still what
we said before which is a lack of understanding and knowledge. But this
is a difficult dilemma. … So we would like people to know more
about every religion. On the other hand we hear if there is too much
teaching of one religion it becomes indoctrination. So you have to find
a balance between, on one hand, where people label it as indoctrination
and, on the other, the knowledge of what it is all about and of course
as educators we have to be a leveller in between.”
Commissioner Matthews outlined the grounds of discrimination
covered by South Australian equal opportunity law: sex, sexuality, marital
status, pregnancy, race, disability and age. Discrimination on the ground
of religion is not covered. A proposal to extend the legislation to this
ground was opposed by some Christian Churches in South Australia and not
pursued by the government. However, the Commission is aware of much behaviour
in the community that would amount to religious discrimination. She also
mentioned that there is some evidence that people who look visibly ‘different’
are more likely to experience prejudice and discrimination in these times,
for example, people of Greek and Italian appearance.
The meeting then turned to the three questions set out
in the Isma project flyer.
1. What are your experiences
of discrimination and vilification?
Much of the conversation focused on discrimination in
education and the unpreparedness of many educators to tackle it effectively.
A secondary student noted:
“A
lot of the teachers have had no training about Islam or the Arab culture
and other groups. They get educated about tolerance and about what they
are trying to teach us. But we don’t really have an understanding
of what we are being taught, so it’s really hard to understand.
There is nothing worse than sitting in a classroom in the afternoon
and having your teacher speaking to her young class and they don’t
care about what they are teaching. If someone is really passionate about
what they are teaching it really comes across a lot better.”
One participant claimed that two kindergartens had refused
to enrol a child from Iraq on the pretence that there were no places available.
Another participant advised that that was true of one of the kindergartens.
“The
family didn’t speak English so there was no way that they could
probably tell this was happening. It’s that subtly of discrimination
I think in the community that really deeply bothered me at that instance.”
Another participant
said, however:
“The
priority of access doesn’t accommodate anything like this. It
puts children at risk, people who are working and people who are studying
and so the priority of access doesn’t accommodate refugees. We
can’t even manipulate it to put them under our priority of access
and let them in because there is no room in the Children Services Act
for that. So we turn families away for that reason.”
Resistance on the part of other parents was mentioned
as another barrier to enrolling children of Islamic background in non-Islamic
private schools. Happily in this case, that reluctance had been successfully
overcome.
“We
recently had a Muslim parent who wanted their child to join the kindergarten
and they actually excepted the child and the centre to come up against
a lot of parental objections and it did happen for a while but we managed
to overcome that and it’s going really well and I hope that this
is a good lesson to learn from.”
An Education Officer in the Muslim Women’s Association
described the following incident.
“I
work as an Education Officer for the Muslim Women’s Association
and we had an incident recently where the girls who attend an Islamic
school where they participate in interschool sports once a week played
netball and they won and the girls from the other school refused to
shake hands with the girls and made a few comments about their religion
and that was quiet upsetting as this happened to eleven year olds.”
“There
are occasional incidents of discrimination between students. These did
increase following September 11th. They were mostly verbal, but did
result in one physical confrontation. Several students also were made
to feel uncomfortable while travelling on public transport.”
The racist attitudes of administration staff at a tertiary
institution were described.
“There
were international students from Saudi Arabia who came to the college
wanting to learn English and working in the admin office, the woman
at the College called ASIO to come and check on them. I am sure she
called ASIO because they were Muslim and wanted to learn English and
proceed to learn flying. I was an international student and before coming
to Australia each person is checked before they arrive to Australia
by the Australian Department of Immigration and so there was no reason
to call ASIO. It makes people feel like they are criminals.”
One participant described workplace discrimination.
“There
was another incident at Uni where I was fasting and I was working the
night shift and I had to take a break for twenty minutes to break my
fast and my colleagues could not understand why I had to take a break.
Within the system there was no break allowed. … We do have prayer
rooms at campus, it’s pretty good and we do have breaks for students
but not if you are working there.”
2. What is being done to fight
anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
Several participants
described local strategies of which they were aware.
“I
am at a very large secondary school. It’s a fabulous place of
work. We have sixty something different cultures and the students actually
get on very well together. They are very protective of each other. It’s
a comfortable place to work but the issues that we are moving to work
with are the parent values and attitudes of parents that come through
to the students. We have had incidents on the streets actually where
parents are shouting at students from other cultures. So we have actually
brought these parents into the school and talked to them about how big
people need to behave. It’s actually been quite an interesting
exercise in some ways because when it is put in front of them they can
obviously see that, whatever their values, are they are going to come
through their children and if the children are going to bring them back
to school then there are going to be problems.”“I
work at a Pre-school and I can safely say that basically nothing has
come into this training on Islam from what we can pick up on but what
we have just currently done is educating the children by teaching them
about themselves, such as ‘me, myself, who am I, how do I differ
from other people in my centre, how am I the same’ and getting
the children to observe each other and distinguish between themselves
and then compare what similarities they have. Then we progress and we
put in a fortnight on each nationality, we get parents in and they cook
their food, talk about their culture, reading stories in their own language,
discuss where they come from. … I think just saying at school
you can’t discriminate is not enough. You have to put programs
in place and give the schools the opportunity to do a week or a fortnight
learning on other religions and therefore there will be a flow-on effect.”
“We
at the Muslim Women’s Association do conduct cross cultural training
to schools and that gets quite busy. We have been to many schools but
we are still not getting out to enough schools. A lot of schools don’t
even know about us or mainly public schools are not contacting us. We
also have guided tours of the Mosques. Even though we are contacted
on a regular basis from many schools, there are still hundreds of schools
that are not contacting us. The fact that we do run sessions, and most
of the time the sessions that we run are for students, very rarely do
the teachers themselves participate as well. We had one session at a
school where we spoke to a group of hundred teachers which was great
but we really need to get out more.”
In a comment
on the Muslim Women’s Association strategy, one participant observed:
“If
we are going to study and understand other religions this has to be
supported by educational departments and institutions and has to be
singled officially and formally. It has to have a perimeter of this
sort otherwise it is dissipated.”
The University
of South Australia’s response to each of September 11 and Bali was
described.
“When
the Bali Bombing issue arose the University sent out an email to all
academic staff and administrative staff and by extension to our students
association and also to the students who happened to come from Indonesia
and said that the staff would be aware that there may be Indonesian
students present who would be worried and anxious and they could make
arrangements through the University to phone home. As a spin off from
that it became quite interesting people began to recognise that we had
Indonesian students on campus and found out things for example that
there are more Indonesian Roman Catholics than there are the total population
of Australia so not all Indonesians are Muslim. So when these incidents
arise it is a good learning opportunity. After September 11th we were
all instructed to be very careful and conscious that there may be American
students or North American students present and that we should look
out for them as they might be distraught and upset.”“I
wanted to share one that brought joy to our community for a number of
years now and that’s Multicultural Parents Arts Group which is
run by the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Participants of this group
don’t have to have a language in common, and we have a huge number
of parents who come and create mirrors or tapestries or whatever and
usually with some theme like cultural food or something like that and
parents just love coming. It looks at parents addressing reality through
art.”“Whole
school assemblies were held following September 11th and the commencement
of the war in Iraq. These assemblies clearly demonstrated the commitment
to valuing multiculturalism within the school community and the wider
society. The assemblies had a positive effect. The staff and students
have had various opportunities to learn about Islam and the cultures
of Arabic speakers and express their views. These opportunities have
come through Multicultural Education Committee, Access Asia and English
as a Second Language teachers’ professional organisation ESLE.”
3. What more could be done
to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
What more is needed in education?
“When
I think of kids working with other kids I think about ways of creating
new types of normal, a different kind of normal. For example, it is
normal not to celebrate Christmas and it is normal to celebrate Christmas.
It depends on who you are and your family. I think sometimes that public
education doesn’t see it in that way, that something other than
what is normal to themselves is not that normal. So they say we will
learn about their way for two weeks but then we will go back to doing
it in the way we have always done it. I see that when it is Christmas
time and the stuff that is made on the television about not having Father
Christmas and things and what that says to me is that Christian beliefs
are solely in our public education and they are invisible to us. Last
year we went out to look at celebrations and look at presents and we
did talk about Christmas and we talked about how some kids celebrate
and some do not. One of the kids came up to me and said to me ‘You
know some people celebrate Christmas and some people don’t, but
I do’ and what he was saying was that that’s ok. That’s
what we need to be doing.”“If
schools could perhaps direct the learning of students in such a way
that a least students could learn such a simple thing as, that you know
Muslims believe in Allah which simply is the Arabic word for ‘God’,
while Christian priests praying in Bethlehem use the word ‘Allah’
in our prayer. How many people out there don’t realise that Christians
and Muslims believe in the same God, or that Christians could use the
word ‘Allah’ in their prayer? ... Basics like that are not
being taught at school and that really upsets me. They are focusing
on fundamentalism, abuse of human rights and not even going near the
basic beliefs.”“That
is a point I often make when I get a chance to talk to the media: that
fundamentalism has nothing to do with Islam. People with fundamentalist
views are in every religion and people who were not religious as well
have come into disputes also. Students are being bombarded by negative
images about Muslims and Islam; they do not need it in class. So many
schools assist all that stuff sensationalised media hype about Islam.
So now let’s get back to the basic of showing Muslim female doctors
in a positive light, for example, and I think schools also have a responsibility
in doing this.”
The question of whose responsibility it is or should
be to ensure these issues are covered in the curriculum was raised.
“We
shouldn’t just teach cultural studies here and it should be everyone’s
responsibility in all courses. Every single opportunity should be taken
up. Teachers are very good unfortunately at saying ‘ah that is
their responsibility; cultural studies belong to the cultural studies
people and teachers’. They are good at saying it is someone else’s
responsibility. Cultural studies are taught maybe a little bit in food
and so on but I think that the message we have to get through to teachers
and to parents is that it is everyone’s responsibility. So that
at every single opportunity we take it up.”“Teachers
said it is not our responsibility to pick up on this. Ultimately if
teachers don’t know that some of the teaching resources and material
they are using is wrong in the first place and that these stereotypes
are just stereotypes then they are not going to pick up on it. Unfortunately
the kids do learn this stuff and nobody picks up on it.”
The dangers
of inaccurate labelling were pointed out at this stage of the meeting
and discussed generally for some time.
“Don’t
mix the culture from a country with the culture of Islam. Islam is not
a culture. It is a faith. Understand when you are talking about meaning
of Islam it is different than the culture, because when you see some
of the countries they are practising some culture looking to say it
is Islam, which is totally wrong. There is a difference in the practice
of culture and the practice of religion.”“Some
people unfortunately can’t distinguish between the act and the
religion. That’s the whole point with the stoning of the woman
in Nigeria, there were comments coming out about Muslims because of
that. But that’s their tradition. That is not the Islamic people,
but traditions of that country. But people can’t seem to distinguish
between the two, so I think that’s a major issue.”
We asked for participants’ views about making diversity
awareness training mandatory as part of every teacher’s training.
“We
hear about harassment and bullying and the money that has been put into
addressing these issues but this seems to me the perfect opportunity
to put some money in from government initiatives to go in some sort
of program, that could go to all schools, private and public, and teachers
can be trained in looking and educating ourselves and students about
protective behaviour, anti-discrimination law, cultural diversity, etc.
We should be required to do it because unless we actually do something
and develop tolerance in the young coming through and help them learn
what discrimination is then we won’t get anywhere. I would support
the idea for mandatory training for us all.”“It
is necessary to have mandatory training on culture and religious diversity
as a teacher because it is the teachers who also do the discrimination,
even union members. It’s just that these people are in a position
of power and these people are imparting their views on to the children,
therefore I really think we need a mandatory training in different cultures.”
“Anti-racism
training should be mandatory. It needs to be flexible enough to incorporate
examples/resources about a range of cultural groups. Increased parent
participation through art projects has been successful for other cultural
groups. At a system's level it needs to be a directive from the CEO
so that school leaders ensure it is part of each school's strategic
development plan.”“I
think that training also has to include anti-discrimination law. We
are told not to discriminate but there is no background or information
on it. You have to be seen to be not discriminatory but it has to become
part of your teaching. We had a great thing about no discrimination
on gender. Well, I think that it has gone further than gender. What
about having a similar push to campaign against racial discrimination?”
