HREOC Website:Eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australias
Consultations Homepage || Meeting Notes: 14 June 2003
Consultation with Sydney University students, 9 October 2003
The meeting was attended by 11 students most of whom were members of Sydney University Arab Students Association (SUASA) or Sydney University Muslim Students Association at Sydney University (SUMSA) or both. The meeting was organised and chaired by Rawan Abdul-Nabi, SUASA President, and facilitated by Omeima Sukkarieh (notes) from HREOC.
1. What are your experiences of discrimination and vilification?
On campus
“I haven’t experienced much on campus, nothing too overt anyway. Not long ago we had Islamic Awareness Week on campus and as part of that students of SUMSA created a beautiful artwork on the Graffiti tunnel wall, where it’s a free for all wall, anyone can use the space for expression, posters or whatever, and the artwork was about Islam which included pictures and quotes from the Qur’an, and other Islamic writing, it was really beautiful. On one wall, in white chalk someone had written across it the word ‘terrorist’. It’s still there. Who are you going to complain to? I told the SRC [Student Representative Council] in general terms, but there’s not much they can do. You find a lot of these things are around. I saw written on a desk ‘kill all Muslims!’ It got me angry but who am I going to complain to and what are they going to do about it? I complained once on behalf of SUASA not long ago this year when Students First (a group running for SRC Elections) got up on campus and said in a campaign to students that ‘if you don’t want your money going to Cuba or the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] then vote for Students First’. I complained to the electoral officer at the SRC asking for Students First to apologise and retract their comment publicly. There has been no response so far but it’s a complaints mechanism and we used it, we want to stamp our ground from now on (another reason why SUASA was established), we don’t want any of this and other sorts of discrimination and racism to continue without being it taken to task.”
At work
“I recently went for a job and the lady who was interviewing me said to me, ‘Do you need anything other than a prayer room?’. But she asked for my driver’s license because she wanted to see how I took the photo (if I was in my hijab or not). She then asked me ‘Are you able to handle people who are going to ask you something (about your religion)?’ The CEO came and talked to me and said ‘We don’t want to discriminate against you’ and provided me with a prayer space. People take cigarette breaks all the time, so what’s the big deal?”
In public places
“People get frightened when there’s a group of Arab looking guys. They took us out of the cinema once. It’s hard because you can’t do things with your mates. When you see young Anglo blue-eyed guys, do cops flood the station at Chatswood and get rid of them? If they perceive us that way then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t behave like that. It’s like living up to a reputation. It provokes anger. Cops do search us for no reason.”
“My sister was walking at the Opera House after the ‘No War’ painting thing happened and it was flooded with security guards. There’s one girl wearing the hijab and so she made a point to go up and say hello to people. We’re always not too sure whether to be on edge or friendly. In the QVB [Queen Victoria Building] there are private security guards in black suits and ear pieces and you’re a different species to them.”
“It’s really frustrating for youths because they do expect it; as soon as they walk into certain areas you have to be careful and not to speak too loud and people notice you.”
“Last year I came back from overseas and went through customs and I didn’t declare anything because I didn’t have anything to declare so I thought it was going to be an easy trip back. I ended up waiting in the customs line for over an hour and a half, and there were tourists from everywhere. They separate you in customs in a line where you get checked, especially if you declare something and they put me in that line and every single guy in the line was an Arab male. They checked everything, every pocket with such scrutiny and other people see that. My friend was an Osama bin Laden look-alike and they treated others with so much respect and were very helpful.”
Causes of prejudice
“Some people think that every Arab is a problem and every Muslim is a terrorist but what they don’t know is that we pride ourselves on being tolerant and multicultural and unfortunately we have people who try and erase that.”
“The gang rapes happened on a local level, but it hit the community the most. The things we had to deal with was the worst. People link Arab with Muslim all the time. I was with friends on a train and an Anglo lady when she saw us just grabbed her handbag and clutched it straight to her chest. You think evil and rapist.”
“There’s a lot of racism within the Arab community anyway. There are also young people who hate cops ‘cos they’re racist also. That’s the reality.”
The role of the media
“The main problem is the media, like the way they portrayed the gang rapes and the calling for the 55 year jail sentence. Why did they have to make it a religious issue, and not encourage the same jail sentence for the priest who raped those children? Why can’t he have been given the same sentence?”
The group referred to several examples of false reporting about Muslims, such as a website about the prophet Mohammed saying that he was homosexual, and religious practices, such as an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about ritual ablutions before prayer. There was a sense, however, that the media is beyond regulation.
“You can’t regulate the internet.”
“You can’t regulate talk back radio either.”
“It’s like you’re gonna try and change people’s minds and you don’t have control over the information people are getting.”
On the other hand, the successful court action against a newspaper columnist in May 2003 and the ABC TV program ‘Media Watch’ gave some cause for optimism that egregious examples of media bias will be monitored and may be effectively regulated.
The critical role of political leadership and the messages explicitly and implicitly broadcast by politicians was recognised.
“It’s a very Australian thing to say, especially to people of NESB, that when you do something good then you’re ‘Australian’ but if you do something bad then you’re ‘Un-Australian’. And that’s the problem we have with politicians. Bob Carr is extremely friendly with the Arab community in Sydney and he appears to be friendly. The conference at the beginning of last year was a good example. But he goes out and says things publicly that hurts the community. This is the way I want governments to think about it. You have high numbers of rape in Australia and for Mr Carr to be in government for so long and to say the perpetrators’ background, what does that say to previous victims of rape, that because you weren’t raped by a Lebanese Muslim then you are less important? If they [politicians] perceive us that way, then what hope does the rest of the community have?”
2. What is being done to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
On campus – Muslim chaplaincy
“There are contacts on campus where you can go I’m sure, but it’s just that nobody knows it exists. 1000 Muslim members are on campus for example and a lot of people are not aware and have no idea of what’s going on. We have a Muslim chaplaincy but the university has to improve itself.”
“It’s all about raising awareness. University is about education but it’s also a very social thing and a lot of things that operate at the Uni are in three main buildings and these are Union run and not Uni run, so it’s difficult because the chaplaincy is Uni run but organizations such as SUMSA are Union run and nobody knows that. The role of chaplaincy on campus has been set up as someone students go to for advice and information, so the person is also seen as having a counselling role. These points of contact are there though but no-one knows that they exist because of the huge gap between the Uni and the Union. They just don’t work together as they should. So what happens is that these points of contact exist but no-one knows that they exist.”
3. What more could be done to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
Address the imbalance between anti-vilification and freedom of speech
“If the government wants to start putting money into addressing this issue and take it seriously, then they should draw a line between freedom of speech and racial discrimination and vilification. It appears that in permitting one human being to exist, you transgress others.”
Community organisations need to collaborate
“It all comes back down to the individual because clubs and societies only have one role and they need a network of individuals without which they can’t exist. There are so many different groups and organizations now but there is no communication between them. If clubs and societies and organizations learn to work together it’s one step further. The Jewish lobby groups collectively now have a very strong voice but for the Arab community this is not a reality, mainly because there are a lot of divisions within the community. It’s important to work with the strength of the community’s diversity not use this as a way to create problems. It is a power struggle and we should be now looking at the youth and finding a way to unite the youth.”
Media training
“When we do respond to articles for example, they don’t even publish our letters. At the FAIR conference they suggested that a group of us to send letters not just one of us, otherwise it will go unnoticed. People need to be educated and informed about the APC and ABA as well as to be taught how to write good letters suitable for publishing.”
“There needs to be more and better education for the younger generation. If people know how much of what they get from the media is such bullshit, and if people realized that and when they see the front cover of the paper for example and it’s discriminatory then they won’t buy it. At the very least they will be able to think critically.”
