The assumption that Islam is a new religious identity among Aboriginal Australians is questioned. The historical evidence demonstrates a well-established connection between Islam and Aboriginal communities through the early migration of Muslims to colonial Australia. This historical framework allows us to criticise the negative construction of the Aboriginal Muslim in the media through the use of statistical information gathered in three Australian censuses (1996, 2001 and 2006). Our conclusion is that the Aboriginal Muslim needs to be understood both in terms of the historical context of colonial Australia and the Aboriginal experience of social and political marginalisation. Their conversion to Islam represents some degree of cultural continuity rather than rupture. Finally the article demonstrates that the sociological and psychological understanding of conversion is underdeveloped and inadequate.

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Land is central to Icelandic identity. It is birthright, heritage, a site of memory and belonging; mountains and fjords are the stuff on which Icelandic dreams are made. Land is made culture through story and song, told at family gatherings, and sung at schools and on hiking trips. Icelandic identity was built on this imagining, coupled to a vision of Icelanders as an exceptional people, a Viking race. The events of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which exposed institutional corruption, caused many Icelanders to doubt the Viking image. At the same time, Iceland has been invaded by tourists. This article, based on participant observation, a survey and interviews, argues that one significant effect of the post-GFC foreign invasion has been a transformation of the cultural and moral order in Iceland, away from the boasting Viking and towards a new set of values within which land and nature occupy an even more central place.