Towards understanding what Australia’s Muslims really think

Abstract

Over the past decade, issues concerning Islam and Muslims have featured prominently in public and media discourse. Much of this discourse is stereotypical, anecdotal and often unsubstantiated. Indeed, relative to the extent of comment on Islam and Muslims, few factual data exist on what Muslims really think. This article presents the views and opinions of the Queensland Muslim community based on the findings of a survey conducted at the 2009 Muslim Eid Festival in Brisbane. The findings of this research contradict many of the assumptions made about Australia’s Muslims concerning their views and opinions on a range of social and political issues. The research shows that Muslims highly value Australia’s key social and political institutions, including its democracy, judiciary, education and health-care systems. However, Muslims do express a lack of trust in certain institutions, namely the mass media. Also, consistent with the views of people globally, Muslims are deeply concerned about conflicts in the Middle East as well as the environmental crisis. This article suggests the need for a shift in public discourse to more accurately reflect the commonality, rather than incongruity, between Muslim views, opinions and concerns and those of the wider society.

Securing Security in Education: The Role of Public Theology and a Case Study in Global Jihadism

“…Religion is the phenomenon they have been trained to believe to be at best a private matter, not a serious issue for public consideration, conversation, debate or indeed motivation of human action in and of itself. As such, it would be not only politically incorrect to "blame" Islam for the aberrations of the likes of the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) but, moreover, the very idea that religion, indeed Islamic theology, is in fact part of what needs to be understood if such aberrations are ever to be managed would run counter to all the assumptions of their education and training (Rane et al 2010;Nawaz 2016a). Nawaz (2016b) is adamant that the notion that Global Jihadism has "nothing to do with Islam" effectively betrays the majority of Muslims: 'If Islamism has "nothing to do with Islam", there is nothing to discuss within Islamic communities.…”

“It would be nice if someone took the load off you” Arabic-speaking new-Australian mothers and the challenges of heritage language maintenance

“…Modern Standard Arabic expresses a common ethnic identity among Arabs all over the world (Elkholy, 1966;Rouchdy, 2002) and, while the Australian Arabic-speaking community is religiously diverse, it is the Arabic language that makes them a distinctly identifiable group (Mansouri & Trembath, 2005, p. 517). Classical Arabic unites the Islamic community worldwide because it is the language of the Muslim Holy Book, the Qur'an (Hage, 2002;Johns, Mansouri & Lobo, 2015;Rane, Nathie, Isakhan & Abdalla, 2011) The fact that Muslims attach strong cultural significance to Arabic as a sacred language (Clyne & Kipp 1999, pp. 154-155, 211) and consider it to be the language of Allah as well as that of the Qu'ran (Saeed, 2008) means that they place high value on maintaining Arabic (Abdelhadi, 2016) and want their children to learn it (Hatoss, 2013).…”

“…As Mansouri and Trembath (2005, p. 517) observe, in the wake of September 11 and the so-called War on Terror, Arab-Australians have experienced significant social and cultural marginalisation and exclusion (see also Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2004;Noble, 2006;Noble & Pointing, 2007;White, 2004). Anti-Muslim stereotypes and sentiments in the mass media have had an adverse (Mansouri, 2012;Rane et al, 2011). It is well documented that, as the most visible icons of Islam on account of wearing the hijab (headscarf), Muslim women encounter verbal and sometimes physical attacks (e.g.…”

A Comparison of Public Support for Moderate and Extreme Terrorism

“…A new survey instrument was formulated with the adaptation of three other surveys, and a new group of questions designed to measure the publics support for moderate and extreme terrorism in low, medium, and high terror active nations. The three surveys used to form the survey proper did not contain any specific information about the reliability and validity of those particular survey instruments, however, all three surveys had been used and cited in other articles; The Pew Global Attitudes Project [35], 'Support for Terror Wanes among Muslim Publics, Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics;' consisted of 99 questions, and has been peer reviewed and cited by [51,52]. Second, Muslim Americans, 'No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism' [53], contained 100 questions, and has been cited by [54,55].…”