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Introduction Timeliness and the Complexity of Identities; or, Why Muslim Women Can’t be Footy Fanatics I am a Muslim, a young woman and an Australian. But I’m also an Australian Rules Football nut. The weekend starts on Friday afternoon when I rush home from university and dissect the footy guide with my family – who’s in, who’s out, who’s injured or suspended. We each offer our hypotheses on which teams will win and which ones will lose. Then at about 8.30pm we all settle down in front of the T.V for three hours of good, hard, physical, no-holds-barred footy. It’s wonderful, and what’s better is that there are more games on Saturday and Sunday. For twenty- two fantastic weeks of each year I’m a happy woman … but as I write these words, the footy season is drawing to a close and I know that shortly I’ll be in the throes of footy withdrawal … and I’m not looking forward to it one little bit. I have a Muslim friend who is more than a friend; she’s the older sister I never had. I’ve known her since we were eight years old and I think she’s amazing. She’s studying at university, runs a household, is a wonderful mother to her two year old daughter and has just started a small business. She’s the epitome of the ‘modern woman’ frantically juggling study, work and family commitments. My mum loves her garden. Personally, I don’t see the joy in getting dirt underneath your fingernails and spiders in your shoes … but Mum really likes it. She loves to poke and potter about, weeding here and pruning there. She’s forever swapping cuttings and plants with friends and neighbours and she’s on nodding acquaintance with most of our neighbourhood and knows who has the best begonias or the nicest roses (and who is willing to ‘trade’). I’m sure we have the best halal-food compost heap in the Southern Hemisphere. But this is not a thesis about being a Muslim female footy supporter, or being a Muslim and a ‘modern woman ‘ trying to ‘have it all’. Nor is it a thesis called Green Thumbs and Crescent Moons: Muslim Gardeners in Australia. Instead, this is a thesis which talks about Muslim women’s experiences of racism in South Australia and this research is nothing if not timely. It comes sandwiched between September 11, the first Bali bombings, the ‘war on terror’, recent bombings in Imtoual ‘Taking things personally’ 1 the heart of London, and, the second Bali bombings. Each of these events, because the ‘enemy’ has been constructed as Muslim, has resulted in a wave of open hostility and negativity towards all Muslims. This thesis doesn’t argue that such hostility and racism began with September 11. On the contrary it argues that such hostility began centuries ago and that events such as these provide opportunities for public displays of racism. These events allow negative discourses about Muslims to become more pervasive and acceptable. For instance the following are some recent headlines from major Australian newspapers which were aimed at Muslims or Islam: • ‘Terrorism spotlight now firmly on Muslims’ (Canberra Times, 10 November 2005, p. 19) • ‘Bomb car found as police make another arrest – TERROR SUSPECT FLEES SYDNEY’ (Daily Telegraph, 11 November, p. 1) • ‘Accept our ways or leave: Costello’ (Daily Telegraph, 11 November 2005, p. 9) • ‘The day one man infected a community with hatred’ (Australian, 12 November 2005, p. 1) • ‘Imam shifts blame’ (Northern Territory News, 13 November, p. 5) These public discourses get played out in the lives of ordinary people. Some non-Muslims feel that it is acceptable to shout racist abuse at Muslims, some feel justified in firebombing mosques or spraying graffiti on Muslim community halls, many others are comfortable ‘slanging off’ against Islam and Muslims without fear of public censure or retribution. This thesis recounts the way some young Muslim women in South Australia experience these behaviours and how they respond. Emailing the Sub-Editor In a moment of anger and frustration I wrote the following email to one of the sub-editors of the South Australian daily newspaper, the Advertiser. I was trying to express my anger and disgust at the way media commentators and journalists had pounced on the opportunity to ‘bash’ Islam and Muslims in discussions of a memoir which allegedly outlined the ‘Muslim tradition’ of ‘honour killing’1. On reflection, I probably wouldn’t have written such an openly emotional email, I would have taken the time to think about the structure of my sentences and taken more care in constructing a logical and ‘watertight’ argument. I include it here however because it shows the 1 The story of this memoir is told in the Media Analysis chapter. Imtoual ‘Taking things personally’ 2 deep upwelling of anger and frustration that can overwhelm Muslim women when confronted with yet another negative or hostile media representation. Each of us has a breaking point, a moment where we feel as if we cannot take it anymore, where we just want it all to STOP … sometimes we lash out in anger, sometimes we cry, sometimes we just withdraw from the world for a while … but sometimes we write an email. From: Alia Imtoual To: Rex Jory Date: 29/7/2004 Dear Mr Jory, As someone researching media representations of Muslims in the Australian print media and the ways in which racism affects the lives of young Australian Muslim women, I was deeply disturbed by your piece yesterday (Advertiser, 28/7/04) entitled ‘If Khouri's book is a lie, untold damage has been done’. I was concerned because you appear to believe that if Khouri’s book is a hoax then the racism that Australian Muslims (and others) have experienced as a result of people reading and believing her work, is terrible and appalling. By default then, you appear to be saying that if her book is ‘true’, then it’s okay for non-Muslim Australians to view Muslims as ‘unbending, insular, unrepentant religious fanatics, people devoid of humanity, cruel, senseless and repugnant’. I disagree. It is not okay for Muslims to be seen in this light – it’s racist and it’s wrong. While only an ignorant person would deny that so-called ‘honour’ killings do occur and that sometimes these are incorrectly claimed to be condoned or permitted by Islam, equally I would argue that only an ignorant person would believe that all Muslims (or even all Jordanian Muslims) condone honour killings. This is one of the major problems with Khouri’s book. If it is a fake then she has deliberately written a book filled with all the worst stereotypes of Muslims and these have been believed by a gullible, ignorant and/or racist public. And if the story is true then she has been perhaps blinded by her rage and grief and written a story that has conflated the terrible behaviour of a few people into the behaviour of ALL Muslims - a conflation which has then been accepted and perpetuated by a gullible, ignorant and/or racist public. Either way, all Muslims have been wrongly and inaccurately portrayed (yet again) as being barbaric, heartless, uncivilised, cruel and degraded. I am very concerned that you have seen fit to write that after reading her book ‘you can’t blame people who read her book from saying: “we don't want this type of person living in Australia. We don't want them mixing with our children at school”’. Well, I disagree strongly. You CAN blame people who feel that they own this land and can judge who is deserving of living in this nation without acknowledging that they too are guests on Indigenous land (who are the ‘we’ you mention?). You CAN blame people who feel that they can judge the moral worth of an individual just by looking at the way they dress, the name they have or the religion they adhere to. You CAN blame people who condemn children for the wrongs of adults (or is it okay to say ‘I don’t want my child to play with the child of an American because ‘‘their people’ have just killed and maimed thousands in an unjust war’?). And you CAN blame people who categorise others into ‘types’. Remember John Howard saying ‘we don't want people like that coming into our country'??? (Children Overboard Fiasco). Finally I believe that you CAN blame people who think that all Muslims in Australia are recent migrants. This is untrue as there are many of us, like myself, who can trace our family histories back to the shameful time when Europeans first invaded this land. And there are many more who have been born in Australia to naturalised Australian parents. Not that this makes a difference in reality - all Muslims are seen as non-English speakers, new migrants, asylum seekers and generally unworthy of being part of this nation. […] Finally, Mr Jory, I would ask that in future when you read books which represent an entire group of people as barbaric, depraved, cruel and mindless, please take the time to question this representation. An entire people can never be generalised as ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Were all Germans Nazis and Jew-haters? Was it okay to lock up Australians of German heritage during the war? Was it okay to prevent their children from attending school with other Australian children? I think you'd agree that the answer is ‘no’. Ditto for Muslims.

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