.jpg)
Radar, one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s stable of blogs, carried out an interesting experiment recently. The author decided to dress as a Muslim woman and, accompanied by two Muslim ladies:
…venture into a socially conservative area of Sydney dressed in cloaks and hijabs. Deep within the heart of whiteness, we will record the reactions to our presence.
In other words, the author wanted to test what has become almost an article for faith for some Australian Muslims: that society, particularly its more “socially conservative” and affluent sections, are intrinsically racist and irremeedably opposed to us. In this case, the author and her two friends settled on the Sydney suburb of Chatswood as the perfect testing ground for the theory.
Whilst one can’t doubt the good intentions of the author, there are a number of very serious problems with this approach.
Firstly, let’s attempt a small thought experiment. Imagine, for one moment, that a non-Muslim woman from one of the more affluent and ethnically homogenous suburbs of Sydney donned a miniskirt and a revealing top and proceeded to go to Bankstown to test the hypothesis that Middle Eastern men harass ‘Aussie girls’. Each look, stare, or comment from a male of Middle Eastern appearance could be recorded and written up as an article; proving, what many people in Sydney apparently believe, that Middle Eastern males have a misogynistic contempt for ‘Anglo girls’. What would be the reaction from Muslims and Arabs? Naturally, our leaders would be howling like banshees that we have been ’set up’ and that the results are unrepresentative or conducted in a less than scientific fashion. Yet, this is exactly the same experiment except it is being carried out on non-Muslims.
Secondly, there is the question as to how one measures the racism of a community. Do you tabulate the racially-motivated slurs that your receive? The number of times that you are spat on? The dirty looks? The number of times that you are cut off in traffic? If you are short-changed when buying your coffee, is that simply an accident or a calculated attempt to defraud you becuase you wear hijab? You get the point. It’s actually more difficult that it sounds because the only measurement you have available with an experiment such as this is the feelings of the woman who is doing the testing. It is what she perceives as racism, rather than what can be empirically proven to be racism or intolerance.
In this case, the test is described as follows.
“Go to the shops and ask for things, don’t be afraid to ask for directions or the time. Just make sure when you’re asking you look tough. You’ve got to treat racists like dogs, because they know when you’re scared. Don’t look scared.”
Isn’t this itself a rather racist characterisation of white Australians in relatively affluent suburbs?
Even if there was a deep-seated racism against Middle Eastern women in these more affluent and better educated suburbs of Sydney, then one would expect that it would not manifest itself to visitors. The reason is that relatively well educated people tend, though they may be exceptions, to understand the importance of ‘tolerance‘. By that, I mean the idea that although we might not like something or someone, it is a mark of maturity to tolerate the right of that person to behave, dress or conduct their affairs in that manner. Even though they might not agree with your choice of religion or dress, it is unlikely that they will voice their views to you or behave aggressively.
The result of the experiment was, as one might hope, negative. The women were not met with a torrent of anti-Muslim, anti-Lebanese abuse nor were they physically threatened. Rather, they were met with what the author describes as “pantomimes of politeness”.
These are pantomimes of politeness, as well-intentioned as they were exclusionary. A simple request for directions to a coffee shop has three women offering to take us to their favourite hot-chocolate bar, while a mere glance at some perfume has an eager shop assistant leading us on a guided tour of her shop’s best fragrances.
It reminds me of travelling abroad, where the more effusive people are in their displays of friendliness, the more foreign you feel in their world.
Now, there could be any number of reasons why people were being friendly to these women. Given that there are, quite obviously, not a huge number of Muslim women in that area, it may be that they simply wanted to make them feel welcome. It could also be that the people that they came into contact with are just ordinarily friendly. However, it is drawing a rather long bow to interpret three women offering to take you to their favourite hot-chococate bar as evidence of racism, bigotry or some other unsavourary attitude. And if they didn’t respond to the women, what would be the reaction? That, no doubt, would also have been construed as evidence of a negative attitude towards Muslim women.
“You should have gone up to more people and asked them strange questions.” I explain the day was about documenting Muslim women’s experiences of discrimination. “No way,” she retorts. “You’ve got to ask people random things, shake them up a bit and then you can see if they say something racist.”
Is the purpose to merely measure racist attitudes (itself an impossible task) or is it to provoke a racist reaction by behaving in a way that you believe will elicit it?
Ultimately, the experiment is worthless, but it provides an insight into one of the issues that most cripples the Australian Muslim community: the unwavering belief that the rest of the community is somehow against us. Indeed, it has reached the point where the Australian Muslim identity is essentially based around being a victim: a victim of racism; and a victim of the ridiculously named psychological affliction of islamophobia.
The reasons for our obsession with being victims are rather obvious. It provides us with the ultimate excuse for all our personal and community failings. We can externalise responsibility for all our shortcomings and mistakes: we didn’t get that job because we have a Muslim name; we were given a parking ticket because we wear hijab; the misdeeds of our youth are constantly in the media because of the plotting of the supposedly Jewish-controlled media; and our Muslim lands are run by totalitarian kleptocracies only because the Jews/Freemasons/British conspired with Kemal Ataturk to destroy the Ottoman Empire.
Of course, this isn’t to say that discrimination, bigotry and racism don’t exist. Quite obviously, they do. However, there is a tendency in our community to make racism and bigotry the starting assumption. The problem with such thinking is that it leads to a feeling of hopelessness and despondency. This can, in turn, lead to a stifling of one’s ambitions or a diminishing of one’s self-confidence. And this is exactly the opposite of what our community needs.
Unfortunately, by indulging in these sorts of stories, some journalists, obviously intent on doing good, only exacerbate the problem. It is unfair and unjust to make assessments of suburbs or communities based on these sorts of spurious experiments, and it only reinforces Muslim fears about the nature of non-Muslim Australia.
Finally, the author concludes:
We didn’t experience any hostility but what if, next time, we took things to a different level? What if we went to a bank to ask for a loan? Or went for a job interview?
What if, indeed.
13 comments ↓
Here in the US, NBC (a US television station) tried a similar experiment with similar results at NASCAR (which is said to draw very conservative poor whites) trying to get racist reactions from them.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/t.....line_x.htm
Salams, an amazing blog you have here. One interesting thing I wanted to add is that there seems to be a small, if not reasonable number of Muslims in the area anyway, especially around Artarmon and the immediately surrounding area. They have a small mosque there down from the station. So it is not ‘virgin’ territory, so to speak anyway, if that is what they were looking for.
It was an excellent write up of the article though, and I couldn’t agree more with what was said. I don’t like the whole bravado thing that goes on, like… “trying to get racist statements” from people. Most people who have experienced it (for wearing hijab or whatever) did not have to try and do anything at all. My wife (who is a Lebanese-Australian hijabi) and I (a white convert) were up on the Sunshine Coast visiting a friend and just walking down the street when some young guys went past in a car and yelled out “Mrs. Osama!” to her. I am sure many people face these situations all the time, and they are demoralizing and make them feel worthless. They build up over time.
But I agree with you against the victim mentality which seems to be prevalent in many places. As someone who is quite often an ‘outsider’ to all of this (as my Muslimness is not contingent upon how I look, being white), it is hard for me to understand where it comes from. But it is there and needs to be dealt with. I think the more men and women we have succeeding in what they do (there are more and more hijab wearing girls getting in to professional jobs etc.) then this will slowly change things… i’A!
For the last 50 years of Muslim migration to Australia, your point has been correct, however in the last 2 to 3 yeares there has been a shift in community attitudes towards Muslims.
one cannot recruit 5000 people to participate in a public mob lynching, as happened in cronulla last december, without there being deep-seated widespread anti-muslim sentiment.
Australia has no history of race riots that have bedeviled the US and UK, so it was an extraordinary sight.
As a social experiment, this was a poor one, there are better ways to measure community sentiment. I would point out that a journalist in perth did something similiar, and was geeted with a mixture of praise and community support as well as some hostility.
I do agree with the proposition that our perception of other peoples views of us, must not be allowed to affect our view of ourself.
I should also point out (for internaional readers) that the change in community sentiments with regards to Muslims were as a result of bad muslim behaviour; gang rapes of white women, assault of a surf lifeguard and the ill advised public utterences of 2 muslim leaders.
I don’t think that it is quite that simple Baybers. Bad “Muslim” behaviour? How many of the 250-300,000 Muslims in Australia have been misbehaving? Are you referring to the fact that a group of screwed up young men decided to do a criminal act in an incredibly heinous way and the media had a field day over it, causing repercussions throughout one of the biggest migrant groups in Australia?
The acts of a few rowdy young men, caught up in all types of heinous activities cannot be linked to their religion – if anything, it is an extreme lack of it which has caused them to turn out the way they have.
I participated in numerous events with people representing the Shire and Cronulla area, and regardless of the greviances that both “sides” of the conflict had, one thing was clear: those who instigated the violence at the beach were out of towners and not locals to the Shire. The press even reported some of those arrested coming from as far as Penrith to get to the ruck at the beach.
The public imagination of a media saturated society such as Australia, is actually quite limited, so yes I am saying that the behavior of some Muslims is seen as normative for all muslims by the wider community. Things don’t have to be fair to be true.
Unfortunately, the behavior of those lebanese men IS typical of a large group of predominantly muslim lebanese youth who have lost their religion.
I don’t know the politics there very well, but are Lebanese not considered to be ‘white’ in Australia?
Tariq: Lebanese are considered ‘white’. However, in Australia, the conflict between different groups is more along cultural lines (e.g. wogs versus Aussies) rather than racial. It is very rare, for example, except in some rural communities with a large Aboriginal population, to hear talk of black versus white conflict.
I’m not convinced that the Cronulla riots had anything to do with Islam or Muslims. It seems to me that it was simply the latest iteration of that old struggle between competing youth subcultures for a relatively scarce public resource (the beach). The fact that the other side were ‘Lebs’ meant that the riots/protests took on a racial/ethno-religious hue.
As for anti-Muslim sentiment, then I’ve got no doubt that a significant percentage of Australians don’t like Islam much. There have been a few social distance studies which showed, for example, that a sizeable number wouldn’t want a child to marry a Muslim, etc. However, I don’t think this is as big a problem as one might assume because whilst most people might not like or accept our religious practices, they do understand the importance of tolerating them.
Andrew Norton wrote a very interesting piece on the question of how prejudice is tempered by tolerance in The Australian after the Cronulla riots. It’s worth a read.
Top post Amir. I am also interested in seeing any actual statistical information regarding how much of the “leb” youth does all these dastardly things. Does anyone know anywhere that has anything like this? I can’t imagine it to be all that much, regardless of what people like to say for the shock-effect.
I am surrounded by “leb” folks around these parts, and although I may disagree with them over a great many things, having a hotted up car and cruising around in it doesn’t equal being someone who likes to involve themselves in anti-social behaviour or criminal acts.
The reason that many Aussies don’t like Islam is obvious. Read the newspapers; watch the news. Be thankful for their ignorance. If they read the Quran and hadiths, they would like Islam even less. Also be thankful that Muslims live in the tolerant West, and not as non-Muslims in an Islamic society.
This is why things will get worse. Muslims cannot be honest about their religion. They rarely ask ‘why’ these things happen to Muslims, and when they do, they usually blame others: the jews, racism, the crusades, the West, Bush, Howard, Blair, Hollywood, whatever….
This article is a good start, but it doesn’t begin to even approach the problem. Islam’s problem is not bigotry, discrimination, or racism. It is Islam. It is the hate and violence in the Quran. It is the life of the man Muslim call prophet – and who they consider to be a noble example to follow. Yes, Islamic writings are full of hate and violence against non-Muslims (oh, denial is thy name!) and the traditions tell of horrible things done by Muhammad and his men – including murder, torture, slavery, rape and even wife-beating. Yes, these are in the hadiths, not that Muslims want to think about them.
This hate and anger is the primary cause of the alienation and isolation of Muslim populations. They know there is a problem, but they cannot blame their religion so they must blame others. When they don’t want to blame others, they don’t know who to blame. The fact is that even moderate Muslims (like the author) don’t understand the problem, so the best they can do is a superficial analysis of the problem (as in this article) that doesn’t provide any answers.
Let me tell you what the Muslim community needs. It is honesty. They need to face the truth about Islam. They need to face the hatred and oppression that characterizes Islam wherever it dominates. They need to renounce the hate in the Quran. They need to tell non-Muslims that the evil deeds that Mohammed did were wrong. Period.
I am pessimistic. Muslims cannot be honest. Double standards are the norm. The concept of equality, respect for human rights and freedom of speech are not to be found.
The sad thing is that this denial is evident even in this moderate blog by a brave, educated Muslim with intelligent, liberal (and probably nice) Muslims readers. Nobody wants to ask the really hard questions. Nobody wants to look at the 800 pound gorilla with bloody hands in the room. Speaking of monkeys, remember the scene from “Planet of the Apes” when the hero (Heston) says at the end of the movie that he is going to “look for answers” and then the old leader of the simians tells him “Be careful, you may not like what you find”. Well, Muslims will not (should not) like what they see if they dare to look deep into the soul of Islam.
Things will get worse, much worse, and good people will get hurt.
You folks take care.
John Kactuz
Maybe in Australia Lebanese are considered white but in America they are definitely not. Whiteness in America is a social construct based on what you are not and one of the things that you cannot be and be in the club is a Muslim (other than some kind of MWU type). Maybe Australia is different; but I doubt many white Aussies are jumping for joy at the site of Muslim immigrants.
However I think that Australia and America are better in their treatment of Muslims than many Muslim societies are of their minorities. Can you imaging if a group of Indonesian Christians would have been arrested plotting bombs against Muslims in Jakarta? There would have been a bloodbath and maybe not a single church in Jakarta would have stood. Can you imagine what would have happened in Egypt if 19 Coptics would have flown into whatever buildings they have in the center of Cairo? So, I’m not that upset about Americans and Australians hostility to Islam; it is there and Muslims are not liked, but it could be much worse.
Whilst there are statistics available on the rates of imprisonment for various groups (based , for example, on country of birth and citizenship), it is impossible to really measure the level of misbehaviour by a particular group because most of the behaviour that concerns people — such as behaving aggressively, intimidating people, or abusing others — is simply not captured anywhere. Yet it is this sort of ’soft crime’ or anti-social behaviour that is what people most often cite as being the problem in Sydney. This behaviour may not even reach the level of criminality but may, as you say, simply be groups of young Lebanese males cruising around in their hotted up cars. Rightly or wrong, this comes across as ‘menacing’ to some sections of the community — probably because experience or the media have led these people to believe that that particular demographic of young Lebanese male in hotted up car is ‘trouble’.
Unfortunately, the absence of hard facts such as statistics really makes it difficult for all involved to assess the extent to which young Lebanese males in Sydney are really a problem. On the one hand, we have the anti-Lebanese people arguing that it is out of control; and, on the other hand, we have the pro-Lebanese people arguing that Lebanese are no more likely to be involved in criminality than are Filipinos or Jews. I’m not sure how we can reach the truth of the matter unless we, as a society, start collecting statistics on crime based on ethnicity and making that available to both sides of the debate. If the Lebanese are really not a problem, then the statistics will allow those of us on that side of the debate to silence our critics once and for all; and if the statistics show that there is a significant problem then that will aid those who argue that there are issues.
Leave a Comment