Advance Australia Fair - Building Sustainability, Justice and Peace
Workshop - The 'War on Terror'
Sunday 31st July 2005
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Nuzhat Lotia
Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria
Racial Violence
Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria is a community welfare organization established and managed by Muslim women for Muslim women. The Council was established in 1991, as a non-religious organisation reflecting the ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity of Muslim women living in the state of Victoria. The organisation is founded on the belief that meaningful change in the status of Muslim women is to be achieved through the improved situation of Muslim women individually and building their capacity collectively. To this end, the Council aims to facilitate Muslim women’s full participation in Australian society.
Let me start off by relating an incident to you in the words of our Manager at IWWCV:
It is 6am on Tuesday morning, and I've decided to come in early to plan and organise before the working day officially begins at nine. I notice a pile of unopened mail and start to sort through it.
One letter looks suspicious - it isn't from government or a welfare organisation - I wonder if it is one of "those"' letters? The police encourage us to call them and not open these, but report a letter? It seems a bit precious. What do I say? "Officer, officer, please come immediately, I think I have an abusive letter in my hand?''
So what to do? I open the letter, which contained the following:
To the Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria:
ISLAMIC WOMEN LIVE LIKE DOGS, F--- LIKE A DOGS, EAT LIKES A DOG. ALL OF YOU JUST LYING DOWN FOR HUSBAN F--- AND LIVE ON WELFARE, NOTHING TO DO, JUST F--- ALL THE TIME. YOUR LEADER MOHAMMED WAS A F---EN MAN. HE DID F--- AN LIVE WITH HIS SISTER IN LAW. WHY YOU BELIVED HIM, HE WAS A BASTARD. DON'T PRAY TO HIM, OK. YOU ARE CRAZY. YOUR KORAN BIBLE IS A TOILET PAPER. WAKE UP NOW, DON'T FANATIC ANY MORE, OK.
In between the phone calls and clients dropping in, in between homeless women looking for shelter, women escaping domestic violence, women looking for affordable English language classes, helping women get to hospitals, take out intervention orders, organising interpreters and information sessions on Australian citizenship rights and responsibilities, in between government departments' requests to read their latest discussion papers, fill in their latest applications for funding, in between the begging, cajoling and pressuring of these departments to look into the situation of Muslim women in Victoria, in between requests to supervise social work students, computers crashing, taking out the garbage and ordering stationery, we decide as a group, without speaking about it, that today will be business as usual.
Tuesday is now a common type of day - it has never been unusual for us to receive hateful calls or mail- but it has only been in the last three to four years that hateful mail/calls has become mostly of the racial and religious kind. A community organisation is vulnerable to the same types of experiences as the people it represents and services - therefore one expects these types of organisational experiences.
Talking about the issues of harassment and abuse facing Muslim women in Australia as we discuss the impact of war brings to light the reality of modern wars. That reality is that women are and have always been vulnerable in areas of war but what we find today is that women are also vulnerable even if they are not in areas of direct conflict, but face violence in areas of apparent peace as a consequence of conflict and the stereotyping, discrimination and vilification it generates.
The view among community organisations who service or represent Muslims is that their communities are without qualification one of the most vulnerable groups in Australia when it comes to prejudice and violence, and that many Muslims have had their lives directly affected by racist violence or harassment and that this has existed in the context of an environment of racial and religious vilification of Muslims. These experiences intensified after September 11 2001, the October 2002 Bali bombings and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and, according to Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), were made worse by particular national and local events such as public debates over asylum seekers and the trial, conviction and sentencing of gang-rapists in Sydney in 2001-2002.
Consequently, there has been a significant rise in racial and religious vilification against Muslim and Arab Victorians, particularly racially inspired acts of violence against Muslim women. Since 2001 several incidents concerning people of the Islamic faith have led to public debates that have highlighted Muslims as a religious category and have brought them in the focus of the media. All these socio-political events have created an environment that has left Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular more vulnerable in terms of violence and discrimination against them.
The types of experiences of harassment and abuse described by Muslim women is diverse. Most experiences described by participants were unprovoked, 'one off' incidents from strangers on the street, on public transport, in shops and shopping centres or on the roads.
There are four key types of attacks against women:
verbal harassment:
physical attacks:
attacks against women's property:
attacks against Muslim women's institutions and public gatherings:
‘Terrorist, dirty Arab, murder, bloody Muslim, raghead, Bin Laden, illegal immigrant’ are some of the labels and profanities that have been used against Arabs and Muslims in public places. Arabs and Muslims were told to ‘go back to your own country’ -even those whose families have been in Australia for many generations. Examples of physical attacks include women physically pushed, their hijab pulled, had things like rocks, cans and other objects thrown at them. A woman had a man set his three dogs on her. Attacks on property with mosques, homes and cars have been vandalised. Muslim women have received threats of violence through letters, phone calls and faxes.
One incident involved a Muslim woman coming out of a Melbourne shopping centre in late 2002. A group of youths in a car began following her and her two children, yelling abuse and threatening to rape her 16 year old elder daughter. The woman and her children ran to their car, locked it up and sat there for several hours until they were sure that the youths had left and they would not be followed home. Women have also been verbally abused.
The recently released report on the National Consultations on Eliminating Prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission gives a disturbing account of people identifiable as Arab or Muslim by their dress, language, name or appearance of having been abused, threatened, spat on, assailed with eggs, bottles, cans and rocks, punched and even bitten. Drivers have been run off the road and pedestrians run down on footpaths and in car parks. People have reported being fired from their jobs or refused employment or promotion because of their race or religion. Children have been bullied in school yards. Women have been stalked, abused and assaulted in shopping centres.
I want to read out a few quotes from women that we have talked to as part of our day to day work at the Council as well as part of our ongoing research on Muslim women’s safety in Australia. This research has involved consultations with more than 200 women from various ethnic backgrounds and ages.
“There was an incident in Moreland where a Somali woman was waiting for a bus and another woman was verbally abusing her so violently that the poor woman was just standing there stunned not knowing how to respond…I was standing by the lights and I saw this…”
“There was a woman who was dropping her children off at school when a man came from behind her and snatched her veil off her head. She called the police but they told her they couldn’t do anything to help her….”
“I am telling you I don’t feel comfortable or secure enough to go walking alone. Of course its because of all the incidents, what else would show that I am a Muslim if not for my veil. If I wasn’t veiled why would anyone think to harass me…”
“…at times a person no longer feels safe when they go shopping, to a park, for a walk, to a restaurant or to a faraway place, for instance where there are not a lot of Arabs around….me personally I don’t feel safe. What I mean is I prefer to return home as soon as possible.”
“A friend and I stopped walking in the mornings. Now we walk in the afternoon, no longer in the mornings because we used to start at about 7:30am and so did this man. And he repeatedly spat at us until we were scared to walk in the mornings anymore.”
“Yes, there is violence. There are good and bad people and yes we are afraid but we have to keep walking in the streets alone because we have no options. We go out even if we are worried but we don’t go places where there are now people especially at night. Some people are rude but there are others who are good.”
“If we keep ignoring or letting matters go because we don’t want trouble then this will only encourage and increase these incidents because they believe they can get away with it. But if you could call the police or other organisations for help then maybe these things will decrease.”
The experience of abuse of these women is also varied in terms of abuse on streets, shopping centres and strips, at home (with eggs thrown and the front yard set on fire), on public transport, at school college or university and at work (fear of clients’ reactions to Islamic dress, employer aversion to Muslim names) and in the media.
Within the communities of Muslim women, there are further constellations of disadvantage and vulnerability. Although, HREOC is keen to point out that many women were attacked who were not indeed Muslim or Arab but were mistaken for being Muslim or Arab, our own experience suggests that there are three groups of women who are particularly at risk:
- Women from the Horn of Africa;
- Women who wear the hijab and chador;
- And women residing in high density, low cost housing.
For these women who we talked to, feeling safe means:
“Go where I want to, where and when I want to. Feeling comfortable to walk in the street, feeling welcome.”
“Free, free like one of the Australian people.”
“Going into Safeway and not being asked why I wear a hijab.”
“Feeling like you are living in your own country and that you have freedom.”
“To wear a scarf and feel safe, this is not the way we feel at the moment. People stare at me and sometimes abuse me.”
The biggest impact is a substantial increase in fear. Such incidents of violence and harassment have impacted women’s lives in terms of their day to day activities, have raised their concerns about their personal safety on the roads, shopping strips and centres and public places and this has had an impact on their sense of belonging to their local community and neighbourhood and the larger Australian community. Women have reported to us that they have reduced their outside activities to the minimum or only when they have someone else to go with increasing their isolation and reliance on other people.
The bullying and harassment faced by children has impacted them substantially – there is an increased feeling of stress and alienation, loss of confidence in themselves. Children have become angry and withdrawn and feel isolated. A woman reported that her six-year old son wants to change his name (Mohammed) to disguise his religious identity.
Physical appearance (dress and colour) in conjunction with historically and religiously rooted understandings or misunderstandings of Islam has promoted a ‘them and us’ scenario where Muslims and particularly Muslim women experience exclusion and discrimination in all spheres of public life. It has led to a considerable withdrawal of Muslim women from participation in the broader public life and social activities, negative impact on the health and well-being of the women.
The Isma project states that many newly arrived Arab or Muslim migrants and refugees report that the experience of prejudice has made it harder for them to negotiate the already difficult process of settling into a new country.
For Muslim women the costs are much higher than that; among many within the community it has now become again acceptable to stop women from working, from attending school or universities and from moving around freely without their families or guardians because they are not safe. Many Muslim women themselves now state that they no longer travel without their husbands, brother or fathers just in case they are attacked. I don't need to spell out just how terrible this is for the process of empowering Muslim women that we have been working towards and in bringing them close to the ideal of equality with not only the men in their community but also with other Australian citizens, as is their right. The right to education, employment and the right to move around freely were all rights that Muslim women in Australia at least, had made significant headway on, much of that work has now been undermined, particularly among the most vulnerable sections of the Muslim community.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) report also suggests that people are more likely to complain about these experiences to their families, friends or their local ethnic or religious community organisations, than to police or government organisations. Reluctance to complain to police or government organisations was due to a "fear of victimisation; lack of trust in authority; lack of knowledge about the law and complaints processes; the perceived difficulty in making a complaint and the perception that outcomes were unsatisfactory". We would agree with that; except to add this, the trend described was already present among Muslim women; they rarely access services, most certainly not law enforcement agencies. In addition to this, there are some difficulties around accessing a government services when you have suspicions about the role the government is playing; both in relation to global political environment and its relative silence on attacks on the community.
Both in our work and in HREOC's research we have identified lack of knowledge and misinformation about their history, culture and faith as the major underlying cause for the rise in prejudice against them and that this lack of knowledge and misinformation has been exacerbated by terrorism and an international climate of political tension between the Arab and Muslim world and western nations, including Australia. Participants also felt that biased and inaccurate reporting of issues relating to Arabs and Muslims and the stereotypical images associated with Muslims (e.g. terrorists, primitive, anti-West, misogynist, etc.) significantly contributed to the level of active prejudice against Muslims and Arab and their day to day lives. In our work, Muslim women stated that they stayed home whenever there was a big media story about terrorism, the Middle East or Islam. When Bali came around women had already learnt to stay at home. With all the Muslim women we interviewed, they did not identify government as the instigators of the current wave of prejudice against them, but they have felt that all levels of government have been apathic and have in some respects colluded in the media attack against them.
In the process of undertaking our current research, we piloted a questionnaire designed to assess the general Victorian community's views and attitudes towards Muslims and which we disturbed broadly through the welfare and associated sectors. We found that despite the sector we chose and despite the fact that only 26 of the 247 people surveyed had negative experiences with Muslims; violence-backwardness-oppression of women-and fanaticism were the major descriptors associated with Islam- most people received their information about Muslims from the media (of the 247- 193 in fact) and many people described the state of relationship between Muslims and non Muslims as dreadful-divisive-strained.
In all the research we've done on this issue; there is a great deal of work exploring attacks against Muslims, Arabs and asylum seekers, but little work seems to be under the way researching why women are usually the target of these attacks. We know that women are almost always the first group to be attacked in a minority group and often the last to be protected.
There are major issues of justice that require further exploration in relation to the protection of women, that is not being pursued at this moment
So what can we do and what have we done? Awareness raising and enhancing knowledge of service providers and communities of Muslim women and Islamic communities. Build capacity of Muslim women to implement actions and strategies to eliminate discrimination and violence. Increase women’s knowledge of support services and legal rights. To hold similar public consultations and debates such as this to develop appropriate strategies for addressing stereotypes and misinformation and protecting the safety of and supporting communities under attack. We have also organised media training for Muslim women so that we as a group can bring our voice to the Australian community through the media.
In the end, I would just like to point out an interesting phenomenon that while there are many critics of Islam and Islam’s treatment of women in Australia, ironically, it is sometimes people from these very groups that actively contribute to Muslim women’s oppression and isolation as Australian citizens.
Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria
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