Islamophobia in Australia: When the Jihadist Come Marching Home Again

By Casey Abel, New Age Islam

18 February 2023

Late last year, the Albanese government began repatriating Australian citizens from Syrian refugee camps back to Australia. Much to chagrin of the Australian media and some sects of the public. This strange circumstance has seen public figures calling for Australian women and to be abandoned in the Middle East. Why? Because they are the wives and children of men who chose to fight for Islamic State.

They have been marked with the title of ‘terrorists’. Would the public still be outraged if these women and children were not Muslims? Australian soldiers murdered civilians, including disabled people and children, in Afghanistan and weren’t marked as ‘terrorists’. Their families certainly faced no repercussions. Is this public reaction another example of Islamophobia raising its ugly head?

The 9/11 Terror Attacks are often credited for creating a negative perception of Islam in the West. But for Australian’s, this is a gross simplification and erasure of the origins of our Islamophobia¬¬¬– that social prejudice which vilifies adherents of the Muslim faith. Islamophobia permeates Australian society, as shown by a cursory glance at the nation’s historical record. Since arriving in Australia, Islamic peoples have suffered prejudicial violence and systemic marginalisation.

Australians Were Murdering Muslims before Federation

In 1838, the British Empire began importing Islamic cameleers from across the Middle East to map the Australian interior, and to transport goods between rural settlements. Despite their ethnic diversity they were referred to collectively as “Afghans” and “Asiatics”. Period newspapers reveal the Australian white-settler considered ‘Afghans’ to be “half civilised aliens” and “an intolerable nuisance”. Their neighbourhoods were ridiculed as “festering…breeding ground”, and their religious customs looked upon as “abominable practices” and “disgusting habits”.

 

 Afghan’ cameleers outside Cloncurry, Qld, in 1905: Courtesy of the  State Library of Queensland

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 The newspapers show the process of ‘‘othering’ in action. Like all social prejudices, Islamophobia seeks to “other’ groups of people, making them appear as being different from, and therefore undesirable to the dominant social group. This inevitably leads to violence and political systemic oppression. Consider the 1894 shooting-murder of an Afghan cameleer in Western Australia.

The cameleer had been washing his feet, an Islamic custom, in preparation to join his friends in prayer. When a local miner approached and pushed him into a water tank, and then shot him with a revolver. He turned and shot the next nearest man in the stomach before being subdued. The public outcry over this cultural conflict took the form of a petition, with 150 signatures, to have the culprit released from police custody. Which he was.

The Road to a White Australia Is Best Ridden On A Camel

The Australian colonies were rife with Islamophobia, and New South Wales presents a pre-federation example of apartheid-esque legislations being put to parliament. That same year of 1894, saw the NSW Legislative Assembly debate the “Use of Camels Regulation Bill”. In writing, it excluded camels from being within two miles of all public towns. The ‘logic’ being that the “Afghans” would remain with their camels on the periphery of society.

That pastoralists were reliant on camels led the bill to be described as “grotesquely absurd”. As a journalist from the Barrier Miner wrote, “It was not the camels that were objected to, but the attendant Afghans. …Nobody could deny that the bill was a subterfuge to get at the Afghan drivers.” The Australian Star went further stating, “We don't want the Afghan, but we must have his camel.” permeated the colonies and public cries for restrictive immigration legislation increased in the countdown to federation in 1901.

No sooner were the colonies federated and the White Australia legislations were put to print. “Afghans” (among all other non-whites) were barred from entering the country without express permission. This coincided with the rise of the steam-train so that within a decade the outback camel caravans vanished completely. Leaving thousands of cameleers unemployed and desperate for work in country that did not want them.

Islamophobia Caused Aussie Muslims to Fight for Turkey In WW1

Despite being lost to popular memory, the first few decades of the federated Australian Commonwealth were defined by an intense struggle to remain a white and Christian nation. In his book Best We Forget: The War for White Australia, 1914–18,, historian Peter Cochrane details how in the decade prior to the First World War, successive Australian governments obsessed over preserving ‘White Australia’ from an ‘awakening Asia’. When War was declared, it was considered an opportunity to display the strength of the racial-British-Australian. After the war, Prime Minister Billy Hughes proudly said in parliament:

we hold firmly to that great principle of White Australia… we believe in our race and in ourselves, and in our capacity to… hold this vast continent in trust for those of our race who come after us.

Discrimination against Australian Muslims increased during the war, especially after Britain invaded the Islamic Ottoman Empire. The social prejudices prevalent in Australia motivated many social minorities to enlist in attempt to achieve greater social privileges: the reverse is also true.

Mullah Abdullah and Gool Badsha Mahomed were both ex-cameleers living in Broken Hill, New South Wales.  Abdullah was an Islamic priest who worked as a butcher after cameleering. He regularly endured religious discrimination by police for his practicing halal butchery and became disillusioned. He found companionship in Mahomed, an ex-Turkish soldier turned ice-cream vendor. Fed up with living in a country that despised them, the pair decided to join the war effort on the side of Turkey.

On the 1st of January, 1915, Mahomed raised a homemade Turkish flag on his ice-cream cart and parked it near a railway line. Armed with rifles the pair waited and ambushed a passenger train carrying 1200 people. After the train left, the men retreated to the hills and fought a fatal stand against police. In all they killed four civilians and wounded seven including a police officer. This tragic battle exemplifies what social ostracization and isolation can lead people to do. There is a lesson here we still have not learnt.

We Eased Immigration Restrictions and Started Firebombing Mosques

While the Australian public made social progress in the mid-half of the twentieth century, the prejudice did not vanish – the minorities did. Like all others, the “Afghans” were pushed to the periphery of society where they remained for want of peace. Psychology recognises prejudice is an inter-generational phenomena inherited from parent to child. This principle of longevity became abundantly clear during the Iraq War of 1990-91.

When Australian troops deployed to Iraq, the accompanying news media coverage vilified Islam and Muslims indiscriminately. “Care needed when talking (and writing) about terrorism” wrote Australian activist Denis Freney in 1991, as Muslim communities across Australia,, reported mass increases of verbal assaults, physical violence, and vandalism. Islamophobia became so chronic in the wake of the Iraq war, that 1991 was the first recorded year where angered citizens targeting Mosques with Molotov cocktails.

Have We Tried Revoking Their Citizenship And Abandoning Them In The Middle East?

Since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the firebombing of Mosques has continued, Australian soldiers have committed war crimes against Afghan civilians, and a generation of Australian Muslims have grown up feeling “targeted and besieged… [and] exclusively viewed through the prism of counter-terrorism laws”.. For the Australian Multicultural project to be successful, the nation must reckon with its prejudicial past. That means recognizing that to some extent we are a racist country struggling with a tribalist mind-set.

This brings us back to the present. The men who left Australia to fight for Islamic State after 2013 became terrorists when they did so. Still they remain Australian citizens. As do the Wives and children who went with them, forcibly or otherwise. The easiest option is to abandon our fellow citizens in the Middle East. But to do so would be to continue the historical narrative of prejudicial violence laid out in this article. Do we want this narrative to continue or end?

If we want an end to violence then we must achieve three distinct tasks. We must acknowledge and tackle the racism entrenched in our social psyche. We must be inclusive of all groups in our communities. And we must focus our judicial systems on de-radicalising, rehabilitating, and re-integrating, (broadly all criminals but especially) those of us who have fallen victim to radicalisation.

To bring the Australian hatred of Muslims to an end is neither naive nor unrealistic. The Danish have made strides in de-radicalising returned ISIS fighters, and the Norwegian prisons rehabilitation programs put the rest of the world to shame. The knowledge to make a better Australia is out there. As a nation we must ask ourselves, do we have the courage to choose Reflection over Revenge? Do we have the grit to roll up our selves and do the work that needs to be done?

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Casey Abel is a Residential Youth Worker and Educator living in Brisbane Australia. He has studied a 'Bachelor of Learning Studies' with majors in Education, Pschology and History at Griffith University. Through his studies Casey has developed and explored his passions for Australian history and human rights adovcacy."

URL:   https://newageislam.com/muslims-islamophobia/islamophobia-australia-jihadist-marching-/d/129133

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