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Recently politicians in Australia have raised concerns that some Muslims are not adopting Australian values to a sufficient extent. In this paper I explore the notion of Australian values with respect to immigrant youth. By analysing interviews with 32 Muslim students who are 15-18 years of age and of diverse backgrounds in two state schools in Sydney, I focus on the extent to which these young people seem to be adopting Australian values. I discuss the factors that hinder the adoption of Australian values, and whether such hindrance can lead to a possible jihadi threat. This paper relies on oral testimonies and secondary sources, including international literature.

Since the implementation of a multicultural policy in the 1970s, religious diversity in Australia has increased. Research has demonstrated that intergroup contact is essential for managing diverse multicultural societies. This is because, given the right conditions, intergroup contact will reduce prejudice and build trust between groups. Given the importance of intergroup contact, policy makers and researchers have identified interfaith dialogue's importance to the success of multicultural societies. However, there is very limited research that explores interfaith dialogue from the perspectives of adherents, in this case Christians and Muslims in the Australian context. This paper focuses on interfaith dialogue between Christians of the Uniting Church and Sunni Muslims of Adelaide, South Australia. It explores the factors that influence participants' attitudes towards engaging in interfaith dialogue. Using a grounded theory methodology, the study involved seventeen (17) mixed gender Muslim participants over the age of eighteen, including everyday adherents and religious leaders. Some of the key findings demonstrate that theological perspectives and notions of multicultural citizenship are positive drivers for dialogue; Islamophobia and dehumanization of Muslims were inhibitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yemenis have a long history of settlement in America. First-generation Yemenis have mainly worked as laborers in agriculture and car manufacturing, and some second-generation Yemenis attend educational institutions. Today, Yemen is facing sectarian and regional conflicts, which are affecting Yemeni Americans. In this paper, I investigate the identity of young Yemeni Muslims in Michigan and New York. This paper uses grounded theory and is based on data from interviews with five participants that I conducted in 2010 and 2017; and arts and crafts of newly arrived Yemeni youths displayed in an exhibition in 2017. I conclude that young Yemeni-American Muslims are likely to identify with America because of their resilience and optimism. The policy makers and the wider society should make an effort to make America an inclusive society so that the new Yemeni arrivals in the United States do not feel distressed with the war-torn conditions back home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslims in India have lived alongside Hindus peacefully for many centuries. Yet in the contemporary period some politicians have orchestrated division for political ends, for example, during the Godhra-Gujarat riots in India in 2002 in which there were many Muslim casualties. Critics allege that the ruling party in Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and its leader Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now the Prime Minister of India) were responsible for the Godhra-Gujarat riots. Once again, in 2020, under Narendra Modi's Prime Ministership, riots against the Muslims took place in Delhi. Within the framework of identity politics in India, where religion seems to dominate the social, economic and political spheres, based on my participants interviews, this paper mainly focuses on how the 2002 Gujarat riots impacted on Muslims in Gujarat. Based on other primary sources, this paper also briefly examines the recent 2020 Delhi riots. I conclude that, in the era of identity politics when Muslims form a disadvantaged minority, national and international policy makers should promulgate policies that would improve social cohesion in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Muslims migrate to Western countries, they bring their identity and culture with them. As they settle in their host countries, some Muslims encounter structural inequality, which is often revealed through media representation, unequal labour market status and racial profiling. Through the dynamics of structural inequality, some Muslim women remain doubly disadvantaged. Within their ethnic/religious community, Muslim women are expected to follow their cultural traditions and in the wider society their overtly Muslim appearance is often questioned. The discussion of identity formation in this paper is based on interviews with Muslim girls and women in Australia, Britain and the United States, aged between 15 and 30 years. Though the cultural and political contexts of these three countries are different, the practice of “othering” women have been similar. Through their life stories and narratives, I examine the formation of the participants’ identities. It was found that for many of these women their sense of identity shifted from single to multiple identities, thus revealing that identity formation was a flexible process that was affected by a variety of factors, including the relevance and importance of biculturalism in the women’s identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fernando Ortiz acknowledged the pain of colonisation and the uprooting of slaves from Africa from the sixteenth century onwards. Later, people from diverse backgrounds such as Jews, Anglo-Saxons and Chinese migrated to the New World. Ortiz observed that initially migrants were faced with the problem of disadjustment and readjustment, of acculturation, deculturation and neoculturation – in a word, of transculturation. Ortiz’s concept of transculturation provides a useful framework for examining the cross-cultural adaptation and hybridisation that usually takes place when two or more cultures meet. Against the transcultural conceptual framework offered by Ortiz, this paper examines the life stories of three American Muslim girls of Bangladeshi heritage, and evaluates their experiences as reflecting transcultural processes. It examines how their transculturality or hybridity through the ‘contact zone’, and global and local interactions, helped them to assert their identity and sense of belonging. It recognises the tensions and the positive outcomes of their transculturation. In particular, this paper mobilises Pratt’s, Kraidy’s and Pereira-Ares’s interpretation of transculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The civil war in Somalia forced many Somalis to migrate to other countries where they had to adapt to new cultures and learn new languages. At the same time, they retained the identity and culture that were important to them throughout the process of migration. These first-generation Somali immigrants may feel strong allegiance to their country of origin along with a “sense of belonging” to their clan/kinship. They may also hope that one day they will be able to return “home”. But do second-generation Somalis feel the same way? This paper is based on 23 interviews with Somali immigrants in Australia, the UK and the USA. Out of the 23 participants, two were first-generation and the rest were second-generation. I seek to understand the participants' identity and their sense of belonging to their ethnicity and host country in the wake of pertinent moments of local, national and international anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In modern times when we speak of a mobile lifestyle we think of backpackers, fruit pickers, tourists, bikies or people living in caravans. Some people, of course, deliberately choose such a lifestyle. In the context of the historical past, of the people who moved in and out of this place - Kalgoorlie (our conference venue) - one group in particular had a very mobile lifestyle, though not by choice. I refer to the Afghan camel drivers who came to Australia for economic reasons. They mostly arrived as single men and assisted the explorers in their expeditions, and contributed to the development of the infrastructure of the Australian outback. The camel drivers steered the camels, 'the ships of the desert', that carried water tanks out to the mining areas such as Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie and other areas where water was scarce. The camels also carried wool bales and boxes of merchandize from one part of Australia to another. And they carted sleepers for the construction of railway lines from Perth to Coolgardie, and materials for the development of the Overland Telegraph Line in South Australia back in 1870-1872. The mobile nature of the lives of the Afghan camel drivers never permitted them to stay in one place for long. The Afghans were predominantly Muslims. They retained their culture and religion in such a harsh lifestyle. In this paper I examine the pattern of their mobile lifestyle from 1860 to 1930 and discuss their identity when they were with other ethnic groups, conflict when they faced resistance and their outspoken nature when they were regarded as the 'other'. Finally, I consider their loyalty to their Australian employers (and explorers). This paper relies on both primary and secondary sources, including oral testimonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the media construction of Australian Muslims. It reviews literature on this topic, noting that the Australian media associated Muslims with criminality. However, the earlier literature has not attended to how some Muslims have been controversial in the media. Here the empirical focus is on the former mufti (Australian Muslims' highest spiritual leader) Sheikh Taj el Din al-Hilali who depicted scantily dressed women as uncovered meat and blamed them for drawing men to rape. In this paper I consider three aspects of media representations of Muslims in Australia: first, I examine the views of thirty-seven ethnically diverse Muslim youth on the media and their spiritual leader al-Hilali; second, I reflect on how this Muslim leader's speeches have affected the standing of Australian Muslims in the wider community; and third, I address the extent to which the media is conventional. This paper relies mainly on oral testimonies and primary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's leading newspaper, The Australian (29/10/2007:1-2) reported that a Sydney Muslim leader, Fadi Rahman, warned that there could be a possible terror strike or a "London-type bombing" in Australia. This was because some Muslims did not trust the Australian Federal Police since they had bungled a terrorist case against the Gold Coast, Queensland doctor Mohammad Haneef. On 2 July 2007 the Indian-born physician, Mohammad Haneef, was arrested and held in detention without charges and without the right to seek bail for two weeks. Haneef was alleged to have had a terrorist link with his cousin Kafeel Ahmed who had attempted to blow up the Glasgow airport in the United Kingdom. The Lebaneseborn Fadi Rahman ran a youth centre in south-west Sydney which was attended by 460 members (mostly of Lebanese background) aged 10-35, and some of them were "at risk", and former criminals. So did the threat of a "London-style bombing" come from a small section of Muslims or was it widespread throughout the community? Did the concept of a globalised Islam pose an imaginary or a real threat? Or was it just an umma (Islamic community) feeling for fellow Muslims? In this paper, I will examine the interviews of 44 Muslim students in Melbourne that I conducted during the period of the Haneef ordeal (July 2007). I will explore the question whether in spite of their cultural diversity they felt connected to the Haneef case, or if they have related something else to their identity. I will also identify the factors that could possibly establish fellow feeling among Muslim youths of diverse backgrounds. Finally, I will question why the participants of this study were peaceful, and just wanted to have a voice through my work. This paper mainly relies on oral testimonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]