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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]

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]

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]