Today marks the fifth anniversary of the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington which tragically claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent American citizens. Whilst a lot of attention has been given to how these events changed our world, today I want to speak about the effects that 9-11 has had on Australia’s diverse Arab and Muslim communities. The aftermath of September 11 has seen a new climate of fear, suspicion and sometimes open hostility directed towards Australia’s Arab and Muslim communities, one in which the ‘war on terrorism’ has all too often been translated, both in sections of our media and by some members of the Australian community, as a war on Australia’s Arab and Muslim population.
Since 9-11 there has been an alarming increase in documented cases of racial vilification and racially motivated violence directed at Arab and Muslim Australians. Muslim women in particular who wear the hijab, as well as young schoolchildren, have been the main targets for these attacks. Instead of trying to discourage this climate of fear and vilification, both the Prime Minister and the federal Treasurer seem intent on trying to outdo each other in making political mileage out of openly targeting Australia’s Arab and Muslim communities.
Today in the Australian the Prime Minister suggested that moderate Muslim leaders from Australia’s Muslim communities are ‘pussyfooting around’ by failing to renounce terrorism. Such comments only serve to further alienate Australian Muslims from the rest of the Australian community and are misleading and unfair. The truth is that moderate Muslim leaders and community groups across Australia have repeatedly condemned acts of terrorism and are on record as having done so on numerous occasions. This includes Muslim community leaders in my own electorate of Calwell, which has a large Muslim minority, as well as members of the Prime Minister’s own Muslim reference group.
The Prime Minister’s comments send out a false message to the rest of Australia that moderate Muslim leaders here, as well as the communities they represent, are somehow answerable for the crimes of a small and marginalised minority. They ignore the cooperation and support that the Prime Minister has already received from Muslim community leaders across Australia, including members of his Muslim reference group. The Prime Minister is quick to scapegoat Arab and Muslim Australians but reticent to publicly recognise their achievements and the cooperation and support he and his government have already received from Muslim community leaders across the country.
Over the last week or so we have seen a Prime Minister and a Treasurer taking turns to periodically attack the loyalty and integrity of Arab and Muslim Australians and their leaders. In a copycat rendition of comments made earlier by the Prime Minister, last week the Treasurer demanded that Muslim Australians openly endorse Australian values, learn English and renounce terrorism. The decision by both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to single out Australia’s Muslim communities for criticism in the lead-up to the anniversary of September 11 is more a case of cynical political posturing and political opportunism than a show of leadership.
Both have exhibited the sort of crude stereotyping and open hostility to Australian Muslims that we have now come to expect from a government that has built its political platform largely around a politics of fear and scapegoating. Despite decades of successful settlement in Australia under the policy of multiculturalism, Muslim Australians now have to answer to charges from the Prime Minister down that they have a problem integrating into the Australian way of life and adopting Australian values. Scapegoating Australia’s Arab and Muslim communities is simply designed to allow both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to portray themselves as strong and vigilant leaders by playing one section of Australian society against another. This is a crude game of political point-scoring that should be condemned in the strongest possible terms.
Australia’s Arab and Muslim communities have had to pay an enormous price since 9-11. They have had their place in Australian society questioned, scrutinised and continually undermined. I want to end by saying that multiculturalism, far from being mushy and a failure, has been incredibly successful in this country, and it has acted above all as one of our greatest safeguards against the sorts of attacks and unrest we have seen in both the United States and the United Kingdom. This is the message that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer should be giving to the rest of Australia, one that recognises the achievements of the Muslim community and the broader multicultural community rather than one that condemns them.
