A support network for Indigenous Muslims says some are struggling to reconcile cultural and religious identities.
It’s calling for greater understanding and acceptance by different cultural communities.
Biwa Kwan reports.
Bureau of Statistics figures show an increasing number of Indigenous Australians over the past 15 years turned to the Muslim faith at same time as they turned away from Christianity.
Associate Professor in sociology of religion Adam Possamai at the University of Western Sydney has been studying this trend.
He says it represents a significant change in the way Indigenous Australians experience religion.
“There has been an increase of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders claiming to be from a Muslim background, especially from 2001 to 2006, there was an increase of around 600 people to a bit more than 1,000 people. An increase of around 80, 70 percent. But in terms of proportion there hasn’t been much of an increase, because at the same time as more Aborigines were claiming to be from a Muslim background from 2001 to 2006 there has been an increase in people reporting to be from an Aboriginal background on the census. So there has been an increase in people not only reporting to be from an Aboriginal background, but [also] people reporting to be from a Muslim background. And there has been growth among the Baha’i or Buddhists as well. The Indigenous population is becoming more non-Christian as well.”
Professor Possamai says his field research shows many of the Indigenous people practising Islam are younger males based in urban areas.
And he says there are a few reasons why Indigenous Australians are turning to the Muslim faith including a process of following the religion of their grandparents.
“There is a supposition that Islam arrived in the 1970s in Australia but in fact there is a hidden history of Islam in Australia that started with Makassar from Indonesia back in the 1700s and with the Afghan cameleers. And when the Afghan cameleers came in the 19th and 20th Century. And today some Indigenous people are not necessarily speaking about conversion, but will use the term ‘reversion’ - or a term that was used by Peta Stephenson who interviewed some Aborigines that converted to Islam. She used the term ‘kin-version’. That is they go back to the faith of their parents and grandparents and some of them were Muslims. And for them this is not a new religion.”
Professor Possamai says there’s also a resurgence in popularity of ideas from the American Black Power Movement of the 1960s, and one of its most prominent Muslim members, Malcolm X.
“During the Vietnam War when you had a lot of African Americans who came to Sydney for rest and recuperation. And they spread the idea of Malcolm X and the Black Power Movement. And today there is a move back towards some of these ideas of that period and an interest in Islam through the writing of Malcolm X.”
Arabic-speaking Torres Strait Islander Dr Asmi Wood turned to Islam 12 years ago.
He says it was a choice inspired in part by the writings of Malcolm X.
“Here was a religion that clearly acknowledges what had been denied to Indigenous people for a long time in Australia. So that was - to me - a very useful thing. And as it acknowledged every people. So it made the issue of racism really stupid in a sense. That is not to say that [there are] Muslims are not racist. There is a lot of Muslims, as I said, between the communities. But that is an issue of human beings struggling to get access to scarce resources, rather than anything else.”
Both a barrister and academic at the Australian National University, Dr Wood says there is a misconception that being an Indigenous Muslim means giving up their Aboriginal cultural identity for Islam.
He says he retains both his Aboriginal and Muslim identity, but reconciling both was not always so easy.
“No, of course life was not always like that. I’ve spent many a day drunk under a table, and being very angry at the world. Sometimes unjustifiably. But I doubted many times unjustifiably, but that’s the journey. But I think Islam, in a sense, has helped me to find my place in the universe and - I may be wrong - it seems good to me.”
And while there are daily challenges in practising Islam as an Indigenous Australian, Asmi Wood says they can be overcome.
“There are no legal impediments for sure. And very little societal impediments to this. I don’t drink and a lot of my colleagues do. They don’t ever impose that on them. Really, it’s not a problem at all. Under the Sharia [law] you have...there’s always an exception for necessity. And this is a subjective determination of what is necessary. And if I think something is necesary I’ll do it and take an exception.”
A Larrakiah, Tiwi and Chinese woman, Eugenia Flynn, converted to Islam from Catholicism.
She says it led her to set up the Indigenous Muslim Support Network to provide advice and support for people going through a similar situation.
“When I converted to Islam, most of the critical comments really came from white Australia. One, being hysterically afraid of Aboriginal people becoming Muslim. Lots of articles [being] printed about Aboriginal people converting to Islam in jail. And that being - you know - potentially radicalising Aboriginal people and turning them into terrorists. So there was a lot of that that went on, fearmongering. And also [comments]: ‘will, you must have given up your Aboriginality?’ No, I didn’t give that up, that’s who I am.”
Eugenia Flynn says she knows of cases where individuals have been ostracised by their family or community.
“Once or twice I think there’s been moments where there are people who then have gone away from Islam. And when I say ‘gone away from Islam’, I don’t mean that they have left the religion. I guess I mean they have stopped practising. It’s not that they don’t believe in Islam, or believe in the religion, I think it’s more that practising has been really difficult for them.”
Eugenia Flynn says there needs to be a greater understanding in Australian society generally of what it means to be an Indigenous Muslim.
“Sometimes there is still a little bit of stigma. Recently, when Anthony Mundine came out with the comments against homosexuality there were a lot of things...and I got into disagreements with some people who, some Aboriginal people who were therefore then vilifying Islam, which was really unfortunate.
“And having to point out to people that you’re doing the exact same thing that people do about Aboriginal people. People think that when Anthony Mundine speaks he represents all Aboriginal people, and you’re saying ‘no he doesn’t represent us’. So then please don’t say he represents all Muslim people because he doesn’t do that either.”