AustraliaThis entry is concerned with the ways in which
Muslim women in Australia experience religious
racism as a restriction on their freedom of religious
expression. Recently a number of initiatives have
tried to gather information on levels of religious
racism and have tried to address related issues
(New South Wales Anti Discrimination Board
2003, DIMIA 2003, HREOC 2004, Dunn 2003).
Schools are places where young Muslim women
experience particularly high levels of racism; how-
ever, many Muslim women have strategies of resist-
ance to allow them to subvert the racism and
continue to express their religious identities pub-
licly and proudly.
In recent years there has been increasing recogni-
tion that Australia has a number of issues to deal
with in relation to its minority Muslim population.
Of particular concern have been increasing levels of
religious racism Muslims experience, particularly
those Muslim women who wear ™ijàb, as they are
the most easily visible members of Australia’s Mus-
lim communities. In 2003, the New South Wales
Anti-Discrimination Board, in an attempt to under-
stand the nexus between media coverage and repre-
sentation of events involving or affecting Muslims,
published a report entitled Race for the Headlines.
This report recognized that Australia has a “long
history of institutionalised racism” (New South
Wales Anti-Discrimination Board 2003, 3) against
a range of peoples including, most recently, people
of Middle Eastern background and Muslims. It
also recognized that “it is virtually impossible to
isolate the ways in which media coverage of current
events, political commentary and rhetoric, and
community attitudes interact” (New South Wales
Anti Discrimination Board 2003, 4) and therefore
that religious racism against Muslims was not to be
“blamed” solely on either the media or individuals
in the community.
Shortly after this report was published, Aus-
tralia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission (HREOC) began a series of consulta-
tions with Arab and Muslim Australians in order to
gather qualitative data relating to experiences of
racism, based on both religion and ethnicity.
HREOC called this consultative process “Isma-
Listen” because their primary goal was to listen to
Freedom of Expression
the stories and experiences of racism and to ask
Arab and Muslim communities what they felt
would be appropriate government responses or
solutions to their concerns. During the consulta-
tions the HREOC facilitators made it clear to par-
ticipants that HREOC was aware that Arab and
Muslim Australians, particularly women who wear
™ijàb, experienced extremely high levels of racism
but that HREOC and its state-based counterparts
rarely received official complaints. The Isma-Listen
process was an opportunity for individuals to speak
out under the freedom of anonymity and without
the obligation of pursuing the case through official
avenues. What these consultations established was
that Muslim (and Arab) Australians were not
confident that their complaints would be taken
seriously, or that they feared further negative reper-
cussions if they pursued an official complaint
(HREOC 2004).
Even prior to the HREOC consultations, the
Australian government had recognized that Mus-
lims are one of Australia’s minorities most likely to
experience racism (Dunn 2003). In response to this
the “Living in Harmony” initiative was instituted
with the aim of encouraging “tolerance” and “anti-
discrimination” (DIMIA 2003). Through the dis-
tribution of small grants to community groups who
were involved in projects or events that aimed at
reducing barriers between religious and ethnic
communities and who facilitated opportunities for
“cultural exchange,” the Australian government
believed that racism would be reduced. However,
as the Isma consultations demonstrated, measures
such as “Living in Harmony” are largely ineffective
in reducing the racism experienced by ordinary
Muslims, particularly veiled Muslim women.
One of the areas that the HREOC Isma consul-
tations reported was the experience by Muslims of
high levels of racism in schools. Unlike countries
such as France, Singapore, and Germany, Austra-
lia’s view of itself as a secular country does not
require that its citizens refrain from outward ex-
pressions of religiosity such as the wearing of ™ijàb.
However the current global context (particularly
since 11 September 2001) is one of hostility toward
Muslim women who wear ™ijàbas an open and
public display of their commitment to Islam. Con-
sequently, the experience of many young Muslim
women who wear ™ijàbin Australian schools is one