of overwhelming hostility and negativity. The
Isma-Listen consultations reported that schools
were often places of fear and distress for Muslim
women as, in many cases, schools were ill-
equipped, or unprepared, to deal with either racism
or the special needs of Muslim students. Students
did not feel safe in practicing their religion as they
would become the target of abuse, bullying, physi-
cal attacks, and hostility from both staff and other
students. One of the major effects of these experi-
ences is to make young people, particularly
women, feel alienated from the Australian educa-
tion system, and society more broadly, and to
increase their feelings of persecution, fear, and vul-
nerability. Despite being assured that they are free
to practice their religion, many of the students spo-
ken to felt that the current climate prevented them
from freely expressing their religiosity. Often these
young people, even when permitted to practice par-
ticular aspects of their religion such as dress codes,
dietary habits, and certain forms of social interac-
tion (such as a lack of physical contact between the
sexes), felt as if this “permission” was tenuous and
that approval could be withdrawn at any moment.
In research conducted with young women in
Australian schools, this researcher has heard many
narratives of religious racism. One of the most
powerful came during an interview with a 17–year-
old woman named Shakira. Having recently begun
wearing ™ijàb, she was well aware that doing so
would increase her visibility and that she might
well become a target of racism, but she was deter-
mined not to let this deter her. Her first obstacle
was whether her school would treat her new cloth-
ing choice with respect. In discussions with the
head of the school Shakira was assured that pro-
vided she wore a cream colored ™ijàbso that it
blended in with the school uniform she was more
than welcome to wear it. After a few months in
which Shakira felt that her new, active religiosity
was gradually becoming accepted by staff and stu-
dents an incident occurred which showed her that
hostility toward her ™ijàb, and thus her identity as
a Muslim woman, had been simmering under the
surface waiting for an opportunity to erupt.
The school commissioned a large color photo-
graph of all staff and students and Shakira took
part in this. When she received her copy of the
photo, she initially found it difficult to locate her-
self in the image because, in order to erase her Mus-
lim identity as embodied in her ™ijàb, the school
had air-brushed her ™ijàbin such a way that it
appeared to look like brown hair. Shakira’s fury
and hurt at this action meant that she felt unable to
continue at the school she had attended for many176 freedom of expression
years. The injustice she had suffered was com-
pounded as she then had to settle into a new school,
find new friends, and accommodate to a different
set of teachers and expectations while her original
school continued unaffected by the incident.
Other young women interviewed as part of the
same study spoke about their school’s refusal to
provide them with a space in which to perform their
midday prayers despite the women’s flexibility
about the size and location of the room. They felt
that this decision was unfair as the (public) school
had made generous provisions to Christian youth
groups operating during lunchtimes at the school.
They felt that if the school, which publicly pro-
moted itself as a multifaith, multicultural environ-
ment, wished to live up to this claim then it should
support students of all faiths in their practices, or,
alternatively, not support the practice of any faith
by its students.
The young women also spoke about the willing-
ness of their schools to provide a range of food
options at their school canteens as against their
continued refusal to provide halal (or kosher) food,
even where Muslim students made up a significant
portion of the schools’ populations. During the re-
search it also became clear that schools were largely
unwilling to re-evaluate pedagogical practices that
affected their female Muslim students’ ability to
comfortably participate in lessons. For example,
many of the young women felt uncomfortable in
having to work closely with male classmates, par-
ticularly on lengthy projects that would involve
working together on weekends and after school.
Similarly they were reluctant to participate in cer-
tain school activities such as swimming carnivals
because these were inappropriate according to their
sense of religiosity. All the young women said that
their schools often told them that it would be will-
ing to accommodate any special religious needs but
that although schools occasionally made special
provisions, this was rare and the constant pressure
of having to request special treatment meant that
the young women felt constrained and resentful
toward the education system that so clearly did not
support their choice to be actively Muslim. In many
instances when they did make special requests these
were not catered for appropriately or, in some
cases, at all.
While Australia might profess to be a society in
which there is total religious freedom, the experi-
ences of young women in schools, as well as other
Muslims, tell a different story. A nation does not
need to legislate in order to make it difficult for
individuals to practice their religion as is the case in
France recently (Willms 2004); it only needs a