Islamic in Australia

Islam in Australia is a small minority religious grouping, but fourth largest after all forms of Christianity (64%), irreligion (18.7%) and Buddhism (2.1%), excluding 11.2% who failed to answer at the last census. According to the 2006 census, approximately 340,392 people, or 1.71% of the total Australian population were Muslims.

While the Australian Muslim community is defined largely by religious belonging, the Muslim community is fragmented further by being the most racially, ethnically, culturallyand linguistically diverse religious grouping in Australia, with members from every ethnic and racial background, including Anglo-Celtic Australian Muslims. Members of the Australian Muslim community thus also espouse parallel non-religious ethnic identities with related non-Muslim counterparts, either within Australia or abroad.

Although Islam's presence in Australia is often perceived to be recent by Australian non-Muslims, adherents of Islam from what is today Indonesia had in fact been visiting the Great southern land prior to colonial era settlement of European Christians. For several centuries these Muslims had traded with coastal Aboriginal peoples of the north. The common misconception among Australian non-Muslims that Islam is new to Australia is due mostly to knowledge of Islam and Muslims limited only to the recent migratory waves from the Middle East and North Africa, South East Asia, the Balkans of Europe, Indian sub continent, and most recently from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Although the recent migratory waves of Muslims to Australia brought awareness of Muslims and Islam, it also encouraged a distorted perception of the history of the religion and the proportion of Muslims in the country. Not all of the peoples from the migratory wave from these regions — or their Australian-born descendants — were Muslims. In fact, most were non-Muslims. Thus, for instance, most Lebanese Australians, and as a result most Middle Eastern Australians, are in fact Christians, and most Australians with origins in the Indian sub continent are Hindu, Christian, or Sikh, while most African Australians are Christian.

A Mosque in Auburn.

History: 

Pre-European Australia

The first Muslims in Australia were traders from ethnic groups indigenous to the Indonesian archipelago. The Macassan and Bugis traders from Indonesia may have had a relationship with the Indigenous people of northern Australia, and their language influenced Indigenous Australiansof different tribes.

Macassan trepangers and Bugis traders from Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) visited the coast of northern Australia for hundreds of years prior to arrival of Europeans in Australia to fish for trepang (also known as sea cucumber or "sandfish"), a marine invertebrate prized for its culinary and medicinal values in Chinese markets.

During the voyages the Macassans left their mark on the people of northern Australia — in language, art, economy and even genetics in the descendants of both Macassan and Indigenous Australian ancestors that are now found on both sides of the Arafura and Banda Seas.

First Fleet

The early fleets of settlers used Muslims from coastal Africa and the islands and territories under the British Empire, for labour and as navigators.

19th Century

Cameleers settled in the areas near Alice Springs and other areas of the Northern Territory and inter-married with the Indigenous population. The Adelaide to Darwinrailway is named The Ghan (short for The Afghan) in their memory.^[6]Between 1860 and the 1890s a number of Central Asians came to Australia to work as "Afghan" camel drivers. Camels were first imported into Australia in 1840, initially for exploring the arid interior (see Australian camel), and later for the camel trainsthat were uniquely suited to the demands of Australia's vast deserts. The first camel drivers arrived in Melbourne in June 1860, when eight Muslims and Hindus arrived with the camels for the Burke and Wills expedition. The next arrival of camel drivers was in 1866 when 31 men from Rajasthan and Baluchistan arrived in South Australiawith camels for Thomas Elder. Although they came from several countries, they were usually known in Australia as 'Afghans' and they brought with them the first formal establishment of Islam in Australia.

The first mosque in Australia was built in 1882 at Marree in South Australia. TheGreat Mosque of Adelaide was built in 1890 by the descendants of the cameleers.

During the 1870s, Muslim Malay divers were recruited through an agreement with the Dutch to work on Western Australian and Northern Territory pearling grounds. By 1875, there were 1800 Malay divers working in Western Australia. Most returned to their home countries.

Early 20th Century

In the early twentieth century, Muslims of non-European descent experienced many difficulties in emigrating to Australia because of a government policy which limited immigration on the basis of links with Great Britain and Ireland. Known as the White Australia Policy, politicians of the era claimed that non-white immigrants would cause social disharmony.

However, some Muslims still managed to come to Australia. In the 1920s and 1930s Albanian Muslims were accepted along with BosnianMuslims, whose European heritage made them more compatible with the White Australia Policy. Albanian Muslims built the first mosque in Victoria in Shepparton in 1960 and the first mosque in Melbourne in 1963.

Post World War II

The perceived need for population growth and economic development in Australia led to the broadening of Australia’s immigration policy in the post-World War II period. This allowed for the acceptance of a number of displaced Muslims who began to arrive from Europe.

Moreover, between 1967 and 1971, approximately 10,000 Turks settled in Australia under an agreement between Australia and Turkey. This was the first Muslim community of Middle Eastern origin to settle in Australia. Almost all of these people went to Melbourne and Sydney.

From the 1970s onwards, there was a significant shift in the government’s attitude towards immigration. Instead of trying to make newer foreign nationals assimilate and forgo their heritage, the government became more accommodating and tolerant of differences by adopting a policy of multiculturalism.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Muslims from more than sixty countries had settled in Australia. While a very large number of them come from Bosnia, Turkey, and Lebanon, there are Muslims from Indonesia, Iran, Fiji, Albania, Sudan, Egypt, the Palestinian territories,Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, among others.

Late 20th century

Lebanese Muslims form the core of Australia's Muslim Arab population, which also includes many Iraqis, particularly in Sydney where most Arabs in Australia live. Approximately 3.4% of Sydney's population are Muslim. Adherents of the Sunni denomination of Islam are concentrated in the suburb of Lakemba and surrounding areas such as Punchbowl, Wiley Park, Bankstown and Auburn. Adherents of the Shi'a denomination of Islam is centred in the St George region of Sydney, ccampbelltown and liverpool, with the al-Zahra Mosque being built at Arncliffe in 1983,^[10] However there are also a small number of adherents to the Ahmadiyya sect.^[11]Larger-scale Muslim migration began in 1975 with the migration of Lebanese Muslims, which rapidly increased during the Lebanese Civil War. Lebanese Muslims are still the largest and highest-profile Muslim group in Australia, although Lebanese Christians form a majority of Lebanese Australians, outnumbering their Muslim counterparts at a 6 to 4 ratio.

There are also Somali populations scattered throughout Australia who fled their country from the start of the Somali civil war in 1991. In 2005, tensions between Lebanese Australian Muslims and Anglo-Celtic Australian non-Muslims caused the 2005 Cronulla riots.

Many Muslims living in Melbourne are Bosnian Muslims and Turkish Muslims. Melbourne's Australian Muslims live primarily in the northern suburbs surrounding Broadmeadows (mostly Turkish) and a few in the outer southern suburbs such as Noble Park and Dandenong (mainlyBosnian Muslim).

Very few Muslims (mainly iraqi) live in regional areas with the exceptions of the sizeable Turkish and Albanian community in Shepparton, Victoria and Malays in Katanning, Western Australia. Men in both communities work in the local meat-packing industries. A community ofIraqis have settled in Cobram on the Murray River in Victoria.

Perth also has a Muslim community focussed in and around the suburb of Thornlie, where there is a Mosque. Perth's Australian Islamic School has around 2000 students on three campuses.

Mirrabooka and neighbouring Girrawheen contain predominantly Bosnian Muslim communities. There are a number of Halal restaurants in Perth. The oldest mosque in Perth is the Perth Mosque on William Street in Northbridge. It has undergone many renovations although the original section still remains. Other mosques in Perth are located in Rivervale, Mirrabooka, Beechboro and Hepburn.

There are also communities of Muslims from Turkey, the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) and South-East Asia, in Sydney and Melbourne (the Turkish communities around Auburn, New South Wales and Meadow Heights and Roxburgh Park and the South Asian communities around Parramatta and Dandenong. Indonesian Muslims, are more widely distributed in Darwin.

Australia also attracts Muslim students from Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and increasingly from the Persian Gulf region.

There is a deep split within the Australian Muslim community. Many of the Muslims in New South Wales are Arabs but there are also Turkish and Bosnian Muslim communities, while Victoria has Bosnian, Turkish or Albanian Muslims. There are also Pakistani and BangladeshiMuslim communities in both cities, numbering roughly 10-12 thousand.

The mainly moderate Bosnian Australian community refused to accept the fundamentalist Taj El-Din Hilaly (an Arab born in Egypt) as Australia's mufti. Victorian Imams do not recognise Hilaly. Hilaly, who was criticised by Australian politicians for allegedly broaching Holocaust denial, is no longer recognised as a mufti.