Liza Hopkins

Thank you for this. OLO is not noted for such nuanced discussion of identity, especially of Muslim youth. So thank you for this contributuion.

On OLO, many posters follow the lead of the popular media and do construct a singular, hybrid category of Muslims without any regard to what you describe as "the complex mixture of affiliations, networks and personal relationships" that develop in Australia. Many posters continue to position Muslims - as you put it - as the “other” or the “enemy within”. Unhappily, no amount of evidence to the contrary seems to allay the paranoia.

Mind you, when the boot is on the other foot and 'Australian' culture and identity is being discussed, many posters fail to see the importance of nuance in describing Australia's cultural complexity in what some call the mainstream. So we hear much of 'Australian core culture' as if all 'real Australians' follow them faithfully - as if there's one single identity to which all 'newcomers' should subscribe, like the rest of us.

Most attempts to define this core culture result in cliches and triteness and amount to nothing more than chest-beating about their presumed superior virtues.

Liza, thank you; this article is very much needed.

Australian attitudes to "other races" are influenced heavily by what is reported by the media.
This reporting is often the work of just one journalist, and the outcome is that this single person's ideas are circulated widely.

Because it appears in mass media, the masses accept it as fact.

That journalist either may be highly knowledgeable about the topic, or encountering it for the first time.
In the latter case, it is probable that the writer will report in the simplest of terms within the constraints of a limited understanding, resulting in the "dumbing down" of readers or audiences.
He/she could also be aping others.

The quest for simpicity often sees a heavy use of cliches to overcome a reluctance to think, analyse, understand.

"Muslim-Australian" is a handy label, particularly for the xenophobic.
How often would they use descriptors such as "Irish-Anglo", "coloured",
"Protestant motorist"?

It's about time that we stopped putting religious labels on groups unless it is germain.
Race and religion are separate.

It is not ‘public discourse’ which has positioned Muslims as the other or the enemy within, as the author suggests, but rather Muslims themselves.

All Australians should be Australian first. Whatever other identity or belief they choose is secondary to that: personal and nothing to do with anyone but them.

Any “examination of the mainstream media” shows that the media is out of control, presuming to know what most Australians think and believe, when it/they are merely projecting their own beliefs and trying to influence public opinion, or worse.

There is no need for Muslims to be any different from Australians of other faiths or no faiths. Country and nationality should always be the main identity if there is to be peace and cooperation.

Sadly, Muslims - or at least the mouthy ones we always hear from – don’t seem to believe this. And yes, for the nitpickers, there are other groups who do the same, but we are talking about Muslims here.

It’s that simple. But, as usual, we have an academic trying to make the subject mysterious and ‘complex’.

Ah! Leigh - clearly a man who does not suffer fools gladly - what does a media "in control " look like is what I want to know -

I doubt - despite any form of analysis - we will get a clear picture of what a muslim in Austrlia looks like or in fact thinks - as , I humbly suggest, their socialisation has been disorted by inordinate amounts of pressure on the community by those who subscribe to the islam=terror equation - about as intelligent as the all fish swim there fore all that swim are fish logic of some of our more polemic journos -

Cowardly and ill advised reaction by governments including ours - and on going direct and unjustifeid vilification of muslims by Costello, Abbot and that putz Nelson engender hatred and or withdrawal - it will be either fight or flight - has contributed to what might well be a self fulfilling prophesy about some muslima - all that clap trap about "our" shared values - it is interests that dominate the common ground not values - we threw them out years ago -

I only hope I live long enough to see the tension that will grow out of the fact that the only nations that are breeding fast enough to replace themselves are those of the sub saharan regions and the middle east - that will be a test for the OECD nations - (Overfed Elitist Complacent Dunderheads)that wil test our values - our sense of a fair go and whatever other rhetoric we choose to cling to

Leigh's faith in "country and nationality" as the pathway to "peace and cooperation" is touching.

That is what ultra-nationalists have always liked to claim in their speeches. Nation for them is a transcendent entity which ends all wars and suffuses all humanity with its benficence.

It's magical thinking, and thus is immune to evidence or reason.

The corpses produced by all the wars of "country and nationality": the Napoleonic wars, World Wars I & 2, the Irish troubles, Yugoslavia, Iran/Iraq war: the intra-national slaughters carried out in the name of "country and nationality" in Suharto's Indonesia, Mao's China, Stalin's USSR, Castro's Cuba, Pinochet's Chile, Saddam's Iraq: the separatist terrorist slaughters carried out in the name of "country and nationality" by ETA & the IRA are all magicked away in the comforting fantasies of ultra-nationalists.

This article by Liza Hopkins is a ‘must read’ for those who want to capture the zeitgeist of the 1990s. Liza, the caravan has moved on. While you were scratching around in north-east Turkey one of your colleagues was busy torturing our language with her own application of deconstruction. Psychologist Marilyn Bowman came to the conclusion that “each personal, particular and subjective interpretation of an event, a text or an observation, is considered equally valid”. Dr Bowman seems to be granting tacit approval to those who have negative views of Islam and muslims.