Politics of Islam Down Under

Michael Richardson (Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore)

One reason why Australia's Labor party has overtaken the centre-right coalition of Prime Minister John Howard in recent opinion polls was the release by the opposition this month of a policy pledging a major redistribution of funding for education if it wins the election on October 9. The policy proposes hefty cuts in state subsidies to high-fee private schools and more generous aid not just to government schools, but to low-fee and often struggling Christian and Muslim schools on the fringes of the cities.

This Robin Hood principle is a reminder of how much Australia has changed in recent years. Since the late 1940s, more than 6 million migrants from about 200 countries have made it their home.

After the last vestiges of the White Australia policy were discarded by a Labor government in 1973, the country has chosen immigrants on a non-discriminatory basis. Far from trying to shore up an Anglo-Celtic majority heritage, successive Australian governments have opened the doors to diversity by promoting multicultural policies. For example, there are now more than 1.3 million Australians of Asian ancestry, out of a total population of 20 million.

In the past 25 years, the Australian Islamic community has grown significantly. The 2001 census found that there were almost 282,000 Muslims living in Australia - an increase of 40 per cent since the 1996 official count. Some recent estimates suggest that Australian Muslims may now number between 350,000 and 450,000.

Today's Muslims in Australia are ethnically diverse, reflecting the racial mosaic in the general population. About 35 per cent were born in Australia. The rest came from more than 70 different countries, including Lebanon, Turkey, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, Pakistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Islam is one of the fastest-growing faiths in Australia. This is why the Labor opposition is courting the Muslim vote, especially in the marginal big city seats it must win to unseat Mr Howard's governing coalition, which has been in power since 1996. There are more than 100 mosques and at least 21 Muslim primary and secondary schools in Australia. Islamic community centres, student associations and halal restaurants abound.

But Labor's education policy is also intended to appeal to the Christian community and its less well-endowed schools in a country that remains majority Christian.

Australian Muslims have expressed their abhorrence of terrorism in the name of Islam. However, many of their leaders are critical of the US-led invasion of Iraq in which Australian troops played a significant role. They are also critical of what they see as American and Australian bias towards Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.

Ibrahim Dellal, vice-president of the Cyprus-Turkish Mosque in Melbourne, said after the terrorist truck bombing outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta this month that the Howard government's foreign policies had "invited terrorist attacks". He added: "If your country throws stones, they will be thrown back at you."

Of course, Australia was an al-Qaeda target before the September 11 attacks on the United States, and before its involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Labor Party says it will be as tough on terrorism as the Howard government.

But in a gesture calculated to appeal to Australian Muslims and to many non-Muslims opposed to the Iraq commitment, its leader, Mark Latham, has said he will withdraw the remaining Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas - despite the misgivings of some in his own party and warnings from the government that to "cut and run" will fuel terrorism and worsen instability.

(Originally appeared in the June 25, 2004 issue of South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, reproduced here with permission.)