Australian Prime Minister Worries Over 'Extremist' Muslim Immigrants

News article

By: Phil Mercer

Date: February 20, 2006

Source: Mercer, Phil. "Australian Prime Minister Worries Over 'Extremist' Muslim Immigrants." Voice of America News (February 20, 2006).

About the Author: Phil Mercer is a contributor to Voice of America (VOA), part of an international news media organization sponsored by the government of the United States. The VOA was originally constituted as a radio network to provide current events information to both United States citizens living abroad and foreign nationals; the VOA today utilizes digital satellite and Internet communications as its broadcast media.

INTRODUCTION

The country of Australia, founded in 1901, is an aggregation of seven former British colonies that had been established on the Australian continent beginning in 1788. Through most of Australia's history, its immigrant population comprised a mixture of free Anglo-Saxon settlers and convicts transported from the British Isles to the colonies to serve their sentences. By 1901, these populations had blended to create a relatively homogeneous and predominately white society.

From the date of its independence, Australia was a bastion of patriotism and its policies conveyed a nationalist, Australian-first outlook. Although a nation with British roots, anti-English sentiment was a prominent feature of Australian nationalism. As the country grew from its birth through the 1960s, Australia was a nation that prized an identifiable Australian culture, where any visible minorities were expected to blend into the existing cultural fabric as opposed to maintaining a distinct cultural identity. The immigration practices of the Australian government as mandated through the 1960s have been described in academic literature as being in furtherance of a "White Australia" policy.

Australia legislated changes to its immigration policies in the 1970s that were intended to broaden the ability of non-white immigrants to migrate to Australia. Demographic studies confirm that since 1980, over 100,000 immigrants have arrived each year in Australia, one of the highest per-capita rates of immigration in the world. The greatest percentage of these recent immigrants have arrived from Asia and Indonesia. There has been significant editorial commentary in the Australian media as to the rise in racially motivated incidents in the nation; a riot near Sydney that began with a confrontation between a white group and youths of Lebanese ancestry attracted national attention in January 2006.

When John Howard made the speech excerpted in the primary source below in February, 2006, he had been the Prime Minister of Australia for ten years. Howard, a politician who has exhibited a conservative approach to economic and social issues throughout his political career, had spoken out on how Australia should approach multiculturalism on numerous occasions. In 1988, while a member of the Australian parliament, Howard stated that it was his belief that Asian immigration to Australia was then at excessive levels, and that he feared that Australian cultural traditions would be overcome. In 2001, the Howard government provoked an international incident by boarding a Norwegian ship headed to Australia that contained Muslim asylum seekers from Indonesia. The combined effect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States and the 2002 bombing in neighboring Bali, Indonesia prompted a series of heightened internal security measures in Australia that directed attention to its Muslim minority (approximately 300,000 persons in a national population of twenty million).

PRIMARY SOURCE

Australian Prime Minister John Howard says he is concerned about "extremist" Muslim immigrants, insisting such people are antagonistic towards the wider community. Mr. Howard's remarks have sparked criticism from Islamic leaders in Australia. Prime Minister John Howard says there is a "small section of the Islamic population in Australia"that holds extremist views about relations with non-Muslims, the rights of women, and other contentious issues. He said such views pose a challenge to Australia's liberal immigration policy.

Australia's conservative leader was repeating comments for reporters that he had made in an earlier interview for a new book that details his forthcoming 10th anniversary as prime minister. Mr. Howard says radical elements within the country's Islamic community need to be confronted.

"It is not a problem we have ever faced with other immigrant communities, who become easily absorbed into the mainstream," he said. "We want people, when they come to Australia, to adopt Australian ways."

Mr. Howard's remarks have provoked criticism from Muslim leaders. They have insisted their community already feels under siege due to the U.S.-led war on terrorism, in which Australia is an eager participant, and recent race riots in Sydney, where white gangs targeted people of Arabic or Middle Eastern appearance.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils said the prime minister's comments were inflammatory at a time when tensions between Muslims and Western nations were already running high over controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that originally ran in a Danish newspaper.

It is estimated that there are 300,000 Muslims in Australia. They have come from more than 70 countries, including Turkey and Lebanon. Islamic leaders have said that racism towards this minority group has been increasing in recent years, since the terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001 and the bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali a year later. Islamic leaders have also expressed concern that new counter-terrorism laws in Australia will unfairly target Australia's Muslims.

Australia has never suffered a major terrorist attack on its own soil, but the 202 people killed on Bali in 2002 included 88 Australians, and the country is on a heightened state of alert. It has combat troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

SIGNIFICANCE

The comments of Australian Prime Minister John Howard in February 2006 reflect a growing concern on the part of many Australians about the future of Australian society in the face of the threats posed by terrorism beyond its borders, as well as a corresponding perception of the instability created by immigration posed within the country. Howard, a long time conservative presence in Australian national politics, echoed the sentiments of a significant segment of Australian society with his comments.

The Howard speech raises a number of issues in relation to Australian multicultural practices, the first of which is the distinction between the concepts of xenophobia and racism, two terms that are often used interchangeably. Xenophobia is a strong dislike, fear, or hostility towards foreign persons; racism is the subtle or active discrimination against persons who are of a different racial origin than oneself. Racism does not depend upon a country of origin; similarly, xenophobia is not dependent upon race.

Neither xenophobia nor racism were perceived as particularly acute social problems in Australia when immigration to the country was made by predominately white persons. Australia through both the force of tradition and immigration practices encouraged the assimilation of all immigrant cultures into one definable Australian culture. In this respect Australia was similar to the traditional "melting pot" theory that was valued in the United States through the larger part of the history of immigration to America. Ethnic diversity as a stated societal goal as practiced in other nations that encouraged immigration, such as Canada, was not the rule in Australia.

The pressure to ensure tolerance toward all persons in Australia, particularly visible and ethnic minorities, had led to the passage in 1995 of the Racial Discrimination Act, which expressly prohibited a wide range of overt and indirect discrimination motivated by race. This Act was followed by the passage of the Racial Hatred Act, a statute that criminalized an equally broad range of conduct motivated by race. The existence of these statutes is significant in light of the statement made by Howard regarding the earlier assimilation of non-Muslim immigrants into Australian society and his stated desire that all immigrants "adopt Australian ways." Howard's reference to assimilation is in seeming contrast to the volume of immigration from backgrounds so clearly different from that of traditional white, Anglo-Saxon-rooted Australian society.

The corollary question raised by the prime minister's comments is how one precisely defines the "Australian ways" in that society. The more diverse the population a society becomes through immigration, the fewer common bonds will exist between its segments. As Australia has clearly pursued an immigration policy since the 1960s that has resulted in a society that includes both non-white and non-Christian persons, there would appear to be an implicit recognition that Australia is now designed to be a diverse, multicultural society.

It is of significance that the issues raised by Prime Minister Howard are those that have been advanced in a number of perspectives in American society in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Australia has been a political ally of the United States and has provided military resources and troops to support the American initiatives in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The 2002 Bali terrorist attack that killed eighty-eight Australians and one hundred others occurred in Indonesia, a near northern neighbor to Australia and a country that is approximately ninety percent Muslim. After the 9/11 incursions, Bali served as a microcosmic example to Australians of the recent American experience with terrorism that was directly tied to a religious creed. It is not surprising that Howard would draw attention to Muslim extremism given this recent history.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

The Australian People, edited by James Jupp. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Horne, Donald. 10 Steps to a More Tolerant Australia. Sydney: Penguin Australia, 2003.

Racism in Australia: Volume 180, Issues in Society, edited by Justin Healey. Thirroul, Australia: The Spinney Press, 2001.

Web sites

Government of Australia/Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. "Human Rights." 200.5 〈http://www.dfat.gov.au/hr/comm_hr/chr61_item6.html〉 (accessed June 28, 2006).