Is having ‘brown’ skin, in Australia, a crime?
The colour brown is not tantamount to being intellectually inferior, vicious, manipulative, dishonest, uneducated, ill-mannered and dirty.
Ali, 26, was lying unconscious on the concrete footpath outside a busy train station on King’s Street, Sydney. His mouth was bleeding profusely and his eyes were bruised and swollen, while his friends made frantic phone calls to the police and emergency services.
Within 10 minutes, the police and paramedics were at the scene, applying first aid. As he regained consciousness and looked around, he realised that his attacker had fled the scene and he was surrounded by the emergency staff.
Before this incident happened that day, Ali was partying with friends on a Friday night on King’s Street – the party hub of Sydney. A young Caucasian male approached him and asked for a cigarette, to which he refused. Five minutes later, one of Ali’s friends asked for a cigarette and Ali handed him the pack he had in his pocket. This infuriated the Caucasian youngster and he and his friends approached Ali again, in the hopes of teaching him a lesson.
In order to avoid any nasty confrontations, Ali and his friends decided to leave the area and they began walking towards the train station to head back home. Just as they were about to reach it, the Caucasian men gathered around them. The youngster came closer to Ali, ridiculed his Asian skin colour, punched him hard on his face thrice, pushed him against the footpath and ran away when Ali became unconscious.
Ali is one of the 504,544 international students enrolled in an Australian institution for higher education. Three months ago, he came to Australia in search of greener pastures and a promising career as an accountant. For him, Australia was a land of pure opportunity where equality of opportunity prevailed and anyone with an Australian degree was guaranteed a thriving career. Like millions of fellow Pakistanis, he also believed he was absolutely safe on the streets in Sydney on a busy weekend night. But his image of a crime free, safe and multicultural Australia was shattered the very second he was attacked because of his skin colour. Even after four months since the incident, Ali’s case is still buried under hundreds of other files awaiting action at the Racism Tribunal.
Millions of Pakistanis are under the impression that developed countries hold big opportunities for everyone who migrates there and once you enter the country, you are guaranteed a secure future. This, unfortunately, is a myth. Immigration also comes with a price tag. It is usually followed by years of struggle couple with tolerance of abusive, and sometimes overtly racist, behaviour.
Over the years, racism has taken many forms in developed countries that promise to be open to all cultures and claim to be supporters of multiculturalism. In some scenarios, racist comments are overtly directed at you, while in other cases such as workplace and more formal settings, it is covertly expressed. At some stage in their life, every immigrant experiences an open or more subtle form of racism.
I have very vivid memories of my first few days at my new job after I had newly migrated to Australia with my husband. I was surprised when my colleagues told me there was corridor gossip going around about my not-so-Australian accent and people wondered where I got it from. I was further informed that my boss thought he found it hard to understand me because of my thick accent and they were reluctant to hire more people from the same background because of the language issue. Yet they claim to be an equal opportunity employer and support cultural diversity.
Over the next few years, I encountered a plethora of questions and statements about Pakistan.
“Do you have internet in Pakistan? We don’t think you do.”
“Do you have to wear a burqa all the time?”
“Can you wear jeans in Pakistan?”
“How did you manage to get education?”
“You guys are forced to marry your husbands, aren’t you?”
“You can’t get any more brown. If you go out in the sun, you can only turn into an aboriginal now.”
The harder you try to demystify their mistaken beliefs about your culture, burqa and other issues, the more they judge your customs. While wearing a burqa or hijab is more of a personal choice than an obligation, as I would explain, they found it hard to believe. Also, they found shocked at knowing that in urban areas of Pakistan, middle class families would invest as much in the education of their daughters as their sons. In addition, they never believed me when I told them the decision to marry my husband was taken by me after I got to know him. Such stereotypes, I believe, are a cause of this racist behaviour towards immigrants.
While the governments are trying to open up to new cultures and assimilate them, they still need to educate their citizens about other cultures so that they shed their myopic perspective on people from other cultures and accept them as valuable members of their society. On a micro level, people in the developed world also need to educate themselves about various elements of alien cultures in order to leave stereotypes created by television and internet images behind.
For example, wearing a burqa does not symbolise female oppression. Furthermore, the colour brown is not tantamount to being intellectually inferior, vicious, manipulative, dishonest, uneducated, ill-mannered and dirty. In order to be truly multicultural, the developed world has to shed its ‘us versus them’ mindset and see immigrants as equal to its citizens, regardless of skin colour, accent and physical features.
Anusha Omair Chaudry
She holds a BSc (Hons) in Social Sciences from Lahore University of Management Sciences and is a freelance journalist and amateur documentary maker based in Australia.
“A damning new report by Professor Carl Parsons of Canterbury Christ Church University College has found that institutional racism exists within British schools. Britain’s ethnic minorities will always be perceived as outsiders.
Multiculturalism has always been defined and implemented wrongly by the British establishment. Multiculturalism involves a level of complexity which cannot be understood from the prospective of any single discipline. Instead, historical, cultural, linguistic, political, economic, educational, sociological and psychological factors and processes all play a critical role. Multiculturalism is not about integration but about cultural plurality. It is not about separation but about respect and the deepening awareness of Unity in Diversity. Each culture will maintain its own intrinsic value and at the same time would be expected to contribute to the benefit of the whole society. Multiculturalism can accommodate diversity of all kinds – cultural, philosophical and religious, so that we can create a world without conflict and strife. Britain can assume the role of accommodation and concern for all peoples, for our planet and indeed for our survival. We live in a rapidly changing world. British Muslims are ordinary people with the same sorts of ambitions, frustrations, failures and successes as anybody else. We are just like you, go to work, pay taxes, obey the law and just want to get on with our everyday life. We are hated simply for following Islam.
According to labour’s Karen Buck, Muslims in Britain are now at the sharper end of race hatred and xenophobia. West has many stereotypes, misconceptions about Islam that are due to the media, prejudice and ignorance. Islam is often looked upon as an extremist, terrorist religion. To fight malaria, one does not shoot down mosquitoes, one drains the swamps. Urgent government action is needed to tackle Islamophobia and “institutional disadvantages” suffered by British Muslim community. Now it has become widely accepted that, in Bernard Lewis’ words, “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century”. The greater Islamist threat to the West is not violence-flattening buildings, bombing railroad stations and night clubs, seizing theatres and schools – but the peaceful, legal growth of power through education, the law, the media and the political system.”
Majority of Muslim parents in all western countries would like to send their children to Muslim schools with Muslim teachers. Muslim teachers are role models for Muslim children during their developmental period. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
I regard Muslim schools not just Faith schools but more or less bilingual schools. I set up the first Muslim school in Forest Gate London in 1981. Special attention was given to Standard English, Arabic and Urdu languages along with National Curriculum. The teaching of Standard English will help them to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village, he/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit.
The sound knowledge of one’s owns language would appear to help – not hinder the acquisition of a second language and bilingual children may even have cognitive advantages and that the ability to speak more than one language is going to be increasingly important for the world of the future. Therefore, Muslim children and young Muslims have potentially a major educational advantage, although sadly this is not being developed well at present. British policy makers now recognise bilingualism as an educational asset rather than a problem. Education plays a central role in the transmission of languages from one generation to the next. The teaching of mother tongues is essential in terms of culture and identity. Arabic is a religious language for the Muslims but for Pakistanis, Urdu is also essential for culture and identity. Blind Muslim children in Bradford are learning to read Arabic and Urdu Braille, by a blind teacher who travelled from Pakistan. Now blind Muslim children are not going to miss out on culture, religion, language and the social aspects and integration into their own community and identity.
As a British Asian myself, and a Muslim, I am deeply proud of my heritage and language. At home i speak my own languages, Punjabi and Urdu. When out and about with family, i speak in Urdu etc. I will speak in whatever language I like. Nobody, absolutely nobody will tell us what language to speak. Obviously I appreciate everyone living here should ve able to speak a bit of English. But its not a must, especially for elders. After all, look at how many Brits move to other nations yet refuse to learn the languages? No, they expect others to learn or speak English, and the Brits just don’t wanna integrate. If u Brits don’t do it when u move to other nations, don’t expect or demand other others, Asians, Africans etc to have to learn English to fit in. Me, I’m Asian, I’m proud of my languages and if it riles others when they cant understand our conversations, well get over it. There is no such thing as multiculturalism, it’s a phallusy, a twisted idealism of the truth, multiculturalism refers to the mixing and integration of different races and beliefs but they don’t integrate, they purposefully segregate themselves to continue their own way of life, I don’t call that ‘integration’.
Native Brits must learn to respect and tolerate those who are different. The needs and demands of the Muslim community are different from those of natives. Muslims are in Britain not to give up their cultural heritage. They must integrate in their new home country, learn new languages and apply for political representation — without forgetting their cultural heritage. It is important to learn Standard English, but their languages should not be neglected. They need Masajid and grave yards. Muslim children not only need halal meat or Eid Holidays but they need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their development period also. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit. The whole world belongs to Muslims. He/she must learn and be well versed in Standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. At the same time, he/she must learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural heritage and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. For a Muslim English is an economic language and Arabic is a religious while Urdu and other community languages are their social and emotional languages.
Muslim children not only need halal meat or Eid Holidays but they need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their development period also. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school. Legally, the state has an obligation to respect the rights of parents to ensure that ‘education and teaching(of their children) is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.’ The schools must satisfy the spiritual, moral, social, and cultural needs of Muslim pupils. State schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers are not in a position to satisfy their needs. A good school is not just a knowledge factory or a conveyor belt for churning out exam passes – it is a community, a family. A community is held together by common values and principles.
IA
London School of Islamics Trust
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk