Honour killing? More like dishonourable homicide ...

A recent article on the popular website AltMuslim.com by columnist and lawyer Rafia Zakaria is well worth reading.

Zakaria provides a sharp analysis of the discovery in late June of the remains of 20 year-old Banaz Mahmod Bakabir Agha, an Iraqi Kurd . Her body had been cut into pieces and hidden in a suitcase. A court later convicted her father and brother for her murder.

Zakaria holds back no punches. She asks some tough questions which Muslim organisations and law enforcement officials should be asking ...

Banaz's case illustrates how a host of factors can come together to allow such grotesque honour crimes to occur. Archaic and misogynistic cultural beliefs, on the one hand, reduce women to objects of ownership and control, whose family members have no qualms in obliterating them for imagined sins against tradition. On the other is a host foreign culture suspicious of a ghettoised and economically disenfranchised Muslim minority, and hence slow to provide protection. Banaz had repeatedly asked the police to provide her with protection and even given them a list of three people whom she believed would try to kill her, to no avail.

Finally, also blameworthy is the persistent silence of the Muslim Council of Britain, and other Muslim groups who jump to organise protests when Muslim women are denied the right to wear niqabs but choose to ignore their plight when they fall prey to the brutality of their own families.

The collusion of all of these factors, the low priority given to Muslim women's freedom by their own cultural tradition, their host nation and ultimately their religious community are all to blame in the Banaz case.

Zakaria sums up the absolute immorality of such homicides as follows ...

There is nothing that can mitigate the horror of an innocent life taken at the behest of the very people that were responsible for bringing it into the world. At the most primary level, a crime which involves a father killing his own daughter, whose only mistake was to choose her own mate, should evoke the deepest disgust in every human heart. But the Banaz case is also an indictment against the religio-cultural confusion becoming increasingly symbolic of West-European society in the twenty-first century.

Immigrant communities, Muslim or otherwise, have to address this crisis. Law enforcement officials also need to be reminded that domestic violence doesn't become less serious just because the victims are 'foreign'.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

ESSAY: Holland's Hirsi: A gentlewoman she is not

AYAAN Hirsi Ali is a persona non grata in many Muslim circles. Fiercely independent and with little concern for the sensibilities of others, the Mogadishu, Somalia-born 38-year-old Dutch ex-parliamentarian is not afraid to take Muslims out of their comfort zones. She openly states that she is an ex-Muslim, and that she does not believe in any divine figure. Given the suffering she went through in a war-torn country and the victim of female genital mutilation, I cannot help but pause to some extent. Suffering generates its own reverence.

Many Muslims have attacked Hirsi Ali for her ignorance of Islam as well as for her links with far-Right groups in the Netherlands and now in the United States. She certainly has become a darling of cultural warriors from the lunar-Right, who are fond of her insider critique and exposure of aspects of Islam and Muslim cultures which Muslims allegedly try to hide.

Whatever one may think of her leaving Islam, Hirsi Ali's knowledge of the Muslim societies she condemns is certainly lacking. I discovered this during a robust 45 minute discussion I had with her on Tuesday in Sydney. Our discussion covered political, social, cultural and theological issues. At the conclusion, Hirsi Ali said it was one of the better and more enjoyable interviews she had done in Australia.

Hirsi Ali was in Australia as a guest of the Sydney Writers Festival. Although she was chief guest, many in the writers establishment were sceptical of her. After being exposed as an immigration fraud (she used the actual word "fraud" to describe her asylum application during an interview with Dutch journalist), she ended up leaving the Netherlands in disgrace.

Some years back, a number of Australian writers' festivals also made a huge issue of Norma Khoury, the author of Forbidden Love, a book dealing with the honour killing of her Jordanian Muslim friend Dalia. Khoury claimed to live in hiding in Queensland, allegedly fearing for her life from Dalia's family members. Her book became a huge bestseller and was used by cultural warriors to attack Muslim cultures and to reinforce the stereotype of violence in Muslim families.

Khoury was regarded as an untouchable figure in Australia. Taking enormous personal risks, and following an 18 month investigation in three countries, then literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald Malcolm Knox declared Khoury a literary fraud. The writing establishment and Khoury's publishers ended up with egg on their faces. Its little wonder so many have been cautious to embrace Hirsi Ali.

I must say I have my own doubts about Hirsi Ali's claims. I reviewed her book The Caged Virgin for The Australian newspaper in October 2006. The book is a collection of speeches and articles delivered and written mainly during her period as a Member of the Dutch Parliament.

In May 2006, following the broadcast of an investigative programme on Dutch TV, Hirsi Ali admitted to telling lies about her migration status. The Dutch journalists exposed Hirsi Ali as a serial liar who made numerous claims about her family, her past, the countries she lived in and the circumstances of her allegedly forced marriage.

Those revelations led to the downfall of the then conservative Dutch government, and led to Hirsi Ali resigning from Parliament. For many Dutch former supporters of Hirsi Ali, she was a hypocrite who happily campaigned for other asylum seekers to be forcibly removed for telling less significant untruths than the ones she told.

It's unclear, though, whether Hirsi Ali will last very long in the lap of American conservatives. I have many doubts about Hirsi Ali's knowledge of her ancestral faith, but I have no doubt about her ability to speak her mind. Hirsi Ali's views on abortion and creation science will not sit well with an American conservative establishment that builds its support base on conservative protestant Christians.

She openly describes herself as "pro-Choice", though she doesn't believe that abortion should be seen as a form of contraception. In this respect, it is ironic that her views are probably close to those of the mainstream position of the syariah which she so despises.

Further, Hirsi Ali believes that creation science should not be taught in schools. She regards creationism as unscientific, an attempt by religious people to impose religion on secular education. Christian conservatives will therefore have two reasons to hate her.

Indeed, Hirsi Ali is very insistent on the separation of religion and state, a staunch secularist who openly opposes anything that she believes compromises secularism. In this respect, her opposition to the current government in Turkey is most unusual.

Hirsi Ali told me Turkey is a staunchly secular country and that the AK Party wished to re-unite religion and state. She also claimed the AK Party wanted to implement shariah as the law of the land. Her evidence was that the Justice Minister allegedly tried to change Turkish law to make adultery a criminal offence.

I'm not sure if her claims are true or not. Supposing they are, how is declaring adultery a mere criminal offence an example of implementing shariah when the shariah insists that adultery be treated as a capital offence, with a mandatory death penalty? And was the proposed crime one of adultery or one of public indecency (having sexual intercourse in public), regarded as a crime in many Western jurisdictions?

Hirsi Ali's commentary on Turkey is just one example of a tendency to talk about issues way beyond her league. She suggests Kemalist secularism involves a separation of church and state. As far back as 1981, Turkish political scientist Dr Binnaz Toprak wrote in her Islam and Political Development in Turkey that

... the Kemalist version of separating Church and State took a different form from what is generally understood by the term ... Mustafa Kemal's programme of secularisation defeated its own purpose. Religious institutions were not separated from the State but rather became subservient to it.

Hirsi Ali's most unusual claim was that the dominant strand of Islam in Indonesia was wahhabism, and that Saudi Arabia funds the majority of Indonesia religious schools. I asked her if she had been to Indonesia. She replied:

Do I have to go there to know a self-evident truth? Do I have to have lived in Salem to know of witch hunts?

Yet when I asked her evidence for her claims about Indonesia, it was clear she was the one conducting the witch hunt of the world's largest Muslim country. She stated that religious schools in Indonesia were called madressahs. She looked confused when I used the term pesantren, and even more so when I spoke of an organisation called Nahdatul Ulama who run Indonesia's largest network of pesantrens.

Her evidence that al-Qaeda influence in Indonesia was growing was the number of Indonesians who attended protests against the Danish cartoons. I'm not sure how protesting against cartoons is evidence of al-Qaeda membership. I cited a report in Asian media which said some 600 people took part in the protest at the Danish embassy.

That's 600 people in a city of 9 million. Ideas which only galvanise 0.0067 per cent of a community hardly represent evidence of a substantial growth in their popularity.

Hirsi Ali then claimed that Muslim extremists in Indonesia were now calling for shariah to be implemented in Indonesia. I asked her whether she had any evidence of this in terms of Indonesia's electoral politics. She had no idea. I advised her of a speech delivered to conservative Sydney thinktank The Centre for Independent Studies by legal academic and Nahdatul Ulama leader Mohammad Fajrul Falaakh who said that in each successive Indonesian election since independence, the number of seats held by pro-shariah parties has actually reduced.

Hirsi Ali is happy to make sweeping statements about a diverse range of societies whose only common feature is some element of Islam. She has not travelled through Muslim countries nor met Muslim communities.

One would think that, as a former Dutch MP, she would have had occasion to meet many Indonesians living or studying in the Netherlands. Indonesian and other sources of classical Islam are freely available in universities such as Leiden, also home to the respected International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World. The Netherlands has no shortage of scholarly material on Islamic cultures and theology, almost none of which is reflected in her book.

Yet none of this appears to have left any impression on Hirsi Ali. I left the interview feeling sympathy for Hirsi Ali after all the suffering she had been through as a child, but more so for all the Islam-haters out there who could not find a more credible insider to promote their cause.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer who recently interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali for NewMatilda.com. This article was first published in the Brunei Times on 11 June 2007.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf


Bookmark this on Delicious

On Pell, Hilaly and the separation of religion and state ...

I really don't need to say much on this as NSW National Party MP and practising Catholic Adrian Piccoli has said it all ...

Look, if the Catholic Church want to take measures against members of Parliament who vote in favour of this legislation, then I guess it's up to them. But, look, I don't expect that the Catholic Church would do that.

I, in fact, think that the vast majority of Catholics don't believe that the church should influence politics and politicians. So I think the vast majority of Catholics are certainly on the side of members of Parliament and don't agree with the Archbishop's intervention.

So, look, if they want to take measures against me or anybody else it's entirely up to them, but I don't think it's going to happen.

Well, I certainly, you know, in the last few years there's been a lot of talk about the Islamic faith and the attempt, or the perception that, particularly in other countries, that the Islamic faith is having a, is putting a lot of pressure on politics. And I think in Australia, if Sheikh Al Hilali had made that same kind of declaration to Members of Parliament of the Muslim faith, telling them how to vote, I think there'd be outrage.

I think it would be front page of every newspaper and there would be outrage against him. I see this by the Catholic Church as being a similar thing.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

More On Imams

I’ve written elsewhere on the rumblings at the Canberra Mosque here, here and here. Yet the Canberra Mosque issue does raise interesting issues about the roles imams play in different countries and cultures. It also raises issues about the terms and conditions in which imams are employed. Perhaps now is a good time to revisit some of these issues.

Typically, imams deliver Friday sermons and lead the Friday congregational prayers. However, many mosques and other locations where Friday prayer is held (such as musallahs and prayer rooms on university campuses) don’t employ full-time imams. Typically, members of the congregation take it in turns to deliver the Friday sermon.

A common problem in Muslim communities is the status of imams. In many parts of the Muslim world, imams are at the lower end of the social and financial ladder. There is a perception that you become an imam because your grades weren’t good enough to get into anything more ‘useful’.

Hence many trained imams have had to find other things to do. Many imams are self-employed. In Turkish-speaking communities, it isn’t uncommon to find one’s local kebab store being owned or managed by an imam. Other imams are employed in Muslim independent schools as teachers of Arabic or Islamic studies. Still, others try to enter academia (perhaps the most successful in this regard as been Professor Abdullah Saeed, who holds at least one degree in Islamic sacred law from an Islamic university in Saudi Arabia).

The situation in the United States isn’t much different. However, in the US, a number of imams have set up their own think tanks and academies. Some imams in Australia are trying similar projects. One American imam, Na’eem Abdul Wali, works under the auspices of a college in Auburn.

Imams are frequently criticised for overseeing an environment where women and youth are driven away from mosques. Yet often this environment existed before the imam first arrived. To survive in their position, imams must gain the confidence of the congregation, especially of the executive committee of the mosque managing society which employs them. This often means not rocking the boat too much initially.

In classical Islamic sacred law, the imam should abandon his post when he loses the confidence of the bulk of the congregation for reasons recognised by the sacred law e.g. having a blameworthy source of income, keeping company with oppressive rulers etc. Yet how is this to be implemented in practice? In this sense, there is a real tension between the role of imam as employee accountable to the executive and the role of imam as someone with whom the congregation are satisfied. After all, not all members of the congregation are necessarily members of the mosque management society. And it is generally the case that few mosque executive members regularly attend prayers at the mosque.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald regarding Ayaan Hirsi Ali and female genital mutilation ...

The following letter was submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald ...

In her profile of Somali-born author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, your reporter Angela Bennie claims the disgusting sub-Saharan cultural practice of female genital mutilation is common in countries where Islam is dominant, including Ethiopia.

In fact, Islam is not the dominant faith in Ethiopia. FGM is widely practised among Ethiopian Coptic Christians, and is also widespread among Ethiopian Jews (including those settled in Israel).

Further, FGM is completely unknown among Muslim communities in Central Asia, China, Turkey, Bosnia, Albania and the Indian sub-Continent (from where 1 in 4 Muslims originates).

Thankfully, the practice is banned in Australia. Muslim women were prominent in lobbying for it to be banned. They understood it to be a cultural practice with no support in the Islamic sacred law.

Ms Hirsi Ali has every right to be angry about being subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM. But by blaming Islam itself, she is doing no favours to FGM's millions of non-Muslim victims.

I Yusuf
Sydney, NSW

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

Bridging the divide between secular Muslims and the imams

WHEN a longstanding priest loses the confidence of parishioners of a mainstream church, the matter is dealt with using internal and established church law. A church hierarchy exists to arbitrate or establish a tribunal.

In the dispute between longstanding Imam Swaiti, of the Yarralumla Mosque, and some of his parishioners, it isn’t so simple. The dispute raises fundamental issues affecting the management of Muslim religious life in secular Australia.

Unfortunately, Australian Muslims aren't as adept at juggling the requirements of Islamic sacred law (sharia) and Australian law to resolve internal religious disputes. This is despite the fact that so much Australian law on alternative dispute resolution is derived from sharia.

Imam Swaiti relies on the fact that he has served as imam of the mosque for more than a decade. Under sacred law, he may be entitled to argue this. But what exactly is an imam's role in Australia?

The term imam means a leader. In an Islamic liturgical sense, it refers to the person who leads five daily prayer services at the mosque. Traditionally, a mixed-gender prayer service can be conducted by any male selected by the congregation. Once the imam loses the confidence of most of the congregation, he can be replaced.

In Muslim diaspora communities, imams don't just lead prayer services. They also act as resident scholars, advising parishioners on questions of religious law.

Classical Islamic sacred law was codified by private imams supported by Muslim civil society with minimal state involvement. The earliest and most authoritative imams of Islam frequently found themselves on the wrong side of rulers. Government-sponsored imams were seen as corrupt and compromised, lacking the independence to carry out what the Prophet Muhammad described as the greatest jihad to speak the truth to a tyrannical ruler.

Islamic history is, therefore, a case of reverse secularism. In the Catholic West, the State fought to keep itself independent of the Roman Church. Throughout the Islamic world, Muslim religious authorities struggled to remain independent of rulers who attempted to usurp the mantle of religious leadership.

In Sunni theology, religious and temporal leadership was united in the person of the Prophet Muhammad and his four, rightly-guided successors. In Shi'ite theology, the two forms of leadership were united in the prophet and his 12 direct descendants, whom Shi'ites refer to as the 12 imams of the prophet's household, and who are also held in high esteem by Sunnis.

Yet rulers of both persuasions have tried to re-unite the two leadership forms, and have often suffered greatest resistance from imams themselves. Modern Muslim states have tried to regulate religious institutions by establishing ministries to employ and train imams, often with only minimal success.

Australian imams inherit this traditional defiance to leadership structures, with despotic kings and rulers replaced by boards and committees who manage mosques. Australian mosques were usually established in areas where a Muslim community reached a critical mass and required a place for communal worship and religious festivals.

Indeed, sacred law requires that Muslim congregations above a certain size are required to hold a Friday service where a khutbah (or sermon) on the sacred law and on current events is delivered.

To meet these needs, parishioners first establish an association in accordance with local law, agreeing on a constitution and electing an executive. As the community grows, the mosque might decide to appoint someone to lead prayer services and provide advice on ceremonial matters, often on a part-time voluntary basis to begin with.

Sydney and Melbourne mosques tend to be established along ethnic and cultural lines. Hence, the imam tends to be from the same ethnic and linguistic background as the congregation. Muslim Canberrans, on the other hand, are a uniquely multiethnic community, with all Muslim sects and ethnic groups represented.

During the 1960s, when my parents first lived in Canberra, the community consisted mainly of embassy staff, students and academics. Canberra Muslims still regard themselves as a more educated, secular and gentrified congregation. As it is, many modern Muslim cultures regard imams as belonging to a lowly profession. Imams claim specialist knowledge of intricacies of the sacred law which many parishioners see as largely irrelevant. Imams are poorly paid, and many are forced to rely on taking a second job or to engage in some kind of business.

One would expect that such an educated community would have organised itself and its structures in a manner whereby recourse to courts (whether of law or of public opinion) would not be necessary. One would also expect the community to have developed strategies enabling imams to perform traditional roles while enabling them some security of employment and a decent salary.

The unfortunate response of many Muslims, disgruntled with conservatism and the irrelevance of imams, has been to avoid the mosque altogether. Those frequenting the mosque tend to avoid involvement in management issues. The result is that management is frequently left in the hands of those least capable.

Ironically, sacred law provides little specific guidance on how imams are to be appointed or dismissed. Different cultures have established different norms. Resolving Muslim institutional disputes in Canberra is a new phenomenon, especially with many cultures and two legal systems at play.

An ACT magistrate recently told Canberra mosque factions that her court did not have the wisdom of Solomon and Allah, and that the factions needed to resolve the dispute themselves. Perhaps Muslims could look to their spiritual elder cousins for some guidance.

Islam and Judaism have more in common with each other than with any other faith. In religious terms, the roles of both rabbis and imams are similar. Both assist their congregations in understanding and practising the sacred law. Both advise and frequently lead prayer services. At the same time, both faiths operate without a priestly hierarchy and allow lay persons to lead major services.

In this sense, both faiths enjoy a kind of liturgical democracy. So what happens when an influential part of a congregation decides it wishes to replace its leader? In this regard, Jews have had at least 2000 years experience living as Diaspora communities, with internal mechanisms for resolving such disputes. Both the Canberra Mosque and the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation are experiencing this situation right now.

In the case of the Adelaide Shul, the Australian Jewish News recently reported that parishioners and the rabbi in question have agreed for the matter to be arbitrated by the London Beth Din. The Beth Din (meaning literally House of Judgment) is a religious court set up by the Jewish congregation and consisting of rabbinical jurists with special training and experience in dispute resolution. In Adelaide, the parties have signed a binding arbitration agreement. This would presumably make any decision enforceable by a secular court.

The Canberra Mosque management have argued in the media that Imam Swaiti was an employee subject to their direction. Imam Swaiti's supporters argue that he cannot be stopped from leading prayer services as he still maintains the confidence of his congregation.

In a sense, both are right. Surely, it is not an act of rocket science for Canberra's mosque managers and a group of Muslim lawyers to develop some procedure for resolving the matter. Unfortunately, Muslim leaders have a poor track record in resolving internal disputes. The umbrella Australian Federation of Islamic Councils established a system of Muslim arbitration. Sadly, that system wasn't in evidence during more than 18 months of internal AFIC disputation and resulting litigation.

In the long term, as more Australian mosques follow Canberra's lead and cross ethnic and sectarian boundaries, such problems will become more common. Mosque congregations must develop some kind of model for the employment of imams. The present situation in which imams are expected to act as a highly underpaid combination of priest, jurist, counsellor, teacher, community spokesman and spiritual guide cannot continue indefinitely. Muslim communities need to develop an alternative model for imams, ensuring it becomes a respected profession.

This, however, will require educated, secular Muslims becoming at least partially interested in management of their religious institutions. John Howard insists 99 per cent of Muslims have integrated and adopted Australian values. Perhaps complete disinterest in religion is an Australian value Muslims should ignore for the time being.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer who has acted for Muslim peak bodies, independent schools, mosques and imams in employment and structural matters. He is associate editor of AltMuslim.com. This article was first published in The Canberra Times on Saturday 26 May 2007.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

The (Daily) Tele(graph) quotes everything - (brackets and) all

Sydney's tabloid Daily Telegraph ran a story on May 24 2007 concerning blind passengers who were "regularly refused" passage by taxi drivers. The headline of the story was "Taxi drivers refusing to carry blind passengers".

Among those refused were Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commissioner Graeme Innes. Mr Innes has been refused on average once a month, though in recent times twice a month.

The story also mentioned ...

He has been told on a number of occasions that it would be against a driver's religion to allow a dog in the cab.

No specific religion was named.

The story goes onto mention Mr Innes being supported in his complaints by Vision Australia, an advocacy and service group for the visually impaired. The DT claims that Vision Australia's policy and advocacy head Michael Simpson said ...

... that the problem was worse in the Sydney metropolitan area where there were more drivers unwilling to carry dogs based on Muslim objections.

This was not a direct quote from Mr Simpson. The direct quote is as follows ...

"It is fair to say that the (Islamic) religion has made the problem worse in the metropolitan areas than regional areas, where I've found taxi drivers are generally excellent"

So let me get this right. Did Mr Simpson actually mention a specific religion? Why mention something he said and then add something between brackets? Did Mr Simpson actually use brackets in his quotation? Surely the DT reporter could have found some direct reference to the religion involved.

Further, is Islam the only religion potentially known to have some reluctance to handling dogs? Is not the same reluctance found in the sacred religious codes of other faiths e.g. Hindus and Sikhs?

If indeed there are Muslim drivers refusing to take guide dogs for alleged religious reasons, surely these are matters that can be handled more effectively than tabloid newspapers effectively attributing blame to entire congregations.

To make matters worse, the DT then ran an editorial entitled "Faith dogged by shame's shadow". Here the DT made no bones about which faith it referred to ...

For Mr Innes is also blind and travels with his guide dog Jordie. But as often as once a month, Mr Innes is refused service by cab drivers on the basis that Jordie is unclean and some sort of affront to their faith.

Their faith? Islam - it goes without saying.

Now today, in all likelihood, there will be a response from moderate Muslims saying that taxi drivers guilty of that disgraceful offence against common decency and humanity should have known better, that they are wrong in their extremist interpretation of Islamic lore, and that they should apologise and mend their ways.

At least, it is to be hoped that such a response might be forthcoming. And if it does, it will be no more than we have a right to expect.

The great pity is that there is a need for such a response in the first place - a pity it is possible for such a shocking and degrading misapprehension to be held in the first place.

For the people who have refused to assist Mr Innes - who was only asking, after all, that they fulfil their professional obligation - have shamed themselves, and shamed their religion.

And if any suggestion is allowed to remain that such conduct is somehow acceptable under Islam, that shame will endure.

I wonder who wrote this editorial? Certainly the sentiments sound similar to those of comments left on the blog of the DT's Opinion Editor, Tim Blair.

So an entire editorial attacking a religious faith and its various congregations has been written on the basis of a word in brackets. Yep, that's why they call it a tabloid.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

Some Thoughts on Muslim Cultures & The Workplace

There’s no rest for the wicked. Even my obvious bronchitis didn’t stop ABC journos from phoning me in the early hours to talk about a rather innocuous course the folks at the Canberra-based Australian Homeland Security Research Centre were running about how employers can manage and avoid cultural conflict in the workplace.

"Employers want to be seen to be making reasonable adjustments for their Muslim employees," Mr Yusuf said. "It's a risk-management issue."

It is illegal for employers to discriminate against employees on the grounds of religion, or to fire them because of it, but many are confused about what constitutes discrimination, he said.

"I can help people try to define where that line is." ...

He will also explain that different brands of Islam may observe Ramadan on slightly different dates, and while some sects celebrate the birthday of the prophet Muhammad, others frown upon it. This can be confusing if Muslim workers asking for different days off for the same religious holidays. "People might ask, 'Is this employee really serious when he says this is a religious requirement or is it just cultural requirement?'"

Courses like this are nothing new. In Australia, the remedy of unfair dismissal is dying a sure death. However, in its place, Work Choices has unleashed a revamped unlawful termination remedy that makes discriminatory treatment unlawful on the basis of religion.

There are, of course, exceptions and exemptions. But employers still need to understand the terrain they are navigating. In the case of Muslim employees, that isn’t always easy.

In the United Kingdom, at least 75% of Muslims are of South Asian background. So running a course for employers on Muslim cultural sensitivity would be similar to a similar course on Sikh cultural sensitivity, given both speak a similar (if not identical) language and have similar cultures. And that granny from the Kumars @ No.42 looks and acts just like my mum (login required).

Australia has a much more diverse set of Muslim cultures. Australian Islam is an ethno-religious phenomenon. We have just about every sect and denomination of Muslim here, and we have Muslims from different ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups. Further, different cultures express religiosity in different ways. And not all Muslim women resemble my mum or Granny Kumar.

Believe it or not, in many Muslim cultures, it is extremely rare for a woman to cover her hair when she isn’t at the mosque or at a religious gathering. Further, not all Muslim cultures are averse to the consumption of alcohol. One ABC radio host yesterday told me about her friend who works for a Muslim radio station in Sydney who says her religion doesn’t allow her to be in the same room with a man alone. So what happens when she is in the studio? And would all Muslim women in the workplace insist on the same strictures?

What makes running such courses difficult is that so often Australian discourse about Muslims is governed by persons purporting to represent Islamic orthodoxy. What made the Herald series on Islam in Australia so valuable is that it had less to do with religion and more with people. Managers in the workplace need to know about theology, but what really interests them is what adjustments their employees of various kinds might want to negotiate at certain times.

There are religious groups running these courses. The problem is that they focus more on what theology has to say and less about how it is played out in practice. I once was part of a course run by an Islamic religious group run for public sector lawyers. It was a whole-day course, with a whole 2 hours devoted to what Islamic law has to say about certain things. My section, which focussed on cultural factors affecting Muslim family and criminal law clients, was left to the final hour of the day.

It might serve the funding and ideological purposes of certain organisations to promote the myth that all Muslims abide by their religion in a uniform manner. But this simply doesn’t solve the typical problems which employers and HR managers face with culturally Muslim employees.

Many Australian Muslims are incidental Muslims. That means their being Muslim arises from being Turkish or Albanian or Indonesian or of some other ethnic group. Culture and religion are tied up. Believe it or not, Cypriot Turkish Muslims have culturally more in common with Cypriot Greek Orthodox Christians than with Bangladeshi Muslims who in turn have more in common with Hindus from Calcutta than with Muslims from Morocco.

Differences in culture mean differences in emphasis. Some Muslim cultures emphasise gender segregation more than others. I was shocked to visit Indonesia and find men and women entering and exiting the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta from the same door. And my Indonesian hosts were shocked to see that I was shocked!

More on this later.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007