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PETA STEPHENSON specialises in the study of cross-cultural relationships between Indigenous and non-white immigrant communities in Australia. She recently completed an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts, the University of Melbourne, where she is now an honorary fellow. Her first book, The Outsiders Within (UNSW Press, 2007), traced the hidden story of centuries of trade and intermarriage between Indigenous and South-East Asian communities across Australia. 2 ISLAM DREAMING Indigenous Muslims in Australia PETA STEPHENSON 3 A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Peta Stephenson 2010 First published 2010 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. Indigenous readers are advised that this book contains names, images and words of people who are now deceased. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Stephenson, Peta. 4 Title: Islam dreaming: Indigenous Muslims in Australia/ by Peta Stephenson. ISBN: 978-1-74224-018-3 Subjects: Muslims – Australia – History. Aboriginal Australians6. – Religion. Dewey Number: 305.69794 Digital conversion by Pindar NZ 5 CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The beginnings 2 Telling it like it was 3 Keeping it in the family 4 Marriage matters 5 Having faith 6 Speaking to the converted 7 Sisters are doing it for themselves 8 Malcolm X Down Under Conclusion Interviews Notes Bibliography 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without the generous contribution of the many Indigenous people who shared their personal and family histories with me. I feel privileged to have been taken into their confidence, and thank them for their warm hospitality, time and trust. I also give thanks to those interviewees who allowed me to reproduce photographs of themselves or their forebears. I owe a further debt of gratitude to the many other interviewees who shared their expertise and experience with me. Philip Morrissey generously read and commented on an earlier version of the manuscript. For their feedback on individual chapters I likewise extend heartfelt thanks to Athol Chase, Philip Jones, Ian McIntosh, Balfour Ross, Anna Shnukal and Pamela Rajkowski OAM. I would also like to express my appreciation to Pamela for introducing me to many Afghan cameleer descendants, particularly Mona Wilson and Shirley Wilson. I give thanks to Simon Caldwell, Dilara Reznikas, Joan Staples and Ken O’Shea for providing access to interviews they had previously conducted. Thank you to Sandy Caldow, Aziz Cooper, Dexter Duncan, Soliman Gilany, Beylal Racheha, Kurander Seyit, Halima Binti Hassan Awal, Eugenia Flynn and Julie Nimmo for putting me in touch with other interviewees. I also thank Julie for allowing me to use the title ‘Islam Dreaming’. I thank Muhammad Kamal for answering my queries along the way. Thanks to Tuba Boz for the copy of her honours thesis and to Edmund Carter for his help with the maps and cover image. 7 The staff at UNSW Press deserve special acknowledgment. In particular I would like to thank Executive Publisher Phillipa McGuinness for her continuing support and Cathryn Game for her careful editing. Various sections of the book appeared in earlier versions in journals and edited collections. I thank the editors for the opportunity to have my work published and for their editorial advice. In particular, I give thanks to Peter Read (Aboriginal History), Tanja Dreher and Christina Ho (Beyond the Hijab Debates, Cambridge Scholars Publishing), Catriona Elder and Keith Moore (Journal of Australian Studies), Russell West-Pavlov (Who’s Australia? Whose Australia?, WVT) and Carole Ferrier (Politics and Culture). The research for this book was undertaken as part of an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship. I thank the ARC for the grant and those, particularly Abdullah Saeed, at the Asia Institute, the University of Melbourne, for their support during the period of the fellowship and subsequently. This publication was also supported by grants from the Asia Institute and the Research and Research Training Committee, Faculty of Arts, the University of Melbourne. Finally, I give loving thanks to my partner Paul Carter for reading and commenting on the manuscript from beginning to end, and for sharing my long journey of discovery with patience, grace and good humour. 8 INTRODUCTION Islam Dreaming is a book about stories. It explores what Indigenous men and women from around Australia have to tell us about their varied encounters with Islam. Some of these stories come to us from Christian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who married Muslim men. Others are related by the ‘mixed-race’ children of these intermarriages. Still other stories are narrated by Indigenous Australians who have no Muslim forebears at all but who, for a variety of reasons, have been drawn to the Islamic faith. They are stories about travelling between cultures, between countries and families, and in learning about them I have become a traveller myself. Collecting stories of Indigenous–Islamic contact has taken me on a five-year journey all over the country, from the bottom to the Top End of Australia, from east to west and back again, and from Perth to Thursday Island, from Broome to Brisbane, and Adelaide to Alice Springs. I’ve visited every mainland capital city (more than once) and countless regional towns in between. I’ve had the privilege to hear and record the stories of old people, young people, students, professionals, the unemployed, a multimillionaire, some who don’t want to be named and one whose name is known locally and internationally. I’ve met men and women who have high hopes for their communities, and some who feel they have no 9 community at all. I have had the opportunity to interview husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, and brothers and sisters. I have entered a network of memories, experiences and aspirations that go back to a time before colonisation and look forward to a time of genuine decolonisation. The almost fifty Indigenous men and women I interviewed exhibited great generosity in telling me their stories. They took time out of their day to recount personal and family anecdotes when perhaps the only previous contact we’d had was a telephone call or an email. Some respondents contacted me after hearing about my research through friends or family. Most did not know me at all. Nevertheless they made the decision to open their homes and their hearts, and for that I am tremendously grateful. They have also been immensely courageous and extremely trusting. Given the suspicion with which Indigenous and particularly Muslim people in Australia are often viewed, those I met took a risk in entrusting their experiences to me and in allowing me to communicate them publicly to the general reader. Nearly thirty of the interviewees had Afghan or Malay heritage. The descendants of the so-called Afghan cameleers regularly organise and attend large-scale reunions, and I was fortunate to reconnect with former interviewees and meet new respondents at some of these events. The most recent Afghan Cameleers and Pioneers Cultural Festival, held in South Australia’s Port Pirie in 2009 (and coinciding with the touring exhibition Australia’s Muslim Cameleers: Pioneers of the Inland 1860s–1930s), included camel rides, Afghani music and food, a photo exhibition and documentary films of the early cameleers as well as storytelling sessions with their Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal descendants. Dressed in 10