A Fraught Search for Common Political Ground: Muslim Communities & Alliance-Building in Post-9/11 Australia (Report‪)‬

In the years since 9/11, Muslim communities in Australia have formed a central element of public discourse on issues of security as well as migration and settlement. During the years of the conservative federal government led by Prime Minister John Howard, Muslim communities and Islam were regularly positioned as posing a multifaceted threat to the national interest (Spalek and Imtoual 2007; Manning 2006; Poynting and Noble 2003). Muslims were constructed as a security threat through their association with international terrorism; as a threat to domestic law and order through their association with various forms of crime, especially crimes of sexual violence; as a threat to the integrity of 'Western' values through their propagation of alien ways of thinking on issues such as gender equality and the relationship between church and state, and as a demographic threat due to their capacity to outbreed 'mainstream Australians' (as foreshadowed by National Party MP Dana Vale during public debate over abortion) (Peating 2006). In response to this political climate, Australian Muslims have received a heightened degree of attention not only from government, media, and policy-makers, but also from socially progressive individuals and movements who actively sought to resist and challenge the 'dog-whistle politics' (Wright 2000) that characterised the Howard years. Muslims have also developed a higher level of interaction with other 'out-groups', with sometimes mixed results. This paper seeks to tease out some of the fraught tensions generated by these transcultural encounters, with particular regard to gender issues. The paper draws upon the authors' observations of, and participation in, engagements between Australian Muslims and social and political activists across a range of issues, including the rights of 'mainly Muslim' asylum seekers who were subject to mandatory detention upon arrival in Australia, the detention in Guantanamo Bay of Australian Muslims David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, the 'war on terror' and associated security discourses and legislation, media representation, and racist discrimination and harassment. In discussing 'alliances', we are referring to informal affiliations among individuals and loosely-structured movements, although many of those concerned are also members of formal organisations. These alliances are generally shifting and transient, often bringing participants together for a single event/action, but they involve continuing intersections of individuals, organisations, and ideas.