Nothing is unchangeable
By Kuranda Seyit

Yesterday’s elections in Turkey, signifies a new era in Turkish politics. The Islamist AKP party led by Tayyip Erdogan has been given a mandate to take Turkey into the 21st century with zeal.
However, how will Turkey’s Kemalist secularists take this slap in the face? Has democracy dealt a cruel blow to those who have used it in an attempt to diminish the influence of Islam in Turkey?

Religious resurgence is everywhere in Turkey, in the mosques, the madrasas and the universities. Nowhere else in the world will you see a tightly fought clash between secularism and Islam. Young Turks in their thousands are embracing the West and their values, whilst an equal number of Turks are resisting the temptation. Turkey has always maintained strong roots in Islam and their proud history of a 600 year caliphate and an Islamic state cannot be erased. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk modernised Turkey in the early 20th century but in doing so he embedded a republican system that was espoused by his followers as perfect and unchangeable.

However, life is impermanent and change is inevitable. The Kemalists are holding on to a memory and in their short-sightedness are unwilling to accept the demands of modernity. Even the USA has evolved its democracy, as has China which has changed its understanding of communism. This election must mark the change that is necessary to make the Turkish political system tenable in this century and competitive with that of the robust democracies of Europe. The very first change to take place must be the abolition of the National Security Council and the cessation of any military influence in government affairs.

The question of co-existence has dogged the Islamists for decades. Yet the Erdogan government has proven that Islam can co-exist with democracy, if not enhance it even further by eradicating corruption and nepotism. As we are currently witnessing a global phenomenon of an Islamic resurgence, the West and other nations must realise that it is better to work with it instead of against it.

Walk down the cobble stoned street of Istanbul’s chic suburb of Beyoglu, where cafes and boutiques abound and crowds throng to the call of the West and you will see the odd headscarf which is re-emerging as a fashion item. But further away, still on the European side, in the famous suburb of Fatih, where the tomb of great Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror lies, there are considerably more noticeable headscarves and men with beards. Take a short walk down past the mosque and over to Carsamba and one would be forgiven for thinking that they had stumbled into a back street of Cairo or Damascus. Here the dominant image is of Islamically clad Turks and with more regularity women dressed in the full black garb called the ‘Charshaf’. However, religion is not just about headscarves.

In Turkey the debate has been reduced to a piece of cloth. The outgoing president Mr Ahmet Necdet Sezer has said that the presidential candidacy of Mr Abdullah Gul was unacceptable because his wife wore a headscarf. We need to go beyond the headscarf and look to a new future for Turkey. A future with corrupt free politics, a program for economic development and social reform and as member of the European Union. This is a Turkey, which is both Islamic and democratic and espouses freedom of religion and human rights, a model for the rest of the Muslim world to follow.

This is all conceivable. The next few months will be interesting. If Abdullah Gul does succeed as president then the government will have power in both realms of politics and the ability to enact constitutional change. The litmus test will be if whether the military will intervene and set Turkey back 30 years once again.

Christmas means a lot to Muslims

By Kuranda Seyit

It’s Christmas Day, 1982. Emu Plains.

As usual on this special day, the temperature was nearing the high thirties. I was excited with anticipation as my father drove us home in our silver HQ Holden. In the boot lay an unassembled red racer. This was my first real bike.

I had never received a gift like this before. We grew up in the inner city and my parents were un-skilled migrants from Turkey. I was the third oldest of nine children and my father at best was struggling to put food on the table.

As practising Muslims we didn’t celebrate Christmas yet I grew up in a Christian society and openly participated in scripture at school and my parents sent me to Sunday school. I grew up with the same stories from the Bible as the ones in the Quran. There was very little to differentiate between the two faiths from my 10 year old eyes.

I was brought up to love Jesus but my father was very clear on his status as a prophet and not the son of God. But you could not be a Muslim if you did not love and respect Jesus Christ. He was born of a miraculous birth to Mary. The Quran lucidly describes his entry into this world. In his brief life he inspired thousands in the Holy lands to turn back to the righteous path to God. He lived austerely and in complete devotion to God. He personified peace and performed miracles including healing lepers and bringing the dead back to life- albeit through the power of God.

So on this warm Christmas Day in Emu Plains on the foot of the Blue Mountains I was anxious to show all my friends my Chrissie present. In all truth it was just a present but in my attempt to “fit in” I wanted my friends to think that we believed in Christmas and celebrated the tradition.

For some years throughout my adolescence I continued the façade that Christmas was as much a part of our tradition as it was my mate’s. As the only Muslim kid in a school of over a thousand students I desperately wanted to feel accepted. It took me a whole year to make friends and to establish my identity after moving to the suburbs from the city and I wasn’t willing to let it go after all my hard blood, sweat and tears.

My brothers and sisters grew up with racism. We were constantly in fights, name calling and being marginalised. I used to be called “gobbler” by my English teacher and “Ching” by some students and had to constantly put up with bullies who just didn’t like the colour of my skin or the shape of my eyes.

But I still loved it when Christmas came around. As I got older I was invited to my mate’s Christmas lunches. Now, that was a good treat although I never ate the Christmas ham I enjoyed the cake, the soft drinks and the steak. But it was the feeling of belonging that mattered to me.

More than two decades on and I have done a lot. I worked as a cop, a teacher, an actor and now a community activist. Motivated by the September 11 terrorist attacks I felt obliged to build the bridges between Muslims and Christians. I saw the need to break down the misconceptions about Islam. There were reports of Muslims being vilified and harassed. So in 2002 I took up a post with the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils as the Media Liaison Officer. It was no easy task. We were hearing at an almost monotonous rate the varied issues involving Muslims who allegedly were trying to turn Australia into an Islamic state. There were mad mullahs in Melbourne and gang rapists in Sydney, across the Gulf of Carpentaria were the Bali bombers crying out “Allahu Akbar” in court. Then of course there were a number of arrests of alleged terrorists so the threat of terrorism felt real in the minds of every Australian.

In this context every effort to build better community relations was hampered by negative media coverage but we persevered. In 2003 I founded the Forum on Australia’s Islamic Relations, a think tank and an advocacy organization which ran a number of successful projects including the now very popular Goodness and Kindness Project, where a Muslim, Jew and Christian visit schools. We did a lot of interfaith work and we put out information about Australian Muslims as well as appearing frequently in the mainstream media on various issues from the war in Iraq to the banning of the headscarf.

For all intents and purposes we were doing well. The arson attack on Kuraby Mosque was an all time low for Muslim community relations but amazingly the community has endured the problems with great determination and as was seen after the London bombings there was very little to report in terms of a backlash against Muslims.

Today, there are great initiatives being taken by various religious organizations, the Catholic arch diocese, Griffith University and the Islamic Council of Queensland. Last year the community hosted the first Multicultural Eid festival of Queensland which not only celebrated the end of Ramadan but also Queensland’s great history of pluralism and harmonious co-existence.

Our organization has always supported the celebration of the multitude of religious traditions in Australia. Christians celebrating Easter and Christmas, Jews celebrating Hanukah, Sukkot and Yom Kippur and Muslims who celebrate Eid ul Fitr at the end of Ramadan and Eid ul Adha at the end of the Hajj pilgrimage. Of course there are many more celebrations than just these few which makes Australia the great place that it is.

We were shocked when we heard that our organization was apparently calling for an end to the Christmas tradition and to change the name to “winterval”. As the thousands of readers who were insulted by this suggestion we too were offended. Unfortunately, the story had been manipulated to present a wrongful message that Muslims had an agenda. Well, this was preposterous and in no way based on fact.

Muslims make up about 1.5% of the population. They are one of a number of religious faiths practiced in Australia. There is no doubt that Christianity is the faith of the majority of Australians. There are some politically correct do-gooders who create the impression that Muslims are advocating for change. However, Muslims often are so grateful that they can practice their own traditions freely and unimpeded than they could in the homelands of their parents or grandparents. So why would they try to create division and tension when as a minority they are still establishing themselves in this land? Our children are growing up with the tradition of Santa Claus, Carols by Candlelight, Chrissie on the beach and of course the great Christmas barbie. Christmas is not an affront to Islam nor is it an issue. We draw a lot from the prophet Muhammad who congratulated his Jewish and Christian friends during their festivities, we know that for Australian Muslims it is incumbent on all of them to show respect and kindness to people of other faiths and to share in the spirit of Christmas.

I hope that during Ramadan Christians and others will join in with me to break bread and enjoy the fruits of multicultural living in days to come.

Kuranda Seyit is the Director and Founder of the Forum on Australia’s Islamic Relations, he is also editor of Australia Fair Newspaper and has been chosen amongst the Smart 100 by the Bulletin Magazine in 2003 and also awarded the Sunday Telegraph’s Pride of Australia medal for the peace category in 2005.

Muslims must be protected by the Act

As we are seeing more and more cases of international incidents involving Muslims, the backlash is real and hard on the ground. In the past six years, there has been a sharp increase in physical attacks against Muslim women wearing the scarf, Muslim schools and places of worship as well as direct cases of discrimination in the work place, at universities, hospitals and doctor's surgeries, shopping centres and in public spaces.

Although most cases of vilification against Muslims is based on their cultural and racial traits, I still believe that the Racial Discrimination Act must cover Islam as a specific cultural group which receives a lot of discrimination based on their religious obligations, duties and practices.
It is true that Muslims in Australia belong to more than 65 different ethnic groups. But the same can be said of Jewish people who have ethnic origins in Europe, Africa, Mid East and Asia. Yet they are referred to as a racial group because they act and see themselves as one. In this way of thinking I believe that Muslims are bound together by their uniform beliefs and practices which clearly identify them as a distinct homogenous group based on their religious identity. For Muslims, religion is actually a way of life and so their religious practices and their cultural traits defines them as Muslims.

When one becomes a Muslim or is born a Muslim that person will grow up with clearly identifiable cultural practices which is uniform across Islam. Therefore they will often be discriminated along these grounds regardless if they are a Turk, an Arab or an Indian. The second point of importance is that many people, through ignorance, treat Muslims as a racial group. Therefore the treatment and belief that they are a racial group and vilified as such is another reason that Muslims should be included in the Act.

Muslims have suffered for many years but today that suffering has been magnified 1000 times because of the downfall of Communism and portrayed as the world’s number one public enemy. Islam has been presented as backward and oppressive and many average citizens see Islam with suspicion and fear. Muslims are discriminated regularly on the basis of dress, customs and beliefs. Therefore it only makes sense that they be protected by the law, regardless of definitions or perceptions.

I would also like to clarify a couple of gross misconceptions about Islam. Firstly, Islam regardless of what hearsay evidence there is, has never in its 1400 year history ever converted a person at the point of a sword or by force. It is absolutely incongruous to suggest so. In Islam it is unequivocal and the Quran states that their is "no compulsion in religion": no compulsion to wear a headscarf, no compulsion to have a beard, no compulsion to marry another you do not love and no compulsion to take into your heart the love of God and to act piously and charitably. No one can force this upon another, not without resentment or negative repercussions, this would be counter-productive.

If any Muslim were to impose their beliefs and ideals on another person then he would be acting outside of the ethics of Islam and would in effect be committing a sin. This is something that is undesirable. All Muslims in the past and present have invited people to Islam, usually by their deeds and actions and by their example.

People often then cite the example of all the wars that were fought by early Muslims that resulted in the spread of Islam throughout Africa and Europe and also the Far East. Let me point out as a writer and researcher that the first wars after the Arab tribes had united were either defensive or pre-emptory and the victories were usually as a result of the weakness of the threatening power. For example the Byzantine, the Persian and Egyptian powers while openly against the new Muslim state were in decline themselves and when they lost the battle their whole empire collapsed and the Muslims automatically inherited the remnants of the empire.

The conquering armies of the Muslims were always magnanimous in victory and offered their captives freedom if they accepted Islam or taught them to read and write. The first comprehensive protocol for treating prisoners of war was made by the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) and is a precursor for the Geneva Convention which followed almost 14 centuries later. Muslims treated their prisoners with civility which astonished the enemies and many embraced Islam almost immediately.

Secondly, another misconception is that Muslims are trying to turn Australia into a Sharia state.
This is a ludicrous notion. Firstly, sharia law cannot work in a country less than 1.5% of the population are actually Muslim. Even if there was a mass conversion of Australians to Islam, it is highly unlikely that this would affect the political nature of this country. Even in countries where the majority are Muslims they still operate under secular law or governments: the best examples I can give are Indonesia and Turkey. Sharia law cannot be administered unless the whole society is Islamic and the leaders are Islamic and even then it has to be based on consensus.

Muslims in Australia not so extreme

OVER the past six years Australians have watched some of theworld's most terrifying events unfold, from our doorstep inJakarta and Bali, through the Middle East, in Madrid,Istanbul, London and now Glasgow.This global trend has forced many Western nations such asAustralia to rethink security strategies and laws. Connected to this, much mention was recently made of ayet-to-be-released report which suggests that up to 3000young Muslims in Australia are lying dormant, waiting to beradicalised.Do we really believe that 3000 people are in sleeper cellsawaiting the green light from Osama bin Laden?I have lived and worked with the Muslim community in Sydneyall my life and in more recent times I have met many Muslimsfrom Melbourne, Perth, Darwin, Canberra and other capitalcities.I have worked as a high school teacher in private schoolswhere there have been a majority of Muslims or at least as alarge percentage in other schools. I have run youth programs and worked at the AustralianFederation of Islamic Councils and I can safely say that Iknow and understand the Muslim communities of Australiabetter than the average person. And I have made documentaries about Muslims.My research leads me to believe that while there are Muslimswith extreme ideas in Australia, by and large they do notadvocate violence or any form of terrorism. People with violent tendencies and knowledge of bomb-makingtechnology, let alone the conviction to die for a cause, areextremely rare.This does not mean we should just relax and hope for thebest. We should still be vigilant and ensure that youngpeople are given as much support as possible in school.But we can definitely tone down the fear-mongering rhetoricwhich does little for the average Mohammed and Fatima whohave to live with the stares and the taunts on a dailybasis. The very grave issue of over-stating the facts,particularly if it can create a negative backlash againstMuslims, must be addressed. It is simply not acceptable to make unfounded statementsthat create fear or suspicion of the Muslim community.One very simple reason why Australia is an unlikely placefor homegrown terrorism to take root is that Australia hasone of the West's most integrated Muslim communities.Muslims in Australia cannot be compared to the Britishmodel. In some British cities, such as Birmingham andBradford, hundreds of thousands of Muslims live inmarginalised ghetto-like suburbs which provide deep coverfor dissent and rebellion.Here in Australia the comparatively small and localisedMuslim community lives in relative affluence and comfort.About 15 per cent of Australian Muslims possess a degree,which raises their incomes. In Australia, most Muslims whose parents migrated here inthe '70s have grown up in a society which has nurtured afairly easygoing nature and world view.In Australia we do have nutcases and radicals who preachthat we should protect ourselves and our children from theevil influences of a non-believing society. They are relatively harmless, albeit distasteful.More usually, the average Australian Muslim lives aninvisible life. On the fringe, however, those who hold strong views aboutgovernment policies and feel passionate about internationalaffairs tend to be more vocal and conspicuous. In terms of numbers they are significantly small and only atiny percentage within that tiny percentage have thepotential for extreme violent behaviour.More people are likely to die from road rage accidentsinvolving Middle Eastern drivers than from a home-grownMiddle Eastern terrorist.The argument that Muslims are more prone to radicalisationin Australia because it is a new country with no traditionalbase for Muslims to fall back on is exactly the reason whyMuslim terrorism instigated by Australian Muslims will nevereventuate here.In Australia, the fact that we do not have a long history ofIslamic traditions and that the Muslim community is made upfrom a wide spectrum of cultural and ideological viewpoints,makes Australia a place where difference can be toleratedand opposing groups co-exist in harmony.Australia does have one great tradition that transcends allreligious boundaries, and that is the freedom to believewhat you want and to live your life the way you want as longas you don't try to stuff it down others' throats.A great motto to live by, don't you think?

Merdeka

Its 50 years since Malaysia’s independence. Merdeka!
An achievement fought without bloodshed or civil strife. Yet 50 years on and is the Malaysian experiment with democracy a success?

Some believe that after 22 years of a Mahathir dominated government new Malaysia is hanging together like Chinese paper and fire crackers on new years eve, at anytime it could go up in flames as had happened during the race riots of 13 May1969. That is why the new Badawi led coalition has embarked on a new progressive program called Islam Hadhari.
In these very precarious times where Islamic radicalism and conservatism has cast a long shadow across the Muslim world and the West has remained at an arms length, many are asking how Islam can work in a global community which is dominated by democratic principles of freedom and liberalism.
Most look towards Turkey to pave the way for a successful model of an Islamic secular democracy but others in South East Asia are optimistic or maybe I should say hopeful to see Malaysia succeed with Islam and democracy hand in hand.
Yet as we travel through KL amidst the impressive skyline which includes the Petronas Towers, the tallest twin towers in the world, we meet with government officials who try to explain the benefits of Islam Hadhari.
“So what do you know about Islam Hadhari?”, I am asked.
It is very hard how to answer a question when speaking to Malaysians because it is very easy to offend if you don’t say what they want to hear. I take the middle path and say that Islam Hadhari is a very modern approach to bridging Islam with modernity.
In the words of Abdullah Badawi, “It’s a new approach adopted by the government as a complement to the agenda of developing a glorious and civilized Malaysian society.”
Malaysia has on the surface become one of South East Asia’s wealthiest states and traveling through the country you can see that Malaysia has a fluid relationship with its 9 million Chinese and another 1 million or so Indians. Economically, the Chinese have made their mark and the country is relatively harmonious.
Speak to any Malay in the streets of KL and they will tell you just how happy everyone is under Islam Hadhari. Malaysia’s official religion is Islam. Its legal system operates on two levels; Shariah court and a civil court. In general this seems to work. Those who are Malay are automatically assumed to be Muslim which is indicated on their identity cards. The shariah court deals with Muslims and the civil courts deal with the Buddhists, Christians, Sikhs and Hindus. It all works out nicely until someone like Lina Joy, a Malay, comes along and wants to become a Christian.
Miss Joy met a Christian with whom she desired to marry but to do so she would require to change her status as a Muslim. This was dealt with in the civil court and she was directed to obtain a certificate of apostasy from the shariah court. It became a high profile case which could have been resolved if Miss Joy had gone to the shariah court but she has till now refused to do so.
Having two parallel systems in a society where it is not always black and white is fraught with danger. Generally speaking in the past two years there have been 16 apostasy applications and only two refusals. Whilst Malaysia does not want to admit there are many people leaving Islam, it is playing down the Lina Joy case. I speak to a Malaysian shariah court judge who says, “Changing your religion is not a simple matter, although we can issue a certificate of apostasy, we have to try to help that person in every way possible and then only and if only the applicant is beyond reconciliation with their faith we can issue a certificate and remove Islam from their identity.”
We meet with a delegation from the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) who show us a power point presentation about their view of things. Their fears are apparent, they are afraid of Islam taking hold of affairs and of losing democracy and their rights in a society which favours Malays. The MCA is an influential partner in a shaky coalition which has for many years withstood the challenges of time. But it appears that the two need each other more than ever as the Islamic Party (PAS) is gaining ground after its shock loss of the state of Terenganu. While MCA does not fully appreciate the benefits of Islam Hadhari, it prefers that to the Islamic Sharia state law advocated by PAS.
After a week of meetings and luncheons I left the country with a sense that not everything was right in the state of Malaysia but yet there was this uncanny reciprocity between Chinese pragmatism and Malay single-mindedness that was the glue between the two parties that contributes to the success of this ongoing experiment.

Kuranda Seyit is a documentary writer/director and was a part of a recent delegation to Malaysia organized by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.