The text of the post is below:
”As we wander around Chatswood, Hala and Hanifeh talk of the abuse they have suffered”
Haha - ya gotta love it! My God, traumatised for life ‘cos someone called you a bitch! He didnt even say ‘Muslim bitch!’ Asked ‘What are you doing here?’ The horror, the horror! You don’t know whether to laugh or be very very angry, do you?
‘ Hanifeh tells me of crossing the road and having a taxidriver stop and scream out “bitch”. Of waiting at her child’s school absentmindedly gazing at a poster on the wall only to be jolted by a parent demanding why she was there. “Do you mind?” the parent snapped. “What are you doing here?”’
I was pleased to see that most comments were negative (including mine) and that readers clearly saw what a crock this is.
How do you measure racism? Alecia Simmonds dons a hijab and goes to Chatswood.
People were always going to stare. I’m a freckled redhead wrapped in the folds of a cloak and hijab, hobbling awkwardly through Chatswood mall. My two Islamic female companions assure me I look very natural.
‘Natural’ to be wrapped from head to toe on male orders? ‘Natural’ to wear this freak garb in a country where the beach is king? Whatever ya reckon. Yes, people are always going to stare because any person in his/her right mind knows damn well how alien hijabs etc are to a free country. If they dont like it, perhaps they should go to a country where the people welcome women who resemble walking garbage bags.
I am spending the day as their humble apprentice, observing the lines and contours of the city which they map every day from beneath the veil.
The expedition begins one Saturday a few weeks ago in a small home in the western suburbs. I’m met by Hala, a boisterous, stridently independent 16-year-old with a penchant for football, and Hanifeh Trad, a writer and mother of nine who is married to wellknown Muslim communtiy spokesman, Keysar Trad.
Isn’t this the wife who proposed to another woman on her husbands behalf? Way to go.
Our mission is to venture into a socially conservative area of Sydney dressed in cloaks and hijabs. Deep within the heart of whiteness, we will record the reactions to our presence.
For Hala and Hanifeh, wearing the hijab is an everyday expression of faith. For me, it’s a cross-cultural experiment. The fact that Hala and Hanifeh are excited about the mission makes it impossible to refuse.
We meet to decide where to go. I suggest Bankstown, an idea dismissed by Hanifeh. “It’s too easy,” she says. “There are too many Muslims there for us to be an issue.”
Liverpool, similarly, is “like Lebanon”. “We need to go where all the skips are,” Hala announces. Hanifeh agrees. “Perhaps we should go around where you live – Surry Hills, Bondi, Newtown … or Broadway.”
If we go to the inner-city, Hala recommends we be brazen and fearless.
“Go to the shops and ask for things, don’t be afraid to ask for directions or the time. Just make sure when you’re asking you look tough. You’ve got to treat racists like dogs, because they know when you’re scared. Don’t look scared.”
Have you ever read such tripe? You really have to wonder what the hell goes on in the heads of people like this fool.
As I listen, my leftie liberal heartland crumbles before me. What, to me, is the warm bosom of the Newtown soviet is to them a white ghetto. It’s a place where something as benign as asking for directions can unleash a torrent of abuse. I didn’t want to go to Newtown because of my fear of bumping into friends, so we agree to buy tickets to Chatswood.
We spend the day talking of love and football. Hala confesses her attraction to AFL players and Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. She declares that one day she will be either a philosophy professor or a journalist.
She could easily be a journalist, it doesnt require much native intelligence. Her attitudes are spot-on - lie when you dont like the truth, make something out of nothing, make false accusations, slant whatever you write to match your own bias — we have another Pilger in the making –
As we wander around Chatswood, Hala and Hanifeh talk of the abuse they have stuffered. Hanifeh tells me of crossing the road and having a taxidriver stop and scream out “bitch”. Of waiting at her child’s school absentmindedly gazing at a poster on the wall only to be jolted by a parent demanding why she was there. “Do you mind?” the parent snapped. “What are you doing here?” No one asks us to go home, but the people we speak with make it subtly clear that Chatswood is not our home. On entering shops, welcoming dances are awkwardly performed as people grin and leap to offer us assistance.
Amazing!! The inhabitants of this middle-class Sydney suburb are surprised to see three slaves - sorry, ‘women’ - in black shrouds. ‘Welcoming dances’ - the SMH should be strung up for publishing this rubbish.
These are pantomimes of politeness, as well-intentioned as they were exclusionary. A simple request for directions to a coffee shop has three women offering to take us to their favourite hot-chocolate bar, while a mere glance at some perfume has an eager shop assistant leading us on a guided tour of her shop’s best fragrances.
Politeness is racist and exclusionary huh? - too bad the women didnt say what they really thought and give the cow something to write about –
It reminds me of travelling abroad, where the more effusive people are in their displays of friendliness, the more foreign you feel in their world.
Hala leaves Chatswood disappointed.
Yeah, disappointed that she didnt have her veils ripped off, that she wasnt insulted by racist Skips — she’s a good match for Trad.
“You should have gone up to more people and asked them strange questions.” I explain the day was about documenting Muslim women’s experiences of discrimination. “No way,” she retorts. “You’ve got to ask people random things, shake them up a bit and then you can see if they say something racist.”
If you dont find ‘racism’ on the first attempt, try try again —
Her idea, that racism simmers beneath the surface, haunts me.
Australians have had to tolerate ME imports like Trad and his cow, they are lucky that ‘racism’ is not translated into more direct actions.
We didn’t experience any hostility but what if, next time, we took things to a different level? What if we went to a bank to ask for a loan? Or went for a job interview?
“There’s a difference,” as Hanifeh’s husband Keysar had said earlier, “between doing it for a day, knowing you’ll take it off, and doing it out of faith. “You try turning up to work in a veil an
see how differently people treat you.”
Alecia Simmonds
Have you experienced racism in Sydney? Tell us in the forums at radar.smh.com.au.
SAME BUT DIFFERENT
Muslims were regarded with increased suspicion after Osama bin Laden became a household name and public figures raced to demonise “men of Middle Eastern appearance”. Who could forget Federal Liberal MP Danna Vale saying Australia was in danger of aborting itself “almost out of existence” and becoming a Muslim nation?
Noureddine Bader, 26, wants to set the record straight. “We don’t want to make everybody Muslim,” he says.
“[Muslims] have common ground [with other Australians] but my religion is between me and God. It’s nothing to do with you.”
Bader, who works with young people at the Lebanese-Muslim Association, says he’s seen significant change in his community. “After September 11, things became worse with discrimination, but at the same time, it became better in a way. The Muslim community woke up a bit [to say], ‘That’s not us.’ ”
Others, such as Mustapha Kara-Ali, 29, criticise some of the older, first generation community leaders. “[Their] messages ripple down to the grassroots to reinforce the siege mentality. The leadership comes just as effectively from the second generation,” he says.
Sanna Trad, Keysar and Hanifeh’s daughter, wants to enter politics when she finishes her HSC. The 17-year-old quickly dismisses stereotypes of the Muslim woman — she is a “loudmouth” who knows “too much about sport”.
Unlike some politicians, Trad practises what she preaches. She visited Cronulla after last December’s riots. “I thought, ‘Don’t put yourself in any danger’ [but] on the Sunday [after the riot], Dad and I went along to carols in the park and everyone was really nice.
People from Cronulla and Bankstown should meet each other and hear what they have to say.” It’s a good time to start. Earlier this year, a study of Victorian schoolkids found more than half weren’t sure about the difference between Muslims and terrorists. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, meanwhile, notes that day-to-day harassment of Muslims has increased. Women wearing the hijab were more easily recognised and likely to be harassed.
Ali Abdulla, a youth worker, tells stories of young people who have trouble looking for work because of their name or the way they look. “They feel it is discrimination though they can’t really prove it,” he says.
Simon Levett
