When I read about the abuse levelled at Ed Husic after he was sworn into Parliament holding a copy of the Qur'an, my heart dropped. I talked about it with my housemate Nader, who is from a Lebanese/Palestinian Muslim family. He told me that of all the things in Australia that made him feel uncomfortable about living here — the street harassment and racial violence that so many people are exposed to — it was this kind of thing that disturbed him the most: the normalised racist outrage against even the most conservative expressions of otherness.
These past few months have been a disturbing time for public discourse in Australia — for women, and non-white people. Is it obnoxious to suggest that it's too far gone, that it might be better to forge a new life elsewhere? It's hyperbole, of course, a cliché reminiscent of all the American liberals threatening to move to Canada if the Republicans win an election. But it's a sentiment that is growing in the absence of strong intellectual debate in the media, and amid the frightening sense that it's more democratic to utter hate speech than it is to take offence.
My sense of foreboding that winter is coming is grounded in history. I was a teenager when 9/11 stopped the world, I was subject to Howard's 'culture wars' throughout my schooling (which my school teachers rolled their eyes at and which I, like most children, was largely impervious to), my feet were still growing when we invaded Iraq. I feel shaped by the violence of that decade, and there's nothing that could convince me to go back there. Back then, 'terrorism' was the shorthand that justified a range of racial and religious discrimination.
My best friend's sister was abused and spat on by a group of grown men because she wore a headscarf on a Melbourne train. She was 14. Another friend had a thickshake thrown on him from a passing vehicle for 'looking like a Muslim'. The voices that came out of the cracks this week regarding Husic's swearing in are, indeed, 'harsh words from dark corners', as Husic himself responded. But they are also the voices which represent a certain form of Australian bigotry that we should be careful around. These words are never entirely empty gestures.
There was something troubling about the media coverage of the issue. There is a public interest in exposing the reality of racism, but to what extent did the media response legitimise the more salacious of the Facebook comments against Husic? Is there an ethics of representing hate speech?
In response, Husic pandered to domiant notions of Australian-ness. He's a successful politician, so he knows how it works. But it was uncomfortable to hear the 'son of an immigrant' say 'children of migrant parents always want to give back to Australia'. I'm sure Husic, like many public servants, feels a grave sense of service to his national community. But to think he feels a greater debt because his parents migrated here from Europe confirms the idea that people should feel uncritically lucky to live in Australia if they're not from a white, Anglophone family.
Husic's nominal religiosity was emphasised, and Labor MP Stephen Jones called Husic an immigration success story. I wonder what an immigration disaster story would look like. Would it look like the British-descendent bullies who spat on a young, headscarved girl in 2004?
And what if Husic were a devoutly religious man? Like all people, he is entitled to a religious life. A celebration of multiculturalism is not contingent on the ability or willingness of a new citizen to lose their religion and assimilate, nor is it dependent on members of a dominant cultural group being able to fully comprehend the cultural differences of the othered person. Celebrating assimilation is really just celebrating monoculture. Australians need to get over the idea that social inclusion is conditional.
The idea of a static 'immigrant' whose identity can be understood in terms of its 'otherness' is a troubling notion. You can say 'nominal Muslim' or 'Albanian-Australian', but you are only referring to superficial markers, not how they might be experienced.
Like love and bowel movements, the core of religion is a deeply private undertaking. But like love and bowel movements, freedom of religion, which is the same as freedom from religious compulsion, needs defending when it comes under attack. There is a public interest in defending people's right to their conscience and their identity.
Ellena Savage is a Eureka Street columnist, arts editor at The Lifted Brow and politics editor at SPOOK Magazine. She has written about literature, feminism, and political culture for publications including Overland, Australian Book Review, Right Now, Arena, and Farrago, which she co-edited in 2010. Her 2012 essay 'A Man Like Luai' won the Tharunka Non-fiction prize. She tweets as @RarrSavage
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