The way forward for Muslim women: Reflections on Australia's social inclusion agenda

Abstract

Among the most socially excluded communities in Australia today is the Muslim community, and within that community, Muslim women and Muslim youth are especially excluded. Whilst social exclusiveness of Muslim youth is a serious problem, this chapter will focus on Muslim women only. The essential argument is that if Australia is to succeed in socially including Australian Muslim women, discourses and institutions that depict Islam and Muslims as the 'enemy within', 'culturally incompatible', that 'elements of Islam have an agenda hostile not only to Australia's values but also to the basic tenets of Western civilisation', and that Muslim women are oppressed and subjugated, need to change substantially. Successful social inclusion of Australian Muslims, including Muslim women, requires a paradigm shift in the way we think, write and speak about Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular. The chapter will examine the way Muslim women have been and continue to be portrayed in Western discourses (media and otherwise), and contrast that to their status from a legal Islamic perspective, using Islam's primary sources of legislation as evidence, together with recent empirical findings about the way Muslim women define themselves. The analysis of this data will be used to argue for a more constructive social inclusion approach.