Abstract
This qualitative study investigates the ways in which Muslim minority youth experience Islamophobia in south-west Sydney primary schools. Islamophobia has occupied the Australian discursive context since the September 11 attacks and the ensuing War on Terror in 2001, and was amplified in the recent decade following the rise of Daesh and events of home-grown terrorism. In schools, minority Muslim students in Australia have been considered a problem for some time. Since the early phases of migration in the 1970s, Muslims have been constructed as a pedagogical challenge. More recently, this has adopted political overtones, and concerns regarding educational attainment have moved towards issues of national security and socio-political integration. To understand the ways in which the wider discursive context filters to schools, the study is underpinned by critical theory, combined with a critical ethnographic case study methodology. Drawing on the voices of Muslim students aged 10–12 across three schools, the critical discourse analysis found that Islamophobia was experienced by Muslim students in primary schools drawing on visible and physical cultural markers of being Muslim including the Arabic language, the hijab and Islamic practices. This paper contends that Islamophobia should be formally recognised as a form of cultural racism in schools.
Introduction: Mapping the global and local Islamophobic context
Since the late 1970s, the West 1 has become increasingly concerned with the Middle East, Islam, and Muslims. Following events such as the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Gulf War of 1990, the September 11 attacks and the ensuing War on Terror (WOT), Islamophobic discourse began to dominate the media apparatus across the US and its allied states. In recent decades, this discourse was amplified with the influx of refugees and asylum seekers from the Middle East, and the rise of “homegrown” terrorism and “lone-wolf” attacks by terrorist groups such as Daesh on “Western soil.” The discourses regarding Islam and Muslims have been cemented across the West as inextricably bound with issues related to religious extremism, radicalization, and terrorism (Semati, 2010).
Following trends in other Western societies, political and media discourses in Australia began to associate terrorism with Islamic communities and Muslims in Australia (Aly, 2007; Dunn, 2004; Gale, 2006; Noble, 2005; Poynting and Mason, 2006; Sivanandan, 2006). Several events involving Muslims as victims and perpetrators, such as the Lindt Café siege in Sydney in 2015, the Bourke Street attack in Melbourne in 2018 and the murder of Curtis Cheng in Sydney, have contributed to Muslims’ association with terrorism. The demonisation has been exacerbated in the Australian context with the recent resurgence of right-wing political parties and organisations, such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, the Australian Liberty Alliance, Reclaim Australia, and the United Patriots Front. These groups have anti-immigration and Islamophobic agendas that further conflate Islam with terrorism (Briskman and Latham, 2017, pp. 17–20). Consequently, Muslims have become a focal point for media and political discourses regarding cultural incompatibility, in which their “allegiance to the state” has been questioned, and Muslim communities have become central to local discourses of security, radicalisation, and suspected terrorism.
In the context of these discourses, anti-Muslim sentiment is increasing. The Scanlon Foundation’s Social Cohesion Survey (Markus, 2017, p. 3), which has been polling Australians on attitudes towards Islam since 2007, indicated that Australians display a “relatively high negative attitude towards Muslims.” A decade-long survey conducted by Western Sydney University researchers found that almost half the population held anti-Muslim sentiments (Dunn et al., 2007). Similarly, Essential Research’s 2016 survey reported that almost half of all Australians want to ban Muslim immigration, indicating a level of hostility that Essential Research related in part to fears of terrorism. Beyond hate crimes and negative attitudes, Islamophobia is embedded in institutional structures and manifests itself in government policies, institutional discrimination, and political and media discourses.
Central to the discursively mediated anxieties about Muslims and terrorism has been the schooling of Muslim students, which has been intensely debated in English-speaking countries. In Australia, education has become central to discourses of radicalisation and extremism, particularly regarding the education of Muslim students in public and private schools. Media and political discourses have highlighted how schools are targeted by extremists as “breeding grounds for junior jihadis” (Little, 2017). In Sydney in 2017, newspaper reports indicated that 19 public schools were identified as being “at risk from radicalized recruiters seeking to exploit vulnerable students” (Reid, 2017). This resulted in the implementation of several initiatives and programs in schools in the name of “national security,” aiming to make Australia safer by countering violent extremism (CVE) and deradicalizing children as young as 6 year old (Nadim, 2016).
At the school level, during the early phases of Muslim and Arab immigration to Australia, the education of Arabic youth—particularly Lebanese youth—was constructed as a pedagogical challenge (Mansouri and Wood, 2008); however, this perspective has subsequently shifted. Now, the schooling of Muslim youth is considered a highly complex issue with political and sociological overtones, moving beyond concerns regarding educational achievement to issues of national security and hostile identity formation (Mac an Ghaill and Haywood, 2017). Muslims, especially Muslim youth, are being constructed by the media and political discourses as a major socio-political problem for the state that threatens social cohesion and state security, causing fears regarding radicalisation. Following September 11, an entire generation of Australian Muslim youth is growing up in the context of the global circulation of fears and moral panic about the Muslim “other.” These youth were born into a “clash of civilisations” (Huntington, 1996) between Islam and the West, and in this turbulent context, schools are faced with the challenge of managing this complex phenomenon.
In light of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim discrimination, there has been a recent increase in research investigating the experiences of discrimination faced by young Muslims in educational settings. However, most studies have focused on older Muslim youth (Housee, 2012; Shain, 2011; Youdell, 2012). Contrastingly, a limited number of studies have engaged with the experiences of younger Muslim children (Basit, 2009; Hawkins, 2014; Welply, 2018). In addition to focusing on secondary school students, the existing literature on Muslim students’ education exclusively addresses their shifting identities; for example, from ethnicity to religion (Mac an Ghaill and Haywood, 2017). Further, the studies that examine discrimination against Muslim students within wider discourses generally focus either on the schooling of boys (Cantali, 2013; Mac an Ghaill and Haywood, 2017; Shain, 2011, 2017) or the schooling of girls (Jiwani and Rail, 2010; Mouhanna, 2014; Saeed, 2013, 2016). Regarding boys, the literature concentrates on masculinity, marginalisation (Mac an Ghaill and Haywood, 2014); 2017; Roose, 2016), and boys’ positionality as a major social problem for the state (McGhee, 2012). Regarding girls, a growing body of research has examined the challenges experienced by Muslim girls in society, whether in relation to processes of identity formation (Dwyer, 2000; Khan, 2002), challenges of education, employment (Ahmad, 2009; Asmar, et al., 2004; Haw et al., 1998; Mouhanna, 2014; Saeed, 2013, 2016) or social exclusion, or the racial and religious discrimination experienced in various societies (Imtoual, 2010; Yasmeen, 2008). In addition to racialization, an emergent body of work has examined the schooling of Muslim students and securitization (Miah, 2017; Shah, 2017; Shain, 2017; Saeed, 2016). These studies consider the wider socio-political context that situates Muslim males and females as either potential jihadists or victims of Islamophobia within educational institutions and broader society.
To advance the study of Muslim youth experiences of Islamophobia, this article is significant for two reasons. First, the examination of Islamophobia and experiences of Muslim students is situated in Australia, with a scarcity of research that focuses on this minority in this context. Second, it explores the early years of schooling, rather than secondary school years when issues are harder to address during the period of adolescence. As such, this article examines the relationship between the wider Islamophobic discourses and the schooling of Muslims students in primary schools in the Australian context.
Theorising Islamophobia: A form of cultural racism
Scholars have suggested that it has become customary to begin any writing on Islamophobia with a discussion of the controversy and inadequacy associated with the term (Jackson, 2018, p. 2; Sayyid and Vakil, 2017). This is not surprising given the scholarly literature that has examined Islamophobia spreads across the fields of sociology, religion, Middle Eastern studies, media and cultural studies, politics, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, English, history, and women’s studies, among others. Over the last several decades, a large body of scholarly work that debates both the term and concept of Islamophobia has emerged, with some dismissing the term (Halliday, 1999; Malik, 2005), others stating methodological and theoretical concerns over the term (Savelkoul et al., 2012), and sympathetic critiques (Allen, 2005; Dunn et al., 2007; Meer and Modood, 2010; Modood, 2005). In March 2019, the UK Labour Party, having consulted more than 750 British Muslim organisations, 80 academics, and 50 Members of Parliament, produced the following definition: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness” (Perraudin, 2019). The recognition of the term as aligning with racism by the UK Labour Party demonstrates its relevance as a contemporary phenomenon.
In relation to theories of race, Islamophobia can be understood a form of cultural racism based on the premise that race is understood as a social construct rather than a biological reality. This is aligned with theories of “new” racism (Hall, 1992). One aspect that is emphasized in understandings of cultural racism is that cultural markers constitute markers of difference, and this difference is dynamic and contextual. In this sense, Balibar (1991) argues that the “new” racism is “racism without races.” This “neo-racist” view incorporates the failure of biological racism, which views “the other” as inferior according to biological differences of race. Thus, according to neo-racist logic, the other/self-dichotomy is not only understood through an inferior/superior framework, but added to this is a belief of cultural “difference.” Contrasting with Eurocentric conceptions of racism, which have been underpinned by biological constructs as the basis of racism, cultural racism: Is the insurmountable ability of cultural differences, a racism which, at first sight, does not postulate the superiority of certain groups or peoples in relation to others but ‘only’ the harmfulness of abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of life-styles and traditions (Balibar, 1991, p. 21).
An understanding of Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism is based on the premise that race is essentially a social construct rather than a biological fact or reality (Considine, 2017). Muslims do not suffer traditional forms of racism associated with “phenotypical” difference or skin colour and there is a consensus in the literature about this (Considine, 2017; Garner and Selod, 2015); however, there is little consensus on what “cultural” forms of racism constitute. According to Allen (2005, p. 51), “new” racisms are understood to denote the displacement of traditional phenotypical markers of “racial” difference with those of culture. Some scholars have suggested that traditional elements of racism can also be seen in contemporary Islamophobia (Alexander, as cited in Tyrer, 2003, pp. 64–65). However, Modood and Meer (Modood and Meer, 2008) (2008, p. 42) contend that cultural racism is not a repetition of biological inherentism. Instead, Islamophobia can be understood as an interactive form of racism, drawing on cultural markers of Muslimness as explained above (Modood, 2005, p. 15), where Muslims are the centre of “racialised discourse” (Tyrer, 2003, p. 78) that defines the meaning of the cultural markers of Muslimness. Therefore, Islamophobia constitutes a form of cultural racism, with the term “cultural” understood as dynamic, where discourse defines the cultural markers of Muslimness—such as physical characteristics and cultural practices—and what they are constructed to mean.
Islamophobic discourse has had Muslims constructed through “taken for granted frames” and depicted as monolithic, sexist, backward, prone to terrorism, and engaged in oppression (Kumar, 2010; Kundnani, 2016). Since then, Islam has been seen as antidemocratic (Zine, 2008); Muslims were framed as violent (Karim, 2006; Manning, 2003; Rane and Ewart, 2012); the Arabic language seen as the language of terrorism (Considine, 2017; Hodges, 2019); Muslim women depicted as either hidden radicals or oppressed victims (Haque, 2010; Mishra, 2007; Mouhanna, 2014; Saeed, 2016), Muslim men seen as aggressive and misogynistic (Mac an Ghaill and Haywood, 2014), 2017); and Islam/Muslims associated with terrorism (Manning, 2003; Sultan, 2016; Yusof et al., 2013). In relation to theories of Whiteness (Hage, 2002), these frames position Muslims as the “other,” occupying a subordinate positionality within the societies in which they live.
Methodology
This study is underpinned by critical theory and co-constitutive theory of critical discourse analysis, combined with a critical ethnographic case study methodology. Crotty (1998) argued that the goals of critical inquiry are just society, freedom, and equity, which suggest that critical inquiry can lead to a more just society than exists presently. CDA is a theory and a method, and has been employed in both capacities in this study. CT situates unequal power at the centre of the study to guide the investigation. This qualitative study was conducted across three schools in South Western Sydney, one independent Islamic school, Qalam College, and two government schools, Wallcove PS and Carelton PS. South Western Sydney’s suburbs have the largest proportion of students from an Arabic language background, with Arabic being the second most common LBOTE at 13.7% across the state (Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, 2016, pp. 2–4). Individuals of Muslims background also constitute 20.8% of the community in this municipality (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016). Across all three schools, sampling was selective (Gray, 2014). Student participants were year 5 and 6, aged between 10 and 12 years of age, were either female and male students and were of Islamic faith. Most of the students were born in Australia and some had parents who had also attended Australian schools.
Semi-structured focus groups were conducted with the students. A total of five focus groups were conducted across the three schools. Each focus groups consisted of 4–6 students, reflecting the practicalities of recruitment and the number of consent forms returned. The focus groups were segregated by gender at Wallcove PS and Qalam College. At Carelton PS, the focus group included both girls and boys. This method was chosen in line with similar gender segregation methods for focus groups have been employed in studies for children within this age group (Morgan et al., 2002, p. 8). The focus groups were conducted in the school library rather than a classroom across all schools, to address any power imbalance that was inherent in the adult–child or researcher–student relationship. The seating arrangements were also considered to help promote an atmosphere of equity during the discussion whereby the researcher sat alongside the participants, rather than at the head of the desk.
These dynamics were considered in line with adopting a critical ethnographic approach in this research. Critical ethnography aligns with CT because it does not merely provide “thick descriptions” of what occurs in a field of study; more importantly, it addresses the power relations that define and shape interactions among the participants (Lanuza, 2013, p. 66). Critical ethnography considers the power dynamics embedded in these interactions. Due to the researcher being of visible similarity in terms of the ethnoreligious background of the student participants, in relation to the power dynamics that had existed in the adult-child relationship, an ongoing reflexivity (Gray, 2014) during the research processes.
The process of reflexivity enabled the researcher to ensure impartiality and clarity regarding the views and positions expressed by the participants and her own views about the issues explored and the perceptions held upon entering the study. The benefit of holding an insider positionality while adopting a reflexive disposition was that the interviewees felt a greater freedom to talk about their religion without fear of reprisal, and felt that the researcher could understand their experiences.
A case study method was employed in alignment with a critical ethnographic approach. It allowed an in-depth examination of the schooling experiences of Muslim students that operated throughout the study on multiple structural and personal levels. As the study was conducted across three schools and two different educational settings; as such, it included collective cases (Yin, 2003). Case studies also “amplify the unique voices of those whose experience of, and perspective on the world are unknown, neglected, or suppressed” (Gomm et al., 2000, p. 5). In this regard, the approach further aligned with CT because it provided the capacity to capture the voices of participants who might otherwise be unheard due to their subordinate positionality in society caused by their age and culture.
The qualitative data from the interviews and focus groups were analysed using critical discourses analysis (CDA), which has been described as a type of analysis that explains the ways in which people are unequally socially positioned and the ways discourse constitutes objects and is constituted by them in society (Fairclough, 2013). CDA (Fairclough, 1995, 2013) extends critical theory by connecting it to an understanding of the ways people are unequally positioned through an analysis of discourse, how people socially construct the meanings of objects and subjects, and the factors behind these constructions in the production and consumption of language in spoken and written form. The schooling experiences of students at the individual level are undeniably influenced by wider discourses that operate at the structural and institutional levels of society. These discourses operate through ideological state apparatus including education. Employing CDA allowed these micro-level experiences to be read in relation to the wider macro context and consider broader power dynamics to understand their discursive mediation at the micro levels. CDA provided this inquiry with a solid framework that drew connections between discourses and hierarchies of power, and the voices of the marginalised and minoritized groups, contributing to an understanding of the schooling experiences of Muslim students. The data were analysed using CDA by drawing connections between discourse at the structural level and micro language that was used by the participants to make sense of the discourses and the ways they shaped schooling experiences.
Findings and discussion
Islamophobic discourse was reinforced in schools and the discrimination experienced by students constituted a form of cultural racism. In relation to the wider discourses, it was evident from the student responses that they see themselves as a racialized group, and they understand that Islamophobic discourses are racist discourses. As a result of the material manifestations of Islamophobia in society through experiences of cultural racism, the Muslim students occupied a suspect positionality. Their experiences drew on a myriad of attributes, including cultural traits such as language, clothing, and religious practices. These cultural traits operate as categories of difference that are discursively mediated in wider discourses.
Several of the boys discussed how the primary marker of their Muslim identity is evident through their names and the long beards of their fathers, uncles, friends, and older family members. The boys discussed how the visibility of these traits associate them with danger and terrorism. The girls noted the hijab—referenced in the interviews as “the scarf” 2 —is considered a visible marker of being Muslim, which also inherently associates girls who wear it with terrorism. For both the boys and girls, they discussed how the Arabic language was associated with fear and terror.
The beard: “If we had a beard, they think we are with ISIS”
Muslim youth across the world have been portrayed as potential homegrown terrorists and criminal thugs in Islamophobic discourses. During the focus groups with the boys, it was clear that the boys had an awareness of these discursive constructs because they had experienced material consequences of discrimination. For example, Noah, a Lebanese background 6-year student from Wallcove PS stated during the focus group that: I sometimes see the news, there’s random people, they tell them they are Muslims and they are terrorists and that’s affecting our society and now they think we are terrorists and we are bad … because people, once they look at someone, they’ll be like don’t go near him because he might have a knife or something. Because they have probably seen the news and when they see a Muslim person in real life, they’ll be like oh don’t go near him.
Ammar, a 6-year student from Qalam College shared similar views in terms of his suspect status: We were in Kmart, and we bought stuff, there was this lady walking in front of us, she wasn’t Muslim and she was holding bags, she went past and the security guard didn’t even care, but when we went past, he said can I check your bags. And then he checked them and there was nothing in there … And there are other people, who are walking past, and they see you holding a bag, and they say what’s that in your bag, is there a bomb in there?
In these responses, the boys have established an association between being Muslim and danger, terrorism, and criminality by making references to carrying objects such as knives and bombs. When the students were asked about how people could identify that they were Muslim, Ahmed, a student from Wallcove PS noted, “they do long beards for the men and they wear scarves for the ladies.” Carelton PS student Walid also observed that people can tell he is Muslim from his name: “They can’t tell by my first name but they can tell from my last name.”
These responses reveal that the boys understand they occupy a suspect positionality due to embodying cultural makers of Muslimness. The primary markers of visibility that deem the boys dangerous were the beard as explained by Ahmed (Wallcove PS, Year 6) and their names (Walid, student, Carelton PS).
However, these cultural traits are not as prevalent as other forms of Muslim visibility for the young boys due to their age, as they do not yet have beards because they are primary school students and names are only revealed through verbal forms of communication; thus, not always visible. Mahdi, a 6-year student from Qalam College suggested it was more difficult for girls who wear the hijab because it is more obvious: “Yeah it’s a lot harder for girls, because we don’t wear scarves and no one can detect us, but girls, you can tell straight away.” In Mahdi’s comment, he used the term “detect,” which generally means to expose or reveal something that is hidden, in this case for the boys, their Muslimness is concealed due to their age. However, this was not the case for the girls who wear the hijab.
The hijab: “Her scarf is a garbage bag wrapped around her head”
The hijab operates as a cultural marker of Muslimness due to its visibility. The hijab was described by the students as an Islamic flag. According to this description, for Muslim women who wear the hijab, it is akin to carrying a flag signalling Muslim visibility.
Although Muslim women wearing the hijab were the main targets of discrimination, for young girls, the hijab was depicted as a threat. Sarah, a Lebanese background 5-year student from Qalam College noted that: My mum’s friend, she was in the car, and I think it was around Christmas, she was in the car and they stopped at a traffic light, and there were two cars next to each other. Her window was open and now there was this other guy that was sitting in the car, and then he started like swearing at her, and telling her that you are like a terrorist and that. She put up her window.
In this excerpt, because of the hijab, the student’s mother’s friend was the target of verbal harassment. Sarah specifically indicated that it was during Christmas, a Christian religious and/or cultural celebration. By drawing links between Christmas, the hijab and verbal harassment, it could be argued that Sarah sees this harassment as an uninviting gesture for her presence in Australia. In this instance, Sarah’s reference is being made to the “hidden radical” (Saeed, 2013) evident through the use of the term “terrorist.” Key elements in widely accepted definitions of the term “terrorist” include: (1) intentional violence, (2) that violence is used to spread fear in a wider audience, and (3) political motivation (Ender & Sandler, as cited in Phillips, 2007, p. 227). The “hidden radical” is the visible female Muslim who embodies these traits and “hides” them under her hijab, and seeks to damage the fabric of society due to her beliefs. In the same focus group at Qalam College, two students reveal the relationship between being seen as a threat and belonging: Iman: It feels like we are not welcomed, as if they do not want us here. It feels as though we are not welcomed and not allowed to be here, there’s something wrong with us, and as if they do not want us to be there. Sarah: They tell you to go back to your own country. This is our country. We were born here like they were born here.
For both Iman and Sarah who were born in Australia, this is their country. However, the references they are making about being born in Australia and being Australian are expressed as an assertion of a legal entitlement, but perhaps not as a statement of identity.
In relation to the hijab, the references made to the hijab not only position the women and girls as marginal in society because they do not meet the visible standards of common-sense understandings of being Australian, the hijab was also depicted as a degrading form of clothing. For example, Abir, a 5-year student from Qalam College commented that: One of my aunties, she was in the train, and then like a woman dropped juice on the floor, and then she just told all the people, just get the blanket that is on her head and take it off … so like they just judge you.
The girls commented that the hijab represented modesty, identity, and religious piety and respect for their faith, which concurs with research that many Muslim women assert that the hijab may be a symbol of “morality” and “cultural Authenticity” (Stowasser, 1994, p. 131). Despite being meaningful to the girls, the train passenger exposed her contempt for these qualities by positioning the hijab as a form of degrading clothing akin to an unhygienic mop with which Muslim girls cover their hair. Suggesting that Muslims were unhygienic reflects how the train passenger attempted to dominate or dehumanize Muslims as members of out-groups, implying the subordinate positionality of Muslims.
As stated above, Hana, a 6-year student from Carelton PS also shared a similar narrative through which the hijab was compared to a garbage bag, but in this instance, it was by a peer at school. Hana suggested the scarf was compared to a “garbage bag wrapped around her head.” In both experiences, the hijab operates as a marker of Muslimness that reflects a form of degradation, in addition to cultural threat believed to be a physical manifestation of a primitive religion that disturbs the liberal fabric of Australian society. It brings relations of domination and subordination between the non-Muslim and visible Muslim, which lurk beneath the surface, to the fore.
Language: “They start to say Allahu Akbar and start bombing up stuff”
The Arabic language was also a dimension discussed with the students to work towards an understanding of how students perceive their heritage language, given that it has been inextricably tied to terrorism (Hodges, 2019). In relation to discursive controversy in the news about an ad in Australian shopping centre that had Arabic text, Sarah, a 6-year student from Qalam College noted: That’s where the racism comes from. They don’t like us Muslims. They wouldn’t mind if it had Chinese writing … they don’t say anything if it’s Chinese … because that’s how they write in our Holy Quran.
Mariam, a student from the same focus group, further stated: There are some people that do some Arabic writing because they are Arabic but they are Christian. But they are not Muslim … if you speak Arabic they think you are Muslim straight away, so you say something in Arabic or you think something in Arabic and they judge.
Mahdi, a 6-year student from Qalam College, in response to the photo elicitation images of the Optus ad (see PEI 7) commented: Because it is in Arabic they might of thought that they wrote something bad, like it might say we are going to kill you. Some people they don’t normally hear Arabic. Like when we say Allahu Akbar, they might think we are saying something bad but all we are saying is God is Great. Out loud, they are going to think we are terrorists.
Although the phrase is part of every practising Muslim’s daily vernacular, and is uttered by the pious and the not-so-pious, it is evident that the students are aware of the discourses that conflate the Arabic language and the phrase with terrorism. Further, although Arabic is also the language of Arab Christians, its association with Islam and Muslims has given it violent connotations, and in this sense, it also contributes to the subordinate positionality of students.
During the discussion with the students about racist interactions at school, 6-year student Sahar, from Carelton PS mentioned that the phrase “Allahu Akbar,” literally meaning “God is the greatest,” was often said to Muslim students by other students to tease them: “They always say Allahu Akbar to tease us.” Hana, a student from Carelton PS built on this point by indicating that: In the video, people start twerking and they start to say Allahu Akbar and start bombing up stuff … he just plays it, so every time he walks past one of us he says Allahu akbar … or he says there is a bomb behind you.
These excerpts demonstrate how discursive constructs of the Arabic language as the language of terrorism is mobilised at the micro level and used to associated those who speak the language with violence. It is evident that the students and their peers at school were not oblivious to Islamophobic discourses.
In his explanation of Islamophobia, Modood (2005) notes that Islamophobia is a form of cultural racism in the sense that racialised experiences are not limited to skin tone or pigmentation, but also includes a myriad of attributes including cultural traits such as language, clothing, and religious practices. In the narrations of the students, it is evident that the Muslim students understand they are a racialised group due to the cultural and physical traits they embody. In the case of the girls, this is the hijab, and for the boys, this is a beard or their names and for both, the Arabic language.
Interestingly, several students from the public schools (Sahar, Hana, and Noah, all in Year 6) commented early in the discussion that they do not speak Arabic. However, although the boys were young and do not embody the physical or visible markers of being Muslim such as beards, it is their presence with an individual who embodies these traits, that they understand these are the markers of being Muslim that position them as suspect or dangerous. This was also the case when they were in the presence of females who wore the hijab. Sahar, a 6-year student from Carelton PS further noted that her peers knew she was Muslim because she “took days of school in Ramadan,” Eid and other Islamic celebrations. In this sense, the students see themselves as a racialised group because they have not been afforded the privileges of appearing as having Anglo-heritage; as such, they occupy a subordinate positionality due to the culturally racist discourses to which they have been subjected. This positionality has social impacts for the students, as they believe they will be subjected to unfair treatment because of their status in society.
During the interviews, the students were asked about their future aspirations, and across all three schools, many of the students indicated that they had future career plans and high aspirations. This concurs with wider research showing that Muslim students “aim high” (Abbas, 2011). The jobs they aspire to hold included being a doctor, lawyer, business woman, fashion designer, carpenter, policeman, plumber, and teacher. Across all three schools, many of the students believed they were able to pursue their career aspirations because they believed the multicultural society they live in gives everyone a fair go. This was the case especially for the boys, because as mentioned above by Mahdi, their suspect status was “harder to detect” (Mahdi, Year 6, student, Qalam College). However, while discussing future aspirations, Sahar suggested that due to the status of Muslims in society, their potential aspirations could be confined: Zainab: Do you see yourselves working in these jobs when you are older? Walid: Yes. Sahar: Yeh its multicultural so we can. Hana: I hope so. Sahar: It kind of depends to be honest. Hana: Yeh because people think we are terrorists. Sahar: I’m not sure to be honest but I feel like people are scared of us … because in today’s society, people only focus on the media, and the media only shows negative things and that is what people want to see and that is what people believe, that is what they think Muslims are like. … Hana: Yeh they show pictures of Muslims being terrorists. Walid: Yeh there this video on YouTube of a Muslim, he throws bombs in cars and the title was ‘Muslims…’
In this discussion between the students, Sahar and Hana are concerned that status will be an obstacle for them in gaining employment. Although Walid first commented that he believes he is able to reach his career aspirations, his thinking shifted as a result of the discussion with his peers. This is evident in the last comment above, when Walid demonstrated the ways in which discursive constructs of the threatening Muslim are mobilized, by providing YouTube as an example of a mediascape (Appadurai, 1990) that produces and mobilises imagery.
In brief, the students had experienced Islamophobic discourses and the material impacts of media and political discourses. This produced forms of cultural racism, which was brought to the fore in their social life and schooling. Cultural racism operated as a form of degradation, where they were constructed as threats to the social fabric of the state and inferior members of society.
Conclusion
The discussions with students demonstrate that they are aware of the material impacts of Islamophobia in the wider society, whereby gendered forms of Islamophobia were central to the students because they had noticed forms of discrimination as a result of gendered cultural markers of Muslimness, such as the hijab or the visibility of the beard. Due to these references made to cultural markers of Muslimness, the students understood that their positionality as being that of the “suspect other” in society, and this operated as a mediated discourse, evident in the use of terms such as “detected” for the boys (Mahdi, student, Qalam college). For the girls, it was the hidden radical (Saeed, 2016). They built on this point to explain that they have been or will be treated unfairly. The students indicated that they may not be able to gain employment in the future; yet, they are aware they have been incorporated into Islamophobic discourses and potentially subjected to institutionalised discrimination.
This paper has demonstrated that schools do not exist in isolation of their socio-political context and on this basis, discourses can permeate societal institutions to impact the lives of students. The responses of the students demonstrated that they faced structural inequity, but structural in the discursive sense. This has the potential to create inequitable experiences for Muslim students because of the connections between wider society and education as a social apparatus. The targeting of Muslim students could be considered racist and Muslim students a racialised group, were targeted due to cultural markers of being Muslim, including the Arabic language and their names as aligned with the concepts of cultural racism.
This paper recommends that in addition to the Access and Equity policy, Anti-Racism policy, and Multicultural Education Policy as instruments targeting equity for the Department of Education NSW (2018), departmental policies should also include Islamophobia explicitly in relation to equity policies, and it should be recognised as a form of racism. Tackling Islamophobia in schools through critical awareness workshops and professional development should be provided for teachers, and non-Muslim students should also be provided with space to learn more about Muslims and ask questions, as multiculturalism should also be formally recognised as a curriculum area important to all, not just students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Teachers should also be engaged in critical, informed, and transparent discussions about Islamophobia in schools and implications it has on students of Muslim backgrounds.
Footnotes
Author contributions
Dr Zainab Mourad was a chief investigator on the research project and carried out all the focus groups, carried out the analysis of the transcripts, and worked on framing, writing and revision of the article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethics approval
Approval was obtained for the governing university, Western Sydney University, as well as the NSW State Education Research Applications Process for the focus groups conducted in NSW Government schools. Authorities included in their permission the maintenance of anonymity of place and participants. Pseudonyms have been used and care taken to not reveal any material that may reveal the identity of places or people.
Consent to participate
All participants and their parents signed a consent form that involved interview recordings. The consent forms were approved by ethical bodies outlined above.
Consent for publication
The consent form included permission to publish.
