[Z]

Quote

MEDIA, NEWS & EVENTS

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I'm not racist but...don't marry a Muslim
21 December 2004


Old forms of racism - the type that believes in superior races - are fading. But new forms of racism such as intolerance for certain cultural groups still have a strong hold, according to the Racism Project of the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University.

These are among the findings of a survey which is featured in a new University of New South Wales website that aims to inform grassroots organisations hoping to set up anti-racism initiatives in Australia. The findings are also published in the just released issue of The Australian Journal of Social Issues.

Dr Kevin Dunn, Senior Lecturer in Geography, is one of the authors of the extensive survey of racist attitudes. He says ethnic minorities are not just viewed as inferior. Rather, they are mainly perceived as a threat to notions of national unity.

"Old forms of racism are widely condemned but people still take exception to certain cultures," Dr Dunn says. "They might say 'I'm not racist but...' Invariably they are about to introduce a 'new racism' comment, which is less obvious."

Anti-Muslim sentiment is particularly strong. Women proved to be more tolerant across all 18 indicators of the survey - except when it came to marrying a Muslim. Nearly 56 percent of women expressed discomfort with a relative marrying a person of Muslim faith.

"Muslims are by far the most demonised group in Australian society at the moment," says Dr Dunn, who believes that much of that is to do with stereotypes about the role of women in Islam.

On the positive side, nearly 85 percent of the 5,056 people surveyed accept cultural diversity and 74 percent feel secure with ethnic differences. Yet nearly 45 percent believe that ethnic diversity weakens a nation. "We have too narrow an understanding of what constitutes a nation and most people still assume that differences are incompatible with community," says Dr Dunn.

He says the website is designed to inform non-government organisations, local government authorities and other interest groups who may want to investigate what racism is prevalent in their local area and explore anti-racism activities. The website and publications can found at:

http://www.fbe.unsw....research/racism

Co-researchers on the Racism Project include Associate Professor James Forrest (Geography, Macquarie University, Ph 02 9850 8406) and Rogelia Pe-Pua (Social Science, UNSW).

Contact: Dr Kevin Dunn, mob 0404 032 429; office: 9385 5737 : k.dunn@unsw.edu.au
Media contact: Mary O'Malley, (02) 9385 2873, 043 888 1124, m.omalley@unsw.edu.au

[Z]

I reckon the author could have chosen a more appropriate heading

[Travis]

Many people don't marry outside their culture/religion. Certainly Muslim women cannot at all marry non-Muslims.

I wanna marry someone from a really cool, exotic culture.

[La`Dee]

Travis, on Dec 21 2004, 11:03 PM, said:

Many people don't marry outside their culture/religion. Certainly Muslim women cannot at all marry non-Muslims.

Its forbidden indeed, but some choose to anyway

[Mowlana Vector]

FYI: Some relevant old posts ...

Home of Intolerance


(courtesy of the Australian, 3 July 2002)

New Faces, Old Frictions
By: George Megalogenis
The Australian ( 13 July 2002)

AUSTRALIA'S immigration wound reopened this week in response to three unrelated events: NSW Premier Bob Carr's call for a cut in migrant numbers to Sydney, the publication of a landmark opinion poll on racism and the traumatic conclusion of a gang rape trial involving young Lebanese-Australian men.

The racism survey by Macquarie University and the University of NSW contained the disturbing news – to sophisticated Sydneysiders, at least – that the city's west is more prejudiced than any area of Pauline Hanson's Queensland.

But neither this finding nor this coincidence of race-related episodes should be seen as proof of a significant or irreparable cultural divide. On the contrary, official data updated exclusively for The Weekend Australian shows why immigration is still working, even in Sydney.

Every surge in immigration has been shared between Sydney and Melbourne, either 50-50 or 60-40. The one exception is the Lebanese. Sydney has accepted – but not necessarily welcomed – 72.9 per cent of all Lebanese arrivals to Australia.The way the talkback radio alarmists see it, Sydney's Muslims risk becoming the only culture Australia could not absorb, after six decades of success with every other configuration of humanity.

Yet the concentration of Lebanese Australians can not explain why the racism survey shows Sydneysiders have a greater fear of Muslims than do Melburnians or even Brisbanites.

Sydney's race angst is out of proportion to the numbers involved. The Lebanese-born make up 1.3 per cent of the city's population and 3.4 per cent of its total immigrants. Their brethren in the bush account for 0.05 per cent of the rest of NSW.

All up, Sydney's Lebanese amount to a mere speck of 52,008 in a city of 3,997,302 – and many of them are Christian, not Muslim. They rank fifth behind Sydney's English-born (150,782); Chinese (82,029); New Zealanders (81,963); and Vietnamese (61,423). They pale beside the white Australians who are truly disconnected from the community, either through long-term unemployment or mental illness.

Sydney and immigration is a case of mind over matter, and the only genuine difference in outlook remaining between the harbour city and increasingly cocky Melbourne. The postmodern phase of the Sydney race debate began with publicity about the gang rapes, which occurred during the past two years. It reached its xenophobic apotheosis with the Tampa affair last August and with September 11.

The ethnic gang is the community-wide slur that attaches itself to the latest arrival. The Lebanese gangs replaced the Asian Triads of the 1980s, which usurped the Italian mafia of the '70s.

The other cliche is the ethnic enclave, the idea that immigrants stick together rather than adopt Australian values.Fortunately, there is proof from the real world to demolish the furphy that Muslims are radically different from the other new Australians before them.

The suburb that received the highest number of immigrants during the past 11 years – Fairfield in Sydney's west – did not have Lebanese in its top five entrants, Department of Immigration analysis supplied to The Weekend Australian shows.

For the anti-immigration lobby, Fairfield is shorthand for the no-hoper suburb, an area so poor that it traps the low-skilled immigrant into a cycle of exclusion. But even if you accept this dubious argument about Fairfield, the Lebanese are not part of it.

The Lebanese centre in Sydney's west is the neighbouring working-class suburb of Bankstown. Even there, the Lebanese-born are not an enclave. This is perhaps the most telling percentage of all: Bankstown's Lebanese intake increased from 5 per cent to 6.4 per cent of the suburb between the 1996 and 2001 censuses. The Vietnamese are moving in at a faster pace, from 4.1 per cent to 5.9 per cent,
according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

The Lebanese of Bankstown have yet to surpass the English and Irish, who made up 7.1 per cent of the suburb in 1971. They are nowhere near the original wogs, the 13.6 per cent of the population in\Marrickville, in Sydney's west, that was Greek-born in 1971. Clearly, Sydney is not being inundated by Lebanese. "We don't get what they have in America," Macquarie University geographer James Forrest says.

"The very large number of people coming from different areas means that even in the most-migrant areas, no one group dominates. This doesn't happen anywhere else." It is the mix that makes multiculturalism work, says Forrest, who headed the academic team that has been measuring racism. The survey published this week looked at attitudes in NSW and Queensland.

The results can be read two ways. For Muslims, they highlight their present alienation. For Asians, they are proof of their rapid integration. But therein lies a source of optimism for Muslim Australians. It was less than a generation ago that Asia was viewed as one culture too far for our immigration program. As John Howard has
admitted since, history had proved those fears, which he once shared, to be wrong.
Forrest's unit found that 52.8 per cent of those questioned would be concerned if a close relative married a Muslim. This is the rawest indicator of prejudice, the Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? test.

The survey indicates Asians are more popular than Aborigines: 71.8 per cent were not concerned about the former, compared with 70.5 per cent for the latter. Bankstown had almost 20 per cent of its residents identifying themselves as "prejudiced against other cultures", which was exceeded only by central western Sydney (almost 25 per cent) and southwestern Queensland (almost 35 per cent). Bankstown was also the suburb rated as the most anti-Muslim.

The birthplace of former Labor prime minister Paul Keating and cricketing twins Steve and Mark Waugh, Bankstown is important to Sydney's race equation. The suburb missed the southern Europeans after World War II, who went to inner-city areas such as Marrickville instead. In 1981, Bankstown was still 2.4 percentage points whiter than the Sydney average. But two decades later it had become 3 per cent more cosmopolitan. Without the first wave to get used to, the second wave of settlers from Asia and the Middle East gave old Australian Bankstown a culture shock. It should subside in time, as it did in inner Sydney, which is now the most tolerant place north of the Murray River, according to Forrest's survey.

Bankstown's identikit in Melbourne's west, Sunshine, is different. It took both waves. Today, Sunshine shows no signs of fracturing in the same way the shock jocks of Sydney radio think Bankstown is. Sunshine has been a majority overseas-born
suburb since 1996. It was down to 46.2 per cent Australian-born in 2001, with the Vietnamese-born at 12 per cent.

The scoop for Sydneysiders is that no one in Melbourne is complaining. Bankstown is much whiter than Sunshine, with 58.4 per cent Australian-born. It is the pace of the change that offers the explanation for Sydney's immigration indigestion.

Population is one of the few real policy spats in Australia at the moment. This week, Carr called on Canberra to help him restrict further immigration to Sydney, citing environmental pressures. If Howard had said the same thing, he would have been accused of playing a race card. But Carr is playing a green card and says he is keen to send more immigrants to the rest of NSW. Carr is pitted against the pro-immigration Victorian Labor Premier Steve Bracks. A third-generation Australian – his Catholic grandparents migrated as children from Lebanon in the 1890s – Bracks does not make great play of his heritage. Although Bracks respects Carr's environmental motivation, he says it is "senseless to say that big cities like Sydney and Melbourne are not going to grow".

"It is unreasonable to argue that a portion of that growth will not be from immigration," he says. "I can't see why you wouldn't want that diversity, that cultural change and that cosmopolitanism, which is important in your engagement with the rest of the world."

Carr says he is not pretending Sydney's population can be halted but that his issue is with the rate of growth. Interestingly, Howard has chosen to sit in the middle of this argument: "I think Bob Carr's [zero growth] view is a bit unrealistic, but I think Steve Bracks's [mass migration] view is a bit simplistic."

Bracks thinks Melbourne is better at immigration because it is less divided according to income and infrastructure. The Census proves the point. The evidence of upward migrant mobility in Sydney is below the highest income north shore suburb of

Mosman, in neighbouring areas such as Howard's middle-class electorate of Bennelong. It has an Asian-born population heading towards 20 per cent.

The good news is the Lebanese-born of Bennelong are approaching 3 per cent of the population, a Bankstown-type level. In other words, Middle Eastern immigrants are on the same path from outcast to middle class as Asians and continental Europeans
before them.
=============================================

Is Parramatta Racist? Melting Pot Signs of Boiling Over
By: Rachel Morris & Jaedene Hudson
The Daily Telegraph ( 12 July 2002)

PARRAMATTA'S image of a harmonious multicultural melting pot has been challenged by a national survey which claims it is bubbling with barely concealed racism.

With more than 30 per cent of its population born overseas or of ethnic origin, Parramatta ranks just above the Fairfield-Liverpool area for racial intolerance in the academic survey of attitudes to race.

The survey, by the Geography departments of Macquarie University and the University of NSW, found that more than 50 per

cent of those surveyed in Australia admitted they would be "concerned" if one of their relatives married a Muslim.

The Everywhere Different: A Geography of Racism in Australia survey also confirmed that racial prejudice in Sydney was "cyclical", with Asian Australians becoming "accepted" and recent migrants from the Middle East being the new "targets".

The survey of more than 5000 in Sydney and Brisbane identified central western Sydney – Parramatta – as the most racist region despite its high numbers of Asian Australians and Middle Eastern-born Australians.

Neighbouring Fairfield-Liverpool, with more than 130 different nationalities, was ranked just below Parramatta on a scale of racial intolerance devised by the report's authors.

Inner Sydney, around Leichhardt and the inner west, was the "most tolerant", along with the Richmond-Tweed area of NSW's far north coast.

Census 2001 figures show that the average Parramatta resident is a 34-year-old Australian-born married parent earning no more than $400 a week.

The majority of Parramatta's population was born in Australia, with 56 per cent born here and 55 per cent speaking English at home. The next highest populations came from China, Lebanon and the UK.

The survey found that more than one in 10 openly identified themselves as "prejudiced" against other cultures.

According to the Federal Government-funded study, nearly 53 per cent of Australians would have a problem with a relative marrying a Muslim.

While only 28 per cent said they wouldn't want an Asian Australian marrying into their family, 29 per cent said they would be uncomfortable with an Aboriginal relative.

Nearly 45 per cent said some cultural groups "did not belong in Australia" and the same number said the country was "weakened by people of different ethnic origins sticking together".

One of the report's authors, Macquarie University's James Forrest, said a reason for the anti-Muslim attitude is the belief by many that new migrants, especially recent ones from the Middle East, challenge Australians for jobs.

This is a possible explanation for the results in Parramatta and south western Sydney. "It's economically based," Mr Forrest said.

The anti-Asian sentiments of the 1980s and '90s had been replaced by anti-Muslim feeling. Mr Forrest said Muslims are seen as "different" by sections of the Australian community – the attitude, dubbed "old racism", that other cultures are "not part of the group". "They have been demonised," he said. But Parramatta Lord Mayor John Haines rejected the survey's results, saying the report's authors "spoke to the wrong people" and he found the results "hard to believe".

"I don't believe that is the case," Mr Haines said. "We are very tolerant, very understanding ... people here are treated as one."

Director of Islamic Resource Management Hind Karouche said it was "hard to be Muslim" in Australia today.

"We are looked at with suspicion, and we are judged as guilty before we are proven innocent," she said. "As Australian and migrants to this country we want to feel that we belong [as Australians] and we are still welcome to belong."

Glenn's Faith in Mixed Marriage
When Glenn Anderson's uncle travelled to Malaysia he met a local family and thought one of the daughters – Julainah Aziz – and his nephew would make a good match.

He played "matchmaker" and gave the pair each other's addresses.

For the next 12 months the couple exchanged letters discussing everything from interests and hobbies to future aspirations.

It was the prospect of marrying a woman from the Islamic faith which motivated Australian-born Mr Anderson to read the Koran.

Before the meeting could take place, Mr Anderson, from Lakemba, decided to read the Koran with "an open mind and an open heart".

"I realised that if the relationship was going to proceed any further, if we were to meet I had to make a decision, would I be prepared to become a Muslim?" Mr Anderson said.

"I could not read the Koran and become a Muslim simply because I wanted to marry, if I had done it that way it would not have been sincere."

After deciding to change to Islam Mr Anderson decided to meet with Ms Aziz.

The couple married in Malaysia in 1997 – with Ms Aziz immigrating a year later to be with her new husband.

They initially settled in Glebe but moved to Lakemba because of the area's high Islamic population.

The couple have a two-year-old daughter, Ayesha. He said since living in Australia the pair have not suffered any racism.

"Since we have been here together I have not noticed anyone looking at us strangely," Mr Anderson said.

Love Thy Neighbour
THE study by Macquarie University and the University of NSW Geography Departments found that more than one in 10 identified themselves as "prejudiced" against other cultures.

The survey also found:

52.8 per cent of those surveyed said they would be concerned if a relative married a Muslim 27.4 per cent said they would be concerned if a relative married an Asian Australian 28.9 per cent said they would be concerned if a relative married an Aborigine 44.9 per cent said they can identify some cultural groups that don't belong in Australia 44.8 per cent said that Australia was weakened by people of different ethnic origins "sticking to their own ways" In Sydney and Brisbane, 13.2 per cent say they are "prejudiced against other cultures".
=======================================================
Is Multiculturalism Dead In Australia?



Whatever happened to the 1980s dream of a truly multicultural Australia? Research by Associate Professor Jim Forrest of Macquarie University’s Department of Human Geography and Dr Kevin Dunn of the University of New South Wales suggests that it’s advancing quite slowly at present.

The academics were expanding on part of their survey work on attitudes to racism in Australia, focusing on whether Australians believe that those of us with an Anglo-Celtic background enjoy a privileged position in society. Forrest believes these attitudes help to pinpoint the type of society that Australia has become in the two decades since the time of the pro-multicultural Hawke and Keating Governments.

“Until the 1980s, Australia was what we call an ‘ethnocultural’ nation, where migrants were expected to assimilate into the dominant Anglo-Celtic culture,” Forrest explains. “Then under the Hawke and Keating Governments we were multicultural and heading towards being a ‘civic’ nation, one of ‘difference blindness’. But with the Howard Government, Australia began to change back to being an ethnocultural nation with a re-emphasis on Anglo-Celtic privilege.

“Someone described ‘multiculturalism’ under the current Government as ‘assimilation in slow motion’ because essentially what the Government has done is create the conditions whereby immigrant groups could assimilate at their own pace, but the migrant groups would still be fitting into an Anglo-Celtic society.”

Forrest and Dunn’s analysis of Anglo-Celtic privilege uses data collected during their Racism Project survey of 2001. More than 5,000 Australians throughout Queensland and New South Wales were surveyed by telephone and asked 14 questions about racism, Anglo-Celtic privilege, multiculturalism and migrant groups.

“Amongst other things we asked them about how they saw this notion of Anglo-Celtic privilege and whether they thought it existed in Australia,” Forrest says. “The results were quite ambivalent – the majority of every group said that either they had no views on it, or that it didn’t exist. But 30 to 40 per cent of every group said ‘yes, it does exist’.”

Forrest and Dunn broke the survey results into demographic groups based on age, class and birthplace. Not surprisingly, a higher percentage of Indigenous Australians and those from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds believed Anglo-Celtic privilege existed. A somewhat unexpected finding, however, was the tertiary-educated group.

“The highest support group for the idea of Anglo-Celtic privilege in this country is among the tertiary educated,” says Forrest. “Over half of them believe that it exists. The reason for this appears to be that they are a very cosmopolitan group – managerial, professional, international. But while we would imagine them to be very multicultural, in fact they’re not – they’re cosmopolitan but not particularly multicultural.

“It appears that this new class group has taken on the mantle of Anglo-Celtic privilege by largely ignoring (multicultural groups). It is this group of educated elite, of course, who have influence with the Federal Government,” he adds.


Associate Professor Jim Forrest

But there is one other important group which influences Federal Government thinking. The surveyed group that least believes Anglo-Celtic privilege exists are the working class Australian-born – the group that Forrest believes feels ‘abandoned’ by the multiculturalism of the 1980s.

“This group, under the multiculturalism of the Hawke and Keating Governments, increasingly found that they were missing out, which is why so many of this group supported One Nation,” Forrest says. “In response, the Howard Government has absorbed One Nation thinking into their own policies – especially the revalorising of Anglo-Celtic identity. Prime Minister Howard has been very astute at this, he has recaptured this Anglo culture and the result has been that multiculturalism is tolerated rather than pushed.”

As part of a journal article submission, Forrest and Dunn compared the current-day society of Australia with three other new world immigration zones – the US, Canada and New Zealand.

“We found that everywhere is different,” Forrest says. “The US is multicultural, but not in our sense. They’re multicultural in the sense that they’re merging everybody into a new American identity, everybody except the black population. Hispanics and Asians are still with the black group, but arguably moving up into the ‘non-black’ multicultural society.

“Canada is probably the nearest to what we’d term a ‘civic’ nation, that is one of ‘difference blindness’, and it is enshrined in their legislation. However, they still have the problem of cultural pluralism, with the French and British elements. But when the French and British came together in the mid-60s, this opened the door for other groups, particularly the indigenous groups and new immigrants, who felt they were being left out of the system.”

And what of our trans-Tasman cousins? Forrest believes their society reflects ours in the 1960s.

“The White New Zealand policy was not abolished until the mid-1980s – it’s quite recent, and people are still quite resentful of Asian migrants,” he says. “In addition to that they’ve got a bi-national society of Pakehar and Maori – they haven’t worked out exactly what a ‘New Zealander’ is yet, and intermarriage between the two groups greatly changes the situation. The immigrant groups, particularly the Asians that have arrived since the late-80s have found themselves where Australia was back in the 80s and 90s. It is not surprising that they have the New Zealand First party with Winston Peters, which is their equivalent to our One Nation party, but more long lasting.”

Email the researcher: jim.forrest@mq.edu.au

Source
==================================

REALATED THREADS

Muslims the New Bogeymen of Racist Australia

Analysis: Media Reporting of "The Gang-Rapes"

"FAIR-GO" WATCH: The ISMA Report 2004

Racism Caught in the Net (Against Arab Muslims)

Religio-Racial Profiling, Anti-Muslim Style

Deconstructing Of Middle Eastern Appearance

Bondi Rampage: What's their Ethnicity & Religion?

Any Tom, Dick or Harry Can Beat Prejudice

Book Tells How Muslims Are Stereotyped

Killing Multiculturalism

Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching For Hope in a Shrinking Society

All Muslims Are Not the Same

Islam — "Fastest Growing Faith in Australia"

[Seeker]

Quote

I'm not racist but...don't marry a Muslim

All the better. Muslims are better off marrying Muslims anyway.

[Astral]

since we're on the topic... this may be of some interest... its a bit old though

May 15 2004

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican (news - web sites) warned Catholic women on Friday to think hard before marrying a Muslim and urged Muslims to show more respect for human rights, gender equality
and democracy.

Calling women "the least protected member of the Muslim family," it spoke of the "bitter experience" western Catholics had with Muslim husbands, especially if they married outside the Islamic world and later moved to his country of origin.

The comments in a document about migrants around the world were preceded by remarks about points of agreement between Christians and Muslims but they seemed likely to fuel mistrust between the world's two largest religions.

The document said the Church discouraged marriages between believers in traditionally Catholic countries and non-Christian migrants.

It hoped Muslims would show "a growing awareness that fundamental liberties, the inviolable rights of the person, the equal dignity of man and woman, the democratic principle of government and the healthy lay character of the state are principles that cannot be surrendered."

When a Catholic woman and Muslim man wanted to marry, it said, "bitter experience teaches us that a particularly careful and in-depth preparation is called for."

It said one possible problem was with Muslim in-laws and advised future mothers that they must insist on Church policy that children born of a mixed marriage be baptized and brought up as Catholics.

If the marriage is registered in the consulate of a Muslim country, the document said, the Catholic must be careful not to sign a document or swear an oath including the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith, which would amount to converting.


DIFFERENT APPROACHES

The document highlighted the contrasting approaches the Vatican has taken in recent years toward Islam, which has emerged as a strong rival for souls, especially in Africa.


Pope John Paul (news - web sites) has broken ground in dialogue with Muslims and even prayed in a mosque in Damascus. He won plaudits in the Muslim world for his strong opposition to the Iraq (news - web sites) war.

But Vatican officials and leading Catholic prelates have expressed increasingly critical views about the spread of Islam and the challenge this poses for Catholicism.

The Vatican's top theologian, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said earlier this week the West "no longer loves itself" and so was unable to respond to the challenge of Islam, which was growing because it expressed "greater spiritual energy."

The migration document also discouraged churches from letting non-Christians use their places of worship.

This issue arose last month when Muslims in Spain asked to be able to pray in Cordoba cathedral, which was once a mosque. A senior Vatican official said this would be "problematic."

This post has been edited by Astral: 22 December 2004 - 05:34 PM

[Sarah]

yeah.. lots of my freinds say thier parents will accept anyone but a muslim. ( male) they're all scared of muslim males marrying thier daughters.

they prob been watchign too many east is east and not without my daughter movies loloolollo inshallah Allah guides everyone

[Mowlana Vector]

Little Evidence of Racial Divide in Sydney: Study

[Mowlana Vector]

Voices of Australia : 1975 – 2005

[Mowlana Vector]

Racial Fear Banished By Closer Contact

By treating men and women like Pavlov's dogs, and giving them electric shocks while they looked at pictures of black and white men, researchers have unravelled our innate and learnt reactions to race.

We have evolved to fear people from a different group to our own, in the same way they we fear spiders and snakes, it was found. But close contact can help counter this inherent fear.

Arne Ohman, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said the findings were important in an age of terrorism, when worries about the threat from "evil others" loomed large in the minds of many.

"To help cope with this situation we need a scientific understanding of the emotional dynamics of intergroup conflicts."

Recognising that humans were prone to fearing, avoiding and demonising people outside their own group, but that close contact could reduce this effect, might help combat the development of "emotionally charged stereotypes" that fed the fear, Dr Ohman said.

The notion that some primeval fears have become hard-wired in humans during millions of years of evolution is suggested by the fact that people tend to hate creepy-crawly insects, yet don't fear cars, which kill a lot more people.

For the latest study, which was published yesterday in the journal Science, young black and white Americans living in New York were given electric shocks when they looked at pictures of spiders, snakes, birds, butterflies and black and white faces with neutral expressions. Like Pavlov's dogs, which learnt to salivate at the sound of a bell, they developed a fear of all these creatures.

When the electric shocks were stopped, people's fear of birds, butterflies and faces the same colour as their own quickly vanished, but they remained scared of snakes, spiders and faces of a different race.

Humans have only evolved into distinct races in the past 100,000 years. Like a car, this was too recent for a fear of race per se to have evolved, the researchers said.

Rather, humans would have evolved a fear of outsiders. Attitudes to race were then learnt and imposed on top of this.

The study also found that those who had dated people from the other race let go of their fears of these people more easily, once the electric shocks were stopped.

"The optimistic news is that this predisposition to fear members of another race may be changed by close personal contact," said Mahzarin Banaji, a member of the research team at Harvard University.

"We are products of our evolutionary history and our immediate social environment. The former we don't control, the latter we certainly do."

Source
====================================

FURTHER READING
Conditioned Fear of A Face: A Prelude To Ethnic Enmity?

Islamophobia: Is It Racism?

"Fair-Go" Watch: The ISMA Report 2004

Australian Multiculturalism - What's In a Name?

Racism: A Gross Sin and Psycho-Spiritual Illness

It's Time to Face An Uncomfortable Truth: Muslims Can Be Racists too

Multiculturalism in Medieval Islam

How To End Racism: Islamic Perspectives

[sodapop]

Racist graffiti attack at Sydney school
1 August 2005

NSW's peak multicultural body has appealed for help in identifying those responsible for anti-Islamic graffiti sprayed on a western Sydney school in which half the students are Muslim.

The Community Relations Commission today called on the whole community to condemn the perpetrators of what it called "hateful" graffiti sprayed across a teaching block at Birrong Public School on Saturday.

The graffiti is believed to have included swastikas.

About half of the school's 460-strong student body comes from a Muslim background.

"The fact it is on a school is abhorrent but the fact it is sending a message to schoolchildren makes it even more abhorrent," the commission's chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian said.

"There is no place for insulting attacks on any religion or its followers."

Mr Kerkyasharian called on the Birrong community to co-operate with authorities to find the culprits.

"The message from the community should be strong," he said.

"Even if it's a joke, it's not acceptable because jokes like this lead to violence."

The offensive graffiti was discovered by a teacher early on Saturday.

Neither the police nor the Education Department would reveal the exact words used in the attack.

"All I can tell you is that it was anti-Muslim graffiti," an Education Department spokeswoman said.

A number of the school's walls were "extensively damaged" but the offending material was removed before students arrived for school this morning, police said.

The Education Department spokeswoman said the school had the graffiti removed as soon as it was discovered.

She said such attacks were not tolerated by the department and the school would be assisting police to find those responsible.

The school's principal had spoken to students about the incident and was contacting parents.

Investigators are asking anyone who may have seen people acting suspiciously near the school between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning to contact Bankstown police.


AAP and Jano Gibson

Source

This post has been edited by sodapop: 01 August 2005 - 03:36 PM

[Mowlana Vector]

Sydney's Map of Racism Revealed



It's Harder To Be Australian

[Mowlana Vector]

The Racism Project: Finding By Region

[`Abdullah]

O ye who believe! Choose not My enemy and your enemy for friends . Do ye give them friendship when they disbelieve in that truth which hath come unto you , driving out the messenger and you because ye believe in Allah , your Lord? If ye have come forth to strive in My way and seeking My good pleasure , ( show them not friendship ) . Do ye show friendship unto them in secret , when I am best Aware of what ye hide and what ye proclaim? And whosoever doeth it among you , be verily hath strayed from the right way . (60/1)

[Mowlana Vector]

Al-Ghazzali Centre for Islamic Science & Human Development:

A Review of Muslim Interpretation of the Qur'an's Definition of 'Friendship' with Non-Muslims

[Mowlana Vector]

Australia A Racist Country: Poll




How To End Racism: Islamic Perspectives

[Mowlana Vector]

Racism outrage: Pamphlet Condemns Muslims

A letter drop of pamphlets denouncing Islam and multi-culturalism has left some Port Macquarie residents incensed.

One woman was so horrified she immediately penned a letter to Prime Minister John Howard and sent a copy of the offending material to local MP Rob Oakeshott.

"I am outraged that this material is allowed to be promoted as our Australian way of life," said the Port Macquarie woman, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals.

"To me it is in the same vein as the Ku Klux Klan," she added.

The materials that have elicited such strong reaction are anti-multicultural pamphlets from the Free Australia Movement and the Australia First Party.

The former is a six-page booklet about Islam, claiming it is an ideology that if ignored, could orchestrate the end of the Australian way of life.

The latter equates multiculturalism with genocide, stating that it is "an extremist anti-Western political ideology ... that wishes to snuff out the existence of all white-populated countries".

Member of the national council of the Australia First Party Dr Jim Saleam stands behind the content of his party's publications.

While he has no knowledge of who made the letter drop in Port Macquarie, he has no problem with Australia First material being disseminated as long as it is in an "appropriate manner" and bears the Australia First mark.

Dr Saleam said his party did not have an affiliation with Free Australia Movement.

People of the Hastings could see more of Australia First in the next few years. Its political aspirations include registering as a party by October this year (it was de-registered in 2004) and running a candidate in the 2008 Port Macquarie- Hastings Council elections.

The party claims the Hastings area was a stronghold for Australia First when the party was formed in 1996.

Dr Saleam said: "We don't have a group that's formally constituted there at the moment but we are re-activating members who were recruited by the party's founder Graeme Campbell."

Wauchope Uniting Church minister John Queripel called the party's arguments illogical, while Rob Oakeshott said the party should put its money where its mouth is.

"These publications don't have the guts to put a local contact. I challenge them to give me a call and I will happily talk to them about how being a united nation will always beat being a divided one – a diverse Australia is the way forward," the MP said.
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ALSO SEE
Our Racist Habits: Despite the Denials, the Runs Are on the Board

[tr3x]

Mowlana Vector, on Aug 31 2006, 11:39 AM, said:

Racism outrage: Pamphlet Condemns Muslims

A letter  drop of pamphlets denouncing Islam and multi-culturalism has left some Port Macquarie residents incensed.

One woman was so horrified she immediately penned a letter to Prime Minister John Howard and sent a copy of the offending material to local MP Rob Oakeshott.

"I am outraged that this material is allowed to be promoted as our Australian way of life," said the Port Macquarie woman, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals.

"To me it is in the same vein as the Ku Klux Klan," she added.

The materials that have elicited such strong reaction are anti-multicultural pamphlets from the Free Australia Movement and the Australia First Party.

The former is a six-page booklet about Islam, claiming it is an ideology that if ignored, could orchestrate the end of the Australian way of life.

The latter equates multiculturalism with genocide, stating that it is "an extremist anti-Western political ideology ... that wishes to snuff out the existence of all white-populated countries".

Member of the national council of the Australia First Party Dr Jim Saleam stands behind the content of his party's publications.

While he has no knowledge of who made the letter drop in Port Macquarie, he has no problem with Australia First material being disseminated as long as it is in an "appropriate manner" and bears the Australia First mark.

Dr Saleam said his party did not have an affiliation with Free Australia Movement.

People of the Hastings could see more of Australia First in the next few years. Its political aspirations include registering as a party by October this year (it was de-registered in 2004) and running a candidate in the 2008 Port Macquarie- Hastings Council elections.

The party claims the Hastings area was a stronghold for Australia First when the party was formed in 1996.

Dr Saleam said: "We don't have a group that's formally constituted there at the moment but we are re-activating members who were recruited by the party's founder Graeme Campbell."

Wauchope Uniting Church minister John Queripel called the party's arguments illogical, while Rob Oakeshott said the party should put its money where its mouth is.

"These publications don't have the guts to put a local contact. I challenge them to give me a call and I will happily talk to them about how being a united nation will always beat being a divided one – a diverse Australia is the way forward," the MP said.
=======================

ALSO SEE
Our Racist Habits: Despite the Denials, the Runs Are on the Board

The good ole double standards aye- this has been pretty much ignored by the mainstream media but when the other Hizb ul-Tahir pamphlets went out people wanted them listed as a terror organisation