[OMJ]

Force Gets A Role Model
By: Lillan Saleh, Political Reporter
The Daily Telegraph ( 20 September 2004)


On the beat...Constable Nasser Dib on
patrol with Constable Nerissa Simpson.

Growing up in Sydney's southwest, Nasser Dib was all too familiar with the mistrust between police and young Muslims.

Now the 20-year-old hopes to be a role model for Arabic-speaking youth after becoming a probationary constable with NSW Police.

"I knew I wanted to be a policeman when I was 12," Constable Dib told The Daily Telegraph yesterday, adding tensions between Muslim youths and police over recent years had strengthened his resolve.

"It made me realise this is something I really wanted to do and it was my chance to make a change," he said.

"I really do hope they [young Muslim people] realise there are other choices other than crime and getting themselves into trouble."

After a little prodding by his elder brother – a teacher at Belmore Boys High School – Mr Dib finally applied to join NSW Police almost two years ago.

He graduated recently and joined the ranks at Hurstville police station two weeks ago.

"My first goal is to get my first stripe and then hopefully become a youth liaison officer," Constable Dib said.

While he would like to work with young people in Sydney's southwest, Constable Dib has ruled out being stationed at Bankstown because "it's a bit too close to home".

Constable Dib is one of 1034 police officers from a non-Australian background. Other cultures joining NSW police include Samoan, Pakistani, Iraqi, Russian, Swedish and Burmese.

Constable Dib's career choice is supported by his family, including his father Ali Dib, secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association, as well as the Mufti, Sheik Taj eldin Elhilaly.

"He [the Sheik] comes over and we have a laugh about it and he makes a few jokes, but he has told me he is very proud of me and gave a little speech," the young officer said.

Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said the recruitment of the "right mix" of people was just as important to policing as forensic science and new technology.

"Fundamental to the successful operation of any police organisation is its ability to be able to recruit and attract people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds," he told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

"It's crucial that we have a police force that reflects our modern society and we need to recruit more people like Nasser Dib."

Keysar Trad, a director with the LMA, said Constable Dib was leading by example.

"We are showing the general public that we are embracing policing and are giving up our sons to go into the police force and risk their own safety for the safety of society," Mr Trad said.

"What this says to other young Muslim people is that they, too, can be the good guys."
================================================================
SEE ALSO

140 Police Graduates Join The Ranks

NSW Police Recruitment

This post has been edited by OMJ: 25 November 2006 - 11:24 PM

[Mowlana Vector]

Muslim Women in Australia
The Religion Report, Radio National
(26 January 2005 )

A Victorian Muslim women's group takes on issues of power and representation. Are women emerging as the voice of progressive Islam in Austalia?

David Rutledge: The Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria was established in 1991, as a means of facilitating the full participation of Muslim women in Australian society. For the past fourteen years they’ve been working to organise housing for immigrants, to conduct education campaigns on citizenship and Australian law, to run community campaigns against sexual violence, and to develop leadership capacities in Muslim women.

The Council’s most recent project is called Bridging Dialogues, and it’s designed to improve the representation of Muslims in the Australian media. The Bridging Dialogues project involves educating student journalists on the representation of minorities, and it also involves setting up a network of Muslim women to act as public commentators on various issues to do with Islam both in and out of Australia. It all rather goes against the prevailing stereotype of Muslim women as silent and oppressed within their communities.

Joumanah El Matrah is Manager of the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council. Joumanah, welcome to the program. The Bridging Dialogues project has to do with the representation of all Muslims, both men and women. So how significant is it that the project is being run by a women’s group?

Joumanah El Matrah: I think it’s of the essence. Generally in Australia, I think especially though in the media, it’s as if Islam only comes in one gender; you rarely ever hear women speak. And I think the importance of women speaking really can’t be overestimated. Muslim women are a disadvantaged group within a disadvantaged group, and so I think that we can give a more nuanced texture and complex representation of what Islam is, what it’s like to be in Australia, how Islam is to be represented, what kind of relationship might take place between Muslims and non-Muslims. And I think it’s also important because it is a proactive act – because Muslim women are often seen as kind of being passive, you know, “we need to be represented”.

The other thing is also that Islam in Australia is generally represented by men, and when women are asked to speak, it’s as if we can only speak our experiences as women – and when men are asked to speak, it’s as if Islam itself speaks, and women are not capable of engaging in the religion beyond their gender. And so I think this project gives an opportunity to give far more place for women in the current media representation of Islam.

David Rutledge: It also brings up this question of self-criticism within Islam. You hear this question asked over and over again, you know, “where is the moderate, self-critical voice in Islam?” Do you think that in Australia at least, there’s a possibility that women are going to emerge as that voice?

Joumanah El Matrah: Yes, I do, actually. We’ve not yet arrived at a time when the moderates have a significant presence. And I need to say that I have difficulty with the problem of moderate or progressive or traditional or conservative. They’re useful terms to use in some respects, but “moderate position” implies that the traditional conservative positions have a closer relationship to Islam than moderates have, because moderates are, if you like, picking up the project of modernising Islam and making it more palatable for the West – and often moderates are actually accused of this. So moderates are not any further away or closer to original Islam, or Islam in its early manifestations. And in fact often traditional representatives of Islam are given too much ground in terms of how authentic they are as Muslims. I think in the current environment, to be self-critical is really difficult, and I think a lot of Muslims have tried to be self-critical in Australia, but have fallen into kind of either apologising for Islam or justifying, excusing, or kind of defending all sorts of behaviours that they shouldn’t be. And sometimes in the media there’s no more room given to Muslim community leaders other than if you like, giving some sort of quick explanation, a quick apology.

But that self-critical space, that kind of collective, introspective space that we need, whereby we kind of evaluate and critique in our theology, our cultural reform, has been difficult, I think, for a range of reasons. And one of them is that many Muslims in Australia, particularly community leaders, feel as if the community is under attack, and I think people fall almost unconsciously into the line of defending Muslims and defending Islam.

But in terms of also being self-critical, the Muslim community in Australia is a relatively young community, and I think that there still isn’t sufficient knowledge of Islam within the community here, and I think that there isn’t sufficient experience in actually talking to broader Australia about what Islam is, and what the situation of Muslims are here.

David Rutledge: In establishing a network of media contacts who are predominantly Muslim women, this puts women potentially in a very powerful position in Muslim communities in Australia, doesn’t it? To what extent is that a conscious undertaking on your part?

Joumanah El Matrah: It’s a very conscious undertaking. Women need to be in powerful positions in the community, and there is no kind of qualifier to that. They need to be representing not only their experiences as Muslim women, but they also need to be commenting about their place as a minority group and issues that are core to Islam.

David Rutledge: What sort of relationship does the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council have with existing Muslim community leaders?

Joumanah El Matrah: It really depends on their politics. Some relationships are actually quite good, and some relationships are a bit more tenuous. Who we are and what we do is very clear, you know, we want absolute equality for women, and nothing less. Now if some community leaders take issue with that because they think it’s un-Islamic, or because they think that women are fundamentally less, then we are going to have a difficult relationship, there is no doubt about that.

David Rutledge: You hear it said that part of the reason that the critical voice in Islam is so quiet right now, is that people are afraid to speak out – people feel under attack, as you’ve said, in the current climate. How dangerous do you think it is, or could be, for Australian Muslim women to speak out in a critical voice, about subjects like sexual violence in Muslim communities, for example?

Joumanah El Matrah: I think it’s politically dangerous in the sense that one always risks the possibility of being completely alienated from the community, and having one’s political power undermined. Is it dangerous in a physical way? I’m not sure yet. We haven’t had any examples of that at all, but there are plenty of examples where women have been isolated from the general community of community leaders, if you like. That strategy is still used by Muslim men.

David Rutledge: Your own background has been in working with women who’ve experienced domestic violence; how common is this in Muslim communities in Australia?

Joumanah El Matrah: Unlike many other countries, Australia does not collect information on religion in Community Services. So we don’t know women’s religion who access, say, intervention orders, or women’s refuges and so forth. But the common wisdom seems to be that domestic violence exists at the same level across all communities, and that seems to be something most women’s groups agree on. The reason that Islamic women’s welfare works so much on domestic violence is because of its symbolism. If you cannot offer women safety, then you cannot engage in the process of empowerment, you simply can’t. Nothing else can happen while women feel unsafe, or while women feel that they are not going to be protected.

Because at the moment, for Muslim women who leave a violent relationship, sometimes they actually also have to leave their community, because they need to find somewhere that’s safe. And so they’re not only leaving their immediate relationship, but they’re also leaving the relationship with their community, and losing all that cultural heritage. It is also difficult, I think, to convince men that women’s issues are also about men. Often men just feel victim to it, and I think that that’s across the board, irrespective of religious identity. Men often feel that if you change enough of women’s identity, that men will lose their place – and often there is some truth to that, that they’re going to lose their privilege, and that they may not have the same level of access to opportunity if women are equally community partners, and leaders, and so forth. So violence, actually, it’s kind of symbolic and it’s discrete, but it affects a whole lot of other things within the community.

David Rutledge: You talk about running education programs for women and for men; are men getting the message? What kind of dialogue do you find you can have with men?

Joumanah El Matrah: I find it a lot easier to have dialogue with your regular community member than I do, actually, to have a conversation with a male community leader. Many of the men I’ve spoken to understand that there is an issue, and they do want some amount of change. Male community leaders, I think, often experience themselves as the guardians and keepers of tradition, and of holding the community together, and they conflate holding the community together with maintaining traditional practices, and traditional beliefs, and perceptions about how communities function. And so it is a lot more difficult to shift their views, because they simply cannot envisage such – they would feel – such radical change, and keep the community together.

David Rutledge: Joumanah El Matrah, Manager of the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria.
==================================================

SEE ALSO

IWWC: Self-esteem, Identity, Leadership & Community Participation Project

MWNNA: The Journalism Project, Building Networks & Understanding Between Journalism students & Muslims

Women Created For Family life?


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[Mowlana Vector]

Muslim Women With Attitude

A group of Muslim women are doing their best to lift the veil of misconception obscuring their culture. Diana Bagnall reports.

It takes some nerve, on the eve of a war billed by the religious right in George W. Bush’s coterie as a crusade, to offer instruction on how to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities. That irony won’t have escaped the redoubtable Nada Roude. “If war goes ahead with Iraq, I’m going to have to think whether I will be attacked when I’m putting petrol in the car or shopping at Roselands,” she told an audience of social service types last month at the most recent of the Muslim Women’s Association’s sell-out seminars on cross-cultural awareness.

Still she persevered in explaining the finer points of Islamic domestic protocol to those who spent the day with her and her Muslim sisters in the spartan surrounds of the Australian Arabic Communities Council’s offices on Bankstown’s busiest thoroughfare in Sydney’s south-west. She couldn’t stop the hateful things, like the anti-Muslim residents’ group working her neighbourhood. But she had some hopes for her audience, each of whom came with their own ragbag of Muslim experiences – some bizarre, many routine – and who left at the very least understanding that a headscarf can’t and doesn’t snuff out a woman’s strength of purpose or personality.

So she advised: On home visits to Muslim families, leave your shoes outside, avoid direct eye contact, don’t shake hands with someone of the opposite sex; in fact, don’t go there at all if a person of the opposite sex is home alone. Practising Muslim men and women stay well clear of each other, unless they’re married. In which case, it’s on for young and old. Marriage is the ­corner­stone of Islamic society. Women, far from being exploited in marriage, are ­drivers in their own right. Or at least that’s the theory. Newly married Sydney law lecturer Ghena Krayem dropped a small bombshell when she said there were marriage contracts in early Islamic society which exempted the wife from cooking and cleaning, and obliged the husband to contract out those jobs. What happened?

A lot, it seems, since those halcyon days a thousand or more years ago. In western minds, Muslim countries have come to represent the worst of patriarchal excess. But the oppression of women isn’t limited to Muslim women, argue the MWA sisters, and besides, not everything Muslims do is Islamic, just as not everything that Christians do is Christian.

This last point is worth hammering home. It often gets lost. Muslims are not all “God-conscious”. Some people who are born Muslim do not live religious lives. And religion is often manipulated for self-advantage by Muslims as much as anyone else.

Maha Abdo showed why she is MWA president in her sage response to an earnest question from the floor about Muslim children “missing out” on dance and singing because Islamic practice forbids boys and girls from physical contact. What to do? Abdo, who has four children, replied with a steady voice: “Lots of kids use their religion as an excuse to get away with not doing things.”

Start looking at Muslims as people, in other words.

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

SEE ALSO
Articles of Faith

[Wolf]

Some excellent role models there for all sisters.

[Mowlana Vector]

Wolf, on Mar 6 2005, 05:24 PM, said:

Some excellent role models there for all sisters.



Indeed ... and (some )great role models there for men, too

B)

[Mowlana Vector]

An old article, yet relevant to this thread on (mass) media profiling of the Aust. Muslim women
==========================

The Driving Seat of Passion
(22 February 2003)

At 10.40 on a steamy Friday morning, Hind Kourouche greets me at the doorway of her red-brick house in Bankstown. Wearing a low-cut white blouse with black crepe trousers and silvery high heels, she looks like a corporate Rita Hayworth. Within an hour, she will have raised $2500 for one of her causes. By 2pm, she will have raised another $5000 for a different project, created a traffic jam in a car park, taken her hands off the wheel while driving, organised a meeting with the Minister for Education, gone to the Auburn mosque, and told me a bit about her remarkable life.

"Have you only got a few hours?" she asks with alarm. "That is not enough for someone like me." Which turns out to be true.

At any moment, Kourouche has about eight projects on the go. She is a mainstream Muslim woman with a penchant for service and networking. Her passion is to make Australia better - nurturing multiculturalism, women, youth and harmony. She has an economics degree from Macquarie University, has worked in banking, and directs Islamic think tanks. At 27, she was the first woman president of the Arabic Welfare Council. Her latest project is the Harmony Awards, an idea that "targets the young, their parents and the education system".

At 11.20am, we meet John Mackay, manager of the Bankstown Sports Club, in his office. Kourouche is asking for a $2500 sponsorship for her expenses at a two-day Ladies Masters of Business conference on the Gold Coast. She mentions her work as secretary and treasurer of the Bankstown Police Youth Club, and a sports tie-in with the conference. Mackay leans back, narrows his eyes and says: "OK, I just wanted reassurance that you weren't only going as an individual. We'll be in it." And that was it.

Down in the car park, she answers her mobile phone and gives her full attention to the caller, unaware that cars are piling up behind a sedan waiting to take her spot. "That was the Minister for Education," she explains. "We need the department's endorsement for the Harmony Awards. I'll be meeting with his office next week."

We get to the office of the Bankstown mayor, Helen Westwood, two minutes early. Kourouche explains the Harmony Awards: every year, NSW schools submit projects in categories such as religion, gender and environment; each of the 10 awards needs a $5000 sponsor. Then she asks Westwood: "What are your aims for this year, Helen?"

"To turn the image of Bankstown around. This is a great community," says the mayor, a straight-shooting, red-haired "anglo-Aussie". She shakes Kourouche's hand and says the council will be glad to sponsor an award.

Outside, I say: "I think you just raised $5000."

"I think so, too," she says. "Wow. You're good luck."

The youngest of 14 children (11 survived), Kourouche was born in Lebanon. Her father, who died of a heart attack before she was born, was a politician and owned three shoe factories. When she was six, her family came here in two lots (1969 and '70).

Every day, she walked 35 minutes to Yagoona High because there was no one to drive her.

Her mother, who had no English and no education, was dependent, first on her husband, then on her children. Kourouche, who looked after her mother until six months ago, resolved "never to be dependent".

She developed the idea of service early. "When I was about 14, I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking: 'I'm so lucky, how can I help other girls?' I had no knowledge of how to deliver this."

When she was 15, her brother, who worked for an American insurance company, gave her four self-help books that changed her life. She remembers all the titles, including Success through a Positive Mental Attitude, by W.Clement Stone. "Quite a miracle happened. I set goals for myself and jumped from being a mediocre student to nearly top of the class in most subjects."

At 31, and still a chaste Muslim ("the oldest virgin in Sydney"), she married a Lebanese dental technician, planning to devote her life to marriage and motherhood. There was a miscarriage within a year, and then a divorce. "I'm more open-minded now about men. I'd like a man who supports my ambitions, who is strong and compassionate."

There must be a few men around? "Yes, I am a heartbreaker, but I like being in control."

Kourouche will visit Washington, New York and Memphis this month as a guest of the United States Government. There she will meet leaders in IT and finance, and Islamic and Judaic scholars. She will also study the police system in San Francisco. On her wish list are Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton. "I'd like to interview Oprah because she tackles the hard issues and offers a lot of hope for women. She'd be a wonderful mentor."

Kourouche's master plan included taking June Dally Watkins' deportment lessons and short acting courses at NIDA. "Now I love public speaking, I love being in the limelight because I know that's what I do well; that's where I belong."

Last stop is the Auburn mosque, a vast domed, marble edifice. Out on the street, Kourouche fits me out in a stifling black nylon robe and helps me tie a beige chador. We spend a few minutes trying to hide her cleavage under a scarf and walk to the mosque, where thousands of men are praying.

After the men have left, she shows me around from the women's gallery and we leave. "I hope you can stay for dinner tonight, I'm having six friends over," she says cheerily, as we drive up a one-way street, the wrong way.

Hind Kourouche spoke to Madeleine Murray.

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

SEE ALSO
Building A Culture of Peace

Australian Citizenship Stories: Hind Kourouche

[Mowlana Vector]

UWS Journalism Student Wins National Award

7 April 2005

An insight into a support and guidance program for young people in Sydney's Arabic community has earned a young University of Western Sydney student a national journalism award.

Lema Samandar has won the 2004 Federation of Ethnic Communities' Council of Australia (FECCA) Student Journalism Multicultural Award. The 20 year old Ryde resident is currently studying her third year of a Bachelor of Arts (Communication) degree at the UWS Penrith campus.

Federal Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Mr Peter McGauran, presented Lema with her prize, which includes $800 in cash and an internship with SBS radio, at a ceremony last week in Sydney.

Her feature story, 'Crossing onto their turf', was described by judges as 'insightful', 'a piece of journalism rarely found in mainstream media', and succeeded in 'personalising and destigmatising' the issue of crime and ethnicity.

The article, published in the FECCA magazine 'Australian Mosaic', looks at a State Government program called Youth Partnership with Arabic Speaking Communities. This program uses Arabic liaison officers to promote positive connections with local youth at risk.

Lema says she's honoured to have won the award, and believes it is the stories about remarkable everyday people that are best remembered.

"I feel humbled when people open up and allow me to tell their story," says Lema.

"For me, it's all about giving a voice to the voiceless and educating my audience."

Lema believes much of her passion for her writing comes from her own unique background.

She and her family fled their native Afghanistan in 1989 during the Soviet invasion, and after moving through Europe, made Germany their home. Her parents decided to migrate to Australia to reunite with the rest of their family in 1994 when she was nine, something that Lema found very difficult at the time.

"It was in Germany where I learnt to read, write and understand the ways of life," says Lema.

"To come to Australia meant leaving everything I knew and loved. At nine years of age I did not want to travel half-way around the world to start from scratch again. It was a nightmare to think I had to learn a new culture and another language."

But Lema says she soon settled into her new home.

"The biggest shock came when I entered my year 4 classroom [in Sydney] for the first time and witnessed 20 multicultural faces above blue jumpers staring back at me. Though I could not speak a word to any of them, I knew when I sat down among them with my own blue uniform that in Australia I wasn't so different," she says.

"Today, no one would guess that I had spent my childhood as a travelling refugee. From this, I have learned to be an open-minded storyteller."

In accepting the prize, Lema has paid tribute to her parents and her UWS lecturers.

"My parents helped foster my interest in different cultures, world politics and news, and I dedicate this award to them. I also want to extend my gratitude to my journalism lecturers Professor Lynette Sheridan Burns, Barbara Alysen, Antonio Castillo and Asha Chand for their guidance."

Lema says she hopes one day to become a foreign correspondent.

"I think a key ingredient to being a good journalist is to care. It gives me great satisfaction to meet people from all walks of life and to encourage them to express their concerns, hopes and fears. It's what made me want to become a journalist."

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

FURTHER READING
FECCA: Winner of the FECCA Student Journalism Award 2004 Announced!

Refugee Journalist Honoured

Lema Samandar's Home Page


SEE ALSO
Islam — "Fastest Growing Faith in Australia"

Crisis/Media: The Uncertain States of Reportage

12 Year Old Aussie Muslim Wins Poetry Prize

[Mowlana Vector]

An oldie news report, related to this thread


Australian Policewoman Allowed to Wear Hijab




ALSO SEE
Sydney Schoolgirl Punished For Muslim Dress

One Super Supreme Multicultural Pizza, Hold the Tolerance, Thank U

New Faces, Old Frictions

An Idiot's Guide In Deconstructing the Civilised Hijab-o-Panic

Consider This: Middle Eastern Crime in Australia

Being A True Aussie: Multicultural Australia

Meritocracy In the Land of Mateship': Conflicting Visions of the Fair Go

Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching For Hope In A Shrinking Society

Violence Is A Human, Not An Islamic Trait

Immigration & Its Discontents

Learning To Live With The Aussie Mossie

Islam — "Fastest Growing Faith in Australia"

[Mowlana Vector]

Silma's School

[Mowlana Vector]

Muslim Women Reject Fatwa that Bans Study
By: Trudy Harris
The Australian (23 July 2005)

Australian Muslim women yesterday condemned as unacceptable and religiously incorrect fatwas opposing them studying at university and exercising the right to vote.

Muslim Womens National Network of Australia spokeswoman Jamila Hussain said the fatwa, or religious decree, banning women from university was oppressive and had no religious authority.

"If people are going around proclaiming this, then it's very unfortunate. They are using cultural practices and cultural thinking rather than religious understanding," said Ms Hussain, who has a masters degree in comparisons between Western and Sharia law.

Despite her criticism, The Weekend Australian has spoken to several women who have come under pressure to drop out of university for religious reasons, while others have been asked to change courses from politics or law -- that could see them working in government or legal systems -- to social sciences.

The existence of the fatwas was revealed this week by the nation's most senior Muslim cleric, Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali.

Sheik Hilali called for hate and violent literature to be banned and for clerics who preached such views to be deported.

The Weekend Australian has learned that literature railing against Australia's education system has been handed out in Sydney's southwestern suburbs.

An article published in a past edition of a quarterly, The Call of Islam, published by Sydney's Islamic Youth Movement, warns Muslims against enrolling in the secular education system or associating freely with non-Muslims. The article says that by sending Muslims to kindergarten and childcare centres, "we are sending our children to be suckled by the Shaytan (demon)".
===========================

ALSO SEE
Anti-West Fatwas Hit Australia

The Many Faces of A Living Religion

[Mowlana Vector]

Muslims Stroke Across the Cultural Divide
By: Andrew Murfett
The AGE (21 August 2005 )


Trainee instructor Anisa Buckley
discusses technique with Adeeba Nabalsi
as part of a special youth sport program
run by Young Muslims of Australia.
(Photo: Joe Castro)

THE cultural barriers preventing some Australians from learning to swim hit home when four members of Melbourne's Pakistani Muslim community drowned after straying into deep water at MacKenzie Falls in the Grampians on Christmas Day last year.

Three of the victims were attempting to save a 12-year-old girl. The tragedy highlighted cultural factors that mean many Muslim women never learn to swim.

Enter Young Muslims of Australia, a group that organises youth events including camps for Australian Muslims who are facing similar issues as they grow up.

Enisa Muranovic, the group's volunteer sport organiser, said that swimming was an ideal activity in her role of helping young Muslim women "get together and exercise".

"I hadn't had much swimming experience," Ms Muranovic said. "I knew a lot of people in the same boat. The last time I had lessons was when I was in primary school and I hadn't ever participated in the general swimming culture that's here, which I was always a little bit afraid of."

Ms Muranovic obtained a grant from the Australian Sports Commission and went to Swimming Victoria, where Kellie McMillan and Felicetta DiMonda designed a training program.

"We thought it was a great idea to get these women involved and have greater access to physical activity," Ms McMillan said.

"It's programs like this that look after those that have cultural or religious needs to get them to participate."

The program began with a beginners coaching course and continued yesterday with a course for teachers of swimming and water safety.

"We're learning general water safety, rescue, how to streamline your stroke and how to coach beginners," Ms Muranovic said.

The diverse backgrounds of the 10 women taking part in the program include Turkish, Chinese, Bosnian, Egyptian and Somali.

Ms McMillan said that once accredited the women wanted to have access to centres that offered women-only sessions.

"The biggest hurdle is finding places that hold women-only swimming lessons. Even a gym with large windows that people can see in isn't on. When there's ladies-only sessions they don't have to cover up, so there is the freedom of being able to swim around."

For more information on the program call 0423 141 185 or Swimming Victoria on 9686 5222.
===========

[Mowlana Vector]

Amal Awad: The Type Of Cover-up Freedom Lovers Need Not Fear

[Mowlana Vector]

Quote

Muslim Women in Science



Very seldom do positive depictions of Muslim women get portrayed by the western mainstream media, Fact Checking ...

[Mowlana Vector]

Jun 24 2005, on 07:57 PM, said:

Australian Policewoman Allowed to Wear Hijab

Maha Sukkar on Salam Cafe (Episode Fourteen) B)

[DerVishYuNus]

Assalamu Alaikum

are there any muslim firefighters?

[Mowlana Vector]

Muslim Sisters Bring Afghan Culture to Adelaide's Brides

[Mowlana Vector]

Quote

Tale of Three Muslim Women



Following racial tensions on the streets of Sydney, three women talk about living in Australia as Muslims. Featuring Amna Elghoul, Fatima Hawa and Zouhour Elghoul. More ...

[Mowlana Vector]

On the Beat in Regulation Blue Hijabs
Source: The Daily Telegraph (14 January 2006, Pg. 2)


Luma Naim and Sital Singh model Police Uniforms for
different religions. (Pic. Colin Murty/ Source)

Australian police officers will be still walking the beat in hijabs, after the Muslim head scarf was added to the acceptable uniform of one State force.

NSW police would consider adding the hijab to the uniform, after West Australian police yesterday said it would allow the head scarf, in regulation police blue.

Assistant Commisioner Garry Dobson said there was no shortage of Muslims joining the force in NSW and none ever had asked to wear the hijab.

“[But] if the hijab was a barrier to them applying , then we would look at it.” He said.

West Australian police added the Hijab and the turban to its uniform list in a bid to encourage more sikh and Muslim people to enlist.

At yesterday’s announcement, police Commissioner Kari O’callaghan said the innovation was a milestone in the 152 year history of the WA force.

The new directive allows officers who have religious or cultural requirements to adapt their uniform to meet these needs.

Suresh Rajan of the WA police ethnic advisory committee said it would make a difference.

“People from these communities can look at the people in the police service representing them and feel some sort of affinity,” he said.
=======================================

Force's New Look of Diversity

Navy blue hijabs, loose-fitting shirts and turbans emblazoned with the police logo will be part of a new range of West Australian police uniforms.
But the institution of religiously appropriate attire to attract to the ranks Muslims and Sikhs was lambasted yesterday by the police union and state Opposition.

Opposition police spokesman Rob Johnson asked if officers would also be permitted to interrupt their duties to pray to Mecca.

Victoria and Queensland police have already allowed culturally appropriate uniforms for Muslims and Sikhs on a case-by-case basis, but West Australian Police are the first to introduce blanket uniform exemptions to accommodate religious beliefs.

Superintendent Duane Bell said under the initiative, officers would be allowed to keep their beards or wear shoes made of synthetic materials rather than leather in order to remain faithful to their customs.

"In essence, we recognise that the police uniform has been a barrier to people wishing to become police officers, from certain ethnic backgrounds," Mr Bell said.


(Source)

Turbans and hijabs will remain in keeping with the rest of the uniform, emblazoned with the metal police badge and checkered hatband. Mr Bell said the hijab would have a velcro section so if offenders tried to pull the cloth, it would become loose rather than strangling the officer.

"If officers have already come in, they've had to shave their beard off or take off their turban," he said.

"We are now open to those officers who might wish to meet those observances."

He said the move was aimed at increasing police numbers and targeting new recruits from a variety of backgrounds.

But West Australian Police Union spokesman Mike Dean said people of different cultural backgrounds should be required to meet uniform standards. "Special treatment for special groups brings difficulties," he said.

Mr Johnson said the public might not react kindly to being policed by officers wearing unfamiliar uniforms.

Historian and author Geoffrey Blainey welcomed the initiative, saying it was an experiment and needed to be introduced slowly.

"This is an experiment and needs to be looked at as such," Mr Blainey said.

Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Minister Margaret Quirk said the Police Service needed more diversity in its ranks.

"It is very important that the composition of the police is more accurately representative of the composition of the community," she said.
==========================================

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