Sept 14 2002 – Silma Ihram is headmistress of a primary school at Condell Park called the Noor Al-Houda Islamic College.
She is young, wears a head-scarf and speaks with an Australian accent — and she is not happy.
Recently the pupils in Years 4 to 6 were supposed to have swimming lessons at Auburn public pool but, thanks to an outpouring of ignorance on talkback radio, the lessons have been cancelled. They cannot be rescheduled until next year.
It is one of the saddest cases of public prejudice to have occurred in this city.
A problem with talkback radio is that presenters too often accept what they are told by callers.
On August 22, Alan Jones was told by a caller that Auburn pool was being closed for a certain period every week to everyone except Muslim women, who would “dive in, in all their clobber”.
Jones declared this was appalling and asked: “What’s that do for the hygiene question?” A week earlier, John Laws had told his listeners that men were being “banned from a public facility”, which had been “hijacked by the requirements of one particular religion”.
None of this was true. What was involved were 10 one-hour swimming lessons at a time when, according to pool manager Michael Turton, the indoor pool normally had three people in it.
It is true these three people would have been excluded for one hour but this often happens when schools — public, private, boys, girls, co-educational — book a pool for lessons or carnivals.
It is also true that no man would have been allowed in the building during the lessons because of Muslim beliefs, however if the pool had been booked by a Catholic girls’ school, men wandering around with no reason would hardly be welcome either.
In this case, the pool management put up posters three weeks before the lessons began explaining what was happening and received not one complaint.
Silma Ihram and Michael Turton confirmed that Noor Al-Houda and other Muslim schools all around Sydney have been hiring public swimming pools for more than seven years, under exactly the same terms, without a trace of bother until now.
When Silma Ihram became aware of the frenzy on the radio she called in and spoke with John Laws who, to his credit, changed his view and said: “The point she makes is valid. Maybe we all over-reacted — the pool wasn’t closed, it was booked.”
But it was too late. Auburn Council and the pool (which is run by a private company) received some angry phonecalls, with one man threatening to disrupt the lessons.
So Michael Turton decided to cancel the program for the safety of the children.
I asked Silma Ihram if she resented the cancellation.
She said it was better this way. She said there was so much focus on the Muslim community at the moment that some people were reacting to the smallest of things.
However, her community was not experiencing much direct prejudice.
“These people … express their views behind our backs or in the media, but not to our faces,” she said.
It is a great shame that things have got to the point where children are being denied the opportunity of learning to swim because of the threats of one man.
He should be made aware that there has been a women-only public pool at Coogee for decades.
When someone complained about this a few years ago
to the Anti-Discrimination Board, he was told (in official language) to go and get a life.
It wasn’t bad advice.
