By: Gina Rushton
Source: The Australian
Mother, author, Muslim, feminist: she wears many hats, but it is Tasneem Chopra’s headscarf that has always ignited conversation.
“What has fabric got to do with it anyway?” the 45-year-old asked. “When Muslim women are reduced to what they look like, what they wear and why they wear it, it opens up the floor for Muslim men and non-Muslim feminists to talk about every other important issue.”
Domestic violence prevention, racism and funding for community programs are topics she would rather be asked about.
“Instead I constantly have to explain who I am,” she said.
Social cohesion between Australia’s diverse ethnic and religious population will be the focal point of a forum next Wednesday at which Ms Chopra is to be the keynote speaker.
One Community Many Faiths will be held at the Hume Global Learning Centre at Broadmeadows, on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, where the question of social cohesion is a pressing one.
Accused Islamic State supporter Adam Brookman, killed teenager and self-styled jihadi Jake Bilardi, Syria war causality Roger Abbas and rebel force fighter Yusuf Toprakkaya all lived in a handful of suburbs surrounding the centre.
If Ms Chopra could reallocate federal government funding to target radicalization she would invest in “community grassroots engagement”.
“A lot of these young Muslims aren’t the ones who are engaging with community, going to Muslim events, youth groups and festivals; they are on the outer and they are not participating,” she said.
But she said young men had long been attracted to extremism.
“It is not the (sole) purview of Muslims, it is the basis of the formation of Nazis, bikie culture, or football gangs in England, and it happens across all races,” she said, noting it was historically linked with socio-economic challenges.
If the government took a pre-emptive approach to fund community and health workers in providing frontline mental health and social work services it would “get results”, but instead it is “flexing muscle” by “taking away passports and arming policemen’’, she said.
As a mother-of-three, Ms Chopra said she was concerned about NSW Premier Mike Baird’s recent announcement of an audit of prayer groups in state schools.
“Teachers and police don’t have nuanced training of what to look out for with extremism,” she said. “If my son has been on the computer for too long, will he be dobbed in?”
Raised in Bendigo during the 1980s, Ms Chopra said locals thought Muslims “flew magic carpets, didn’t eat pork and had four wives”, but “curiosity with the exotic turned to fear” after the September 11 attacks in the US, and now she fears for her own safety and that of her children.
“It is hard enough being a woman in a Western society. When you add a scarf to a woman that risk multiplies,” she said.
