Indigenous Muslims In Australia, Research: Need Your Help!!!

Indigenous Muslims in Australia
Assalamu Alaikum

Dear Brothers and Sisters, I would like to personally invite you to read this article and to help the author to conduct research into a very interesting and important topic about Indigenous Muslims in Australia.

Amir Colan
Sahwa Productions
http://www.muslimsinaustralia.com


Aboriginal Muslims

Hi, I’m Peta Stephenson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne. I’m currently conducting research into the growing number of Indigenous Muslims in Australia. If you are or know of any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australians who are Muslim, please contact me at:
p.stephenson@unimelb.edu.auThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or on (03) 8344 5989.

To date I have interviewed around 40 people from all over the country (including Anthony Mundine)! Some of my interviewees are not practising Muslims per se, but they grew up with Muslim fathers (or grandfathers). Some of these connections have come through the pearl-shelling industry when Muslim ‘Malays’ came to Australia (from the late 1800s to the post-war period) and met local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

Other Aboriginal people - in places like South Australia and Western Australia- met Muslim Afghan cameleers during roughly the same time period. Then, there are those that have no family connection to Muslim forebears, but who have decided to identify with Islam nonetheless.

I am wanting to show the broadest possible spectrum of Indigenous meetings or encounters with Muslims through time. I am hoping that my work (which will be written up as a book in the next couple of years), will show that unlike non-Indigenous Australia, which is extremely paranoid about Muslims, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have been meeting, trading and working with, and marrying Muslim people for generations.

Often interviews take up to an hour or so, and I send people a copy of the transcript afterwards. I also send my interviewees any papers that use their story BEFORE they are published, so that they can ask for changes or deletions if they aren't happy with something I've said. If you’re interested in becoming involved, please get in touch.

Dr Peta Stephenson
ARC Postdoctoral Fellow
Centre for Islamic Law & Society
Asia Institute
The University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010 Australia
T: +61 3 8344 5989
F: +61 3 9349 4870
E: p.stephenson@unimelb.edu.au
W: www.asiainstitute.unimelb.edu.au