I love finding out about how Islam has made its way around the world and changed cultural landscapes: particularly if it took an unusual route. Take for instance Australia. It’s a well-known fact that Australia has a significant Muslim population (340,392 in 2006). Given as to the best of my limited geographic and historical knowledge, the crusades didn’t get down under, how did Islam arrive in Oz?
We Go Back, Way Back…
Muslims got to mainland Australia in the 16th and 17th Centuries, predating European settlers. The first contacts between Aborigines and Muslims include some of the first links Aborigines had with the outside world.
In the 1600’s and 1700’s, Indonesian fishermen and traders from the Macassar region sailed to the northern coasts of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. The Macassarese traded with Aborigines and fished for ‘trepang’ (sea cucumber), which they sold as a delicacy on the Chinese market.
Inter-marriages between Aborigines and Macassarese took place, and the Macassans left their mark on Australia in its language, art, economy and even genetics in the Maccassan and indigenous descendants.
In 2003, there were around 1000 indigenous Aboriginal Muslims and the community is said to be growing rapidly.
The Afghan Camel Drivers and the Settlers
A wave of Muslim immigrants from coastal Africa and British Empire island territories arrived in Australia as sailors and convicts in the early fleets of European settlers during the late 1700s.
But it was the Afghan camel drivers that arrived in the 1800s that represented the first significant semi-permanent Australian Muslim population. They played a crucial role in the early exploration of inland Australia and developed the rail lines and the overland telegraph line between Adelaide and Darwin in the 1870s, which eventually linked Australia to London via India. While they were building the railways they established a string of ‘Ghan’ towns were established along the railway. Most had at least one corrugated iron mosque.
The introduction of motorized transport put pay to the cameleers. Some returned to their homelands, others settled in parts of the Northern Territory. Many married local Indigenous people and descendants of the Afghan cameleers have played key roles many of Australia’s Islamic communities.
Muslims recruited from Dutch and British colonies in South East Asia worked in the Australian pearling industry as the 19th century closed and the 20th century dawned. Australia’s first mosque was built at Marree in 1861.
A Fresh Start
After World War II, many European Muslims, mainly Turks, took advantage of the post war boom and job opportunities to seek a better life in Australia.
Bosnian and Kosovar Muslim migrants arrived in Australia in the 1960s and played an important part in the construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electricity Scheme in New South Wales.
Lebanese Muslims also began arriving in larger numbers after the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975.
Today, Australia’s Muslims are an extremely diverse group, with the majority coming from Lebanon and Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq and Indonesia. Since the 1970s, many Muslims have also migrated under refugee or humanitarian programs, and from Somalia, Sudan and other African countries.
Australia’s Muslim communities are most prolific in Sydney and Melbourne. Since the 70’s, Muslim communities have developed mosques and Islamic schools and made a vital contribution to modern Australia’s diverse, multicultural society.