Episode 78      35 min 31 sec

Accounting for Imams

Accounting for Imams

VOICEOVER
You're listening to Up Close, produced at the University of Melbourne, Australia.  I’m Eric van Bemmel, senior producer of Up Close.  In this episode we hear conversations on the roles and predicaments of imams in mosques in Australia and elsewhere, as well as on more secular sources of information on Islam, namely teachers in the school classroom.  Later we’ll hear from lawyer and writer, Irfan Yusuf, who gives his frank, yet compassionate take on the trials and tribulations of imams in Western, non-Muslim majority countries such as Australia.  We’ll also speak to Dr Eeqbal Hashim on how teachers in schools, in some ways complementing the work of imams, can be helped to better communicate Islam and its meaning for Muslim and non-Muslim students.
But first, for a quick glimpse of the imam’s work in the Muslim community, Up Close’s Jacky Angus spoke with PhD student Anisa Buckley, whose own research looks into matters of Muslim women and divorce, including the imam’s role.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, Anisa, I’d like to start with you telling me, please, what exactly is the role of the imam in the Muslim community?

ANISA BUCKLEY
In Australia the term imam is usually associated with people who are in mosques.  They do functional roles such as leading the prayer, looking after, say, for example, overseeing marriages, divorces, providing religious guidance.  They also oversee things such as funeral procedures, burial procedures and so on.  So their role is a very functional role and, mostly, they’re kind of seen as the religious leaders of the community.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, they’re not leaders in the sense of being priests, are they, in Islam?  Can you explain that?

ANISA BUCKLEY
So I suppose to compare it to, say, the Christian faith, there’s no need for any imam in the meantime intermediary in matters of worship.  So any Muslim can go to the mosque and pray and they can pray at home, they can pray anywhere.  I guess the role of the imam, and it makes it a bit different from a Christian priest, is just that they offer services and they offer guidance and religious advice to people who just want to know whether they’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing as a Muslim.

JACKY ANGUS
Are they trained for that?  It sounds like a complex role.  I know that Christian priests or Catholic priests, and most of the protestant sect – and, in fact, most Christian groups – do train their leaders.  I realise there’s a difference in terms of the religious symbolism of the leader but, nonetheless, you'd think that an imam would require a fair amount of training for that complex role.

ANISA BUCKLEY
Because of the nature of giving religious guidance it would be advisable to have some kind of religious track and field, and there a number of imams who do have religious training.  However, there are others who provide religious guidance and are recognised as imams purely based upon the fact that they have served the community for so many years and they’ve just sort of picked up things along the way.  But some of them are not necessarily trained in the sense of having qualifications and recognised degrees and so on in theology.

JACKY ANGUS
Because it’s an informal kind of position in a way, although obviously a position of greatly respected and symbolic leadership like this, are they accountable in any way to the community?

ANISA BUCKLEY
Because it’s largely unregulated, like some imams are officially appointed and therefore if there are complaints they can probably go through the Board of the Mosque is someone has a problem with an imam.  However, there are others who do it largely on a voluntary basis and so, in a sense, it’s very hard to make them accountable, I suppose, for some of things that they do.  It’s just depending on the congregation of that particular mosque; if there’s a number of people who want to do something different or they have a particular issue, then they can do something about it in terms of giving their opinion to the imam himself or to the people who employ him.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, the other side of accountability, I suppose, is support.  I’m just wondering whether in this role which is pretty demanding and, as you say, involves English, which might be the second language – and, in fact, a diversity of ethnic representation – I’m wondering whether they get much support or whether they get much professional training?
You see, one of the areas I’m thinking, Anisa, is obviously the area of women.  Because the imam is always a man – and as we know, even from the Church structure and the Jew structure – that there are issues that come up in a religious community that women really want some guidance with or some help; whether it’s a marital issue or whether it’s about children or whether it’s quite personal.  So what are some of the challenges that an imam might face when dealing with a personal problem that a woman has come to him with?

ANISA BUCKLEY
Well, I know for one example when I was interviewing an imam myself, a husband who didn't agree with the decision the imam gave just barged in on our interview.  So imams are constantly abused by people of the community who don’t agree with their decisions, people don’t respect their personal space in terms of their having a meeting with somebody else.  So imams have to deal with perhaps a lot of irate members of the Muslim community who aren't happy with the decisions they make, particularly those who decide in favour of the wife.
A Muslim woman might be hesitate to go to an imam because they feel embarrassed about talking perhaps about some of the more personal issues in the relationship.  For example, if the husband has particular psychological issues or if there’s even just basic issues to do with sexual health and so on, it’s sort of a bit taboo to talk about these issues to anybody else and so some of them prefer to go say, for example, to an imam’s wife.  Some imams are very accommodating in this aspect and they really try to bring in their wives or other women in the community who can be a buffer so the women can talk about their issues.  Then that particular woman who’s assisting the imam might ask for a specific legal ruling or so on in terms of Islamic law about what options the woman has or what options her husband has.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, that seems a very important issue, actually, because unless there’s a formal place for woman in religious communities – including, obviously, a mosque community – then it becomes so informal that it could be subject to sort of gossip.  It seems to be very important that there’s a clear dividing line between the role of, say, the imam’s wife as a counsellor, and the role of the imam’s wife as a woman in the community who might be talking to other woman about someone else.  Does this happen?  Is there starting to be a demarcation line which implies a sort of professional integrity on the part of the person who’s listening to someone’s problems?

ANISA BUCKLEY
I know that there’s one Sharia Council in the UK that I interviewed one of the imams of, and they have a woman counsellor as a professional staff member there.  Because a lot of the women that I interviewed here in Australia said that they were really quite embarrassed going to another man to talk about all these issues, when a lot of the issues to do with a husband and wife aren't even spoken about to say, for example, their parents and their in-laws and so on; it’s supposed to be just a really private issue.

JACKY ANGUS
Do you feel that in terms of how Muslims feel about this, it’s not seen about perhaps a bit of a threat, a bit of a sign of being incorporated into a Western concept of what goes on?

ANISA BUCKLEY
I think among the younger generation of Muslims, which is where most of this sort of professionalism is taking place – even amongst say, for example, there’s Muslim lawyers, Muslim psychologists, Muslim counsellors – they can see that there’s a need to be able to have someone who is in tune with a lot of the issues, particularly the legal ramifications of some of the fallouts of the divorce and custody and so on, and they can provide a bit of from both sides.
However, I think a few imams are open to it and I think it would be very beneficial for perhaps more imams to be aware of a lot of the services that are out the, so that way it takes a lot of the load off them.  Also, they might give advice that might not be necessarily the best for that particular couple, for example, if they are facing serious mental health issues.  The imam is just doing as much as he can but there’s a sort of limit as to how much he can do, so to be able to refer to more specialised people in the Muslim community might be a good option.

JACKY ANGUS
One of the things that interests me with this area is the extent to which new Muslims, that is converts – and women, obviously, inclusively because, you know, sometimes they do feel excluded – are given actual help and support to understand Islam in more depth from the point of after they’ve been converted, and whether they feel that the imam can help them in that way.

ANISA BUCKLEY
I think some people who have become Muslim have done so through attending mosques or through knowing people.  So the mosque becomes a focal part of their daily life in terms of the Friday prayers for men and, perhaps, children’s classes and there’s lots of religious classes that take place in mosques.  So for some converts imams are providing them with answers.  However, I suppose for women sometimes mosques are not necessarily the most friendly places and there are a number of young Muslims, men and women, who are providing support for converts – sometimes in the mosque but, increasingly, outside of the mosque to be able to provide them with an open space where converts can ask whatever they want – and imams are sometimes invited to be part of that discussion.

JACKY ANGUS
Now, Anisa, I’d like you to tell me a bit more about your own research and precisely what is it about?

ANISA BUCKLEY
My area is looking at how Muslim women negotiate a complete divorce.  So, in that sense, because inevitably they will go to an imam to get a divorce – if they’ve had a registered marriage in Australia they will want to have a civil divorce – however, a lot of the Muslim women that I interviewed in my research found it difficult getting a divorce from imams because the predominant opinion among many imams is that the husband is the one that gives the divorce.  For women to be able to petition for a divorce requires quite specific grounds which a lot of women are unable to provide.  So, for example, a lot of women have found it difficult to provide appropriate grounds to the imam’s satisfaction such as a cruelty or that he is not providing, say, a proper household for her, that he’s demanding a certain number of things, he’s preventing her from going out and working as much as she would like, perhaps.

JACKY ANGUS
There’s a fairly liberal perspective on a woman’s role in Australia, you're saying, so a woman would thereby assume that she would be permitted to go and work, for example.  Is that what you're saying?

ANISA BUCKLEY
Mmm.

JACKY ANGUS
There are no strict rules, as there might be in Saudi Arabia, about a woman’s role.

ANISA BUCKLEY    
Yeah.  So, as part of this idea of what constitutes a complete divorce, I found from my interviews with Muslim women, although they feel that a religious divorce is very important to them, if they feel that they cannot get one from an imam it does not mean that they are eternally attached to their former husband.  For example, there are cases with a husband may give them a civil divorce but then say, I withhold a religious divorce from you and you can't get married again, which is considered a limping marriage.

However, from the interviews that I did with Muslim women, I found that even though their husband might say that, they will still persist and find a way to get what they feel is a complete divorce.  So if that involves doing a bit of imam shopping to find an imam that will give them and be sort of supportive of their needs, or whether it needs that they try and then they just say, look, I don't really need a religious divorce, I consider myself divorced in the sight of God, or I do not need that paper from the imam, I feel that I’ve done all the requirements.

JACKY ANGUS
This is when they have a divorce from the state?

ANISA BUCKLEY
Yeah.  So in that sense, I found that although some women might still be helpless in that they feel that they cannot get married again because of this husband says, no, you can't because you're still married to me.  The majority of women that I interviewed, which was 20 – just that sample that I had who were from a variety of different backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds, educational backgrounds – even though they may have had getting a religious divorce they still were able to move on with their lives.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, in terms of the findings of your research, would you say that there is actually a cultural shift in Australia from the perspective of Muslim men in this regard?

ANISA BUCKLEY
Yeah, I think a lot of the Muslim men are becoming a bit more aware of the fact that women in Australia have access to a number of support services.  They are becoming more aware of the fact that women are going to do things whether they try to stop them or not.  So there are those who are becoming more supportive and who are trying to really take a different approach than perhaps their parents did in their home country, back in a Muslim country.  I think if Muslim men and women work together, side by side on a lot of these issues to be able to better the outcomes for both – because divorce is not something that just affects one side, both sides eventually are going to experience some fallout, whether it be depression and so on.  So it’s issues the affect both men and women, and the more men and women get involved in providing these services the better.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, Anisa, thank you very much.  It’s been most interesting.

ANISA BUCKLEY
You're welcome.  Thanks for having me on the show.

VOICEOVER
PhD student, Anisa Buckley, there speaking with Jackie Angus.  You're listening to Up Close from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Next up we hear from Irfan Yusuf, Sydney-based lawyer, blogger and author of the recently published memoir, Once Were Radicals.  Here Irfan Yusuf spells out his views on imams and the demands, fair and unfair, that are heaped upon them by their employers and communities.  What should we expect of imams and are they up to the task?  Irfan Yusuf spoke to Up Close’s Jacky Angus.

IRFAN YUSUF
A lot of imams in Australia are, we use this term they’re imported, as it were.  In other words, they come from overseas, their first job in Australia and their only job in Australia is to be the imam of a particular mosque.

JACKY ANGUS
That’s really leading the prayer rather than necessarily leading and understanding of the Koran?

IRFAN YUSUF
It’s usually limited, yes, to ceremonial matters but it depends on the community.  In some communities the imams have a very high status.  In some communities imams are very much people that you only call upon when you want your son to get married and you need someone to perform the marriage, so you call the imam.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, in Islam, of course, the Sharia is a very complex area of Islamic law.  Would it be fail to settle that some imams are not experts actually on the Sharia?  Is that a fair comment?

IRFAN YUSUF
The other thing, of course, we have in Australia is that we don’t have actually a system or an agreed system to accredit imams.  But because they came here a long time ago, they’ve been leading the press for as long as anyone can remember and so they’re imam.  I guess you can distinguish between an imam as in someone who leads the prayers and an alim, as in someone who is a religious scholar.  They might be called an alim or a sheikh in the Arab world, or in India they’re often called maulana.  In Indonesia they’re called kiai, or if they’re female nyai.  You know, these are honorific terms given to people who have completed a certain course of study.  Now, many people in Australia who were employed as imams by Mosque Committees are, in fact, alims – are, in fact, religious scholars.

imams have a very unenviable job.  Often they’re leadership role is limited, if any – in some communities it’s very limited – simply because there are some ethnic Muslim communities in Australia who are very middle class, middle-upper class, they look down upon imams.  In their culture the profession of the imam is regarded quite – it’s like, well, there’s one interesting story about a man who came to an imam in India and said, imam, sahib, tell me why it is that our imams are so silly, why do they say such silly things.  The imam responded, well, if you have two sons one of them is rather intelligent, the other isn’t as intelligent – which one would you send to London or New York to study and which one would you sent to my madrassa, so you reap what you sew.  

But it’s true, in some ethnic Muslim communities the position of an imam isn't regarded as terribly important.  Even where it is regarded as important many imams, unfortunately, are in a very vulnerable situation and, in fact, many of them are poorly paid.  I mean, I’ve seen contracts of imams where they’re working 60 or 70 hours a week – because they don’t just lead the prayers, then they have all these other expectations loaded upon them.  I’ve seen imams contracts where people are paid $30-40,000 a year.

JACKY ANGUS
Australian dollars?

IRFAN YUSUF
Australian dollars a year.  But the way that they’re sort of, as it were, sucked into this job is that when they’ve overseas – I know of one imam who was in Pakistan and representatives of a mosque in Sydney went to visit him in Pakistan to offer him this job and they translated his salary into Pakistani rupees.  Of course, when he saw it he thought, wow, this is a lot of money, but it was only when he got to Australia with his wife and five kids that he realised that it wasn’t much at all.

JACKY ANGUS
I suppose, too, in Australia the role of imam, in a sense, is almost a de facto religious minister and so an imam might be faced with a whole range of other problems in counselling and support of the family that he could perhaps handle better in a more traditional society where there was a back up community.  I mean, what I’m really trying to say is, I guess, the imam is seen almost as a professional support when he really hasn't been trained for that on the whole?

IRFAN YUSUF
The imam is regarded as a professional support; he is not treated as a professional, he’s not paid as a professional.

JACKY ANGUS
He’s not trained as a professional either, is he?

IRFAN YUSUF
Well, he’s not trained necessarily as a counsellor.  I know that if you want to study to become a minister of the Anglican Church or, you know, another church there is a set curriculum that you must follow, and I understand that an essential part of that is things like counselling and psychology and what have you.  So, Christian ministers have that role of being a counsellor institutionalised.

The other thing, of course, is that a lot of imams are in a very alien social environment.  It’s hard enough for them to understand the environment that they’re living in.

JACKY ANGUS
They may not even speak good English, some of the news ones.

IRFAN YUSUF
Many of them – most imams do not speak very good English at all, and I think the executives of their mosques who employ them would like to keep if that way because, of course, if this imam could speak English then he may well be able to speak more forthrightly and communicate more forthrightly about some of the funny business that goes on in executive committees, and executives don’t want that.  I mean, I’ve seen situations where imams have been sacked for talking about financial irregularities in mosques.  imams have been threatened; imams have had all sorts of nasty things said about them.  What their executive does is they have them out here on a three month visa and, of course, if they don’t toe the line then they’re sent back.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, are there any other societies that have dealt better with the standardisation of Islam and the professionalisation of an imam?

IRFAN YUSUF
I must say that in Turkey this has worked really well and that’s reflected in fact that wherever Turks have gone, wherever they’re migrated to, they’ve taken that system with them.  The Turkish Government – the largest department or ministry within the Turkish Government is the Ministry for Religious Affairs.  It’s also called the Diyanet and the Diyanet actually trains imams, it has its own curriculum.  It doesn't just train them in religion; it trains them in a whole heap of other areas.  If they’re sent on overseas posts, such as to Australia, they also have to learn at least some basic English and they also have to learn something about the culture here.  What I’ve noticed with the Turkish imams who are employed under the Diyanet system, many of them are very young, they’re quite ambitious as well because being an imam is a profession in Turkey, and they’re very educated.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, there’s a certain irony in the fact that, of course, Turkey is ostensibly a secular state and yet does so well by its imams.

IRFAN YUSUF
It does and there have been other countries that have tried to do that, although they’ve tended to do that more as a way of controlling what imams say.  I think in Turkey there’s a little bit of that, too, but I think what’s happened is that the imams themselves have been so enterprising and they have used that to their advantage to make their position quite strong.  It means that it’s a real profession to be an imam.

JACKY ANGUS
The other area of imams, too, which is interesting is their perception in the wider community, not just the Muslim community, and their perception as people who have undue influence on the young.  How do you read that situation here?

IRFAN YUSUF
Look, I think that’s a bit of a furphy.  There has been an enormous amount of concern about where do young Muslims get their information from about their faith.  First of all, there are a helluva lot of young Muslims who really aren't terribly interested in getting information about their faith because it’s simply just as there are many people who tick the Christian box on their census form who aren't terribly interested.  I think, though, there is a growing interest among Muslims – they’re not coming back to their faith but they’re just curious about their faith, simply because they see it getting so much negative publicity that they’re sort of wondering, well, how do I answer some of this publicity.  Often it’s less about understanding your faith and more about talking about your people and your community.

JACKY ANGUS
So it’s an identity issue?

IRFAN YUSUF
Yeah, a lot of it is very much an identity issue.  Certainly, where do they go?  Well, given the fact that the vast majority of the imams cannot speak their language, cannot understand their culture, it’s highly unlikely that a lot of young people will go to imams.  Although that’s not necessarily the case; there are imams who do provide services for young people – a lot of it is at a very grassroots level in their own local community or within their own ethnic or linguistic group.

JACKY ANGUS
I was interested also in their image outside the Muslim community in the wider community.  For example, we know that not only in Australia but elsewhere, the imam is often seen – and not necessarily correctly – as a rather radical element and, you know, giving his khutb, giving his sermon in a way that might incite young people.  So I’m thinking, for example, I know that in the Middle East in Egypt there’s been a great effort to professionalise the imams and encourage them to speak peace rather than to speak jihad, putting it crudely.  What’s the situation in Australia, for example?

IRFAN YUSUF
My understanding of – well, first of all, I have seen very few instances of where imams are …

JACKY ANGUS
Radical?

IRFAN YUSUF
… preaching a message that could be regarded as politically dangerous.  I haven’t seen that.  Where there are young people who are being some would say radicalised, they’re not getting it from the mainstream imams, they’re getting it from fringe groups that represent fringe denominations, fringe ideas and they tend to be people who are outside the mainstream imam sector.

The mainstream cultural ethnic imam, you can say a lot about it – you can say it might be somewhat culturally irrelevant – but I would not regard it personally, from what I have seen, as being terribly radical.  One imam who has really been pilloried in the media – who I myself have had occasion to criticise, one imam from Sydney – that same imam many people don’t know that he founded the first Muslim women’s refuge in Sydney.  Many people don't know that he was a figure who was very much involved in bridging the gap between Sunni and Shia denominations in Sydney, that he was very involved in trying to keep the influence of Middle Eastern governments and embassies out of mosque affairs.  These are things that we don’t hear about.  We sort of think that imams are one-dimensional creatures but they’re certainly not.  

I think that there should be some system of accreditation and the difficulty I see with implementing that is that, although the Muslim communities have moved on, although the vast majority of Muslims are under 35 or whatever – university educated – but, unfortunately, the way that religious institutions are managed is not reflective of the reality of Muslim communities.  To give you an idea of how unrepresentative a lot of religious institutions are, religious institutions and their umbrella organisations have not bothered to do any research on who goes to the mosque, why they go, how often they go, and yet they’re speaking on behalf of, you know …

JACKY ANGUS
All Muslims.

IRFAN YUSUF
… of 360,000 people in Australia who just happen to tick the box that says Muslim on their census form.

JACKY ANGUS
On that note, thank you very much, Irfan Yusuf.

IRFAN YUSUF
No worries.

VOICEOVER
You're listening to Up Close from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

It’s not only imams that can help facilitate an identity of Islam but educators, too, have an important part to play.  Our third guest for this episode is Dr Eeqbal Hashim, a consultant to the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies here at the University of Melbourne, Australia.  Dr Hashim’s research is the history of Muslim education and he is currently overseeing a series of workshops for the professional development of teachers in schools organised under the auspices of the University of Melbourne.  Dr Hashim was interviewed by Jacky Angus.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, that’s the aim of this course of workshops?

EEQBAL HASHIM
There’s two main aims with Education with Muslims, that's the title of the workshops.  The first aim is to develop a greater literacy of Islam and Muslims in schools about both primary and secondary level, and in the future we hope to expand it to the tertiary sector.  The second aim is to increase the engagement of Muslims, especially Muslim communities in relation to schools.  We find that a lot of Muslim students go to school but yet their parents are somewhat not engaged in school activities, or the school does not seem to be able to find a way to engage effectively with Muslim communities locally or internationally.

JACKY ANGUS
So, in a sense, you're talking about both the general population and their lack of knowledge of Islam, which would obviously filter through if Muslims themselves were empowered to know more about their own religion?

EEQBAL HASHIM
That's right.  The programme aims to empower both Muslims and non-Muslims through the school sector.  We focus on teachers because we feel that teachers can be core facilitators in developing a literacy of Islam and Muslims.  We find, even at the tertiary sector, that students are not aware about Islam and Muslims because they have not gone through a structured programme of knowing Islam or Muslims throughout the world.  So we think that by targeting schools, both non-Muslim and Muslim schools, we can develop a better literacy of Islam and Muslims and hopefully that will filter through to the tertiary sector as well as the workforce.

JACKY ANGUS
When you say the tertiary sector, I suppose you mean also that this kind of knowledge can be incorporated into actual training of teachers at university level?

EEQBAL HASHIM
Very much so, yes.  In running these workshops I have been told by academics in the field of education that if the workshops are successful, if they run continuously for several years, there’s definitely the opportunity to try to introduce a component about Islam and Muslims into pre-service teacher training.

JACKY ANGUS
Sounds like a good idea.  Now, can we get more specific; what subjects are covered in these workshops exactly?

EEQBAL HASHIM
The first point that we look at is a brief introduction to Muslims in education.  We also look at a brief introduction to Muslims in Australia – where they come from, what they believe in, their cultures, their linguistic background and their concerns about living in Australia.  We also talk about strategies and methods of how to develop Islam and Muslim literacy through the curriculum, and usually the workshops end with a panel discussion involving community members or members of the Muslim community who offer advice and offer suggestions or respond to questions in relation to community engagement or Muslim community engagement.

JACKY ANGUS
I guess that includes, too, the role of the imam …

EEQBAL HASHIM
That's right.

JACKY ANGUS
… versus his own community.

EEQBAL HASHIM
Yes.

JACKY ANGUS
I mean, presumably he needs professional development, too?

EEQBAL HASHIM
That's right, yeah, and how we’ve used imams in these workshops is to not actually have them as participants but more so as contributors to the workshops.  So we get them in, we call them in, we brief them about what the workshops are about – we tell them that it’s about developing greater community engagement with Muslims, we tell them it’s about developing a literacy of Muslims in the world today – and they come in, they sit as part of the panel.  They offer their suggestions, they answer questions about the Muslim community as well as their role in the Muslim community.

JACKY ANGUS
Now, when I think about education in Islam, I think suppose I think of the grand schemes, you know, the contribution of science of Islam, history, art, politics; are these a bit too ambitious for you or have you tackled them yet?

EEQBAL HASHIM
These are very big topics, very big subjects – the contribution of Islam to science and the arts, et cetera.  But through the workshops we find that we can include a bit of information about Islam’s contribution to the development of the human civilisation by talking about the ways in which teachers of history, of art, of literature, or mathematics and science, how they can actually introduce some of Islam and Islam’s contributions to these fields of study.

JACKY ANGUS
Now, I understand from what you're saying that you're targeting primarily teachers.  Are you targeting any other groups that provide services to Muslims as a whole:

EEQBAL HASHIM
We are.  In our workshop so far we’ve had not only teachers, we’ve had education representatives from government, we’ve had representatives from private educational bodies.  We’ve also had youth workers, we’ve had social workers, psychologists coming in who work closely with Muslims.  So we get a broad range of people and they feel that, as long as they’re working with Muslims in some form of education or social development, the workshop is very relevant for them.

JACKY ANGUS
Have you had any examples or have you been following any paradigm from other countries?  I’m just wondering what’s happening, for example, in England in this area?

EEQBAL HASHIM
We’re not really following any paradigm from any country at the moment.  We are, however, using a lot of what has been done in Australia in relation to, for instance, indigenous education.  I work closely with the Australian Curriculum Studies Association; they are a private educational body with a huge membership and they specialise in curriculum studies.  So I’ve worked closely with them in developing this project and we have utilised, for instance, resources on indigenous education and we’ve tried to use that template and apply it to, for instance, education with Muslims, because we see some parallels in the issues that have been covered in indigenous education.  Also we feel that to borrow the experience of Muslims from England, for instance, or Europe, would not be reflective of the concerns of Australia, necessarily.  So we prefer to use uniquely Australian approaches in this case but yet, at the same time, trying to contextualise that to the Muslim experience in Australia.

JACKY ANGUS
Because, in a sense, you're developing the Australian Muslim identity and Diaspora, aren't you?

EEQBAL HASHIM
Yes.  In regards to identity, that's what these workshops also aim to do.  We don’t aim to present what Islam is supposed to be as opposed to how Muslims perceive Islam.  So we talk about a range of different perspectives in Islam, a range of different ways of practising Islam, as opposed to Islam should be such and such.

JACKY ANGUS
So you're taking a fairly permissive educational line.  I’m just wondering whether this, in fact, arouses any anxiety amongst the participants?

EEQBAL HASHIM
No, it doesn't.  Teachers feel reaffirmed.  They feel that by us telling them that there is great diversity amongst Muslims, they feel a sense of comfort that they know that there is not one way to deal with the concerns of Muslims in education in Australia.  Different Muslims have different concerns about their children’s education in Australia, so therefore each case is almost unique.  One of the skills that we try to develop through these workshops is the ability to listen to different concerns and the ability to appreciate a diversity of perspectives about Islam and religious practice.

JACKY ANGUS
Can I ask about Indonesia?  Because Indonesia, of course, is Australia’s closest neighbour with a huge Muslim population and a history, at least in the past, of a very tolerant, open kind of Islam as well as perhaps a more conservative one.  What are the models there for education of, say, leaders in the Muslim community in Indonesia?  Are any of these things relevant to what you're doing?

EEQBAL HASHIM
Definitely.  I think Indonesia’s one of the most progressive nations in terms of Islamic education reform.  This is seen clearly in their very comprehensive Islamic curriculum for their universities, where they combine studies in the sciences and philosophy in the Humanities with the classical Islamic studies as well as modern Islamic studies.  I think Indonesia should be a model for the whole world, I think.  It’s a big call but I think there is much to learn from Indonesia.

But one of the problems is because when it comes to the study of Islam Arabic is often given primacy.  Although the Indonesian scholars do speak Arabic and write excellent Arabic, most people would rather turn to the heart of Arabic, which is in Arabia or in the Gulf or in the Middle East.  So when we talk about Arabic Islamic studies then they will turn their faces towards the Middle East.  When we talk about English based Islamic studies, which is very influential in the West, then people would rather turn to the UK or the US or even Australia more so than Indonesia.

So the Indonesians find themselves in this gap that in the end, although the scholars of Islam are proficient in Arabic, Indonesian and English, they end up mostly servicing the Archipelago and, to an extent, Singapore and Malaysia.; this is a pity because I think their ideas are very progressive and that there is much to be gained.

JACKY ANGUS
It’s interesting you say they’re progressive because, of course, you know, the stereotypical view is that there are just these very authoritarian madrassa run through the whole education system in Indonesia and that is not correct, is it.  You're saying that there’s a whole selection, a whole variety of different methods and approaches to the teaching of Islam in Indonesia?

EEQBAL HASHIM
The majority of these madrassas, which they call pesantrens, anyway, in Indonesia, are very moderate.  They focus more on spiritual development, classical Islamic studies more so than any radical line of thought.  Of course, we tend to think of Indonesia, or the pesantrens or the madrassas of Indonesia as being quite conservative.  It’s conservative in terms of learning but not conservative in terms of worldview or mindset.  I mean, the examples that we see in relation to militancy or terrorism is by no means representative of the majority.  The nature of the majority of madrassas in Indonesia is somewhat unknown to us in Australia, for instance, which is very unfortunate considering that they are our immediate neighbours.

JACKY ANGUS
Well, thank you very much for being a guest of Up Close, Dr Eeqbal Hashim.

EEQBAL HASHIM
Thank you, Jacky.

VOICEOVER
You’ve been listening to Up Close from the University of Melbourne, Australia.  Relevant links, a full transcript and more information on this episode can be found at our website at upclose.unimelb.edu.au.  You can leave a comment on this or any episode of Up Close by clinking on the comment link at the bottom of each episode page. Up Close is brought to you by the Marketing and Communications Division in association with Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Up Close is created by Kelvin Param and myself, Eric van Bemmel.  This episode was produced by Kelvin Param, Eric van Bemmel and Miles Brown.  Audio engineering by Miles Brown, Craig McArthur and Ben Loveridge.  Theme music was performed by Sergio Ercole.  I’m Eric van Bemmel.  Until next time thank you for joining Up Close. Goodbye.