Muslim women don’t deserve this

Social media is rife with accounts of abuse as well as warnings to Muslim women to keep themselves and their children indoors until “it” is over — “it” presumably being the repetitiously declared and obsessively reported war against IS.

This is not new. Since the events of September 11, 2001, Muslim women have learnt that whenever a Muslim anywhere participates in any act of violence and aggression towards the West, no matter how precarious that link is to Australian Muslims, women, specifically covered Muslim women, will be the target of people’s anger, vilification and violence.

The impact of racism on a person is considerable and can damage self-esteem and wellbeing. In the current environment Muslim women no longer feel safe in public places.

That results in limiting their freedom of movement and as a consequence a loss of a sense of control over their lives and their capacity to make basic decisions. Their lives contract from fearfulness and a sense of not belonging in society.

In our contact with women, many state that once an event takes place, they are consistently fearful. Many start to keep their children away from school lest violence and hatred be levelled at them, too.

For an organisation committed to Muslim women’s equality, women withdrawing from Australian society undermines decades of work to realise what are very basic rights that most women around the world take for granted.

What compounds the situation for Muslim women, and makes the situation particularly devastating, has received little attention from the Australian media, its politicians or the public.

Firstly, IS is beyond the understanding and consciousness of most Australian Muslim women and yet when they are attacked on the street, it is because there is a particular type of individual who holds them responsible and wants to punish them for anything any Muslim does anywhere, anytime.

In part, this is the blaming of women whenever things go wrong in society and, in part, a xenophobia that continues to treat Muslims as if they are all the same: a type of subhuman species that lack individual personalities and moral code.

IS is not only killing and displacing Muslims in the Middle East, but is also targeting Muslims in the West. It would be a mistake to think that IS does not intend Muslim women to be targeted in the atmosphere of hatred and distrust it seeks to engender.

This is designed to make life untenable in the West, leaving Muslims as prime targets for racist backlash, with Muslim women carrying the far greater burden of that violence on the street.

IS has engendered in some Australians a profound fear, precisely as it intended.

It would be a mistake to assume it is just about physical causalities; it is also about bringing a nation psychologically to its knees, divided by hatred and misdirected anger.

Secondly, there is a wilful blindness of the facts when it comes to IS. Since its inception in 2004, its fighters have displaced, murdered, terrorised and beheaded a shocking number of Muslims. IS will never achieve these types of casualties in the West.

Muslim women have not only been the victims of mass slaughter, but they have also been raped as a strategy of war, sold into sexual slavery and been forced into sexual servitude for IS fighters.

IS has been terrorising Muslims and other faith communities in one form or another since 2003, well before 2011 with the development of the Syrian crisis. Many Muslims and Christians of Syrian, Iraqi, Kurdish and Lebanese descent have families overseas and fear for their lives; many have lost family members already or watched them forced into refugee camps.

For those living in Syria and Iraq, IS fighters from Australia are not seen as Muslim men returning home to establish an Islamic utopia. They are as seen as foreign invaders; they are seen as Australians or Britons or Americans. It is of no consequence that they are Muslim. Theirs is not a brand of Islam that most Muslims would ever accept as legitimate in the first place.

Muslims in Australia need to be supported during this complex and demanding period to continue their work with communities and youth. Muslim women are on the front line and their voices need to be heard, given they are often the targets of racist abuse and violence.

They should not be ignored in the conversations with government as they have been since the IS crisis crystallised.

Internationally, women are recognised as pivotal to efforts to eradicate radicalisation; Australia is lagging behind in that regard. All levels of government must lend their attention and support to the efforts of Muslims and other communities to maintain the rich diversity and harmony we attribute to Australian society.

JOUMANAH EL MATRAH IS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE AUSTRALIAN MUSLIM WOMEN’S CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS