Prepared by: Kais Al‐Momani Nour Dados Marion Maddox Amanda Wise C
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CHAPTER 2: POLITICAL PARTICIPATION & MUSLIMS IN AUSTRALIAThis chapter sets out our working definition of political participation, outlines the level of political participation of Muslims in Australia, and identifies the diverse social locations through which this political participation takes place. The chapter also flags some international trends and discusses how Australia compares. Muslims arrived in Australia before the earliest Europeans and have formed a vital part of Australia’s social and cultural life ever since. Yet only two Muslims, Adem Somyürek MLC (Vic.) and Shaoquett Moselmane MLC (NSW), currently sit in any Australian parliament. Moreover, the last two federal elections featured anti‐ Muslim electoral smear campaigns (Greenway in 2004 and Lindsay in 2007), while several federal politicians have made comments portraying Muslims as a threat to Australian values and political institutions. Australia’s formal political institutions need to do more to foster Muslim participation, and to minimise activities or innuendos which send a ‘not welcome’ message to Muslim would‐be participants. Australian Muslims have, however, achieved political influence through a number of avenues, detailed later in this chapter. WHAT IS POLITICAL PARTICIPATION?Following the classic study by Verba et al. (1995), we understand political participation to include a broad range of behaviours directed toward influencing the political scene. Beyond voting and standing for office, political participation can include joining a local or issue‐specific action group, volunteering to support a political campaign, writing to a Member of Parliament or raising funds for a political campaign. In one respect, we cast a wider net than Verba and colleagues. They do not count writing to a newspaper or phoning talkback radio as a form of political participation. We follow Sinno in recognising such participation in public discourse as a form of political participation, because it increases the visibility and public understanding of the points of view of members of groups which are underrepresented in public debate. Letters to the editor, opinion columns and similar interventions are a way of voicing concerns to politicians as well as to the wider community (Sinno 2009: 286‐7). Some kinds of political participation, though important to the individual performing them, are extremely difficult to measure—either who is doing them, or what effects they might have. One such example is political shopping (Stolle et al. 2005). Even a large‐scale boycott is difficult to evaluate in terms of directly attributable impact. Much ‘political shopping’ consists of individual purchasing choices that are not part of a mass movement but merely a personal decision. For example, while sales of large, high fuel consumption cars have fallen and bicycle sales have increased over recent years, it is impossible to say what proportion of this effect is due to environmental considerations and what to economic pressures, health and fitness concerns, fashion or other factors. Predominantly personal instances of political participation, such as purchasing choices, are therefore not part of the present study. Another channel of political participation is via the internet. Some, such as participation in net‐based lobby groups such as GetUp! and Avaaz.org, replicate the patterns of offline lobbying. Blogging and citizen journalism are other modes of internet engagement which can have significant political impact (Flew and Wilson 2008). A number of such instances are included in our study; however, given the similarity in patterns between online and offline political participation, we have not addressed internet participation as a separate category. By contrast, some forms of internet participation are highly individual, and therefore difficult to measure, either in scale or impact. These forms include participation in online forums, which, compounding other difficulties, is often pseudonymous. While internet forums (eg muslimvillage.com) provide an indication of current concerns among forum members, membership in such forums (as distinct from active contribution to them) will not be taken as an indicator of political participation. Not only is individual online engagement in such forums difficult to measure, but, even if it were measured, it would be unlikely to yield much information about political participation not accessible by other means. Much of the literature on internet political participation suggests that patterns will largely reproduce those of off‐line participation. In practice, those with higher socio‐economic status and educational attainment have higher levels of internet access, and they are also most likely to participate offline. Internet access would need to be more equally‐distributed before it effected much change in patterns of political mobilisation (Best and Krueger 2005).
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