The More Things Change…

January 13, 2016

I have been reading the reporting and the various responses to the proposed mosque in South Hurstville with equal measure of déjà vu and new concern.

The déjà vu comes from seeing patterns repeated: communities coming together to establish a place of religious worship; Council officials working with them to ensure ongoing compliance with planning requirements; community response that is coached in planning references to noise levels, traffic and public amenity as a thin camouflage for religious intolerance; an often cynical Council response which has been to knock back such applications regardless of their merits even if they were recommended by Council Planners, to appease the community outcry knowing full well that their decision would be overturned in the Land and Environment Court.

It then falls to the community to consider its next step. Some have not continued and shelved their plans while others have gone on to get positive decisions given that the Land and Environment Court adjudicates on compliance with planning criteria only.

This was the scenario I faced as the Chairperson of Interdepartmental Committee (IDC) set up to consider Planning for Religious Development in New South Wales set up in 1990. This structure reviewed numerous case studies, consulted widely and put together recommendations that sought to address the potential contentiousness of religious developments through a series of educative, preplanning and planning based approaches to ensure high levels of compliance and attention to potential concerns.

The reality is that after 25 years nothing has really changed. Religious developments that are not Christian are far more likely to attract both controversy and heated opposition. This flares up in media frenzy and we get to know them both by name and reputation, the Campbelltown Mosque, the Bendigo Mosque and now the South Hurstville Mosque. The local objections are still about noise, traffic and visual scale but these are now being given greater volume through the support of anti-Islamic and anti-multicultural sentiment which is increasingly vigilant and organised.

While we do not have a Bill of Rights which enshrines the right to religious freedom, Australia is party to a number of international instruments that infer this right in terms of freedom from racial discrimination, and civil and political rights. Regardless non-Christian religious developments remain a vexed question, and one which has now been overtaken by the wave of Islamophobia crossing Australia

This is the first of my new concerns; religious developments are no longer local affairs. There appears a new found vigilance in those who will fight any manifestation of Islam being part of the Australian landscape. Taking positions that often defy logic and are devoid of reason and substance these crusaders have been mobilised and are on the march. They are not unified as this would require some form of philosophical base or consistent principles, but they will drape themselves in national iconry and stand as the bulwark to protect Australian values.

The arguments are often counter intuitive. Indeed the more Mosques that are approved and established the smaller their scale will be as they will be catering for more local populations thereby reducing both scale and impact on the public amenity. But this is really not the issue. It is religious difference which is being contested from both a growing secularism and xenophobia.

The second is the impact of the online space to spread the contentious and the conflicted beyond streets and suburbs to the broader population. The weapons around the Campbelltown Mosque application were local newspaper editorials and handbills stuffed into letterboxes. Today it is material received in our electronic mail boxes. Today I received two requests to sign on-line petitions: one to support it and one to oppose it.

The only problem is that I live in East Ryde and really the matter of a Mosque in South Hurstville is none of my business.

The third of the new concerns is the growing awareness that many those complaining locally are indeed from non-English speaking backgrounds themselves. The 2011 Census indicates that Chinese speakers make up nearly 1 in 4 people in the Hurstville area. Trawling the online commentary today showed that many of those opposed to the Mosque development come from Chinese backgrounds.  Again the comments were about traffic, congestion, size and impact, but are thry really?

For too long we have framed cultural discussions around mainstream and minority, now there is clearly a need to address intercultural relations. While we are seeing a Chinese community in its ascendancy in both economic and social impact we cannot deny the rights of other minorities to be able to worship freely, celebrate their cultures, share the cultures of other and live peacefully in our communities.

I have taken a number of business groups on tours of different areas of Sydney including visits to Temples and Mosques that help define the cultural characteristics of diverse suburbs. These visits demonstrate the importance of these places of worship; they create understanding and appreciation of what is usually portrayed in stereotype and parody; they testify that acceptance and dialogue rather than fear and prohibition as the basis of sustainable multicultural communities.

Taking religious developments out of this merry-go-round of farcical planning is a government responsibility. Governments at all levels should step up to this plate.