A 14-year-old Muslim girl who was returning home from school attempted to get on the bus. The bus driver shouted at the young girl, “Get off!” The girl enquired “Why?”, only to receive the louder command, “Get Off!” As the bus moved, the girl started crying and running towards home so as not to upset her grandfather who expected her to be home on time.
Another hijabi girl, while riding home from university, was confronted and scared by an angry man on the train. “As the train started moving he started to scream really loud about religion, brainwashing kids and if there is actually a God … and was swearing the whole time and making eye contact at me [sic]. He started smashing his bicycle and banging on something I couldn’t see I was too scared to make eye contact with him. The first station passed but I didn’t have the courage to go out as I was so scared that if I move he will do something to me. As the second stop came, an old woman stood up and looked at me and I went with her.”
Two female university students who came all the way from Indonesia to pursue education in Australia faced not only verbal but also physical harassment while waiting at the bus stop. One of the students was punched on the ear. The punch knocked her down to the ground and she scraped her knee so badly that it started to bleed. No one intervened to stop the perpetrators, who kept demanding: “Why are you here, why are you wearing black clothing, why are you still alive?”
These incidents did not occur in a country where education for girls is viewed with hostility. They were not committed by elderly males in remote tribal societies. The abuse which has left girls anxious and fearing for their safety did not take place in some foreign culture or remote village. They happened in Sydney, Brisbane, and Canberra, in public places where bystanders could have intervened but chose not to.
Each of these examples were not uncommon, according to the statistics released this week in the third Islamophobia in Australia report released by Charles Sturt University. The report compiles and examines expressions of Islamophobia in Australia through an analysis of 247 incidents (138 physical and 109 online cases), which were reported to the Islamophobia Register Australia by victims, proxies, and witnesses in 2018 and 2019. The statistics indicate the repetitive nature of anti-Muslim hate in physical settings and on online platforms in Australia. In additions to the statistics, direct quotes from those who reported the incidents fill out the day-to-day experience of anti-Muslim sentiment and the emotional toll they take on Muslims.
Perpetrators were predominantly men (74 per cent) while victims were predominantly women (82 per cent). The cowardly perpetrators usually chose vulnerable victims. Of the women victims, 85 per cent were wearing hijab and nearly half of them were alone (48 per cent). Children were often targeted while in the presence of their mothers (15 per cent), but just as often when they were alone (15 per cent).
Perpetrators were usually Anglo (91 per cent) and in their ages usually ranged from the late-thirties to the mid-sixties (57 per cent). By contrast, almost one quarter of the victims were children and teenagers (24 per cent) while most of the victims were in their late-teens and early-twenties (61 per cent). Apart from the clear sexism expressed in most of the incidents of anti-Muslim intimidation and violence — which is to say, the predominance of men abusing women — the age disparity between perpetrators and their victims was also conspicuous.
But it is not just the young who experienced abuse. Professional Muslim women on their way to work were not even exempt, demonstrating that anti-Muslim hate pays no heed to educational achievement, economic status, or career success. For example, a lawyer who could not repel or dissuade a perpetrator finally had to leave the bus to take another to get to work. She was being screamed at by a man for wearing hijab and was called a “f**king filthy terrorist”. The victim continued: “I stood up to him and told him that I was born and raised in Australia and to leave me alone. He kept on persisting … I got to my stop and left the bus.”
According the third Islamophobia in Australia report, public transport was the second most common site for anti-Muslim hate (12 per cent), after shops and shopping centres (15 per cent). Well over half of the incidents occurred in places with many other people around (63 per cent), revealing the troubling prevalence of third-party inaction and the absence of social pressure on the perpetrator. Most of the physical incidents occurring in guarded areas (75 per cent), indicating the ineffectiveness of security guards and systems for victims.
Regardless of bystander presence in 66 per cent of the cases — including managers, police, security, and members of the public — this tended to make little difference. The Muslim woman whose scarf was pulled on the bus reports how she was left alone with the attacker: “No one helped me for the rest of the 30-minute bus ride. Police were notified but no further action was taken.” The same victim mentioned experiencing five more attacks in the last few months and expressed that she was heavily affected by these repeated public attacks: “I’ve been made to fear for my life. Fear to step out of my house. I shake and cry thinking about being attacked. It’s terrifying. I was born here and call this place my home and now I’ve been made to feel like an alien.”
Another Muslim woman walking in the city with a friend had a bottle thrown at her by a woman in front of other people. The victim reported no action by any surrounding people: “as soon as I turned around, a woman swung a one litre bottle at my head. I immediately ducked under and she just walked away. No one said anything.” Physical harassment in the middle of the city with no intervention made the victim feel as if she did not belong to Australia: “I feel discriminated against and feel like I don’t belong in the country I was born and raised in.”
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The root cause of bystander silence and inaction is not known. Confronting perpetrators as an individual bystander could have been deemed risky. One-to-one confrontation, indeed, can be risky both for victims and bystanders. Furthermore, individual confrontations may not have enough standing to deter perpetrators. By contrast, bystanders using their status to mobilise other bystanders can bring about the desired outcome. The scenarios described above could have been easily reversed or resolved by a group of passengers defending the victims as a display of human solidarity. Such social pressure would force the perpetrator — not the victim — to get off the bus or the train at the next stop.
A victim asking help directly from the surrounding people can also effectively mobilise bystanders. For instance, a victim scared of the perpetrator “rushed into a restaurant to seek help”. Her call was immediately taken up by third parties: “The [restaurant] staff got in his way so that he couldn’t come near me and they looked after me until my friend got there. Another man and his son came in to make sure I was ok and told me the psycho man had left and that it was safe to come out.”
Support of victims by third parties alleviated the effect of incidents on victims while preventing perpetrators from inflicting further abuse or engaging in future harassment. Of the 135 cases, 11 per cent displayed positive action on the part of bystanders. For instance, a bystander offered to accompany a harassed Muslim woman who was frightened by a perpetrator at the bus stop: “I was waiting at a bus stop in the middle of the city and a lady came up to me and started yelling at me ‘Go home’ and ‘Why are you here?’ She was jabbing her finger almost in my face and gesturing wildly with her arms and I feared she was going to punch me. A kind lady came up to me and said, ‘Would you like to come with me?’ When I said ‘Yes please’, she led me away and the other lady did not follow us.”
The examples of solidarity are not rare in Australia. It has been proven by “I will ride with you” campaign after the Lindt Café siege, when public abuse of Muslims was on the rise. It is confirmed again by the tens of thousands of Australians who wholeheartedly supported Australian Muslims in the aftermath of the Christchurch attacks. Thousands marched for Christchurch victims in Melbourne while many interfaith groups organised vigils and many individuals left flowers and notes of support at local mosques.
Apparently, a gentle push or a bit of common sense is sufficient to mobilise people in solidarity. Islamophobia is not a “Muslim” problem, but a risk to social cohesion as such. It requires bystanders’ action to repel anti-Muslim abuse neither by force nor by confrontation, but through social pressure and solidarity.
Derya Iner is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Contemporary Studies in the Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation at Charles Sturt University, and the principal researcher and author of the Islamophobia in Australia Report.
If you experience or witness an Islamophobic incident, please report it to the Islamophobia Register Australia.