Countering Islamophobia: Muslim participation in multifaith networks

Abstract

In recent years a heightened awareness of global risks has produced an unprecedented interest in global peace and security initiatives. This article discusses the impact of international crisis events on religiously diverse communities in Australia, in particular rising Islamophobia, migrantophobia and attacks on multiculturalism. Religious communities have been far from passive in their responses to the impact of these events, initiating dialogue and educational activities to dispel negative stereotypes and attitudes. In addition, state actors, including police, have prioritized engagement with religious leaders, and this has resulted in a rise of state supported multifaith peacebuilding activities. The article argues that, in response to global risks of terror and exclusion, multifaith movements and multi-actor networks, including religious leaders, state actors, educators and the media, have the potential to advance common security. In response to conflicts both local and global, these examples of cooperation between religious and non-religious actors in Australia can be instructive to other increasingly multifaith societies.

Keywords:

• Muslims
• Islamophobia
• multifaith
• peacebuilding
• counter-terrorism

Notes

The 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions (PWR) was originally titled the World's Parliament of Religions (WPR). The Council for the Parliament of the World's Religions (CPWR) was established to coordinate the 1993 PWR and future PWRs. CPWR is now simply called the Parliament of the World's Religions (PWR). I have used Parliament of the World's Religions (PWR) throughout this article to describe all WPR, CPWR and PWR events in order to avoid confusion.

The 1993, PWR, commonly described as the second PWR, was actually the third. The second, much smaller, PWR was held in Chicago in 1933, convened by the World Fellowship of Faiths (WFF) (Braybrooke 1992, 39).

A detailed explanation of my research methodology can be found in my PhD thesis (Halafoff 2010) and in forthcoming publications arising from the Netpeace study.

I first described this phenomenon when I was on an untitled panel at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Transatlantic Dialogue on Terrorism in Melbourne, 19–20 October 2007.