Australia walks down memory lane: A stroll on Cronulla Beach and a coffee at Martin Place

Although what happened at Martin Place on Monday has nothing to do with the Australian Muslim community and everything to do with Man Haron Monis, the Lindt Café siege has become a reluctant addition to the context of Australian cultural relations.

To understand why this is so, it is important that we examine the recent history of the Islamic community in Australia to find out where we are and how we got here.

It is pertinent to start our exploration in the 1970s when large numbers of Lebanese who were fleeing their civil war began to arrive in Australia as immigrants.

Muslims had lived in Australia for many years before this (some anthropologists theorise that Islam came to the continent’s northern shores before Europeans arrived) but the 1970s marked the first great period of Muslim immigrant intake.

After they were settled, they enjoyed a low profile life in Australia until the first Gulf War began in 1990.
This is understood to be the first time in which Australian Arab Muslims were under pressure to define their identity; are you a Muslim, or are you an Australian?

I hope that people come to realise how nonsensical and Orientalist that is, that our society shunned the Lebanese community because of a war between the United States and Iraq; it is like hating the French because your cousin got in a fight with a Spaniard.

Regardless, The Gulf War is an historic moment for Australian Muslims, particularly the Lebanese, as it marked the genesis of their place as the marginalised minority group in Australia, following the Greeks, Italians and Vietnamese.

This marginalisation was further entrenched in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, as the twin towers were destroyed and U.S. President George W. Bush declared the second war on terror.

Only a year later, the Bali bombings carried out by Islamic militants claimed the lives of 202 people, including 88 Australians.

The social paranoia that arose from those attacks is widely understood to have blurred the lines of the terrorist/Muslim dichotomy in the minds of many, and laid the groundwork for the Cronulla Riots in 2005.

After a group of lifeguards were bashed by men of ‘Middle Eastern Appearance’ on Cronulla beach, a series of events began that concluded with Australia’s first anti-Islamic pogrom.

The bashing received heavy attention in the media and was a popular topic of discussion in newspapers and on talk back radio, with popular 2GB radio host Alan Jones now infamous for his agreement with callers who were inciting anti-Muslim vigilantism.

On Sunday morning of the 11th December 2005, A crowd of 5,000 people (mostly young white men) flocked to Cronulla beach with Australian flags and cartons of beer while wearing singlets marked with slogans like ‘We grew here you flew here’ and ‘Ethnic Cleansing Squad’.

They had been summoned by a single text message that was shared over 200,000 times between people in the Sydney Suburbs which read: “This Sunday every Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to support the Leb and wog bashing day …”

They came to the beach early in the morning and despite a heavy police presence, began marauding around the streets to bash and abuse anyone of ‘Middle Eastern’ appearance that they could find.

Perhaps the most iconic image of the riots is the series of photographs taken by Craig Greenhill which shows a mob of men brutally bashing two young Afghans on a train that arrived at Cronulla station.

In retaliation, Arab and Lebanese gangs roamed Sydney suburbs in the following nights and staged revenge attacks which left many innocent people in hospital.

Since those explosive few days, anti-Islamic tensions have simmered within some Australian communities and groups, especially due to the constant media barrage of overseas terrorism, Al Qaeda, and now the Islamic State.

That was until Monday when serial sex offender and murderer on bail Man Haron Monis walked into the Lindt Café with a shotgun.

So why is Martin Place so significant? Whether or not you can make any meaningful connection between Monis and the international threat of Islamic terrorism is one thing, but the real significance of the Lindt Café siege is that it elicited a national reaction and conversation that has not been seen since 2005.

You do not need to look closely to find that the Australian Muslims have been reluctantly dragged into the equation on the back of the actions of one lone criminal from a community of over 400,000 people.

Social Media could be described as being nothing other than explosive during and following the happening on Monday, as anti-Islamic nationalist movements are in full swing with the popular ‘Take back Australia’ Facebook page seeing a sharp increase in likes, up 37.8% to 42,400 since Monday.

This has been countered by the wildly popular #illridewithyou twitter campaign which intended to reassure Muslims who use public transport that they are welcome on the trains and buses.

News outlets went rabid with the Daily Telegraph printing a sensationalist emergency edition at 2pm on Monday to cover the events and Media King-pin Rupert Murdoch again finding himself in hot water over an insensitive tweet.

Although social divide has existed as long as society itself, it seems to be a safe assumption that the current circumstances that we find ourselves in are perpetuated so much by traditional and social media that they could almost be considered their creation.

As always, the effect of Martin Place on the context of Australian Muslim relations cannot be understood in isolation; and it is only because of this history of media and ethnic group mentality that what Man Haron Monis did has anything at all to do with communal relationships in Australia.

This is not the last time we will visit this dark place, as long as people continue to generalise Australian Muslims and Islamophobia lingers in the suburbs, we will find ourselves back here again and again.

Title Photo: Andrew Meares Sourced from: Sydney Morning Herald
Image of Man Haron Monis: Stephen Cooper Sourced from: The Daily Telegraph