How do Muslims in Australia Celebrate Australia Day?

[The Poet]

No you're not breaking any laws, hence why this country is brilliant. Some countries, you conform to the governments laws and that's it- or you get jailed/whipped/flogged/hung/shot. Hence why people from those countries come here seeking a better way of life.

It's ironic people would refuse to celebrate a day that celebrates their freedom by comparing it to communism and fascism.

But thanks for letting me know how Muslims feel about Australia Day celebrations and those that celebrate it. Glad I didn't hear it of some new show; I would have assumed it was sensationalised.

I can say a lot, but I shall refrain for my own benefit.

Not a problem!

[Sammi]

What are u doing for Australia day blue glitter?

Because Muslims don't "celebrate" it doesn't mean they are not happy to live here or be born here.

[Abdraheim]

is it such a big deal to find out? there are many other cultures too that would have nothing to do with it also

[SuBMiSSioN]

blueglitter: we don't need to celebrate Australia Day to be appreciative of the opportunities this country gives us. Yes, in some cases it is better than other countries, and in other cases, it's not. Put aside the religious side of things, the way Australia was founded isn't something to be proud of or to celebrate, and it's exactly how I've seen it advertised on tv and other media outlets. It's also become another huge marketing tool, and honestly that's a huge turn off in itself.

[falah]

Are you serious? You just likened, Australia Day, a day people celebrate with beers, bbq's, beach going or just relaxing at home being thankful for living in a country that has a higher living than most, to Nazi's and Communists? (Both which I should add, are polar opposites.)

So if Nazis celebrated Nazi Day with beers, bbqs, and beach, you would think it is cool?

See it doesn't matter how you celebrate it, what is important is the meaning of the day?

Australia day is a nationalist celebration. Muslims believe that all people are decended from Adam and Eve, so nationalism does not make sense to us. We are all just one big family. An Australian is not inherently better than a Chinese or an African or anybody else.

That said, Muslims are not allowed to celebrate any festivals except the 2 Islamic eids.

[Sammi]

Heaps of people don't celebrate including aussies themselves....

[Sammi]

N how are u meant to
Celebrate it anyway??? I've never seen anyone say happy Australia day? Not being smart but that's the truth!

[falah]

When I was a Christian, I never celebrated Australia Day, nor did i know anybody who did. For me and everybody I knew it was just another public holiday.

Would it offend you Blueglitter that I didn't celebrate it as Christian or only now that I am a Muslim?

[blueglitter]

Hey you came and asked us for our personal opinions, and we're giving you our personal opinions so don't try to argue with us for being free in this country to voice what we like! Didn't you say in a previous thread that you won't even bother arguing? H. H. Mmmmmmmm...

Keyword is previous.

You know what though, I don't care anymore.


Having had no experience with a Muslim outside of perhaps Primary School, and seeing so many news reports and things that seemed radical I figured I would look online for a forum where I could gage a more realistic view of real Muslims. Not those that are crucified in the media for being scary foreign Anti-Australian monsters threatening our culture and often safety.

I certainly hope you are confident with the portrayal and impression you have given me, as it's the one I'm taking away with me, cause I'm done.

That being said, thanks to everyone for their time and effort making reply posts. I read some rather lovely posts made by people on threads here, so here's hoping I encounter some Muslims like them in the future to talk with and ask questions.

Ciao.

[CVM]

Blueglitter many non-muslims dont.celebrate Australia day, I celebrate being australian everyday by kust loving this place to pieces, but i wont openly participate in a day that is dubbed 'invasion day' by the true Australians. even when I was not practicing Islam a whole lot, never felt comfortable celebrating a day that signalled the beginning of a long oppressive battle with the Aboriginals to annihilate their c you lture and iltimately them..

[Abdraheim]

Celebrate Australia Day, $3.99!


January 25, 2012 – 7:20 am, by Peter Chambers

Australia Day used to be controversial. I kinda liked that. I remember going to the Big Day Out in Sydney 1996 on Australia Day and hearing Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha do a big rant about Invasion Day, and feeling stirred when the crowd roared in approval. I should add: no one, no one would have worn a flag to the Big Day Out then. Let alone the Australian flag. You’d have looked a goose, you’d have been teased for being one. Man, TISM would have teased you mercilessly from the stage. But those were different times. After all, John Howard was still about two months off being elected, and it was only three years after Paul Keating delivered that Don Watson penned speech that, the legend now has it, re-ignited white Australia’s love of itself, its flag and its old diggers.

Australia Day is an odd selection for a national day. I mean, most nation-states celebrate independence: independence that they fought for, or won, or were given. I suppose this is impossible in Australia, seeing as we effectively refused it when given the opportunity. Nonetheless, the obvious choice is Federation, which was on January 1, 1901. It would be the technically correct choice, since before that, ‘we’ weren’t a nation, just a bunch of self-governing British colonies. But it would also be the hungover choice, given that it’s also New Years Day… in Australia. Scotch that.

But it gets weirder as soon as you ask what Australia Day actually purports to commemorate. I mean, the arrival of a bunch of stinking prison hulks full of transported convicts, mostly men, and their introduction of smallpox to the local Aboriginal populations… Well, it doesn’t seem like our finest moment. Convict origins, shit food, barely potable water, various types of pox, no toothpaste, insufficient opportunities for conjugal bliss… it seems like an experience that most peoples would prefer to forget.

But I like the weirdness, just like I liked the controversy, precisely because both weirdness and controversy are states that say something about who we might be as a nation. We’re a weird mob, and we don’t agree on much, or even have much in common.

Two years ago, Mark Seymour wrote an outstanding piece about Australia Day that is worth a close read. For me, what he really nails to the wall is the way in which Australian nationalism – post Howard, post 9/11, post Cronulla nationalism – has, at certain points and for certain groups of people, transformed into a narrow, hardline, aggressive dogma, one that precludes any ambivalence (let alone leaving room for weirdness, controversy, or TISM fandom). In every nation-state I can think of there are people whose views sit within this spectrum. But it takes a culture to empower them, a sense of cultural dominance, entitlement, something that not only says it’s okay to have these kind of feelings, but that it might be awesome to go yell them at someone (then tell them to fuck off if they don’t like it). And whether it’s satire or not (but I think it’s not), this facebook page says a lot about this spectrum of belief, as well as the way in which it’s expressed. Then I read this interview with Charlie Teo, whose Australia Day speech is rightly making waves, and heard about what happened to his young daughter, repeatedly, and I felt very sad. But, having been to Bondi recently, not that surprised.

But I can’t help but think that a further mutation within Australian nationalism has taken place in the past few years, one that is less to do with sledgehammer assertions about identity and the defence of a set of values perceived to be under threat, and more an unabashed expression of consumerism, a thing without history, memory or gravity. We’re not even dealing with nationalism anymore, just notionalism.

This is a picture of an Australia Day merchandise stall at a Woolworths.



No doubt you’ve seen it at yours, if you’re a shopper (and how could you not be, if you’re Australian). When I look at this rack, I see nude capitalism: the emptying out of everything. Rack upon rack of cheap, tacky, Swanston St-quality merchandise, whose only uniting factor is the flag (on which, weirdly, the flag of the colonist still looms large). Check just around the corner at bigger stores, Woolies are also pimping be-flagged boogieboards. Ten years ago, Australians would have laughed at gullible tourists for buying this crap… now, judging from what I’ve seen on the Mornington Peninsula and at the tennis, we’re lapping it up. Then check out this website – which, mind you, is put together by the Australia Day Council of NSW. Merchandise and Website, together, suggest that Australia Day, really, is just a bunch of dickheads waving flags. Australia Day has become something irredeemable, full to the hat brim with its own emptiness. But, as I see it, there’s a way through this. It’s the difference between celebration and remembrance.

ANZAC Day engages in a form of remembrance. However selective and partial it may be, it still carries the gravity of sacrifice and the dead. We might dispute the meaning and value of each conflict’s complexities and contradictions – we ought to. I’m not comfortable with all of it, but I feel like I can converse with it. I feel that, at least, I want to talk about it, to contest it. Being engaged in remembrance, it is, at least, historical, or at the very least, it is potentially open to investigation as such. Australia Day, which takes place as a ‘celebration’ has become antihistorical; it practices a form of flag-waving consumerism which is contrary to any form of meaningful remembering. As the website says: show your pride. Pride in what? Certainly not in the actual history of the First Fleet, the British policy of transportation, or even that Australia was chosen as a destination for the transported convicts – in part – because America fought and won its independence (though having said that, I would love to see Woolworths merchandise these episodes in our Australia Day history). And it certainly has no interest in considering the ‘boatiness’ – the boats, the boat people, and their arrival at what we now know as Sydney – that the day might actually denote. Remember that: Australia Day is fundamentally a day of boat arrivals. But no, don’t remember, just celebrate: show your pride! Wave your flag. Buy your merchandise. Or go to Bondi, and alienate a little girl by yelling at her ‘cos she looks other… There are many qualities to celebrate about Australia, just as there is much in our history that is worth remembering. My future hope is that the present emptiness of the flag-waving merchandise celebration that is Australia Day becomes a historical lesson for the better future which I know we are capable of making, either under this flag or that of an independent country.


http://blogs.crikey.com.au/this-blog...alia-day-3-99/

[Muslim..Priincess]

Blueglitter: I think celebrating Australia Day would be offensive to the Native Australians, don't you think?

Whenever there is something to celebrate-be in religious or not-I like to know the history/reason of exactly what I am celebrating, not just celebrating just because everyone else does it..

Also, there is a culture associated with Australia day which I would never (inshAllah) be involved with, such as drinking, boozing and everything else. Anyway, there's a good article to read "Why I won't be celebrating Australia Day" which is written by a jew ( so that just proves it is not just us Muslims who don't celebrate)

[Umm Binyameen]

Hi Blueglitter.....for me as a revert to Islam, previously I never did understand Australia Day. I grew up in quite a racist family, which I never understood. The way this country was colonised was disgusting, and the way it's celebrated is disgusting.....drunkeness, violence, agression and the list goes on.

As a muslim, the first thing I loved so much was that in Islam people are judged by their deeds, their heart and the goodness in them, not the colour or their skin, or the country they live in, or the amount of money they have or don't have. So Australia Day completely goes against one of our core beliefs.

[aussiemu]

Seriously what does it matter how people celebrate it? All the Aussies (and most people on this forum are Aussies) that don't celebrate it don't just suddenly hate the country. I don't need to stick a flag on my car and have a bb or beer for that. I don't really care for the ueen's birthday either - does that make me ungrateful to her (well OK I really don't care about her at all but yeah)? seriously it's a non issue. These token types of celebrations are just for people to get a day off - it has nothing to do with how much you like or dislike your country. I wouldn't celebrate any countries national day no matter where I lived because I think its just nationalism which I'm against. If it was a Muslim country or a non Muslim country wouldn't make a difference. I lived in Saudi and had no interest in their national day either.

And after learning about the way Aboriginal people were treated less than animals, thier culture destroyed etc I have absolutely no interest in celebrating the day that the country was invaded by the folks who did that to them. That's a purely non religious reason that even if I had no religious reason for it I would not celebrate it either.

It's my husband's birthday too but we don't celebrate birthdays either - does that mean I am unappreciative of my husband?

[Sammi]

Right on aussiemu ;-)

[Najah]

really, its just another paid day off for all of us, muslim or not. I'm appreciative of that lol.

Nice to see you've done alot of research blueglitter by starting 2 threads and hence taking your view of muslims from that.

[Najah]

What about hindus? Jews? dont you have a problem with them not celebrating australia day?

[Muslim..Priincess]

Watch this, there's some truth to it,



Btw-if there is something negative about public holiday then it is the transport system, back to sunday timetable

[Jayne]

your right to wear a mini skirt in public,

I'd be more impressed if that right extended to those who want to dress modestly. Instead we see reports on TT about women in Burqa's and how it's unAustralian, and people generally acting like anyone who is modest is a freak.

your right to choose where you live,

I'm still not impressed. Negative gearing has meant that housing is unaffordable in our cities. We have some of the highest housing costs in the world. I can't choose where I live - because I can barely make my rent. You are right though - I am one of the lucky ones. My parents are well off enough that they can help me and hence I'm not on the street. Many aren't so lucky.

your right to maintain your religion no matter how ridiculous,

Just so long as you don't mind been ridiculed.

The day doesn't say we are perfect cause we're not, there is so much wrong with our country, but its one day of celebration of everyone as a community. For a nation of so many ethnicities and cultures and religions, we're doing pretty well so far.

I do love my country. And we are definitely lucky compared to many countries, but we take that for granted and don't take care of the needy, nor are we as welcoming as we claim. Truthfully, I'm not sure that I'm proud of my country.

As for the day itself... not a big fan, except it is perfect sleep in weather in Brissie tomorrow so it will be nice not to work. I don't care about what happened on "invasion day" (frankly, I hate that term. We didn't do anything that hundreds of nations haven't done before - including many muslim or christian nations. Some people just need to get over it). It's too commercialised, and it feels too "American" for my tastes. I can love my country without a big song and dance, and if I want to have a bbq I can do that any weekend.

[Jayne]

I don't even know one non Muslim who celebrates australia day! Lol... Most are happy for the day off though. And we don't need Australia day to be thankful for living here its something that probably crosses peoples mind every day. Alhamdullilah for this country that gives us opportunity and freedom :-) But that's as far as it goes for most people I think.

I only noticed people 'celebrating' Australia a few years ago. Before that, no one did. It was just another day off work.