An insider view of Islam in Australia

Once Were Radicals
By Irfan Yusuf
Published: Allen & Unwin, $26.99

The Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF), over the last couple of years, has been obliged to fulfil our burning desire to understand that ‘Muslim question’, to consume with frenzied vigour every word of wisdom that can help us grapple with 9/11.

In 2007, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s hysterical, anti-Muslim comments received standing ovations at SWF events, and oodles of column space in leading Australian newspapers.

In 2008, came the more balanced, yet light-hearted account of Imran Ahmad’s struggles of growing up Muslim in the UK in his memoir, Unimagined.

This year, the festival brought another insider’s view of Islam—Irfan Yusuf’s first book, Once Were Radicals, is about growing up Muslim in multi-cultural Australia.

Yusuf makes a telling comment about these ‘insider’ memoirs in his book: “What made Maryam Jameelah’s venom towards Jews so convincing was that she herself was once a Jew… She was an ‘insider’, a ‘native informant’…her words carried the same authority that the words of ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali are given when she makes equally outrageous and prejudicial remarks about Islam and Muslims.”

Instead, Once Were Radicals, draws our attention away from the minority of radical fascists (that we should admit, exist in all our religions) to offer a glimpse into the way the majority of moderate Muslims see themselves and their faith.

An Imam at Muslim youth camp talked Yusuf out of joining the jihad in Afghanistan. In one quite funny anecdote, another Imam teaches Yusuf and his friends that they could learn the true meaning of respect from a bikini-clad holidaymaker they encounter.

In a lecture, a visiting professor from Bangladesh, says that Australians have been most Islamic towards the Muslim immigrants by sharing what they most value—wealth, prosperity, just laws, education. “Australians understand the Prophet’s message even if they don’t believe in him.”

Yusuf makes another important point in his book about the many versions of Islam that exist in the world—reflected in the diversity of followers that he meets and befriends at Muslim youth camps and associations. In Australia alone, Muslims come from 60 different countries, he revealed at his recent talk at the Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF).

In his book, he mocks the casually, but offensively used phrases, ‘Islamo-fascist’ and ‘the Muslim question’. However, these blanket terms and attitudes towards Muslims seem to have taken hold of the public consciousness.

Sunil Badami, who moderated Yusuf’s talk at SWF, did not skip a heartbeat as he asked, why Muslim youth were blowing up buses, while Hindu and Sikh youth, despite facing similar racism did not. (When he wasn’t being downright offensive, Badami bumbled with factually incorrect questions—that Yusuf gleefully corrected with insolent remarks.)

It isn’t relevant that, in defense, Yusuf reminded Badami of the Croatian nationalist training camps that once operated in Australia, as well as the Khalistan movement. It is deploring that we ask moderate Muslims to defend their faith in the light of extremist acts.

Yusuf raised some pertinent questions about the Muslim identity at the SWF talk. “What does it mean to be a Muslim? That your great-great grandfather was a cameleer in Baluchistan? My idea of being a Muslim has evolved,” he said.

However, he admits in his book that his story is not as much about understanding the faith, as it was about finding his cultural identity and a sense of belonging as a second-generation immigrant. “Some kids experiment with music or art. Others do it with drugs. I did it with religion,” he says in the book.

And though much is made of Yusuf’s momentary desire to join the jihad in Afghanistan, he also often flirted with the idea of converting to Christianity. Besides, his worrying habit of asking his sisters and mother to wear the hijab, his approach to Islam was one of questioning—always confused by the many opposing and varied opinions that guided him.

Like most other South-Asians, Yusuf’s parents much preferred for him to spend his time studying to get into law school or medicine, than reading Islamic theological discussions. His father was weary of what he cynically describes as the Islamic industry—the network of mosques, Islamic organisations and halal butchers.

Meanwhile, his mother, though fascist about her young children learning about their religion, culture, and speak their language (albeit learned by watching laboriously long Bollywood films), when religion and education compete for Yusuf’s precious time, study would always win.

She pulls him out of the madrassa in Pakistan during a holiday, when she realises that the teacher believes in beating the Koran into children. She encouraged him to learn about other religions, knowing that her children would grow up and live in a multi-cultural country.

Yusuf’s recollections of an earlier Australia—when South Asian migration was still quite low—is quite revealing to new immigrants like myself. He remembers his visits to the only South Asian grocery store in Bondi. Even more telling are his memories of social gatherings reflecting the diversity of South Asians in Australia. As he grew older, there were more of his “own kind” in Sydney. The gatherings grew increasingly insular, and the Sindhi uncles slowly disappeared.

For a Muslim reader in Australia, perhaps there are many autobiographical elements in Yusuf’s tale. For the non-Muslim reader, like myself, the details about Islamic theologists, authors and movements were a little jarring, and the book could have done with some sharper editing.

Yet, reading this memoir, does give you an almost triumphant sense of relief—that despite our biased media, propagandist literature and religiously divided society, the voice of reason does find its way to youth like Yusuf.