Stephenson - Islam dreaming: indigenous muslims in Australia

Islam Dreaming is a book about stories. It explores what Indigenous men and women from around Australia have to tell us about their varied encounters with Islam. Some of these stories come to us from Christian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who married Muslim men. Others are related by the mixed-race children of these intermarriages. Still other stories are narrated by Indigenous Australians who have no Muslim forebears at all but who, for a variety of reasons, have been drawn to the Islamic faith. They are stories about travelling between cultures, between countries and families, and in learning about them I have become a traveller myself.

Collecting stories of IndigenousIslamic contact has taken me on a five-year journey all over the country, from the bottom to the Top End of Australia, from east to west and back again, and from Perth to Thursday Island, from Broome to Brisbane, and Adelaide to Alice Springs. Ive visited every mainland capital city (more than once) and countless regional towns in between. Ive had the privilege to hear and record the stories of old people, young people, students, professionals, the unemployed, a multimillionaire, some who dont want to be named and one whose name is known locally and internationally. Ive met men and women who have high hopes for their communities, and some who feel they have no community at all. I have had the opportunity to interview husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, and brothers and sisters. I have entered a network of memories, experiences and aspirations that go back to a time before colonisation and look forward to a time of genuine decolonisation.

The almost fifty Indigenous men and women I interviewed exhibited great generosity in telling me their stories. They took time out of their day to recount personal and family anecdotes when perhaps the only previous contact wed had was a telephone call or an email. Some respondents contacted me after hearing about my research through friends or family. Most did not know me at all. Nevertheless they made the decision to open their homes and their hearts, and for that I am tremendously grateful. They have also been immensely courageous and extremely trusting. Given the suspicion with which Indigenous and particularly Muslim people in Australia are often viewed, those I met took a risk in entrusting their experiences to me and in allowing me to communicate them publicly to the general reader.

Nearly thirty of the interviewees had Afghan or Malay heritage. The descendants of the so-called Afghan cameleers regularly organise and attend large-scale reunions, and I was fortunate to reconnect with former interviewees and meet new respondents at some of these events. The most recent Afghan Cameleers and Pioneers Cultural Festival, held in South Australias Port Pirie in 2009 (and coinciding with the touring exhibition Australias Muslim Cameleers: Pioneers of the Inland 1860s1930s ), included camel rides, Afghani music and food, a photo exhibition and documentary films of the early cameleers as well as storytelling sessions with their Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal descendants. Dressed in clothes traditionally worn in their forebears homelands, the descendants recounted, with visible pride, the contribution their fathers and forefathers made to Australia under very difficult circumstances.