‘Caravanserai: Journey Among Australian Muslims’ by Hanifa Deen

In her book ‘Caravanserai: Journey Among Australian Muslims’, Australian writer Hanifa Deen says:

I grew up in the forties and fifties of the last century, almost a lifetime ago, when Muslims were invisible. We were called ‘Mohammedans’ and nobody knew much about us, or really bothered with us; we were too small to be a threat, there was no Middle East problem and while the British Empire was running out of steam it still flew the flag; the media hadn’t ‘adopted’ and ‘distorted’ us- we were pariah- like without being real pariahs.’

and she points out:

‘Stereotypes now define people as less than human and what a litany there is to choose from: veiled women, fierce bearded men, barbaric parents, rapists and suicide bombers- these are the images taken to represent Islam. But where is the human face that I know? Where are my parents, my brother and sister? Where are my friends?’

Hanifa Deen’s book is based on her two separate journeys among Australian Muslims: she began her first journey in 1993 two years after the Gulf War ; and the second one after the September 11 and also the Bali bombings of 2002. After these significant events, the media locked the images of Muslims into unchangeable terrible and negative stereotypes. In order to challenge these misleading stereotypes, Hanifa Deen wanted to give Muslims a human face as ordinary people who have their own little problems like everybody else, who have a mortgage to pay; who like doing sports and watching rugby matches; who worry about gaining weight; who send their children to school; who pay tax; who vote.

Deen says, she wrote the book out of pride as a Muslim who grew up in Australia. She listened to the stories of Muslims, her people, from different ages, genders, classes, ethnicities, all from different walks of life. In her book she tells the story of these diverse people, whose common point is being Muslim. She has a beautiful style; she is not only in conversation with the people whose stories she listened to but also with the reader. She never tries to draw a rosy picture of Muslim communities, and she does not avoid to also talk about the petty power struggles, jealousies, and social control among Muslim circles.

In her book, Hanifa Deen brings up many different issues relating to Muslims in Australia. I think what she says on ‘veil’ (with her own words ‘a small piece of cloth’), an issue which has not been exhausted in the European-Christian West yet, is very interesting.  

On veil ‘A small piece of cloth’:

And so the fuss continues over a plain piece of cloth. Nuns wear habits, Christians wear crosses and the Jews the Star of David. What does it matter if other people, for religious reasons, want to wear distinctive clothes as a religious sign- a reminder of God and a show of solidarity?

Symbols change and often the very symbol of oppression from the past is reinterpreted and becomes adopted as a rallying point-redefined all over by subsequent generations.

Today many young Muslim women in Australia choose to wear ‘the veil’ or hijab-their symbol from the past. Yet not so long ago, their grandmothers and great-aunts marched in the streets demanding the right not to wear the veil for what it symbolised to them-exclusion from education, public life and employment. Seventy years ago Egyptian feminist leader Huda Sha’rawi symbolically threw her veil into the Mediterranean at Alexandria. Her husband divorced her for refusing to wear it. Overseas the struggle still continues. But for migrant women, in Australia at least, wearing the hijab is a way of asserting their religious and cultural identities.