Sanctuary and Security in Contemporary Australia: Muslim Women's Networks, 1980-2005
An ARC Linkage funded project being conducted in partnership with the United Muslim Women Association
Project Summary
This project makes an important contribution to Muslim women's participation in public life. It researches the scope and potential of social networks and, crucially, acknowledges that both religious practice and secular activities are legitimate facets of everyday multicultural society. The project proposes a dynamic account of Muslim women's achievements and challenges, highlighting the causes and symptoms of past and present insecurity. The key concept of sanctuary-as-security is both innovative and significant to contemporary political debate. The project will result in a reflective organizational history, online oral history, policy recommendations for the advancement of Muslim women, and scholarly publications.
National and Community Benefit
This project supports the United Muslim Women's Association's strategic emphases on capacity building for young women, to increase accuracy in national public debate, and encourage relevant policy development. The project's focus on communication will maximize the potential of existing community and national networks. The research process will train young women in oral history and archival analysis, producing a sophisticated engagement between communities and their own lives. Accepting the role of religion in everyday networks, and deploying the idea of sanctuary to express Muslim women's need for mainstream understanding, this project contributes to national cohesion based on information, confidence and respect.
Project Overview
This project will produce an historically grounded account of Muslim women's networks in contemporary Australia, through the conduct of organizational and oral histories, archival audits, extensive interviews, and policy reviews.
The project hypothesises that prevalent notions of security must be broadened in scholarly and public debate to include an analysis of sanctuary in Australian society. Given the ongoing connections in the public mind between Islam and insecurity, this project determines to conduct research into the ways and means of staying safe, and in defining sanctuary as a dynamic and active process of community organisation.
It is anticipated that the outcomes will allow Muslim and non-Muslim Australians to better understand the ways in which sanctuary is sought, achieved, and maintained for communities over time, and especially for communities under immediate social and political pressure. Both the process and the outcomes of the research are therefore designed to deepen mutual knowledge and understanding across different Muslim and non-Muslim communities.
The project began as an initiative of the United Muslim Women Association (MWA) who were seeking an evaluative history of their organization as it has developed over the past twenty five years. This history will provide the starting point for a critical understanding of the motivations, achievements and problems for such an organization in this country over that period. It will be contextualized through parallel case studies of other organizations of Muslim women, to compare the approaches to sanctuary and security that they have pursued through networking.
The project aims to:
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Provide a survey of Muslim women's networks;
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Document the history of the MWA in its local and national contexts;
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Develop an oral history of Muslim women's experiences in Australia;
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Publish the histories to both inform and provide advice for Muslim and non-Muslim women's networks in Australia, and for relevant policy-makers in federal, state, and local government;
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Provide capacity-building research opportunities for Muslim women.
About the MWA
The MWA is a community-based organisation that has specialised in the delivery of services to Muslim Women of diverse cultures and their families in New South Wales for over twenty years. The Association has worked to foster and promote Muslim women's participation and involvement in Australia's culturally and religiously diverse society by catering to the welfare, social, educational, religious and recreational needs of Muslim women.
Chief Investigators and contacts:
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Professor Stephanie Donald (Institute for International Studies, UTS)
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Dr Devleena Ghosh (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS)
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Dr Christina Ho (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS)
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Associate Professor Heather Goodall (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS)
Partner Investigators:
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Ms Maha Krayem Abdo (United Muslim Women Association)
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Ms Genan Dadoun (United Muslim Women Association)
