Australian Community Organization Confronts Myths about Muslims
The first mosque in Bendigo was approved in June this year after long and bitter protests from sections of the community, whose ranks sometimes swelled from far-right groups travelling in from other areas, Government News website reported.
Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services Community Development worker Diantha Vess said that the information sessions, funded by the Victorian government, would help counter far-fetched ideas about what it meant to be Muslim.
The sessions also zero in on the terminology used around the religion, such as the word ‘jihad’ which means a struggle for good that exists in the soul, rather than a holy war; or why Muslims eat halal food.
"We felt it was needed because there were a lot of misconceptions in Bendigo,” Ms Vess said. "From our consultation we were finding all sorts of weird things being believed.
"There’s a lot of information out there that’s negative and blatantly untrue.”
Before conducting the events, the organization visited schools students to find out what opinions they held about Muslims.
The answers were revealing and depressing. Children asked questions like: Why don’t Muslim children go to school, why do all Muslim men hit their wives and why don’t Muslim children wear shoes?
After the sessions, conducted by a Muslim woman, the children’s opinions had shifted markedly to hold much more informed and compassionate ideas.
Ms Vess said: "It gives people the opportunity to meet the Muslims in their community, to have a rapport with them, see them standing there and be able to ask questions. Here in Central Victoria people don’t often get the chance to talk directly to people from Islamic backgrounds.”
Next week’s Q&A in Bendigo is aimed at the media, to encourage more sensitive reporting around race and religion.
Ms Vess said the everyday lives of Muslims did not normally make the newspapers but the atrocities wrongly attributed to the whole group of people got blanket coverage.
She added that the furor surrounding the mosque being built in Bendigo had attracted some over-heated reporting over the last couple of years which could have been more responsibly done.
The Q&A information session is on Wednesday August 3, from 12pm-1.30pm at Bendigo Library.
