![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapeofthingsFor those who haven't heard, Australia has had our first race riots. Last weekend, violence broke out in a Southern Sydney suburb as resentment between Lebanese and Anglo-Saxon communities turned to violence.
Why this happened is a long and complicated story. White Australians formed an ugly mob and unprecedented violence and intolerance surfaced. The racists among us told hold of the opportunity, and I'm saddened by what happened. I'm not, however, shocked. The writing has been on the wall for some time, with ongoing problems within the Lebanese community, and the resulting main-stream anger perpetuating resentment and aggression.
This newspaper article does a good job of explaining a complex part of the situation...
Isolated and angry
A range of social, economic and cultural reasons lie behind the alienation of second-generation Lebanese Australians from the mainstream, report Cameron Stewart and Amanda Hodge
December 14, 2005
"FEIZ Mohamad has seen the dark side of growing up as a Lebanese Australian on the gritty streets of southwestern Sydney.
The son of Lebanese parents, Feiz felt neither Lebanese or Australian, and his personal search for identity saw him collide with drink, drugs and trouble. "As a teenager I got a bit nasty, a lot of drugs, a lot of evil stuff," he says. "I actually feared death or imprisonment, because that was the next stage in my life." He took up boxing to defend himself, but ultimately found his lost soul by embracing a conservative stream of Islam.
Feiz became a sheik and set up the Global Islamic Youth Centre at Liverpool in Sydney's south. He pitched hardline and often controversial sermons to woo disgruntled street kids like himself and now enjoys a cult-like following among Lebanese Muslims in Sydney's southwest. Sadly for Feiz, too few of his fellow second-generation Lebanese-Australians have found inner peace through religion. Rather, many have become entrenched, if not trapped, in a culture of street gangs where violence, criminality and aggressive machoism are worn as badges of honour. The violent riots of recent days will only serve to increase the sense of isolation felt by this community.
How have Australian-born Lebanese found themselves in this predicament, which is so at odds with the success stories of second-generation immigrants from other countries? "The Lebanese have been left behind compared with other groups such as the Chinese, Vietnamese, Greeks and Jews," says James Jupp, director of the Centre for Immigration & Multicultural Studies at the Australian National University. "Their level of education and therefore their level of employment and employability are lower than average ... they are still in the classical ghetto situation. So there is a lot of resentment there: they haven't done terribly well and they feel that they are not being treated like Australians and that they are being picked on." Similar themes of alienation - a sense of being left behind - have triggered clashes involving Muslim minorities overseas, notably the recent Paris riots. This sense of "us and them" has been sharpened in recent years by the publicity given to brutal gang rapes committed by Lebanese youths and concerns about home-grown terrorism, which have generated a backlash against the community.
University of Sydney sociology professor Michael Humphrey, who has studied Australia's Lebanese commmunity, says their troubles can be traced back to Lebanon's civil war, when a new wave of migrants poured into Australia, looking for asylum and a better life. More than 20,000 Lebanese migrants arrived in Australia over a two-year period in the late 1970s: an immigration wave that coincided with a dramatic downturn in Australia's manufacturing industry. The job market they would have relied upon to build a new life in Australia simply wasn't there, Humphrey says.
By the late '80s and early '90s, unemployment rates in the Lebanese community, based mainly in southern Sydney and Melbourne, were up to five times higher than the national average. "There's a social path to this that has created a marginal second generation," Humphrey says. "We have an out-of-control teenage group. I wouldn't like to say material conditions equals bad behaviour, but it no doubt contributes."
Humphrey says world events have also contributed to the progressive stigmatising and alienation of the Lebanese community. "We have had this increasing association between international events and violence and the devaluation of [the Lebanese community's] status. "September 11, the Bali and London bombings particularly and the way our government focused on the politics of fear around security heightened the fear we were hosting dangerous people within. I'm not saying you can reduce events in Cronulla to this, but it's a focus for a whole kind of cooking of a sense of anxiety and uncertainty."
Experts say that some Lebanese attitudes - including the attitude towards women - have also contributed to their failure to integrate more fully with mainstream Australia.
Humphrey says that his experience interviewing Lebanese families led him to conclude that many have a "preoccupation" with what they believe to be the promiscuity of Australian women. "There's a fantasy about Western sexuality," he says.
The ANU's Jupp agrees. "There is no doubt some of these young Lebanese guys have an aggressive attitude towards women," he says. "They get this from their parents: women in the Middle East are often seen as sisters, mothers or whores. "The daughters are very tightly controlled but the blokes do what they like. When they see girls on the beach walking around virtually naked, they get very excited about it."
Michael Bitar, who plays a Lebanese hothead in the SBS television comedy Pizza, is unnerved by how closely life is now imitating art. The actor from Marrickville, in Sydney's inner west, says the gang violence and racial drama in the city's southern and western suburbs in recent days reminded him of Pizza. "After I did Pizza, I had people come up to me saying I was a disgrace to the Lebanese community, and I would just say: 'Fix up what's going on on the streets first, rather than worry about what's happening on Pizza'," he says. "What happened on Pizza, it's like people are trying to do it in reality."
Fadi Rahman, a Muslim youth spokesman and president of the Islamic Centre for Research, says the disaffected core of Muslim Lebanese youth in western Sydney is caught in the classic social trap of high unemployment and low education. "These kids have got plenty of time on their hands and end up in large groups, feeling victimised," he says. "Unfortunately their parents are not highly skilled and educated and aren't aware of what the kids are up to. The parents can't relate to their children and they don't understand society and how it operates. It's easy for a young man to get away with lying his way through."
Rahman believes many young Lebanese are taking their cultural cues not from Australian or Islamic culture but from African-American rap culture. "You see hotted up cars, big jewellery, the toughness, the talking and haircuts. If you speak to any of these kids, they're into rap and all sorts of things coming from black American society. "They're relating to being victimised just like the black Americans. Once you provide a person with such a mechanism, they're always on the attack. They think they're being victimised and that justifies why they get into trouble."
Amir Butler, co-convener of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network, agrees that the Lebanese gang culture does not have a religious base. "The subculture which has developed here owes more to American rap gangsta culture - the music they listen to, the way they dress - more than anything Islamic or Arabic." However there is little doubt that many Lebanese, Muslim as well as Christian, feel angered and alienated by the sometimes hostile community backlash over terrorism. "Terrorism gives a much sharper edge to this whole issue on both sides," says Jupp.
"The Lebanese see themselves as being picked on. On the other side they are seen as much more foreign." Humphrey says the division between working class western Sydney and affluent coastal Sydney is a historic social fracture and is not confined to antagonism between Lebanese and Anglo-Australians. However, he acknowledges that young Lebanese men causing problems on the beach is not a recent phenomenon. He recalls that more than a decade ago "young Lebanese used to go down with a Lebanese flag and run down Bondi Beach, kicking sand in people's eyes". He adds: "It was boys behaving badly."
University of Western Sydney academic Scott Poynting, an expert on Lebanese culture and co-author of Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime, says the stereotype of a misogynistic, violent Lebanese youth is misplaced and the so-called gang element is no different from what would be encountered in any Australian community with low socioeconomic status. He says people tend to be more frightened of "boisterous, noisy" Lebanese youths because they look different.
The media also deserves some blame for unwittingly assisting the perception of alienation among Lebanese youths, says University of Sydney academic Catharine Lumby. "There is a sense that when the media talks about 'we Australians', there is an assumed Anglo-centric perspective. The media often talk about men of Middle Eastern appearance as if that group were not Australians, yet many were born in Australia. From their perspective, this can only perpetuate alienation."
Humphrey says low educational levels are an issue among young Lebanese in western Sydney, partly because of poorly resourced public schools in those regions. Jupp says the low education levels also partly reflect parental attitudes, with some Lebanese immigrants not attaching a great deal of importance to formal education. However, obtaining an accurate snapshot of Sydney's troubled Lebanese community is problematic, because of a lack of research and the absence of statistics that might offer clearer answers. According to the 2001 census, there are 142,000 Arabic speakers in Sydney, which includes the Lebanese; yet there is little specific information available on the demographics of second-generation Lebanese.
One thing, however, is clear: this week's riots will only heighten the sense of social isolation felt by Australians of Lebanese origin. The images from Lakemba this week - of Lebanese youth lying face down on the street, their hands behind their heads, with police pistols pointed at their heads - will be hard to shake. "It was like downtown Los Angeles," says Fadi Rahman. "These kids will be wondering why they didn't see similar scenes in Cronulla on Sunday. What it triggers in their minds is injustice."
Why this happened is a long and complicated story. White Australians formed an ugly mob and unprecedented violence and intolerance surfaced. The racists among us told hold of the opportunity, and I'm saddened by what happened. I'm not, however, shocked. The writing has been on the wall for some time, with ongoing problems within the Lebanese community, and the resulting main-stream anger perpetuating resentment and aggression.
This newspaper article does a good job of explaining a complex part of the situation...
Isolated and angry
A range of social, economic and cultural reasons lie behind the alienation of second-generation Lebanese Australians from the mainstream, report Cameron Stewart and Amanda Hodge
December 14, 2005
"FEIZ Mohamad has seen the dark side of growing up as a Lebanese Australian on the gritty streets of southwestern Sydney.
The son of Lebanese parents, Feiz felt neither Lebanese or Australian, and his personal search for identity saw him collide with drink, drugs and trouble. "As a teenager I got a bit nasty, a lot of drugs, a lot of evil stuff," he says. "I actually feared death or imprisonment, because that was the next stage in my life." He took up boxing to defend himself, but ultimately found his lost soul by embracing a conservative stream of Islam.
Feiz became a sheik and set up the Global Islamic Youth Centre at Liverpool in Sydney's south. He pitched hardline and often controversial sermons to woo disgruntled street kids like himself and now enjoys a cult-like following among Lebanese Muslims in Sydney's southwest. Sadly for Feiz, too few of his fellow second-generation Lebanese-Australians have found inner peace through religion. Rather, many have become entrenched, if not trapped, in a culture of street gangs where violence, criminality and aggressive machoism are worn as badges of honour. The violent riots of recent days will only serve to increase the sense of isolation felt by this community.
How have Australian-born Lebanese found themselves in this predicament, which is so at odds with the success stories of second-generation immigrants from other countries? "The Lebanese have been left behind compared with other groups such as the Chinese, Vietnamese, Greeks and Jews," says James Jupp, director of the Centre for Immigration & Multicultural Studies at the Australian National University. "Their level of education and therefore their level of employment and employability are lower than average ... they are still in the classical ghetto situation. So there is a lot of resentment there: they haven't done terribly well and they feel that they are not being treated like Australians and that they are being picked on." Similar themes of alienation - a sense of being left behind - have triggered clashes involving Muslim minorities overseas, notably the recent Paris riots. This sense of "us and them" has been sharpened in recent years by the publicity given to brutal gang rapes committed by Lebanese youths and concerns about home-grown terrorism, which have generated a backlash against the community.
University of Sydney sociology professor Michael Humphrey, who has studied Australia's Lebanese commmunity, says their troubles can be traced back to Lebanon's civil war, when a new wave of migrants poured into Australia, looking for asylum and a better life. More than 20,000 Lebanese migrants arrived in Australia over a two-year period in the late 1970s: an immigration wave that coincided with a dramatic downturn in Australia's manufacturing industry. The job market they would have relied upon to build a new life in Australia simply wasn't there, Humphrey says.
By the late '80s and early '90s, unemployment rates in the Lebanese community, based mainly in southern Sydney and Melbourne, were up to five times higher than the national average. "There's a social path to this that has created a marginal second generation," Humphrey says. "We have an out-of-control teenage group. I wouldn't like to say material conditions equals bad behaviour, but it no doubt contributes."
Humphrey says world events have also contributed to the progressive stigmatising and alienation of the Lebanese community. "We have had this increasing association between international events and violence and the devaluation of [the Lebanese community's] status. "September 11, the Bali and London bombings particularly and the way our government focused on the politics of fear around security heightened the fear we were hosting dangerous people within. I'm not saying you can reduce events in Cronulla to this, but it's a focus for a whole kind of cooking of a sense of anxiety and uncertainty."
Experts say that some Lebanese attitudes - including the attitude towards women - have also contributed to their failure to integrate more fully with mainstream Australia.
Humphrey says that his experience interviewing Lebanese families led him to conclude that many have a "preoccupation" with what they believe to be the promiscuity of Australian women. "There's a fantasy about Western sexuality," he says.
The ANU's Jupp agrees. "There is no doubt some of these young Lebanese guys have an aggressive attitude towards women," he says. "They get this from their parents: women in the Middle East are often seen as sisters, mothers or whores. "The daughters are very tightly controlled but the blokes do what they like. When they see girls on the beach walking around virtually naked, they get very excited about it."
Michael Bitar, who plays a Lebanese hothead in the SBS television comedy Pizza, is unnerved by how closely life is now imitating art. The actor from Marrickville, in Sydney's inner west, says the gang violence and racial drama in the city's southern and western suburbs in recent days reminded him of Pizza. "After I did Pizza, I had people come up to me saying I was a disgrace to the Lebanese community, and I would just say: 'Fix up what's going on on the streets first, rather than worry about what's happening on Pizza'," he says. "What happened on Pizza, it's like people are trying to do it in reality."
Fadi Rahman, a Muslim youth spokesman and president of the Islamic Centre for Research, says the disaffected core of Muslim Lebanese youth in western Sydney is caught in the classic social trap of high unemployment and low education. "These kids have got plenty of time on their hands and end up in large groups, feeling victimised," he says. "Unfortunately their parents are not highly skilled and educated and aren't aware of what the kids are up to. The parents can't relate to their children and they don't understand society and how it operates. It's easy for a young man to get away with lying his way through."
Rahman believes many young Lebanese are taking their cultural cues not from Australian or Islamic culture but from African-American rap culture. "You see hotted up cars, big jewellery, the toughness, the talking and haircuts. If you speak to any of these kids, they're into rap and all sorts of things coming from black American society. "They're relating to being victimised just like the black Americans. Once you provide a person with such a mechanism, they're always on the attack. They think they're being victimised and that justifies why they get into trouble."
Amir Butler, co-convener of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network, agrees that the Lebanese gang culture does not have a religious base. "The subculture which has developed here owes more to American rap gangsta culture - the music they listen to, the way they dress - more than anything Islamic or Arabic." However there is little doubt that many Lebanese, Muslim as well as Christian, feel angered and alienated by the sometimes hostile community backlash over terrorism. "Terrorism gives a much sharper edge to this whole issue on both sides," says Jupp.
"The Lebanese see themselves as being picked on. On the other side they are seen as much more foreign." Humphrey says the division between working class western Sydney and affluent coastal Sydney is a historic social fracture and is not confined to antagonism between Lebanese and Anglo-Australians. However, he acknowledges that young Lebanese men causing problems on the beach is not a recent phenomenon. He recalls that more than a decade ago "young Lebanese used to go down with a Lebanese flag and run down Bondi Beach, kicking sand in people's eyes". He adds: "It was boys behaving badly."
University of Western Sydney academic Scott Poynting, an expert on Lebanese culture and co-author of Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime, says the stereotype of a misogynistic, violent Lebanese youth is misplaced and the so-called gang element is no different from what would be encountered in any Australian community with low socioeconomic status. He says people tend to be more frightened of "boisterous, noisy" Lebanese youths because they look different.
The media also deserves some blame for unwittingly assisting the perception of alienation among Lebanese youths, says University of Sydney academic Catharine Lumby. "There is a sense that when the media talks about 'we Australians', there is an assumed Anglo-centric perspective. The media often talk about men of Middle Eastern appearance as if that group were not Australians, yet many were born in Australia. From their perspective, this can only perpetuate alienation."
Humphrey says low educational levels are an issue among young Lebanese in western Sydney, partly because of poorly resourced public schools in those regions. Jupp says the low education levels also partly reflect parental attitudes, with some Lebanese immigrants not attaching a great deal of importance to formal education. However, obtaining an accurate snapshot of Sydney's troubled Lebanese community is problematic, because of a lack of research and the absence of statistics that might offer clearer answers. According to the 2001 census, there are 142,000 Arabic speakers in Sydney, which includes the Lebanese; yet there is little specific information available on the demographics of second-generation Lebanese.
One thing, however, is clear: this week's riots will only heighten the sense of social isolation felt by Australians of Lebanese origin. The images from Lakemba this week - of Lebanese youth lying face down on the street, their hands behind their heads, with police pistols pointed at their heads - will be hard to shake. "It was like downtown Los Angeles," says Fadi Rahman. "These kids will be wondering why they didn't see similar scenes in Cronulla on Sunday. What it triggers in their minds is injustice."
