The Race Discrimination Commissioner is undertaking a project to listen to and share the stories of Australian Muslims. Specifically, the project aims to build robust intelligence about the experience of Australian Muslims to inform the Australian Human Rights Commission’s work in promoting social cohesion and providing evidence for change.

The project is an opportunity to identify community strengths, concerns and priorities and hear from the community about ideas for change.

Online Survey

Nationally over 1000 Australian Muslim community members completed the project’s online survey, which closed on 30 September 2019.  

Survey respondents were asked which issues were of most importance to them and their family. The findings indicate that freedom of religion, education and interfaith relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Australia are very important to Australian Muslims.

Consultations

Between July and November 2019, seven open consultation sessions, five women’s consultation sessions, three student consultations sessions and over a dozen targeted consultation sessions were held in Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney Brisbane and Townsville.

In February 2020, the Project Team held five open consultations, two women’s consultations, one student consultation and targeted consultations in Perth and Darwin.

Word clouds from the consultations can be found here. 

An overview of the project findings and the full report can be found here.

Speaker Series

Speaker series events related to the project and open to the general public were held in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney in August and September 2019. Events were held in Brisbane and Canberra in November, and a speaker series event was held in Perth in February 2020. 

Event topics have included:

• The history of Islam
• Calling out casual racism
• The rise of cyber racism
• The role of civil society in addressing Islamophobia
• Overcoming the countering violent extremism (CVE) filter

Recordings of these events will be made available shortly on the Commission YouTube Channel.

Critical Friends and useful links

Leading academics, researchers and community leaders have agreed to assist the Commission with this project as Critical Friends. Information about members of this group and links to important research relevant to the project can be found here.

Access the report

Download (PDF)

Download (DOC)