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Olympics 2000: A City in Desperate Need of Islamic Values
By Altaf Husain, MSW, LSW
Islam Online takes a special look at the host city of the 2000 Olympics - Sydney, Australia, where a Muslim family attending the Olympics may have difficulty navigating through the non-Olympic traditions that make Australia famous. In fact, the Muslim community in Australia faces the challenge of living in one of the world's most liberal countries. Olympics 2000 is now being written in the history books. Dreams are being realized as new records are being set and old records broken, and, yes, there are tears of both joy and defeat. Sydney, Australia is the place to be. Sometimes, though, when the entire focus is on the Olympic Village, and the trials and tribulations of the athletes, we tend to overlook the host city itself. A Muslim visitor to Sydney, in particular, may want to overlook most of the non-Olympic traditions that make Australia famous. So what does Sydney have to offer its thousands of tourists when they are not partaking of the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat? Well, there's everything (and quite literally everything) from gambling to legalized brothels and in between. Freedom Defined To begin with, one has to remember that Australia was initially a colony of the British. In their search for a jail as far away from England as possible, the British established a penal colony there under the command of Arthur Phillip in 1788. Phillip, the colony's first governor, had the onerous task of overseeing over 700 convicts. The social life of the colonists was strewn with, among other vices, drunkenness (Aussies are still known to love their "drink"), extortion, fornication, theft and violence. Christian missionaries must have had their hands full trying to convert the convicts to believe in Puritan ideals. Today, over 200 years after those first convicts settled in Australia, it is amazing that elements of their vice-filled culture have actually been incorporated into mainstream Aussie culture. Under the guise of re-defining freedom, the Australian government itself supports certain programs that even the most liberal American lawmakers would have trouble endorsing. Among examples are the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (partly funded by the government), the Sex Workers (aka prostitutes) Outreach Program (SWOP), and the operation of a facility in which heroin injections are supervised. Vices? What vices? While Sydney is receiving the bulk of the attention, much of Australia is following similar trends toward liberalization. Take, for example, prostitution. There's not much fuss there about it because it is regulated. In February of this year, the Sydney Morning Herald carried a story stating that the South Sydney Council estimated that there were some 23 legal brothels in the district. Legal brothels? Surely, there must be some revenue for the government. Indeed, supported by the Disorderly Houses Act, on September 19th, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Australian tax officials held a seminar to educate the sex workers about their responsibility to collect a 10% goods and services tax. So, technically, the sex workers are charging what amounts to a 10% sales tax for the service they provide. But government support doesn't stop there. No, the prostitutes are even eligible for worker's compensation and other rights under Australia's labor laws. And then, to make sure everything goes well, there is SWOP. Heroin addicts in Australia do not have to hunt high and low for needles and syringes. The government helps them out. After all, they are citizens who deserve the government's assistance. In that spirit, drug users can actually go to a newly opened government funded facility that not only gives them clean needles (purely, a disease prevention effort), but provides nurses to help supervise their injections. The Aussie government does not want its users to overdose! This precaution is being taken in light of statistics reported in a June 2000 article of the Sydney Morning Herald (June 2000) whose headline reads, "Drug Abuse Killing Two Australians Every Hour." And, finally, a note on gambling. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, "takings from gambling of businesses in Australia's gambling industries were $11,067 million during 1997-98. This represented an increase of 41% since 1994-95, or a growth rate of 12% per annum over the period." The WSJ (9/19/00) also reported an Australian government study estimate that "82% of Australians bet, wagering twice as much per capita as Europeans or Americans." With less than 1% of the world's population, Australia lays claim to over 20% of the world's poker machines (WSJ). In a review of the Productivity Commission's report released in July 1999, Professor Abul K. Jalaluddin of the University of Wollongong comments, among other things, that:
Challenges and Opportunities for Muslims After a visit to Australia earlier this summer, Imam Siraj Wahhaj of the United States commented that Australia is fertile ground for da'wah. Imam Siraj has been at the forefront of the battle against drugs and efforts to clean up neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York. The Muslim community in Australia is growing and becoming stronger, evidenced by the number of Islamic schools and masajid. Every community has its own share of problems, but it appears that Australia's social landscape is screaming for help. While we might possibly be overwhelmed or depressed by problems such as those cited above, we can also choose to view them as a challenge and an opportunity for Muslims to promote Islamic values Editor's Note:
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