HREOC endorses moves by government to address alienation of Muslim people in Australia

Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tom Calma, today welcomed proposed federal government initiatives which aim to take a more socially-inclusive approach to help address the complex issues faced by many Muslim Australians.

Commissioner Calma said a revival of the Council for Multicultural Australia, as well as a new-look Muslim advisory body that would feature leaders and role models from a cross-section of ethnic backgrounds and focus on everyday Muslim Australians, would be a positive step.

"The level of social alienation faced by many Australian Muslim people, particularly young Muslims, has to be turned around," said Commissioner Calma. "Racist, religious or cultural hatred directed towards any member of the community is a breach of human rights and is absolutely unacceptable,"

Commissioner Calma referred to the concerns covered in a 4 Corners television program this week which focused on the need to promote social inclusion, multiculturalism and zero tolerance to racism in order to avoid the continuing alienation of young Muslims.

"Ongoing fear and misinformation in the wider community remains a major threat to social harmony," said Mr Calma. "Social inclusion measures are likely to be much more successful at protecting the community from violence than many of the tough security initiatives advocated under the 'war on terror'.

"Failure to take action to improve social inclusion and combat racism will only fuel frustration within Muslim communities and continue to reinforce discriminatory perceptions of threats to national security among non-Muslim communities."

Mr Calma noted that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) has been working for several years to form strong partnerships between Muslim communities, NGOs, universities and government agencies in an effort to build awareness and engagement with Muslim communities.

"We require whole-of-government and whole-of-community approaches to building community capacity, cross-community and cross-cultural respect and social inclusion," said Mr Calma.

"The HREOC approach, mixing 'coal-face' community partnership projects, with human rights education resources, research, and communications is an important model that complements this targeted approach to working with communities."

"For these initiatives to work, we require a major rethink on security and social inclusion, which this government appears to be working hard to achieve," said Mr Calma.