North African and Middle Eastern Australians

This article is about Australians of North African descent. For Sub-Saharan Africans, see African Australians.

North African and Middle Eastern Australians

Total population
Approximately 3.2% of the population (2021 census)[1] Lebanese Australians: 248,434 Turkish Australians: 87,164 Iranian Australians: 81,119 Egyptian Australians: 60,164 Arab Australians: 60,095 Iraqi Australians: 57,859 Assyrian Australians: 62,000 Syrian Australians: 29,257 Chaldean Australians: 20,106 Sudanese Australians: 16,809 Palestinian Australians: 15,607 Other North African and Middle Eastern: 11,027 Kurdish Australians: 10,171
Languages
Australian English · Arabic · Aramaic · Azerbaijani · Hebrew · Kurdish · Persian · Turkish · others
Religion
Christianity (Eastern Orthodoxy · Oriental Orthodoxy · Assyrian Church of the East · Catholicism · Protestantism) · Islam · Judaism · Baháʼí Faith · Druze · None (Atheism · Agnosticism) · Zoroastrianism · Yazidism · Mandaeism · Deism

North African and Middle Eastern Australians are the Australians of North African and Middle Eastern ancestry, including naturalised Australians who are immigrants from various regions in the North Africa and Middle East and descendants of such immigrants. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses categorised within North African and Middle Eastern ancestral groups as a proportion of the total population amounted to 3.2%.^[1][2]

Today, North African and Middle Eastern Australians often come from various ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, educational and employment backgrounds.

History

The first settlers of the North Africans and Middle Easterns to Australia date back to 1862, when small groups of mainly Muslim cameleers shipped in and out of Australia at three-year intervals to serve South Australia's inland pastoral industry by carting goods and transportation wool bales by camel trains, who were commonly referred to as "Afghans" or "Ghans", despite their origin often being mainly from British India.

Permanent emigration of North Africans and Middle Easterns to Australia began in the 1940s onwards, possibly due to political turmoil in the MENA region that saw a wave of its international migrants. As of 2021^[update], they number 800,000 persons with a nomination of their distinct ancestries.

Demographics

Australia does not collect statistics on the racial origins of its residents. Instead, it collects data at each five-yearly census on distinct ancestries, of which each census respondent may choose up to two. ^[3] In the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses categorized within North African and Middle Eastern ancestral groups as a proportion of the total population amounted to 3.2%. ^[1]

Persons nominating North African and Middle Eastern Australian ancestries in 2021^[1]

Ancestry	Population
Algerian Australians	2,319
Arab Australians	60,095
Assyrian Australians	42,346
Bahraini Australians	166
Bari Australians	95
Berber Australians	340
Chaldean Australians	20,106
Coptic Australians	1,433
Darfuri Australians	15
Egyptian Australians	60,164
Emirati Australians	63
Iranian Australians	81,119
Iraqi Australians	57,859
Jordanian Australians	6,096
Kurdish Australians	10,171
Kuwaiti Australians	815
Lebanese Australians	248,434
Libyan Australians	1,076
Mandaean Australians	918
Moroccan Australians	4,192
Nubian Australians	130
Nuer Australians	185
Omani Australians	168
Other North African and Middle Eastern	11,027
Palestinian Australians	15,607
Qatari Australians	23
Saudi Arabian Australians	1,638
Sudanese Australians	16,809
Syrian Australians	29,257
Tunisian Australians	1,037
Turkish Australians	87,164
Yemeni Australians	1,443
Yazidi Australians	876

Social and political issues

Asylum seekers

Further information: Asylum in Australia

Asylum policy is a contentious wedge issue in Australian politics, with the two major political parties in Australia arguing that the issue is a border control problem and one concerning the safety of those attempting to come to Australia by boat.

In 1999, Middle Eastern immigrants fleeing from oppressive regimes in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq began to arrive in large numbers.^[4] The Howard government extended the time they spent in mandatory detention and introduced temporary protection visas for boat arrivals.^[5] The deterrents did little to stop immigrants; roughly 12,000 asylum seekers reached Australia from 1999 to 2001.^[4] In 2011, Australia received 2.5% of the world's total number of claims for asylum.^[6] During 2012, more than 17,000 asylum seekers arrived via boat.^[7] The majority of the refugees came from Afghanistan, Iran, and Sri Lanka.^[8] In June 2012, a boatload of asylum seekers capsized in the Indian Ocean between Indonesia and Christmas Island, leading to 17 confirmed deaths, with 70 other people missing.^[9]

In 2015, the government rejected suggestions that it would accept Rohingyas (a persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar) during the Rohingya refugee crisis, with the Prime Minister Tony Abbott responding "Nope, nope, nope. We have a very clear refugee and humanitarian program".^[10] However, later in the year the government unexpectedly increased its intake of refugees to accommodate persecuted minorities, such as Maronites, Yazidis and Druze, from the conflicts of the Syrian Civil War and Iraq War.^[11][12] (It was these refugees who swelled the figures for 2016–2017.^[13])

Discrimination and violence

This section is an excerpt from Anti–Middle Eastern sentiment § Australia.[edit]

Attacks in Spain, London, and Bali have increasingly associated people of "Middle Eastern appearance" with terrorism.^[14] A clearer picture of the impact of these events on Sydney's Muslim, Arabic, and Middle Eastern population emerged from data collected from a hotline between September 12, 2001, and November 11, 2001, by the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW, during which time 248 incidents were logged. There were seven categories of attack: physical assault; verbal assault; sexual assault; threat; racial discrimination or harassment, damage to property; and media attack. Half of all victims were female; seven out of ten were adults. The largest language groups to use the hotline were Arabic, consisting 52.4% of calls. 47.2% of the incidents occurred in public spaces.^[14]

On 11 December 2005, a violent mob of about five thousand young white Australians gathered on the beach at Cronulla, New South Wales. Waving Australian flags, and singing Waltzing Matilda and Australia's national anthem, the mob verbally abused and physically assaulted anyone of Middle Eastern appearance.^[15] Five thousand people reportedly gathered at the site and marched through the streets of Cronulla, attacking anyone who they identified as Middle Eastern.^[16]

One victim recalled how the violence erupted when a man deemed to be "of Middle Eastern appearance" was walking along the beachfront with his girlfriend and "two girls turned around and screamed ... 'get off our f__king beaches' [and then] the whole street turned on them"^[16] The riots put the spotlight on two segments of Sydney's population (the white, Anglo-Celtic majority and a Middle Eastern minority) and two parts of the city: the Sutherland Shire Local Government Area (LGA), located in Sydney's southern suburbs where Cronulla Beach is located (known as the Shire); and the Canterbury and Bankstown LGAs, located in south-western Sydney, where most of the city's Lebanese and other Middle Eastern immigrants live.^[14] Middle Eastern males were tagged as criminal and un-Australian by the media brush of ethnic crime.^[14]

In one incident, two young men of Middle Eastern appearance, on their way for a swim, were mobbed and beaten on a train carriage, with both responding police officers and a nearby press photographer fearing there would be a killing.^[17]

The latest incident occurred in 2011, when the criminal lawyer of Middle Eastern background, Adam Houda,^[18] was arrested for refusing a frisk search and resisting arrest after having been approached by police, who suspected him of involvement in a recent robbery. These charges were thrown out of court by Judge John Connell, who stated, "At the end of the day, there were three men of Middle Eastern appearance walking along a suburban street, for all the police knew, minding their own business at an unexceptional time of day, in unexceptional clothing, except two of the men had hooded jumpers.^[19] The place they were in could not have raised a reasonable suspicion they were involved in the robberies."

Islamophobia

Main article: Islamophobia in Australia

Islamophobia is highly speculative and affective distrust and hostility towards Muslims, Islam, and those perceived as following the religion.^[20] This social aversion and bias is often facilitated and perpetuated in the media through the stereotyping of Muslims as violent and uncivilised. Various Australian politicians and political commentators have capitalised on these negative stereotypes and this has contributed to the marginalisation, discrimination and exclusion of the Muslim community.^[21]

Islamophobia and intolerance towards Muslims existed well prior to the September 11 attacks in the United States. For example, Muslim immigration to Australia was restricted under the White Australia Policy (1901-1975).^[22]

See also

• African Australians
• American Australians
• Arab Australians
• Asian Australians
• Black Australians
• Caribbean and West Indian Australians
• European Australians
• Indigenous Australians
• Latin American Australians
• Arab diaspora
• Assyrian Australians
• Australian Jews
• Christianity in Australia
• Coptic Australians
• Egyptian diaspora
• Islam in Australia
• Lebanese diaspora
• North African and Middle Eastern Australians
• Palestinian diaspora
• Syrian diaspora
• Syrian Australians

References

1. "Australian Bureau of Statistics : Census of Population and Housing: Cultural diversity data summary, 2021" (XLSX). Abs.gov.au. Retrieved 26 July 2022.
2. "Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups (ASCCEG), 2019 | Australian Bureau of Statistics". 18 December 2019.
3. "4713.0 – Population Characteristics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians". Australian Bureau of Statistics. 4 May 2010.
4. Robert Manne (September 2010). "Comment: Asylum Seekers". The Monthly. Retrieved 20 September 2015.
5. Sawer, Marian; Norman Abjorensen; Philip Larkin (2009). Australia: The State of Democracy. Federation Press. pp. 27, 65–67. ISBN 978-1862877252.
6. Neil Hume (14 August 2012). "Australia debates offshore asylum centres". Financial Times. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
7. "Australia to send asylum-seekers to PNG". BBC. 19 July 2013. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
8. Matt Siegel (19 July 2013). "Australia Adopts Tough Measures to Curb Asylum Seekers". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
9. "Boat sinking reignites Australia asylum debate". BBC. 25 June 2012.
10. Woodley, Naomi (22 May 2015). "PM rebuffs criticism over response to Rohingya refugee crisis". The World Today. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
11. "Migrants and Australia: Why Australia is accepting 12,000 more Syrian migrants". The Economist. 9 September 2015. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
12. Lenore Taylor; Shalailah Medhora (8 September 2015). "Tony Abbott to confirm Syrian airstrikes as pressure grows over refugees". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
13. Doherty, Ben (11 February 2019). "Australia takes the most refugees since start of humanitarian program". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 February 2019.
14. Collins, Jock (2009). "Sydney's Cronulla riots: The context and implications". In Noble, Greg (ed.). Lines in the Sand: The Cronulla Riots, Multiculturalism and National Belonging (1st ed.). Institute of Criminology Press. p. 27-43. hdl:10453/8089. ISBN 9780975196786. Retrieved 1 June 2013.
15. "New Racism and Fear: The Cronulla Riots and Racial Violence in Australia". Archived from the original on 17 September 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
16. Cahir1, Jayde (14 April 2013). "Balancing Trust and Anxiety in a Culture of Fear". SAGE Open. 3 (2). Sgo.sagepub.com. doi:10.1177/2158244013484733. S2CID 55882624.
17. Poynting, Scott (2007). Multiculturalism at the end of the Line. ISBN 978-0-9803403-0-3. Archived from the original on 23 April 2013. Retrieved 1 June 2013.
18. Everaardt, Tineka (20 March 2013). "Targeted through racial profiling - Today Tonight". Au.news.yahoo.com. Archived from the original on 23 March 2013. Retrieved 14 September 2013.
19. Mercer, Neil (12 November 2011). "Suing police again, the lawyer of Middle Eastern appearance". The Border Mail. Retrieved 14 September 2013.
20. Khan, Fazal Rahim; Iqbal, Zafar; Gazzaz, Osman B.; Ahrari, Sadollah (Spring 2012). "Global Media Image of Islam and Muslims and the Problematics of a Response Strategy". Islamic Studies. 51 (1): 5–25. JSTOR 23643922.
21. Saeed, Amir (October 2007). "Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media" (PDF). Sociology Compass. 1 (2): 12–18. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00039.x – via Academia.edu.^{[dead link‍]}
22. Poynting, Scott; Mason, Victoria (March 2007). "The resistible rise of Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim racism in the UK and Australia before 11 September 2001". Journal of Sociology. 43 (1): 61–86. doi:10.1177/1440783307073935. S2CID 145065236.