‘Standing for justice’: Why these Australian Muslims back the Voice to Parliament

Some of Australia’s leading Muslim community figures are helping to support the Yes vote in the upcoming Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum this year.

The country’s national peak body, the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), will prepare 200 of its imams to inform the nearly one million Muslims across the country on the case for backing the Voice.

They’ll be among the general population who will head to the polls later this year to vote in a referendum on whether they support the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by enshrining a Voice to Parliament.

The Constitution currently does not recognise First Nations people. To change its wording would require a public vote, a promise that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has kept following his Labor win in the federal election last year.

Australian National Imams Council advisor and spokesperson Bilal Rauf said supporting the Voice would allow Muslims to act in the interests of justice for First Nations people, a value that is widely considered important in Islam.

“In the Australian situation, there’s no doubt that the Indigenous [people] have suffered a great deal of injustice. And it’s not good enough for us to say, ‘Well, it wasn’t us, we’re not part of it’,” he said.

“The reality is we are part of this country. And we now have the responsibility to address issues of the past.”

Mr Rauf said imams will use their congregations and conversations with community members on a grassroots level to provide information about the Voice and its importance.

For 24-year-old high school teacher Saja Alam, being a Muslim is to be an ally for First Nations people – and that translates to a Yes vote. “To be Muslim is to stand for justice,” the Sydney woman said.

“By further suppressing the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were continuing a process of assimilation, not preservation and growth.”

 

Kos Samaras, director of political consultancy RedBridge and a former Labor Party campaigner, says these voices are not alone. The latest Newspoll published by the Australian last week found that 62 per cent of Australians who speak a language other than English support the Voice, compared to 52 per cent who speak English only.

He said multicultural communities are “some of the strongest supporters” of this campaign, with qualitative research from Redbridge showing mounting empathy from migrants with the First Nations struggle.

To be Muslim is to stand for justice. Saja Alam, young Muslim voter

Among the strongest supporters, Redbridge found, were Muslims who have faced “personal levels of racism”, Mr Samaras said. “[Young Muslims] have grown up in a fairly hostile Australia. The political rhetoric over the last 20 years has not been exactly the most friendly for people of the Muslim faith,” he said.

“We’ve had, particularly, young Muslim women absolutely articulate that point to us in focus groups over and over again. “Anyone that’s grown up in that has themselves felt targeted, subjected to prejudice and racism, and therefore has empathy for another group of Australians who clearly have had been suffering this level of prejudice for a lot longer.

The Liberals last week announced their “resounding” opposition to the Voice proposal by the government, but have backed the recognition of First Nations people in the Constitution.

That same day, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended ANIC’s annual Ramadan iftar dinner in Sydney where he used his speech to implore Muslim attendees to vote Yes.

Also in attendance was Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney, Muslim Labor frontbenchers Ed Husic and Anne Aly, as well as NSW’s first Muslim MP, Jihad Dib.

“It will be a unifying moment for our country,” Mr Albanese told the crowd.

He said “respect and fairness” were values of his government and of the Muslim community at the dinner.