JUST behind the towering goalposts of the Gallipoli Mosque, in the heart of Sydney’s west, is a sight that would make AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou fall to his knees and weep with unrestrained joy.

Here in the heartlands of rugby league, tabouleh and fully-sick cars, a green shoot of Australian football has taken root.

The Auburn Tigers football side that trains every Wednesday is not, however, just another team. It is a primarily Muslim team. A primarily Muslim women’s football team.

At the National Press Club this week, Demetriou spoke about the challenges facing his code and asked: “How do we make our game relevant to a 10-year-old Muslim girl?”

The answer is: get her older sisters to sign up for the Auburn Tigers and watch her follow.

Amna Karra-Hassan gives you some idea of how big a cultural gap has been leapt, where 25 per cent of the population is Muslim and 10 per cent Chinese.

Most of the girls in the Tigers are of Lebanese background but there is also a Fijian, Bosnian, Turkish and Afghan member too.

“And an Anglo,” Karra-Hassan says.

The 22-year-old has never watched a game of football on television or live, but she has played in four competition matches in the Sydney women’s league after being encouraged to form the side. She has never heard of Gary Ablett but volunteers a fact that will have Demetriou blubbering all over again. She knows who Israel Folau is.

The AFL is hoping Folau, the rugby league convert who will play with the Greater Western Sydney Giants at the nearby Olympic stadium next year, will be a conduit for a cultural and geographical group that has never engaged with the code.

Karra-Hassan explains that the Muslim girls are observant of their religious customs and so play in headscarves and with covered limbs. They have a strategy ready for the day a scarf is lost in a tackle and plan to surround the victim until it is reinstated. “Our first priority is to make sure the girl is comfortable,” she says.

The Auburn Tigers began last year as a Muslim club and the boys’ side won the fourth division premiership in its first season. The women only began this year, prompted by the urging of the NSW AFL multicultural officers. They will have a female coach and have asked the Tigers’ male side to keep away on their training nights and game days.

On the cultural barriers to forming the team, Karra-Hassan is frank.

“Girls don’t play sport is the big one,” she says. “My dad has that attitude and it took a while for our parents to become comfortable with it. Luckily, Dad doesn’t even know what AFL footy is, but if he ever saw me get tackled I would be in so much trouble.”

Karra-Hassan says that the other women’s sides have been helpful.

Asked if the game ever gets rough, she shrieks: “Of course it does. We are from Auburn!”

Poster-YouAmI-2012

The AYF provides a link between the Australian Government and young people. The committee encourages young people to get involved in ongoing public discussions and then uses their input in the development of public policy.

“The AYF exists to make sure young people are heard and know that there is a direct avenue to get the issues straight from their mouth to government and to policy,” Ms Saleh says.

Apart from the AYF, Saleh is also an executive member of community-based not-for-profit organisation Mission of Hope.

Maha Najjarine, a fellow executive at Mission of Hope, says she is proud of Saleh’s achievement.

“Working at a grass-roots level can develop very important skills of young advocates and activists,” Ms Najjarine says.

She says Saleh is a good example that young Muslims in particular need to stop disadvantaging themselves by playing the victim card.

“There are plenty of opportunities out there, government or non-government related. You just need to think big, wholeheartedly put effort in and give it a go.”

Member of the 2011 NSW Youth Advisory Council, Jenni Iloski, stresses the importance of activism for young people.

“I think it is very important for young people to feel that they have the choice to engage in grass-roots activism and understand how to connect, engage and take action on issues they are passionate about,” says Ms Iloski.

The 22-year-old from Paddington believes that if the right support and processes are in place, young people can have an impact on government decisions.

“That little glimmer of possibility, with consistent effort is eventually what leads to change. Instead of involving young people to ‘tick boxes’, involve them to share their ideas,” she says.

“Involving young people is not just an action; but rather it is an attitude, belief and process that stems from respectful listening.”

As for Saleh, the new AYF Chair intends to challenge tokenistic notions of working with government.

“The reality is so different and I’m really keen as Chair next year to prove that’s not the case,” she says.

“We want to reach out more with more youth engagement and consultation. We plan to establish links and work alongside non-government organisations (NGOs) in order to best tackle the big issues young people face.”

With a goal to engage and inspire, Sara Saleh’s plan for 2012 is simple.

“We’re definitely getting our hands dirty next year.”

————

SHE wasn’t interested. She thought he was probably a typical rugby league party-boy, a womaniser, a player in every sense of the word.

But 20-year-old Arwa was standing at Belmore Oval in Sydney’s west on a winter’s afternoon in 1997 anyway, reluctantly waiting to meet Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs star Hazem El Masri, because her friend had asked her to interview him for their university newspaper.

El Masri was the latest league sensation, a handsome 21-year-old with prodigious goal-kicking talent and a dignified demeanour, the newest poster-boy for Muslim Australia. He was also keeping her waiting.

Arwa was getting annoyed. A Bulldogs official came out and started chatting. “Are you Muslim, too?” he asked. She nodded. “So we could be looking at the next Mrs El Masri?” he teased. Arwa summoned her coldest tone to reply: “I don’t think so.”

At that moment, he came striding towards her, a silhouette in the dark.

When Hazem walked into the light, she almost gasped. “I felt as though I had known this man for a hundred years, even though he hadn’t said a word to me yet,” she remembers. He nodded hello, glancing briefly at her face, then directed his gaze to the ground, humble and diffident. This man was not what she had expected. “Could he,” she wondered in astonishment, “be shy?”

Today, Arwa and Hazem El Masri are sitting in a cafe – a deeply private couple telling their most touching story about the moment they fell in love. He’s digging through a chocolate-smothered profiterole and gently teasing his wife. She’s sipping a flat white and laughing at his jokes, plainly in love with her husband after 11 years of marriage.

THERE’S a serious purpose – Arwa, now 34, has written a deeply personal and revealing autobiography, Tea with Arwa, about how a studious and feisty young Palestinian-Australian feminist became Australia’s unlikeliest footy wife.

The book, as well as being an insight into life with one of rugby league’s most respected men, is the story of Arwa’s romance with Australia; how her childhood feelings of disconnection grew into an abiding love for the sights, smells and tastes of Sydney.

Born in Saudi Arabia to a Palestinian migrant family, Arwa came to Sydney in 1986 at the age of nine and grew up in the western suburbs and the NSW town of Grafton.

The book is crammed with Arwa’s recipes for the meaningful foods of her life: the lamingtons brought by a kindly neighbour on the first day in Grafton; her grandmother’s favourite sage tea, her mother’s baba ganoush. It is also the story of Arwa’s growing feelings for Islam and a passionate plea for understanding of the religion she feels is often misrepresented and maligned.

With the excited support of her husband, Arwa wants to invite people to see and taste something of her world: a proud Muslim-Australian woman, a mother, a wearer of the veil, a romantic. In the book she describes her early prejudices about footballers, her horror at discovering the term “WAG” for wives like her, her philosophies about raising children and her reflections on the hardships endured by her parents.

“I want to let people in. When you let someone in there’s no mystery any more. There’s no assumptions. They can’t assume how things are. When you invite people in they feel welcome. It’s such an important part of our culture, inviting people in and welcoming them and putting a spread out.

“This is my way of doing it. I hope people will pick up this book and learn something from it — we are all equally human but we have different life experiences that make us beautifully unique.”

In 2000, they were married. Arwa finished her social science degree and the couple now have three children: eight-year-old daughter Lamya, seven-year-old son Zayd and three-year-old daughter Serene.

Today, like every day when she’s out of the house, Arwa is wearing a chiffon headscarf, one of her collection. She took the veil at 23, after hearing a Muslim leader speaking about having the courage to live one’s faith in public. It was, she says, the most strongly feminist action of her life.

“I didn’t look for my rights as a woman in the feminist movement,” she says. “I looked for my rights in Islam and I found that Islam is actually a feminist religion. Islam, hundreds of years ago, gave women the right to choose their partner, to inherit, to work as they please. No other religion has outlined those rights. And for me, as a religious person, the word of God far outweighs the word of any human being.

‘IT’S about saying ‘This is me. How you perceive me is beside the point. It’s like having a scar on your face and walking out in public, saying ‘Do you accept me?’ It’s inviting people to experience something new and different.”

Islam is deeply misunderstood, she says, but it is the foundation of their happy marriage.

“There’s no gender battle here, there’s no ‘Why won’t you let me do this’, there’s no such thing. It’s not his rules and my rules – it’s what does our religion tell us? That is our guiding light. There is mutual respect. In Islam, there are guidelines for how to raise your children, your marital relations, your friends, your neighbours and all these things that you may have conflicts about with other people. That’s a side of Islam that people don’t see. All you ever hear about is burqas and cutting off people’s hands.”

Arwa El Masri’s book Tea with Arwa: One woman’s story of faith, family and finding a home in Australia is released by Hachette Australia on October 3. RRP $32.99.

Featured are great articles including a series of self reflective pieces titled Tales from the Hijab where women who wear a hijab share their stories, as well as writing tips by Amra Pajalic, co-author of What a Muslim Woman Looks Like.

Click on this link to read the latest issue of Sultana’s Dream

A ST ALBANS resident is trying to break down the public’s perception of a typical Muslim woman.

Amra Pajalic, of Bosnian heritage, is fed up with what she believes is the constant depiction of Muslim women as subordinate and hidden from society.

The novelist co-wrote a book that was launched earlier this year titled ‘What a Muslim Woman Looks Like’, in the hope people would be able to identify and see Muslim women for who they are and not what they wear.

“The focus is always on people who abuse the Australian way of life,” Ms Pajalic said.

“But we never see the success stories.

“What we’re trying to say is even though a woman is covered, you do not know what she is like underneath.

“I mean who are they hurting? What are they doing to you?

“Don’t people come to Australia to have freedom?”

Ms pajalic said women who decide to wear a headdress were doing it as an expression of their spirituality and many had converted to Islam.

The book was a result of the Muslim Women Leadership Training program Brimbank Council hosted last year.

Now, the mother will talk on a women’s panel with her fellow author Demet Divaroren, about the book and the benefits of workshops she attended during the program, as part of the Brimbank Literary Festival.

Ms Pajalic said the most important message in the book was that Muslim women were like anyone else, regardless of whether they wore a veil or not.

She said the book, which featured 12 women from various walks of life, illustrated the many faces of women.

“A Muslim woman is more than a religion, a colour, a dress code. A Muslim woman is a mother buttering toast for her two boys in the morning; she’s a fashion designer chasing her dream; a professional who prays in the first-aid room; a student of kung fu; and a single mother studying to empower herself and inspire her children,” the book states.

Ms Pajalic said she had already received a tremendous response from the community and the publication would be used as an educational resource for schools.

The panel will be held on Wednesday 14 September from 6.30pm to 7.30pm at AMES, 16 Victoria Square, Victoria Crescent, St Albans. For bookings call 9366 0433.

Wednesday 14 September 2011
6.30pm – 7.30pm
AMES, 16 Victoria Square, Victoria Crescent St Albans
Bookings: 9366 0433

What a Muslim Woman Looks Like is a book that celebrates the diversity of Muslim women’s experiences by profiling twelve women from diverse backgrounds who took part in a Brimbank City Council leadership program. The profiles highlight how they defy stereotypes of Muslim women, how their spirituality and culture affects their lives, and what it means to be a woman. Join authors Amra Pajalic and Demet Divaroren to hear about the aims of the project, the process of writing the profiles, what the project has to say on what it means to be a Muslim in Australia and how the book is being used as a professional and educational resource.

WMWLL teachers notes