Muslims in Australia

This article examines the global human rights activism of young Muslims through their participation in hip-hop culture. The increased awareness of their Muslim identity in the post-September 11 era inadvertently influences and permeates the consumption of popular youth culture. The article contends that there is an attempt by the hip-hop ummah to draw from the struggles of the African American experience to articulate the human rights concerns facing respective communities. The right to appropriate hip-hop as a means to express their predicaments also brings its young practitioners into conflict with moral entrepreneurs who act as gatekeepers to the religion. However, the human rights activism of young Muslims is bridging the seemingly irreconcilable gap between hip-hop and piety, serving not only as an important framework of social identity but also providing the space to forge generational and transnational solidarities.

İbrahim Dellal (1932-2018) has been a community activist and played a pioneering role in establishing religious and educational institutions since his arrival in Melbourne in early 1950. As the grandson of late Ottoman Mufti, being educated at the American Academy, a Baptist missionary school in Cyprus, clashed at times with his traditional upbringing based on Islam, service and Ottoman patriotism. İbrahim’s parents, especially his mother, raised their son to be Osmanli Efendisi, an Ottoman gentleman. He was raised to be loyal to his faith and dedicated to his community. I met him in the late 80s in Sydney. I discovered that he was an important community leader, a ‘living history’, perhaps the most important figure in the Australian Muslim community since the mid-20th century. He is also one of the founders of the Carlton and Preston Mosques, which are the first places of worship that survived till today in Victoria. I wrote his biography and published it in 2010. However, later I found that he had more stories related to Australian Muslim heritage.  Firstly, this essay will analyse his untold stories which is from İbrahim’s unrevealed archives that I collected. Secondly, İbrahim’s traditional upbringing which is a combination of western education and Ottoman Efendisi will be critically evaluated. He successfully amalgamated Eurocentric education and Islamic way of life. Finally, his poetry which reflects his thoughts will be discussed.