Multiculturalism, Muslim radicalism, and the problematic of Muslim integration in Australia

This chapter argues that in the post-9/11 "War on Terror" era in an exceptionally globalized world multiculturalism in Australia has undergone a major metamorphosis, from being a policy of cultural pluralism to a strategy of "social risk management" of the dangerous and threatening "Other." Australia is no longer a place of proud multiculturalism, but a fearful space of "risk multiculturalism" - a constant preoccupation with cultural future and safety of a society which produces the notion of "risk." In Australian "risk multiculturalism" Muslims occupy the space as a borderless homogenized transnational socio-cultural category and dangerous and threatening otherized "Other." Australian "risk multiculturalism" targets Muslim individuals, families, and communities in the wake of events of 9/11 as potentially hostile, politically disloyal, socioculturally self-alienating, and risk. They have become a shared "security'' concern for the Australian government and been made the object of distrust and the target for state intrusion and socio-political management. Their citizenship is no longer a natural progression from immigrant as temporary residents to Australians as citizens, but is increasingly contingent upon their clear and complete espousal of the "Australian way of life" and at the same time, their unequivocal rejection of radical political Islam.