Muslim identities in an era of hypersecurity: insights from two contrasting Australian communities

More than two decades on, the shadow of 9/11 and the Bali bombings continues to linger over Australia and its small Muslim population. We posit this is due to an existential fear of both Islam and Muslims in the Australian imaginary, an imaginary that continues to be cast as Judeo-Christian. This has led to the hyper-securitisation of an entire religious community which has had several effects on the ways Muslims navigate a sense of belonging in and to contemporary Australia. This article analyses interviews with members of two specific and different ethnic groups in different locations in Australia, to explore similarities and differences in their lived experience resulting from this securitised environment. The comparative analysis between Indonesians in Perth and Lebanese in Sydney demonstrates strong mixed cultural identities are common, but finds tensions expressed about how the high levels of securitisation manifest in starkly different and novel ways. While the Lebanese participants are critical of the securitised and challenging socio-political context, the Indonesian participants interpret experiences of hostility and micro-aggressions as not necessarily directed towards all Muslims, but as focused on particular ethnic communities. Our data suggest that one outcome of the securitised environment is that the ‘good Muslim’ and the ‘bad Muslim’ distinction has become internalised.