Australian Muslims Go for Surf, Lifesaving and Burqinis
Cronulla Journal
By RAYMOND BONNER
Published: March 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/world/asia/09australia.html?_r=1&oref=slogin7
CRONULLA, Australia, March 3 As a teenager growing up in a Sydney suburb,
Mecca Laalaa never felt anything but Australian, even though she was for the
most part unable to engage in the most quintessential of Australian pastimes:
swimming at the beach. Restricted by my clothing, Ms. Laalaa explained.
Ms. Laalaa is a Muslim and has voluntarily worn the burqa, the traditional
head-to-toe covering for Muslim women, since she was 14. It is hard to swim,
she said, if your body is swathed in cotton, which is very heavy when wet.
Now, her clothing quandary solved by a novel fashion, the burqini, Ms.
Laalaa, a vivacious 20-yearold, has become a Surf Life Saver, as volunteer
lifeguards here are known, lured to the beach by a new outreach program for
Australias Muslims. The program, On the Same Wave, was started a year ago by
the nonprofit group that organizes the volunteers, Surf Life Saving Australia,
along with the federal Immigration Ministry and the local council.
The outreach was the response to an ugly episode on Cronulla Beach, about 20
miles south of downtown Sydney, in December 2005, when skinheads and neo-Nazis,
many drunk and with racial epithets painted on their bodies and T-shirts,
marauded through the area beating up Lebanese men. Many here and abroad
wondered if Australia was headed for a period of rising racial tension. The
riots set off a round of soul-searching and left many Australians asking if the
violence reflected an underlying racism in their society.
Among Australias population of roughly 20.2 million, fewer than half a
million are Muslims, most of them in Sydney and Melbourne.
On the Same Wave was intended to promote cultural understanding, introduce
people from minority groups Chinese, Somalis, Sudanese to beach culture and
safety, and above all to increase and diversify the membership of Surf Life
Saving, said Vanessa Brown, its membership director. It has also challenged the
public perception of a virtually sacred Australian icon, the Surf Life Saver,
as someone who is always blond, blue-eyed and sun-bronzed. Its a stereotype,
thats accurate, said Suzie Stollznow, diversity manager for Surf Life Saving
New South Wales.
Under the program, 22 men and women, from 14 to 40 years old and including a
woman with three small children, signed up to become Surf Life Savers. Most
were ethnic Lebanese, but there was a Palestinian, a Syrian and a Libyan. But
all proudly Australian, said one, Suheil Damouny. Its important to mention
that.
Like most Muslim immigrants here, Mr. Damouny, 20, a sportswriter at The
Torch, a weekly newspaper, does not like to be referred to by ethnicity. His
grandparents fled Palestine in 1948 and moved to Lebanon, then to the United
Arab Emirates, where he lived until moving to Australia seven years ago. He
considers himself Australian.
Mr. Damouny said his friends could not understand why he wanted to be a Life
Saver, especially in Cronulla. And they did not think he could pass the
rigorous eight-week course. But I did, he said proudly. Seventeen finished;
one woman dropped out after making the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and
coming back in a full burqa.
Nodding to where a yellow surfboard with the red letters Surf Rescue rested
waiting to be paddled out in an emergency, Mr. Damouny, who is about 5 feet 7
and weighs 140 pounds, said: The hardest was getting used to that big, ugly
thing. It is quite heavy. One requirement was to be able to pull an
unconscious swimmer on board, and then get him to shore, through massive
waves, Mr. Damouny said.
Ms. Laalaa broke her nose when she was trying to paddle out through the
crashing surf and the board reared up and kicked back into her. She also
twisted both ankles, she said. I have black-and-blue bruises all over my
body, she said. But Id do it all over again. She admits that she was an
unlikely candidate. Im a girly-girl, she said. I like to walk on the street
in high heels.
But Ms. Laalaa said one reason she had joined the lifesaving program was to
educate Australians about Muslims. They dont think Muslim women swim, she
said. Or do anything, she quickly added with an irrepressible laugh.
When people see women wearing the burqa, they think they are oppressed. I am
not oppressed, she said. I do have my own mouth. I am educated. I do make my
own decisions. For her and other women, the biggest obstacle, she explained,
was what they would wear. That was solved by a local fashion entrepreneur,
Aheda Zanetti, who designs dynamic swimwear and sportswear for todays Muslim
female.
For Surf Life Savers, Ms. Zanetti, whose label is Ahiida, came up with a
two-piece outfit made of spandex, form-fitting but fully covering, even the
hair. Ms. Laalaa pulls her hair back into a bun and hides it under a bright red
hood that is an extension of the long-sleeved yellow top.
Ms. Laalaa said her father, a welder, was completely supportive, as was her
mother, a homemaker, and her three brothers and sister. She said her family was
not that different from other Muslims in Australia. Most are moderate, she
said. Experts here agree. It is the radicals who grab the headlines, they say.
Ms. Laalaa said Muslims had felt fully integrated into Australian life until
the attacks of Sept. 11. That is when the tensions mounted, when many
Australians began looking at Muslims with suspicion. Before 9/11 they didnt
know us, said Shayma Almoty, a friend of Ms. Laalaas. Now theyve become
afraid and fearful of us.
Which is ridiculous, chimed in Ronya Chami, 21, an accountant and another
longtime friend. The message to other young Muslims, Ms. Chami said, is, Get
out there and be part of Australia.
AB
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"For to us
will be their return; then it will be for us to call them to account." (Holy
Quran 88:25-26)
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