• Podcast duration 3.37 minutes. Interviewed & produced by Nadyat El Gawley

Imam Amien Ahmed
Hearts here in our centre

The Suburban Islamic Association has been based in Minto since 1998. I migrated when the post here was advertised in one of our local papers in South Africa. The centre, though administered by Australian South Africans, has a more open name: The Suburban Islamic Association. The pioneers didn’t name the society or association ‘South African’ because they wanted to move away from ethnic and language connotations. They wanted it to be a more open association. In fact, we have non-South Africans serving on our board: Arabic, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and others.

The challenges here in Minto are of the interaction between the very diverse communities getting together here. First and foremost the community or parish I serve are largely South African, Middle Eastern (Arabic), Pakistani, Fijian, and more recently an emergent community from Bangladesh. In Guernsey Avenue the founding members started using a residence as a makeshift mosque. Any community has challenges. We call it growing pains, pains of growth and development. I think because of our South African background, and having gone through apartheid, we have come to learn not to discriminate against others along the lines of race, language and ethnic backgrounds. That’s what I can commend this association for achieving.

Initially in the first years I think the negative reaction [to the Mosque] from a certain minority here, was overblown, but they were an isolated group. We’ve been operating within reasonable limits of compatibility and compassion and neighbourliness within our immediate surroundings. That negativity came after the first Gulf War when people saw the images of behaviour in whatever was the political scene at that time. We’ve grown past that. We have liaison meetings with the Buddhist temple and the Hindu community, sister churches and social welfare organisations.

We had families from Somalia and Sudan and others from the Housing Commission, frequenting the Mosque, but most of them have since moved onto Melbourne and other places in Victoria because of family ties or work.

We have experienced isolated cases of stone throwing, sometimes only after negative news flashes of what’s happening on the international scene and in the Middle East, but we take it in our stride.

[The people at the housing estate], they’re very reluctant to move out of Minto. Having had their hearts here in our centre, some were sad to move on. We must remember that most of these people came from war-torn countries. Australia gives them liberty and freedom, but within the social aspect, they felt the challenges of still having to assimilate and integrate.