Abstract
In recent years, the presence and ‘visibility’ of Muslims in Australia has become particularly pronounced. Often this issue has centred on the problematic positioning of Muslims in the secular state. Such discourse, however, has neglected to critique the presence and visibility of other forms of religious identification in Australia, and thus leaves the normative role and presence of Christianity in formulations of an Australian multicultural secular society unexamined. In this chapter, I discuss how Bosnian Muslims confront and engage with these differential forms of religious visibility and how such tensions inform their experiences of secular belonging in Australia. Drawing on this ethnographic material, I argue that debates and definitions of ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ religious identification in a secular state are political acts which work to demarcate and contest the bounds of national and social inclusion.
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- 1.
In France, the debate has moved beyond the realm of rhetoric and has materialized in the form of an institutionalized ban on a particular form of Islamic attire. Since 11 April 2011, the French Government has begun to enforce legislation which bans the wearing of full-face veils in public spaces.
- 2.
Section 116 of the Australian Constitution formalizes the separation of church and state: “The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.”
- 3.
Bosnian refugees sought asylum in neighboring countries such as Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. UNHCR figures estimated that in 1995, 350,000 Bosnian refugees were in Germany; 80,000 in Austria; 57,000 in Sweden; and 37,000 were outside Europe.
- 4.
This move did raise some public discussion which questioned the model of secularism that the Australian Government was portraying with this appointment.
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Voloder, L. (2012). Secularism, Society, and Symbols of Religion: Bosnian Muslim Australians Encounter Christmas. In: Manderson, L., Smith, W., Tomlinson, M. (eds) Flows of Faith. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2932-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2932-2_5
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