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Demographic Profiles of the Two Communities
The migration patterns of Jews and Muslims to Australia have been very
different. Jews have been present from the start of European settlement,
as there were over a dozen Jewish convicts who arrived with the British
First Fleet in 1788. During the nineteenth century the Jewish population
increased slowly. Jews escaping the failures of the 1848 revolutions in
Central Europe and Tsarist persecution from 1881 to 1920 preferred des-
tinations such as the “goldene medina” in the United States. As a result, by
1933 there were only 23,000 Jews in Australia. The major influx of Jews
occurred immediately before and after World War II with around 9,000
Jewish refugees from Nazism arriving in 1938–39 and 27,000 survivors
between 1945 and 1961. Jewish migration to Australia then leveled off.
While there has been further immigration from South Africa, Russia, and
Israel, Jews in Australia have never accounted for more than 0.5 percent
of the overall population.
In contrast, until 1970 the number of Muslims in Australia remained
tiny. In the nineteenth century, some Muslim Afghan camel drivers ar-
rived to work in the desert areas.
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From 1901, under the “White Austra-
lia” policy, non-Christian Middle Eastern immigrants were considered
undesirable. After December 1972, people were allowed to migrate from
Asia and the Pacific regions. At first most Muslim immigrants came from
Malaysia and Indonesia, then Pakistan and India, and more recently from
Turkey, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. In all, Muslims have mi-
grated to Australia from 120 countries. Lebanese Christians started to
migrate to Australia in the nineteenth century, but the arrival of Lebanese
Muslims is a more recent phenomenon, and today they form the largest
ethnic group, constituting 10 percent of Australian Muslims, followed
by the Turkish Muslims, constituting around 8 percent. Thus the Muslim
community in Australia is multiethnic with the different ethnic groups
forming their own communities and mosques.
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While the Jewish community has continued to constitute approxi-
mately 0.5 percent of the total Australian population, the Muslim com-
munity has grown rapidly since 1971, when it numbered only 20,000,
constituting 0.2 percent of the population. A quarter of a century later,
in 1996, Muslims had increased tenfold to 200,000, that is, 1.1 percent of
the population, and by the 2006 Australian census they had increased to
340,000, that is, 1.6 percent of the population. In comparison, the Jewish
100 · Suzanne D. Rutland
community numbered 86,000 in 2006, and although the community is
growing in absolute size, due to immigration rather then natural growth,
its proportion in the general population declined from 0.5 to 0.4 percent.
Both the Jewish and Muslim communities are concentrated in the two
main urban centers of Melbourne and Sydney. The Melbourne Jewish
population numbers around 50,000 and the Muslim population is 93,000,
while the Sydney Jewish population is 40,000 and the Muslim population
is 161,000.
Fig. 6.1. Comparison of proportion (% of overall population) and population
size of Jews and Muslims in Australia, 1947–2006.
Jews and Muslims “Downunder”: Emerging Dialogue and Challenges · 101
During the first half of the twentieth century, Jewish immigrants in
Melbourne moved from Carlton, the first area of settlement, to the south-
eastern suburbs of St. Kilda, Caulfield, Prahran, and Malvern with some
settlement in Doncaster, while in Sydney, they moved from the city center
to the eastern suburbs of Bondi and Bellevue Hill, with some settlement
in the northern suburbs, around St. Ives, developing after 1945. This shift
to these suburban areas reflected a move up the economic ladder into the
merchant and professional classes.
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This trend strengthened in the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century. The Jewish postwar migrants largely
became self-employed, establishing clothing factories, with some then
entering into property development. Since the 1980s, employment has
been dominated by managerial and professional occupations with a high
rate of young Jews completing doctoral studies. Most young Australian
Jews enter the workforce with a university degree.
Muslims have very different settlement patterns. They tend to be in
the lower socioeconomic echelons of society and face problems of low ed-
ucational standards, unemployment, and other issues relating to adjust-
ment to Australian society. In Sydney, most Muslims live in the southern
and western areas, which are more working-class and where property
is much less expensive, while the Jewish community lives in the eastern
and northern suburbs. In Melbourne, most Muslims live in the northern
and western suburbs, while the Jewish center is in the southeast. Thus,
while living in the same cities, there is minimal social interaction between
the two religious communities.
A number of reasons explain the lower socioeconomic status of Mus-
lims. First, they are a newer immigrant group, so they have had less time
to acculturate and integrate into Australian society. Attitudes in sharia
law about borrowing money on interest make it harder for those Muslims
who are more stringent in their religious practices to achieve the tradi-
tional Australian goal of owning one’s own home, even though Islamic
banks have been established to overcome this problem. Muslim women
tend to marry earlier and have larger families. Those who maintain tra-
ditional Muslim observance do not work after they get married, adding
to the financial stress of families. Because of the higher birth rate, 50 per-
cent of Muslims are under the age of 25, compared with 34.5 percent for
the Australian population in general.
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In addition, the unemployment
rates of Muslims are three times higher than the national Australian aver-
age,
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so many depend on social welfare from the government, with this
102 · Suzanne D. Rutland
moving into the second generation. Many also come from cultures where
literacy rates for a long period were not high, due to the traditional Mus-
lim pattern of focusing on the oral tradition and rote learning rather than
reading, discussing, and explaining religious texts.
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