Fabrications The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfab20 Islamic Architectures of Self-Inclusion and Assurance in a Multicultural Society Julie Rudner , Fatemeh Shahani & Trevor Hogan To cite this article: Julie Rudner , Fatemeh Shahani & Trevor Hogan (2020) Islamic Architectures of Self-Inclusion and Assurance in a Multicultural Society, Fabrications, 30:2, 153-175, DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2020.1749220 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2020.1749220 Published online: 04 Aug 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rfab20 FABRICATIONS 2020, VOL. 30, NO. 2, 153–175 https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2020.1749220 ARTICLE Islamic Architectures of Self-Inclusion and Assurance in a Multicultural Society Julie Rudner a , Fatemeh Shahanib and Trevor Hoganb a Community Planning and Development, La Trobe University, Bendigo and Bundoora, Australia; School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia b ABSTRACT Although Muslim migration to Australia’s new world settler society has a long pedigree, their population and civic presence have grown in recent decades. New generations of Muslim migrants require the nation to engage with their histories and post-secular religious pluralism. Part of their history can be traced through their places of worship. This includes temporary structures along the inland telegraph route (the 1850s), the first permanent mosques in South Australia (Adelaide, 1888) and Victoria (Shepparton, 1956–60), and a variety of contemporary mosques as the population grows – indicating more settled lives. The aim was/is to provide sites of communal, spiritual, cultural, social, and educational guidance. Mosques often comprise(d) hybrid designs using a combination of local materials to fit with the existing built environment and to integrate unobtrusively. Recent examples of mosque development indicate a qualitative shift based on interacting social imaginaries of both Muslims and non-Muslims, which serves two key symbolic and social functions: as architectures of self-inclusion, and as architectures of assurance to the dominant, nonMuslim public in a society that resolutely “others” the Islamic faith and Muslim people. This paper explores the complex implications of this two-fold self-inclusion/assurance discourse by way of two case studies: the Hobson’s Bay mosque in Melbourne and the proposed Bendigo mosque. Introduction Mosque developers go to extraordinary efforts to demonstrate sensitivity to non-Muslim bias and ignorance, and to create intercultural and religious bridges through design and discourse. Wanting to bridge difference is not a new phenomenon,1 but some communities, or at least their representatives, feel compelled to do so in order to mitigate potential or actual political and community conflict. New structures alter streetscapes and neighbourhoods, CONTACT Julie Rudner J.Rudner@latrobe.edu.au University, Bendigo and Bundoora, Australia Community Planning and Development, La Trobe © 2020 The Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 154 J. RUDNER ET AL. so it is not surprising that some proposed developments create concern for the wider community. However, objections towards mosque construction are frequently directed at Islam, providing a clear articulation of non-Muslim anxieties, rather than planning and design matters. Apprehension in Australia has grown in the past two decades. The 9/11 and the 2002 Bali bombings fuelled anti-Islamic discourses in federal policy and rhetoric, social media, and via scare campaigns by anti-migration groups, at the same time that Muslim refugee groups (from Iraq and Afghanistan in particular) increased. The anti-Islamic discourses sought to ‘remov[e] the space of commonality’2 between people by eroding public empathy, demonising asylum seekers, and undermining the Australian Muslim population.3 Feelings of being “under siege” by segments of society were harnessed politically, by reinforcing the imagined boundaries of “civilisation” (west) via the territorial boundaries of nation4 and neighbourhood. Many non-Muslims now feel an acute sense of being colonised and “other-ed”. They attribute an inordinate amount of power to Muslims to comprehensively change society and the lives of “ordinary” Australians. Non-Muslims’ fears about the imposition of their own conceptions of Sharia Law, gender segregation, and violence, for example, suggest doubt about the institutional, administrative, and political competence of the government, and belief in the capacity of Muslims to influence democratic processes to such an extent that they take over whole cities.5 This creates perverse inversions of perceived power and inclusion/exclusion. Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage argues that anxiety arises because Muslims “escape the government apparatus” politically and in the public imagination because Islamic faith, laws, and customs are directed towards “God”; they cannot be encompassed by multicultural policy.6 Sociologist, Modood asserts that the collective nature of faith confronts secular multiculturalism, which is founded on individualism.7 Places of worship can reinforce this anxiety, as the construction of mosques attests to the escape. Planning policy only partially governs the spatial and material expressions of faith, as it addresses land use and activity but not the faith community – although one does affect the other. No other religion in Australia experiences the same level of scrutiny or distrust. Mosque development as a placemaking activity creates new identifications by de-centring assumptions about national and local identity. It represents and facilitates the performance of religious identity and cultural expression, supporting emancipation and integration for Muslims. Islamic design and practice challenge the locus of territorial, religious, and cultural power by making space for Muslim communities. Similar to the experiences of many other migrant groups, processes of settlement and growth common to all communities have been interpreted by many non-Muslims as symbols of colonisation. Diasporic communities FABRICATIONS 155 regularly confront Anglo-Australian and Christian traditions, whose social imaginaries were re-defined and developed in the formation of an antipodean nation-state. British colonies were forged on Protestantism (especially the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches) with a desire for order and tradition, and motivated by aspirations of modernity: progress, utilitarianism, and liberalism.8 To accommodate religious difference, a decision was made to separate dogma (church) from ethics (state).9 Thus, institutions, systems, and populations were remoulded into a secular society that imagined the “Commonwealth of Australia” as a British civil society, in which its secular values are informed and strongly influenced by Christianity, but were not legally binding or directive. This social imaginary and the popular public discourse erase Australian Muslim histories and the heterogeneity of their communities. This includes the Afghan Cameleers, who were Muslim and often British, and made a significant contribution to the country’s physical, economic, and social development pre and post federation.10 Their achievements, as well as those of later generations of Muslims, are woven into the fabric of towns throughout the nation. Since the mid-twentieth century, antipodean structures have gradually been reformulated into a multi-cultural secular society. The underlying assumption remains, however, that the civil sphere of Australian polity is normatively Anglo-Australian against which other traditions are measured and their “otherness” defined.11 Rather than “accommodate [NonChristian] organized religion so that it may serve the public good”12 Muslims are often excluded from the national polity, and are deemed “ungovernable” due to their religiosity.13 But everyday life at local levels is much more complex than this national compact would seem to suggest, as various social groups (ethnic, linguistic, religious) negotiate the way they construct their communities and their institutions (e.g., businesses, welfare agencies, schools, and places of worship).14 This is why it is so disheartening that mosque proponents, whether Muslim or not, still feel a need to respond to demands for Muslims to legitimise their claims to Australian society. In the past 20 years, only two of 137 cases about building new places of worship were “Red Dot” decisions; these cases of high significance are determined by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the administrative body that oversees planning appeals.15 Both were mosque proposals: one in Bendigo16 (2015) and one in metropolitan Melbourne17 (2014). When Muslim religious groups assert themselves in the public sphere through physical development, there are often public demands to reject proposals on the grounds that government cannot provide a public guarantee against terrorism, radicalisation, and the “destruction of Australia’s social fabric.”18 156 J. RUDNER ET AL. With a focus on issues of power and representation that arise when religious sites produce multiplicities of meanings and symbols, we argue that design responses and public discourses about mosques can be read as architectures of self-inclusion and assurance. Design rationales reported in public media about the Australian Islamic Centre and mosque in metropolitan Melbourne are compared to the discourse that emerged from a proposed mosque in the regional city of Bendigo. The paper combines data from doctoral research by Shahani19 about acceptance of Islamic design principles in the city and a study by Rudner.20 Both works comprised spatial analysis, interviews with planners, and Muslim and non-Muslim community members (forty in Melbourne and twenty in Bendigo), but the data presented here focus on the mosques and their associated popular media discourse. Australian Mosques in a Diasporic Context Creating, maintaining, and engaging with places of worship are important placemaking activities that support a sense of identity, belonging, and societal integration for participants. As Verkaaik21 emphasises, the architecture of religion provides a link between the material and the immaterial within its physical spaces through the experience of its artefacts, media, performative rituals, and aesthetics. Places of worship also penetrate the landscape through their strategic, organisational, and organic claims to space. Mosque development, like other religious structures, territorialise their environments because “[s]ymbolic domination involves the power to establish the legitimacy of a particular symbolic order within a given field.”22 The lack of prescribed design features for mosques is well suited to diasporic aspirations by facilitating architectural diversity, providing possibilities that are not limited to one particular geography or culture. Mosques are ostensibly designed for ‘the remembrance of God’23 so the few liturgical requirements comprise the orientation along the qibla axis, with the qibla wall and mihrab (niche) facing Mecca. Neither the Qur’an (word of God to Muhammad) nor hadith (word of Muhammad) requires that mosques take particular forms, designs, or adornments. Islamic architectures are intrinsically adaptable, creating new forms and functions, and symbolising unimagined futures. Kahera, Abdulmalik, and Anz’s24 explanation of design genres suggests why this might be the case: Stylistically, the design of a mosque falls within three common genres: a strict adherence to an aesthetic tradition influenced by sign, symbol, and building convention; second an attempt at design interpretation employing experimental and popular ideas, resulting in a hybrid image; and, finally, a faithful attempt to understand modernity, tradition, and urbanism. FABRICATIONS 157 Mosque design tells a story of settlement and placemaking in specific locales and at particular times, with the Muslim diaspora revealing how local practices of transnational beliefs emerge and are differentiated in their construction. Attesting to the intersection of east and west, Mustafa and Hassan25 identify six different layouts of mosques from Asia to the Balkans in the Ottoman period, and Lozanovska26 explains shared architectural influences from Hagia Sofia (532–537AD) that are reflected in Byzantine churches and Ottoman mosques – accentuating the connection between world religions. Aljunied’s27 work demonstrates the varied cultural forms of mosque architecture through his categorisation of three construction phases in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia: vernacular (Malay and Indic), colonial (classical and Moorish) and modern construction (Arabic, Turkish, and Iranian), while in the South Asian sub-continent, Burton-Page28 provides detailed descriptions of Indian mosque architecture that reflect conquests and the “re-use of pillaged” material from Hindu and Jain temples, dynasties, politics, and access to financial resources. Hammer, Safi and Kahera,29 Saint-Blancat,30 and Zwilling31 highlight that the modern Muslim diaspora links local conditions to a global and collective memory that plays out in the politics, identities, and territorialisation of space in the USA and Europe. As a global force, Rivzi32 discusses transnational mosque design within the context of Saudi Arabian exportation of Islamic ideology and political engagement. Mosques (like all human fabrications) embody the layering and blurring of religious and cultural practices over time that, in turn, change according to the needs of each generation and community – their design, size, material, and function are accordingly influenced by their users’ faith (e.g. Sunni or Shia), community need, country/ies of origin, diasporic group, cultural heritage, aesthetic, climate, streetscape, and location.33 Regardless of whether they are purpose-built, re-purposed structures, or shared spaces, mosques provide space to contemplate God; and facilitate a social, political, and educational identity as well as the changing needs of communities in a multi-cultural society. The diversity of Australian Muslim heritage is evident through mosque construction practices. Hybrid structures, their design and materials reveal the culture, national trends, and international influences at the time of construction.34 For example, the Adelaide mosque (1889) in Little Gilbert Street (Fig. 1) is the oldest, but not the first, mosque in Australia. Symbolically, it represents settlement, commitment, and significant contribution of the Cameleers to local and national development. Its vernacular construction comprising “ . . . bluestone from Mount Lofty Ranges laid in random coursework, tuck-pointed clay bricks and corrugated galvanised iron roofing . . . ” has a “striking familiarity” with the Freeman Street Congregational church.35 Its minarets, built fourteen years later (after 158 J. RUDNER ET AL. Figure 1. Adelaide Mosque, 1888–1899. Photograph, 1950, reproduced from: Museums Victoria Collection: item 2278427. Creative Commons 4.0 international licence. Unknown photographer. Source: Courtesy Museum Victoria implementation of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 or White Australia Policy), also comprise local materials and technologies.36 At the time, religious practice, mosque, and minaret construction seemed to elicit curiosity from non-Muslim observers, while racial, cultural, and linguistic characteristics of the Afghan people elicited concern, as the following statement from the Kapunda Herald in 1890 suggests, “The agitation against the Chinese having nearly exhausted itself we shall next hear an outcry about the Hindoos (sic), the Afghans, and the gipsies (sic) who are rapidly increasing here – the Afghans particularly. They have a fine little mosque in Adelaide . . ..”37 Efforts were made by the local Muslims to explain the function of the mosque and assure the public of the Afghan community’s good intent, with some similarities between Islamic and FABRICATIONS 159 Christian design reported in the press. The following local report in The Express and Telegraph (1890)38 illustrates a contemporary view: Mosque has quite recently been added to the numerous places of public worship in Adelaide. It is situated in . . . the quarter where the permanent Afghan population mostly congregates. Viewed from the street it is a most unpretentious building, for the cloistered court, with its pillars and tesselated pavement, is at the back . . . It is an exceedingly plain, small roofed building whose whitewashed walls might recall those of a ‘‘kirk” in some remote country district of Scotland. Immediately opposite the entrance is a niche about 9 feet high, near the top of which is a bull’s eye window looking due west. This niche is the mihrab or kibla, and is supposed to show the direction of Mecca, as Christian churches do that of Jerusalem. In the walls of the sanctuary are smaller niches, which do not reach to the ground, and where lamps and printed copies of the Koran are kept. On the floor are strips of matting, very necessary to prevent the feet of the faithful from feeling the cold while engaged in their devotions. As we entered an Afghan was on his knees praying, with his face towards Mecca, and every now and again touching the ground with his forehead. The mulla seemed to have no fear of disturbing his fellow-countryman’s devotions, for he began a loud and voluble description of the way in which he calls the faithful to prayer five times a day and twice at night. Leaving the place of prayer we resumed our shoes, and the mulla pointed to a large excavation which is being bricked up just in front of the cloister. This is the tank for the ablutions, requisite before prayer. It will form the centre of the little court in front of the sanctuary and the covered cloister, or liwan, will be extended so as to surround it on all sides. The effect of the pillars, the mosaic pavement, and the water in the Centre, should then be very pretty, especially on a bright day, when the play of light and shadow will come in. The baji mulla estimates the number of worshippers on a Friday at from 20 to 40, and up to 100 on great occasions – great “ Christmases” he calls them. Islam, as is well known, has several festivals, major and minor, in the year. . . . Again, the word “mosque” was found to be an unknown term in Little Gilbert Street. Among themselves, of course, the Afghans use the word masjid, but in the English parlance of the locality the little whitewashed building is the “chapel.” Its cost so far has been about £450, all raised by voluntary contributions among the Moslems, several of those in Melbourne having subscribed very handsomely. This mosque also served as a reference point for subsequent mosque development. In 1895, The Telegraph (1895)39 reported on the Adelaide mosque to provide some context for a proposed development in Sydney. The short article noted that ‘Mahometans . . . have married – European women, bought farms, and settled down” in South Australia. It also provided particular comment on Hadji Mollah’s pilgrimage to Mecca, his residence of 31 years, and his views about other Afghans and “Mahometans” coming to, and remaining, in the country: “Yes, it is a good country. Our religion is not interfered with, and we are not harassed by any unjust laws.”40 Furthermore, the article notes that the “Mollah emphasised this point ‘we are all British subjects’”, illustrating that British common culture was not yet entrenched in its association with Anglophone, white-skinned citizens. Bartsch41 identifies that, in the 1930s, a wellknown herbalist and philanthropist Mahomet Allum was still seeking to build social bridges by portraying himself like Father Christmas and assuring the public that his “services transcended cultural and religious difference.” 160 J. RUDNER ET AL. Similarly, development of the oldest mosque in Shepparton, Victoria (1956–1960, Fig. 2) was reported factually, even though the lawfulness, loyalties, and industriousness of Albanian migrants were intensely questioned in other forums at the height of “White Australia” (the 1930s and 1940s).42 Various migrant groups were lumped with the Albanians and accused of forming colonies and taking land and jobs. Yet, Albanians joined and supported the Australian war effort, and Albanian songs were sung at some local schools.43 Overtures from the Albanian community were made to demonstrate their allegiance to Australian society: The Shepparton centenary which was not listed on the official programme was a special thanksgiving service attended by 200 Albanian Mohammedans at their Mosque at Shepparton East. Members of the Albanian community, which comprises about 500, said that they felt impelled to take some part in the celebrations to show their appreciation of the Freedom of their life in Australia. (Argus, 1938)44 From the 1940s, the community, via the Free Albanian Association (operating for few years), developed a Charter to maintain their culture while expressing loyalty and commitment to Australian law, culture, and the English language.45 The irony of the assimilationist policy regime is that it generates otherness in minority groups who internalise the necessity to assimilate and make themselves less conspicuous. After the communist takeover of their homeland in the aftermath of World War II, Albanians also had to prove their allegiance to Australia in the context of the paranoid discourses of the Cold War. Figure 2. Shepparton Albanian Mosque, 1956–1960. Photograph, c1960, The Rose Series. P14192. Photograph reproduced from: State Library of Victoria. Rose Stereograph Company. This image is out of copyright. (The date listed in the SLV catalogue is 1920-1954 – this is incorrect, so we have listed the year of opening). FABRICATIONS 161 Intensifying Discourses of Assurance in Victoria The extremist attacks of 11 September 2001 by Al-Qaeda, the Bali bombings in 2002, and the subsequent rise of ISIS and various Asian militant Islamist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah significantly affected local Muslim populations and how Islamic places of worship are viewed by non-Muslims.46 Anti-Islamic discourses which were dormant in the non-Muslim population, have been reenergised and deployed across all western and first-world nations over the past eighteen years. In Australia, fear belies reality. Muslims are still only 2.6% of the total national population, 3.3% in Victoria, and 4.4% in Melbourne,47 and their behaviours do not give cause for these fears. Contests of power over social imaginaries of identification, territory, and placemaking, have historical precedence, but now developers and their Muslim communities encounter more intense, unreasonable, and unachievable demands for assurance. To counteract reprisal against mosque-building activities, mosque developers are more consciously engaged in public discourses to reassure hegemonic groups that they are not a threat. These discourses focus on cohabitation and social integration. In recent years, the design of buildings and developers’ rationales for their proposals emphasise respect for local aesthetics and a willingness to be socially included/inclusive. This is often symbolised through hybridised architecture and allocation of community space for use beyond the faith congregation, which is a substantively practical and innovative design response to the current political and demographic context. It also represents a negotiation with the dominant norms and aesthetics that emerged from colonial architecture that are still inextricably embedded in planning practice and community expectation. An overview of mosques in the State of Victoria will contextualise the case studies. There are currently 55 mosques in the Melbourne metropolitan region and 12 in regional areas (Fig. 3). After Shepparton, the first purpose-built mosque in the state was constructed in Melbourne in Figure 3. 2018. Distribution of Sunni and Shia mosques in Victoria. Produced by: Fatemeh Shahani on base map reproduced from Google Maps. 162 J. RUDNER ET AL. 1969. Sunni mosques (fifty-nine) primarily service Muslims of Lebanese, Turkish, Arab, Albanian, Bosnian, Indonesian, Somalian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian communities, and Shia mosques (eight) meet the needs of Muslims with Iranian, Iraqi, Afghani, and Pakistani backgrounds.48 Just over half of the mosques are built in contemporary or modern design (thirty-six) compared to traditional design (thirty-one). The former comprise classic, contemporary Islamic, contemporary Australian-Islamic (refers to twenty-first-century construction using Islamic symbols and Australian features), and modern Australian-Islamic (new and innovative technologies of construction using Islamic symbols and Australian features). Traditional design includes Islamic Ottoman style as well as the adaptation of the Australian Christian vernacular – bluestone, white weatherboard, and cream brick. The images in Fig. 4 represent different types of mosque architecture in Victoria. Figure 4. Sunshine Mosque (1985) Islamic Ottoman design (top left); Omar Bin Al Khattab Mosque (1976) Contemporary Islamic design (top right); Thomastown Mosque (1975) Contemporary Australian Islamic (bottom left); Elsedeac Mosque Traditional vernacular cement render (bottom right). Photographed by Fatemeh Shahani, 2018. FABRICATIONS 163 New Newport Mosque, Metropolitan Melbourne In Hobsons Bay (population ~96,000), the Muslim population comprises a rich and complex set of migrations across many decades. The first wave worshipped at a small mosque in Newport, with a bigger mosque completed in 2016 to meet growing demand. The new mosque represents a resilient, and confident, second, and third-generation migrant community of predominantly Lebanese Sunni-Muslim, who feel at home in Australian settings. The mosque was designed by internationally renowned (and selfavowed) secularist Australian architect, Glenn Murcutt, in collaboration with Hakan Elevli, a Muslim architect. The open, airy, modern design, with a focus on climate conditions and visual harmony, attracted controversy. The complex, multivalent struggle for power by the development proponents, Muslim and non-Muslim community members, and the state, took nine years of wrangling to pass through the application and approval process. Construction of the mosque required negotiations at local and state government level via community outreach, the planning scheme, and Victorian and Civil Administrative Tribunal, all of which exhibit different authority and powers to affect outcomes of built form and the urban landscape.49 Efforts were made to persuade and assure the broader community about the value of the mosque, and the central role of its architecture for community development, national identity, and local aesthetics. Murcutt believed that the development was a “ . . . progressive vision and enabler of intercultural dialogue in a multicultural society” and “perhaps the first truly contemporary Australian mosque.”50 The National Gallery of Victoria positioned the mosque as an example of a new architectural language for Australian Muslims.51 Further comments assert that “Murcutt’s mosque is as much a prism through which the wider Australian community will view Islam as it is a place for an evolving immigrant community to gather and pray.”52 In the architectural team’s approach to the physical design elements, there is, as Shahani observes “ . . . an obvious transformation from traditional to modern and local influences.”53 Significantly, it lacks a dome and a minaret although the mosque incorporates traditional religious elements, like the entry to prayer, which is separated by gender (Fig. 5). Murcutt stated that “although [the minarets] . . . had been the place for the calling of prayers that was not likely to happen today in Australia.”54 While recognising and responding to objectors is a regular practice in planning, the degree of response about the integrated hybrid architecture of the mosque demonstrates the problematic nature of dealing with antiIslamic sentiment. Murcutt noted, “I think the Arab building is threatening to many within the Australian community. I was very conscious of that side of things.”55 The rationale for the design, according to Elevli, was that it “ . . . 164 J. RUDNER ET AL. Figure 5. Old Newport Mosque, Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque, 2016 (left) and New Hobson’s Bay Mosque, 2018, with symbolic minaret (right). Photographs by: Fatemeh Shahani, 2016 and 2017. needed to be simple, beautiful and as welcoming for non-Muslims as it was for Muslims.”56 The desire to be welcoming is embedded in the entrance design; when the doors open for the community to enter, it is akin to a gesture of open arms.57 Discursive persuasion, like the building itself, had to be strategically and aesthetically seductive. A journalist reporting on the mosque acknowledged, “architecture can be a profoundly political act.”58 His statement was supported by a non-Muslim member on the development committee, who highlighted the political nature of decisionmaking: “I said to the committee that having two architects, a Muslim and a non-Muslim, would be a clear demonstration of our commitment to the idea you have of wanting this project to break down misunderstandings and ignorance . . . ”59 In Murcutt’s explanation about his desire to change Australian culture and transform anti-Islamic sentiment through his design, he highlights and reinforces the status of Muslims as being “outside” community. These comments anchor the significance of the development to a much deeper narrative of migration60: I’m putting forward the idea that, in a society that is anti-Islam, we can produce some work that can actually bring Islam back into our community and become an addition to the culture. Our country has the most wonderful culture that has been added to year after year by the migration of people. It is an amazing place and Islam can be another added aspect to our culture. During a National Gallery exhibition about the development, the curator made grander claims about the ability of architecture to transform how nonMuslims view Muslims by stating that “ . . . Glenn Murcutt has managed to present a different language that removes many of those issues [matters raised by objectors]. It takes them off the table”61 – a view echoed by a Hobsons Bay councillor and former mayor, “They showed there was nothing to fear.”62 FABRICATIONS 165 These bold statements simultaneously attest to the transformative nature of architecture for social integration and cohesion while alluding to visions of an intercultural future.63 This was exemplified by excluding minarets from the design. The rationale illustrates sensitivity to the diverse nature of Australian society, as well as providing assurances to the public that their current non-Muslim and western expectations of environmental amenity would not be affected. As explained on the Australian Muslim Centre’s website, in Western societies like Melbourne, minarets are not required:64 The purpose of the minaret is to make a call to prayer, the adhan. It may be compared to the traditional role of church bells, the sound of which in the modern world tends to be a little more than an echo of a long distant past. The adhan, however, is still as much a part of the culture of Muslims today as it was for past generations, however, its announcement in a Western context is purely internal – avoiding disruption to local communities of a different faith. The minaret isn’t necessary in a Western context, as its function cannot be utilised. Hidden from the consciousness of the uninformed, are subtleties that suggest a different layer of placemaking and territoriality. Shahani recalled her experience during a site visit to collect data, which suggests a different context of cultural and religious difference, and power. While I was standing, I could hear the voice of Adhan. The adhan can still be heard when approaching the mosque but set at the back of the site it is quiet and nondisruptive to the neighboring properties. It is an Islamic call for worship which is called by Muezzin from the mosque, traditionally from the minarets. But this mosque didn’t have the minaret, so you could hear the Adhan from the speakers which have been installed for this purpose. Adhan is a call for Muslims to come and pray in congregation, it is the men’s duty to do it in a loud and appropriate tone. When I was listening to the Adhan, I noticed that it was a Sunni Mosque from the repetition of some lines in Adhan. I have a Shia Muslim background, and this helped me to distinguish who prayed in that mosque. Bendigo Mosque Bendigo (population ~94,000) is located 150 km west of Melbourne and has much lower population diversity than Hobsons Bay. New spikes of migration are mostly from various parts of Asia (0.6% in 2001; 1.4% in 2011; 0.5% in 201665), but a detailed picture is difficult to identify because more than 6,922 people did not report their country of birth in 2016. In particular, people born in North Africa and the Middle East reported in previous census data were absent. Over this time, the Muslim population has increased, but is still very small (0.1% in 2001; 0.2% in 2011; 0.5% in 2016, with 9.6% not stating a response).66 The Bendigo mosque, by GKA Architects, also exhibits a hybridised design, but it has more recognisable Islamic features with both a minaret, a curved roof and mushrabiya that filters the sunlight (Fig. 6). Perhaps due 166 J. RUDNER ET AL. Figure 6. Architect’s image of the Bendigo mosque, by GKA (Asher Greenwood) Architects, 2013. to the unique nature of the local Muslim community which comprises people from 27 nations, and the fact it is the first mosque for this regional city in Victoria, there was a different and conscious engagement with intercultural relations. The structure incorporates a central covered courtyard and masonry verandah echoing the historic form of Syrian mosques to commemorate the Great Mosque of Aleppo that was destroyed in recent conflict.67 The shape of the dome above the courtyard also refers to the design of the local law courts (by G. W. Watson from the Public Works Department, constructed 1892–1896), and a locally historic hayshed (no longer existing). The design responds to the local climate, landscape, light, and Aboriginal heritage of the area.68 The colours of the site are reflected in the colours of the masonry external walls. The patterning of the various façade, privacy, and sun shading screens references Islamic aesthetics inspired by Islamic Kurdish rugs to symbolise the diversity of the local community, since Kurdistan covers multiple nations: Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.69 Metal screens lining the courtyard and forming part of the façade allude to the city’s early ironwork and link to the legacy of William Vahland, an 1850s migrant who had a substantial influence on urban development as an architect and public figure.70 As many of the community members originate from Malaysia and Indonesia, the roof is corrugated iron – a common building material in Australia and one that was used extensively for early mosques in Malaysia and Indonesia.71 Importantly, the use of windows facilitates greater visibility than most places of worship afford. In conjunction with its ancillary facilities, the mosque will provide opportunities for the broader non-Muslim community to visit the site, see the Muslim community’s activities, and use parts of the building. It is a design that declares its civic spiritedness in its transparent openness to the wider public gaze. Like the Hobsons Bay mosque, the size, bulk, streetscape, noise, and parking were raised as objections to the proposed Bendigo development. The proposal and permit conditions restricted calls to prayer – which is already addressed through the use of online technologies, operating times, as well as the number of attendees on both regular and high holy days.72 The planning permit process again demonstrated the coercive power of FABRICATIONS 167 regulatory authorities to limit activities at the mosque. However, these powers were more keenly felt by objectors, who appealed the case until it reached the Supreme Court of Victoria and they were not given leave to appeal. The situation, which attracted international interest, revealed the power of anti-Islamic mobilisation, and the desire for some members to reterritorialise urban spaces. The proposal for the Bendigo mosque focussed the anxieties of hegemonic Anglo-Australians and right-wing groups from around the nation, which situated the city as a symbolic and strategic bastion of “Australian values.”73 Objectors’ animosity to the mosque was visceral. They claimed it would conceal sinister desires and activities leading to Islamic radicalisation, future violence, and imposition of Sharia law.74 The building is located at the intersection of commercial, industrial, public use, and low-density residential zones, and will be constructed in the centre of the lot. The open design, which is sensitive to the surrounding natural features, and will enhance the visual amenity of the area, undermine objections that the development will dominate the landscape and intimidate the non-Muslim community.75 Read differently, the forms and features of the building could be interpreted as embodying transparency, accountability, and the rule of law. But design is “immaterial” to objectors who believe they have been, and continue to be, manipulated, and that supporters have been tricked through the persuasive power of the proponents. Construction has started, time will tell whether the community is able to transform local opposition through its inclusionary approaches. In a bid to create a different public narrative, the local representative of the mosque emphasised the community’s intentions of citizenship, peace, and integration, while supporting the right of mosque objectors to have their opinions. For example, Mr Febriyanto, the local representative, stated that, “We’ve always supported peace and harmony and we’ll continue doing so . . ..”76 He also asserted adherence to governing structures, noting that “[o]pposing the Australian system and law cannot be the Australian way,” and “[a]ggression and violence cannot be the Australian way.”77 This phrasing and emphasis on allegiance to law and social values invokes the social and national imaginary of democracy, multiculturalism, and human rights, key themes in the broader national discourse. At the same time, similar ethical and political expectations are asked of their non-Muslim compatriots. In an ABC article, Mr Febriyanto rejected the “other” status by engaging in self-inclusion; he reminded non-Muslim audiences that, “[w]e are also the local community in Bendigo.”78 He further confronted assumptions of “newness” and negative stereotypes: “[w]e have been living here for more than 15 years, so we are same as the locals in Bendigo, we are working as well.”79 Importantly, Mr Febriyanto also identified the Muslim community’s desires for peaceful co-existence, “So I think we should have 168 J. RUDNER ET AL. the equality of rights, then we would like to live in harmony within the community of Bendigo.”80 These statements stake a claim to the city, including the right to shape its landscape through placemaking. As with the Newport example, there was a strong effort by the mosque proponents to reach out to the local community and invite them into conversation so they could assuage their concerns through personal communication. The following examples by Mr Febriyanto illustrate the messaging of public communication to attenuate negativity81: We would just encourage anyone who has questions whether about the centre or Islam in general to reach out and ask us rather than rely on the misinformation. There has been some opposition voiced but this is to be expected and we hope, in time, to be able to reach out to those people and engage with them to try and show them that their concerns are not warranted. There is nothing preventing any individual entering a mosque, whether they are Muslim or not. Most mosque communities would in fact welcome such visits and encourage them as a way to build ties. In these series of comments, reassurance is provided alongside invitations to the non-Muslim community to share power with them, by jointly working to confront misunderstandings and rectify mis- or dis-information. It is a polite rebuttal that shifts the power balance, if only momentarily, to broader processes of negative interpellation and mis-interpellation.82 It also illustrates a desire to build community connection on respectful grounds; the statements are pragmatic and aimed at addressing ignorance rather than intractable beliefs. But the media focus on only one representative was a result of fear – many were unwilling to speak publicly at the time due to concern about their safety, and the safety of their families. The recent attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, by an Australian gunman supported their concerns. Negotiating Spatial, Material, and Social Relations Mosque design represents an architecture of historical hybrid practice, evident through its conceptual development, form, and materials. The structures link expressions of transnational ideas and networks of faith with neighbourhood practice. The distinctive social settings of the Adelaide, Shepparton, Hobson’s Bay and Bendigo mosques demonstrate that everyday life in multi-cultural communities is temporally and spatially dynamic, exhibiting socio-economic, socio-historical, ethno-cultural, and religious diversity across and within Muslim communities, cities, and FABRICATIONS 169 towns. It matters when, where, how, and why migrants settle in particular locations. Local public discourses promoted by proponents and representatives of the facilities seek to create an open and transparent engagement with their broader communities through an architecture of inclusion. They provide insight into the pre-history of locations, the experience of the community in accommodating and welcoming diversity, the political imaginary of the city, its public institutions, and the built form, which are crucial to structuring contexts for successful integration of new migrant initiatives – Muslim or otherwise. Like all new migrant communities in settler-societies, Muslim people express their right as citizens to participate in and belong to the wider civil sphere by building their own places into the urban landscapes. Mosque construction is a demarcation of territory in Muslims’ physical, social, and symbolic lives, as much as it is a negotiation with the broader communities about their place in the world.83 Everyday practices are continually transforming and being transformed through migration, generational change, and new religious architectures. The form and function of mosques embody Muslims’ memories, imaginations, experiences, aspirations, and possibilities through their spaces of contemplation, refuge, and sacred communion. As the discourses of design indicate, mosques are also architectures of inclusion and assurance, representing an open and transparent engagement with the broader communities in which they are located, and thus the public life of the city.84 With the construction of identifiably religious buildings, faith becomes public, communal, and visible, which changes local power dynamics between sites of faith and the community, and between different faith sites.85 The Adelaide, Shepparton, and Hobson’s Bay mosques support an ecumenical secularity that point to a postChristian society where mosques actively assert equal entitlement with churches across the urban landscape: minarets (or not) and steeples. Hobson’s Bay, in particular, suggests less of a need for identifiably Islamic features, e.g. minarets, as it is situated comfortably in a wellestablished migrant community of predominantly Turkish descent. The Bendigo mosque is a more visible transgression of secularity as defined by privatised and invisible/non-Christian practice because it is the first for Bendigo and for the local Muslim community: multi-faith (Sunni and Shia), multi-national, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multilingual. Bendigo attracted major protests at the news of a proposed new Mosque, but the objections and the protests were ultimately unsuccessful due to a more powerful and inclusive vision for the city by its civic leaders and by other non-Muslim community groups, including some of the Christian churches.86 The building of the mosque will be a profound achievement by the local Muslim community and for the 170 J. RUDNER ET AL. civic identity of Bendigo as a city, for it promises to forge a new set of self-understandings, as religious beliefs and cultural differences are normalised. Since Muslims do not enjoy the purported neutrality of Christian denominations, placemaking can be viewed afresh as a territorialising action. Ordinary strategies of placemaking are interpreted as provocative because migrant architecture disrupts “. . . a dominant ‘natural’ narrative” by “buildings whose physical characteristics do not fit in the location’s preferred history.”87 In everyday material terms, the familiar is made strange: the new appearance of minarets (or the Buddhist stupa and the Chinese temple) on the cityscape de-familiarises the assumed normality of the church steeple, which in turn has lost its capacity to contest the power and meanings of the modernist secular buildings that dominate the city and neighbourhood skylines. For its critics, the audacity of Muslims to claim religious, spatial, and social equality is perceived as validation of colonisation. Mosques are believed to be centres of threat and radicalisation that threaten claims on the civil sphere – a sphere that Christian whites, in particular, have long assumed as theirs alone, or at least made in their own self-image. Mosque proponents are well aware of the objectors’ views, and sensitive to the concerns of reasonable non-Muslims, which results in designs and discourse that argue their legitimacy and allegiance to Australian life. The intrigue of contemporary debates about migration and social cohesion is that the inclusion-assurance discourses have shifted in focus from ethnic categories (from post-WWII concerns about the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern migrants to the 1980s and 1990s anxieties about Asians) to a critique of religious differences centred on Islam. Yet, what is overlooked in anti-Muslim discourse is the high level of social cohesion that is both dynamic and peaceable, even when taking terrorism and hazing rituals into account. While negative interpellation towards Muslims is aimed at the “enemy within” neighbourhoods, people of Islamic faith have multiple identifications, many of which indicate greater commonality with those outside their religion, e.g. socio-economic or educational status, colour, gender, interests, and community engagements. So it is perverse that a cohort of people can experience multiple forms of exclusion primarily because of their faith. Inclusivity leads to greater assurance for all citizens. There is still a residue of uncertainty for Muslim communities in Australia due to a pervasive sense that “Muslims” are ungovernable, and as they periodically experience anxiety with each racist and terrorist attack. Muslim foundations of belonging were severely damaged in Bendigo as they were invisible, then negatively interpellated and mis-interpellated. In Hobson’s Bay, the experience was partly mediated by its more cosmopolitan rather than nationalist settler-community discourse. Ironically, the very FABRICATIONS 171 nature of mosque construction epitomises and materialises the hybridity of Australia’s past and present and provides new ways of thinking about and understanding the country’s future. Mosque building is an instituted performance of growing self-confidence of a worshipping community. Our two early examples and two case studies show the development of discourses of both inclusion and assurance to the wider and larger non-Muslim population is not only a realpolitik selfprotective measure, but a genuine recognition of both the necessity and attraction of living in a multi-cultural and democratic civil sphere. It is also a generous explanation of architectural practice – a material expression of a “design conceptualization of faith, spirituality, and esthetics”, and an epistemology of Islamic art, history, and philosophy.88 Notes 1. James Barry and Ihsan Yilmaz, “Liminality and Racial Hazing of Muslim Migrants: Media Framing of Albanians in Shepparton, Australia, 1930–1955,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 42, no. 7 (2019): 1168–85. 2. Ghassan Hage, “Continuity and Change in Australian Racism,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 35, no. 3 (2014): 232–37, 235. 3. Hage, “Continuity and Change in Australian Racism”. 4. Ghassan Hage, “État De Siège: A Dying Domesticating Colonialism?,” American Ethnologist 43, no. 1 (2016): 38–49. 5. Julie Rudner, “Hijacking Democracy? Spatialised Persecution and the Planning Process,” in The Far Right in Australia, eds. Mario Peuker and Debra Smith (Melbourne: Palgrave–McMillan, 2019), 175–97. 6. Ghassan Hage, “Intercultural Relations at the Limits of Multicultural Governmentality,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism, ed. Duncan Ivison (Farnham, United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group, 2010), 205– 27. 7. Tariq Modood, Multiculturalism, 2nd ed. (Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, 2013). 8. Gregory Melleuish, “A Secular Australia? Ideas, Politics and the Search for Moral Order in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of Religious History 38, no. 3 (2014): 398–412. 9. Melleuish, “A Secular Australia?’. 10. Peter Scriver, “Mosques, Ghantowns and Cameleers in the Settlement History of Colonial Australia,” Fabrications 13, no. 2 (2004): 19–41; Katharine Bartsch, “Building Identity in the Colonial City: The Case of the Adelaide Mosque,” Dynamics of Muslim Life 9, no. 3 (2015): 247–70. 11. David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850 to 1939 (St Lucia: University of Queensland 12. Tariq Modood, “Part One Accommodating Religions: Multiculturalism’s New Fault Line,” Critical Social Policy 34, no. 1 (2014): 121–127, 126. 13. Ghassan Hage, “État De Siège: A Dying Domesticating Colonialism?”. 14. Judith Brett and Anthony Moran, “Cosmopolitan Nationalism: Ordinary People Making Sense of Diversity,” Nations & Nationalism 17, no. 1 (2011): 188–206; 172 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. J. RUDNER ET AL. Rachel Busbridge, Multicultural Politics of Recognition and Postcolonial Citizenship: Rethinking the Nation (Oxon & New York: Routledge, 2018); Rachel Busbridge, “A Multicultural Success Story? Australian Integration in Comparative Focus,” Journal of Sociology (2019): 1–8; Mark Chou and Rachel Busbridge, “Culture Wars, Local Government, and the Australia Day Controversy: Insights from Urban Politics Research,” Urban Policy and Research 32, no. 93 (2019): 367–77; Anthony Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism: Building a Diverse Nation (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave–MacMillan, 2017). Julie Rudner, Andrew Butt and Michele Lobo, “Adjudicating Faith: 20 Years of Secular Decision-Making for Religious Spaces,” Proceedings of the 8th State of Australian Cities Conference, November 28–30 (University of Adelaide, 2017). Hoskin V Greater Bendigo CC & Anor. [2015]. VCAT 1124. (6 August), http://www8. austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/vic/VCAT/2015/1124.html. Rutherford & Ors V Hume CC (Includes Summary) (Red Dot). [2014]. VCAT 786. (14 July), http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/vic/VCAT/2014/786. html. This observation emerges from Rudner’s review of all objections to the Bendigo mosque, and substantial review of local and international social media discourse about the development, Islam and Muslims. Fatemeh Shahani, “Religious Placemaking and Performance in (Post)-Secular and Multicultural Urban Spaces: The Representation of Islamic Symbols in a Mosque, a Museum and a Mall within Metropolitan Melbourne” (PhD diss. La Trobe University, 2019); Fatemeh Shahani, Tracy de Cotta and Julie Rudner, “An Imagined Islamic Space in Multicultural Melbourne: A Focus on Lefebvre’s Representational Space,” Spaces and Flows 9, no. 1 (2017): 1–14. Julie Rudner, Social Cohesion in Bendigo: Understanding Community Attitudes to the Mosque in 2015 (Melbourne: Victorian Multicultural Commission, 2017); Rudner, Butt, and Lobo, “Adjudicating Faith.” Oskar Verkaaik, “Religious Architecture: Anthropological Perspectives,” in Religious Architecture: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Oskar Verkaaik (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), 7–24. Kim Dovey, Becoming Places: Urbanism/Architecture/Identity/Power (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2010), 9. Akel Ismail Kahera, Latif Abdulmalik and Craig Anz, Design Criteria for Mosques and Islamic Centres: Art, Architecture, and Worship (Oxford and Burlington: Elsevier Ltd., 2009). Kahera, Abdulmalik and Anz, Design Criteria for Mosques and Islamic Centres, 8. Faris Ali Mustafa and Ahmad Sanusi Hassan, “Mosque Layout Design: An Analytical Study of Mosque Layouts in the Early Ottoman Period,” Frontiers of Architectural Research 2, no. 4 (2013): 445–56. Mirjana Lozanovska, “Hagia Sofia (532–537AD): A Study of Centrality, Interiority and Transcendence in Architecture,” The Journal of Architecture 15, no. 4 (2010): 425–448. Khairudin Aljunied, The Cosmopolitan Mosque (Edinburgh University Press, 2016). John Burton-Page, “Indian Islamic Architecture: Forms and Typologies, Sites and Monuments,” in Handbook of Oriental Studies, ed. George Michell (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2008). Juliane Hammer, Omid Safi and Akel Ismail Kahera, Muslim Spaces and Mosque Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). FABRICATIONS 173 30. Chantal Saint-Blancat, “Islam in Diaspora: Between Reterritorialization and Extraterritoriality,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26, no. 1 (2002): 138–51. 31. Anne-Laure Zwilling, “A Century of Mosques in France: Building Religious Pluralism,” International Review of Sociology 25, no. 2 (2015): 333–340. 32. Kishwar Rizvi, The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016). 33. David Beynon, “Edge of Centre: Australian Cities and the Public Architecture of Recent Immigrant Communities,” in Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration, ed. Mirjana Lozanovska (London: Routledge, 2015), 29–42; David Beynon, “Hybrid Representations: The Public Architecture of Migrant Communities in Melbourne” (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2002). 34. Beynon, “Edge of Centre”; Jessica Harris, “Tradition, Identity and Adaptation: Mosque Architecture in South-East Queensland,” in Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, July 2–5, eds. Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold Coast, Qld: SHAHANZ, 2013), vol. 1, 341–53; Bartsch, “Building Identity in the Colonial City”. 35. Bartsch, “Building Identity in the Colonial City”. 36. Bartsch, “Building Identity in the Colonial City”. 37. “Scratchings in the City,” Kapunda Herald, June 17, 1890, 3. 38. “A Mosque in Adelaide,” Express and Telegraph, July 1, 1890, 3. 39. “Mosque for Sydney,” Telegraph, June 20, 1895, 5. 40. “Mosque for Sydney”. 41. Bartsch, “Building Identity in the Colonial City”. 42. Barry and Yilmaz, “Liminality and Racial Hazing of Muslim Migrants”. 43. Barry and Yilmaz, “Liminality and Racial Hazing of Muslim Migrants”. 44. “Shepparton,” The Argus, October 25, 1938, 14. 45. Barry and Yilmaz, “Liminality and Racial Hazing of Muslim Migrants”. 46. Nahid Kabir, “Muslims in a ‘White Australia’: Colour or Religion?,” Immigrants & Minorities 24, no. 2 (2006) 193–223; Brian J Bowe and Taj W Makki, “Muslim Neighbors or an Islamic Threat? A Constructionist Framing Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of Mosque Controversies,” Media, Culture & Society 38 no. 4 (2016): 540– 58. Nira Yuval-Davis, “Theorizing Identity: Beyond the ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ Dichotomy,” Patterns of Prejudice 44, no. 3 (2010): 261–80. 47. Australian Bureau of Statistics, A Snapshot of Australia – 2016 Census Data Summary (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2017). 48. Shahani, “Religious Placemaking and Performance in (Post)-Secular and Multicultural Urban Spaces.” 49. The approach to this analysis was influenced by Dovey, Becoming Places. 50. Sam Bowker, “Friday Essay: The Australian Mosque,” The Conversation, September 22, 2016. 51. National Gallery of Victoria, “Glenn Murcutt: Architecture of Faith,” https://www. ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/glennmurcutt/; Ewan McEoin, “The Australian Islamic Centre in Newport, Melbourne,” https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/the-australianislamic-centre-in-newport-melbourne/. 52. Michael Bleby, “Why Glenn Murcutt Insisted This Melbourne Mosque Have No Minaret,” Australian Financial Review, June 23, 2016. 53. Shahani, “Religious Placemaking and Performance in (Post)-Secular and Multicultural Urban Spaces. 174 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. J. RUDNER ET AL. David Neustein, “Murcutt’s Mosque,” The Monthly, July 12, 2016. Bleby, “Why Glenn Murcutt Insisted This Melbourne Mosque Have No Minaret.” Bleby, “Why Glenn Murcutt Insisted This Melbourne Mosque Have No Minaret.” Australian Islamic Centre, “Construction of the New Islamic Mosque and Community Centre at Newport in Melbourne,” (http://www.australianislamiccen tre.org/673-2/). Bleby, “Why Glenn Murcutt Insisted This Melbourne Mosque Have No Minaret.” Bleby, “Why Glenn Murcutt Insisted This Melbourne Mosque Have No Minaret.” Linda Cheng, “Murcutt’s ‘Extraordinary Enlightenment’: Australian Islamic Centre,” ArchitectureAU, August 3, 2016. Bleby, “Why Glenn Murcutt Insisted This Melbourne Mosque Have No Minaret.” Bleby, “Why Glenn Murcutt Insisted This Melbourne Mosque Have No Minaret.” In this instance, intercultural simply refers to a deep understanding and respect for people of different ethnicities, cultures, and faiths. Australian Islamic Centre “Construction of the New Islamic Mosque and Community Centre at Newport in Melbourne,” (http://www.australianislamiccentre.org/673-2/). Australian Bureau of Statistics, Bendigo Community Profile (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2001, 2011, 2016). Australian Bureau of Statistics, Bendigo Community Profile. Pers. comm., Asher Greenwood to the author, January 16, 2020. Lisa Cheng, “The Architectural Face of Bendigo’s Embattled Mosque,” ArchitectureAU, November 29, 2016; Editorial. “Construction Begins on Bendigo Mosque and Cultural Centre.” ArchitectureAU, July 29, 2019: Editorial. Pers. comm., Asher Greenwood to the author, January 16, 2020. Lisa Cheng, “The Architectural Face of Bendigo’s Embattled Mosque.” Pers. comm., Asher Greenwood to the author, January 16, 2020. City of Greater Bendigo, “Agenda Ordinary Meeting of Council,” Bendigo, 2014; Hoskin V Greater Bendigo CC & Anor [2015] Vcat 1124. Rudner, Social Cohesion in Bendigo; Rudner, “Hijacking Democracy”. Note: The city’s low cultural and religious diversity does not explain why mosques were approved without incident in Ballarat, a regional city with similar demographics, one in Shepparton, and two in smaller towns; three are within 120 km of Bendigo, with one 215 km away. There were multiple factors: federal political and media discourse, general urban change, two councillors on the local government council who objected to the mosque and were connected to local anti-mosque groups; an ultra-nationalist group, the United Patriots Front, made a strategic decision to publicise their views by organising a rally; transportation to rallies was organised, e.g.,: buses from Sydney and Melbourne; crowd-source funding was sought for the planning appeal, and the Bendigo Bank closed a hate group account. Hoskin V Greater Bendigo CC& Anor. [2015]. VCAT 1124. Rudner, Social Cohesion in Bendigo; Rudner, “Hijacking Democracy?.” Andrew Markus, Division in Bendigo: Mainstream Public Opinion and Responses to Public Protest in Bendigo, 2014–2016 (Melbourne: Monash University, 2018). Karen Percy, “Bendigo Muslim Community Undeterred by Ongoing Protests to Mosque Plans,” ABC News, 17 September 2015. Percy, “Bendigo Muslim Community Undeterred by Ongoing Protests to Mosque Plans.” “Bendigo Mosque: Black Balloons Hung Outside Councillor’s House,” ABC News, June 20, 2014. “Bendigo Mosque: Black Balloons Hung Outside Councillor’s House.” FABRICATIONS 175 80. “Bendigo Mosque: Black Balloons Hung Outside Councillor’s House.” 81. Blair Thompson, “All Welcome at New Mosque,” Bendigo Advertiser, 17 January 2014. 82. Hage, “Intercultural Relations at the Limits of Multicultural Governmentality.” 83. Danièle Hervieu-Léger, “Space and Religion: New Approaches to Religious Spatiality in Modernity,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26, no. 1 (2002): 99–105. 84. David Beynon, “Architecture, Multiculturalism and Cultural Sustainability in Australian Cities,” The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability 5, no. 2 (2009): 45–57; Beynon, “Edge of Centre: Australian Cities and the Public Architecture of Recent Immigrant Communities.” 85. Beynon, “Edge of Centre”; Aljunied, The Cosmopolitan Mosque; Akel Ismail Kahera, “Urban Enclaves, Muslim Identity and the Urban Mosque in America,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 22, no. 2 (2002): 369–80; Fethi Mansouri, Michele Lobo, Bryan S Turner and Amelia Johns, “Islamic Religiosity in The West: Belonging and Political Engagement in Multicultural Cities,” (Melbourne: Deakin University Publishing, 2017). 86. Rudner, Social Cohesion in Bendigo. 87. Beynon, “Architecture, Multiculturalism and Cultural Sustainability in Australian Cities,” 48. 88. Kahera, Abdulmalik and Anz, Design Criteria for Mosques and Islamic Centres, 2. ORCID Julie Rudner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7912-676X