Indigenous Australia's long history with Islam

More Indigenous Australians are converting to Islam. But it is more than a political gesture. Unknown to many is the long history between Aboriginal people and Islamic culture and religion.

Aunty Halima, a Torres Strait Islander Elder, was the daughter of an Indo-Malay pearl diver Source: Stuart Miller

Muslim conversion is growing in Indigenous communities. 

In the 2001 national census, 641 Indigenous people identified as Muslim. By the 2006 census the number had climbed by more than 60% to 1014 people.

Three centuries of history

Indigenous and Muslim communities have traded, socialised and intermarried in Australia for three centuries.

From the early 1700s, Muslim fishermen from Indonesia made annual voyages to the north and northwestern Australian coast in search of sea slugs (trepang). The trade that developed included material goods, but the visitors also left a lasting religious legacy.

Recent research confirms the existence of Islamic motifs in some north Australian Aboriginal mythology and ritual.

In mortuary ceremonies conducted by communities in Galiwinku on Elcho Island today, there is reference to Dreaming figure Walitha'walitha, an adaptation of the Arabic phrase Allah ta’ala (God, the exalted).

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