Negative attitudes toward asylum seekers are often based on religious prejudice and the fear of "Islamisation," a new study suggests.
Lead researcher Denis Muller, of Melbourne University's Centre for Advancing Journalism, spoke to focus groups across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria between August and September 2015 as part of the study.
Dr Muller told SBS religious prejudices and fear of the "Islamisation" of Australia were found to be the main drivers of negative attitudes to asylum seekers among the participants.
He said racism had been a significant driver of negative attitudes for many decades and the focus on religion was a "historic shift".
In a report of his findings, released Thursday, Dr Muller said there were two aspects to the phenomenon and they fed into each other.
'The first is a view that Islam is an intolerant religion. In this view, Muslims demand that the rest of society tolerates Islam, but are not willing in return to show equal tolerance to non-Muslims. The second aspect is that Islam is seen as inseparable from the threat of terrorism.'
Dr Muller said there was a prevalent assumption among participants that most, if not all, asylum seekers were Muslim.
"In the public mind there’s a kind of syllogism that says, 'Islamists are terrorists, asylum seekers are Islamists and therefore asylum seekers are terrorists'."
He said many participants expressed fear that asylum seekers would impose their religion on the rest of society, which would lead to the "Islamisation" of Australia.
He said this suspicion stemmed from unsupported anecdotes expressed by the participants about schools cancelling nativity plays and shopping centres stopping Christmas carols to avoiding offending Muslims.
Dr Muller said the study suggested racism was a secondary driver of negative attitudes after religious prejudice and that this racism was of a "generalised kind".
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Dr Muller said the participants, who ranged in age, gender and socioeconomic status, came to their views about asylum seekers based on information from the media, politicians and through word of mouth.
He said they demonstrated having only a limited understanding about Australia’s legal obligations in this area, including the 1951 Refugee Convention.
Dr Muller said the qualitative research could not be taken to represent the population as a whole and was instead designed to "get behind the answers we already know".
A 2015 study by the Scanlon Foundation found that the number of Australians worried about national security and terrorism has surged, with one in 10 now nominating it as their biggest worry.
It also revealed increased support for multiculturalism and a lower level of concern about Australia’s immigration intake.
Just 35 per cent of people considered the current immigration intake "too high" - the lowest number since the survey began in 2007. Forty-one per cent said it was "about right", while 19 per cent said it was "too low".
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