Anne Azza Mahmoud Fawzi Hosseini Ali el Serougi.
It's the full name of first Australian Muslim woman MP Anne Aly. It is a name stated plainly and openly in her Wikipedia entry.
It's a name that has been ominously bandied about in anonymous racist flyers in her electorate ahead of the Australian federal election on May 18.
In the normal world of political smearing, it's usually accusations of dodgy dealings or the insinuation of moral impropriety that is the weapon used to besmirch a political foe.
But in today's wild political world, (laughable if it wasn't so depressing) the reputational downer is Aly's actual existence. Her actual real name. There's no lie or smear here. She's not being accused of anything but what she is.
In case Aly's constituents were silly enough to forget, "guess what?" the flyer screams, "SHE IS MUSLIM!" (You see, it's in all the Arabic words between Anne and Aly!). The underlying implication is that her name denotes she is foreign, threatening and belonging to somewhere else and therefore inherently untrustworthy and unelectable.
What is it about names?
Names are history, identity and culture. So what to do when your history, identity and culture is prima facie suspect? When it is not part of the mainstream culture? When your name conjures foreign-ness, difference, danger and threat? And what is it about Muslim names in particular that conjures this fear?
For me personally, I have experienced the inverse experience – one of name privilege. My Muslim name does not sound very Muslim. It’s also Hebrew and Christian. It rolls off the tongue of the people interviewing me, it is easily anglicised and greeted with a smile I can hear on the phone. It’s a name that can meld and camouflage, one that does give away my identity without further inquiry. It’s a skin I’ve comfortably hid under sometimes, feeling the comfort of invisibility, of not being automatically identified as part of identity that has becoming increasingly politicised.
My name is repeated with relish, simple, understandable, relatable, not different. I understand the temptation facing many Muslim minority communities to anglicise or give their kids ‘cross-over’ names like my own. I understand why Muhammad becomes Mo, why Fatima becomes Fay and how much easier it is to blend, change, adjust, hide.
When you have a Muslim name, the ethnic name dilemma is heightened. It’s not just the fear of your name being butchered in pronunciation, but having yourself identified in a world that is not always welcoming. It is the potential to be impacted adversely in jobs, in social situations, in a wider context of growing Islamophobia.
Recently, movie star Riz Ahmed posted a picture on his Instagram wearing the shirt with ‘Phenomenally Muslim’ emblazoned on the front. It's a play on Maya Angelou’s famous ‘phenomenal woman' quote. It points to a proud reclamation in the face of racism.
Like African American communities reclaiming ancient pre-slavery names, to be proudly and unapologetically yourself feels like the only antidote to the madness of being literally name-shamed. It is to embrace a world where we create new sounds and combinations, where the roll of Fatima and Ali on the tongue is as Australian as John and Judy - a new lingo for a new world that embraces the complexities of our fused identities and histories.
What’s in a name? Everything.
Sarah Malik is deputy editor of SBS Life. You can follow her on @sarahbmalik.
