tiles so old that I sometimes wondered whether they had been laid byCaptain Arthur Phillip. The stained glass showed images of a white bearded Christ preaching while other white men and women listened intently. Christ was white, and so was his motherâno wonder they were played only by white children in the school passion plays.
Church music proved mesmerising for me, even if I couldnât understand half of what the choir was singing. The procession of the choir into the Cathedral wearing their white and purple robes, with the organ playing some majestic tune, was a profoundly moving experience. At first it felt a little scary, like sitting in a haunted house, but as I got to know the hymns and their tunes, the music grew on me.
Mum had often taught me that listening to music was a sin, but she was a voracious consumer of classical Indian lyrical songs and songs from Bollywood films. We couldnât drive anywhere without her putting on a cassette of Indian songs and asking me to explain the meanings. Sometimes these Indian songs contained references to serving and drinking wine and becoming intoxicated. This was strange as my parents were strict teetotallers and impressed upon us that we should never touch alcohol. We also tended not to mix with people who openly drank alcohol. I couldnât imagine South Asian people drinking, let alone singing about the joys of drinking.
Although South Asians had a strong religious culture and openly wore their religious symbols, they also enjoyed joking about religious prohibitions and were quite irreverent about men of religion such as gurus and
molvis
.
On one occasion I missed chapel as I wasnât sure if I was committing a sin by attending church. I was also worriedby the attraction I was feeling to this new kind of worship. But my parents werenât at all worried. They believed the Christian faith was so similar to ours that it was natural for me to feel attracted to it. Christians believed in God just as we did, and they worshipped God just as we did.
Yet I couldnât see any similarity between the two faiths. I had learned to read the Koran but never understood its meaning. Our prayer involved physical postures and exercises and reciting prayers that seemed strange to me. I used to cringe when we would go on picnics with South Asian uncles and aunts and some of the men spread out mats to perform
nemaaz
on the grass. It looked like such an embarrassing spectacle seeing these men wearing tight pants prostrate and pointing their bums in the air whilst having a (presumably snotty) handkerchief wrapped around their head like an undersized bandana.
Sometimes we would go to the mosque and take our shoes off to pray, only to find our shoes had been removed and placed in another spot or even just taken. My family were life members of the Islamic Society of NSW (the organisation that managed the Surry Hills mosque) but there was a change in the committee and all life memberships were cancelled. On one occasion, Mum went to the mosque for an annual general meeting and an election of the mosque committee which descended into a match of shouting and throwing chairs. The police had to be called to keep apart members of competing factions.
It all seemed so barbaric when compared to the grace and gentleness of Christianity at St Andrews. Muslims just seemed foreign, uncivilised, violent, embarrassing, poor, dirty and dishonest. Dad often spoke disparagingly of peoplewho were part of what he called the âIslamic industryâ, people who had spent years drinking and gambling then suddenly were growing beards and lecturing people on why they should only eat halal meat just because they had secured a job at a religious body that made money from halal certification.
Islam was also extremely disorganised. We didnât have a central Cathedral with offices and a hierarchy. We didnât have our own archbishop. We just had people with thick accents (thatâs if they
Church music proved mesmerising for me, even if I couldnât understand half of what the choir was singing. The procession of the choir into the Cathedral wearing their white and purple robes, with the organ playing some majestic tune, was a profoundly moving experience. At first it felt a little scary, like sitting in a haunted house, but as I got to know the hymns and their tunes, the music grew on me.
Mum had often taught me that listening to music was a sin, but she was a voracious consumer of classical Indian lyrical songs and songs from Bollywood films. We couldnât drive anywhere without her putting on a cassette of Indian songs and asking me to explain the meanings. Sometimes these Indian songs contained references to serving and drinking wine and becoming intoxicated. This was strange as my parents were strict teetotallers and impressed upon us that we should never touch alcohol. We also tended not to mix with people who openly drank alcohol. I couldnât imagine South Asian people drinking, let alone singing about the joys of drinking.
Although South Asians had a strong religious culture and openly wore their religious symbols, they also enjoyed joking about religious prohibitions and were quite irreverent about men of religion such as gurus and
molvis
.
On one occasion I missed chapel as I wasnât sure if I was committing a sin by attending church. I was also worriedby the attraction I was feeling to this new kind of worship. But my parents werenât at all worried. They believed the Christian faith was so similar to ours that it was natural for me to feel attracted to it. Christians believed in God just as we did, and they worshipped God just as we did.
Yet I couldnât see any similarity between the two faiths. I had learned to read the Koran but never understood its meaning. Our prayer involved physical postures and exercises and reciting prayers that seemed strange to me. I used to cringe when we would go on picnics with South Asian uncles and aunts and some of the men spread out mats to perform
nemaaz
on the grass. It looked like such an embarrassing spectacle seeing these men wearing tight pants prostrate and pointing their bums in the air whilst having a (presumably snotty) handkerchief wrapped around their head like an undersized bandana.
Sometimes we would go to the mosque and take our shoes off to pray, only to find our shoes had been removed and placed in another spot or even just taken. My family were life members of the Islamic Society of NSW (the organisation that managed the Surry Hills mosque) but there was a change in the committee and all life memberships were cancelled. On one occasion, Mum went to the mosque for an annual general meeting and an election of the mosque committee which descended into a match of shouting and throwing chairs. The police had to be called to keep apart members of competing factions.
It all seemed so barbaric when compared to the grace and gentleness of Christianity at St Andrews. Muslims just seemed foreign, uncivilised, violent, embarrassing, poor, dirty and dishonest. Dad often spoke disparagingly of peoplewho were part of what he called the âIslamic industryâ, people who had spent years drinking and gambling then suddenly were growing beards and lecturing people on why they should only eat halal meat just because they had secured a job at a religious body that made money from halal certification.
Islam was also extremely disorganised. We didnât have a central Cathedral with offices and a hierarchy. We didnât have our own archbishop. We just had people with thick accents (thatâs if they
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