hermoine wrote on Jul 11^th, 2014 at 10:27am:


There’s a Muslim prayer hall on my sleepy street. No one seems to care either way. The council sent out a letter recently to assess any objections to a Development Application to do up the front of the prayer hall.

I didn’t bother replying. From what I could make out, it won’t significantly change the existing building. No one in the area seems to care.

Recently, a nice old man from the prayer hall visited to ask if any of the neighbours are Muslims. I told him none of my neighbours are. He left a Muslim pamphlet, which I didn’t take much inspiration from. It said Muhammed is the final prophet in all history. It seemed a bit Jehova Witness-like to me.

None of my non-Muslim neighbours care about living with Muslims. To be honest, I envy the prayer hall’s sense of community. The local Anglican church, a sandstone cathedral, has been taken over by a Chinese minister with services in Mandarin. There’s a mega-church around the corner that looks like a drive-in. That’s filled largely with Arabs. The Town Hall, a grandiose Victorian building, is used solely for Indian weddings.

There’s no NIMBYs where I live. People just get on with their lives. I’ve lived in predominantly Anglo neighbourhoods, and I’ve lived in very multicultural areas like my current place. From my own experience, the race, religion and ethnicity of neighbours make absolutely no difference to their willingness to live together. 

If anyone else has any personal experience, I’d love to hear it.

I have had very positive interactions with Muslim (observing them is something else). I have also had very unpleasant interaction with them.

I think Islam was motivating the Muslims in both sets of experiences.

I do not see why I should attribute the positive experiences to Islam but not the negative ones.