‘I have this purpose’: Why Islam is one of Victoria’s fastest-growing religions

In this series, explore how Victoria’s religious communities are attracting worshippers in an increasingly secular Australia.See all 5 stories.

At 5am, the streets of Melbourne are deserted, but Zeinab Mourad is already awake.

The sky is dark, but inside her living room fairy lights glow and candles burn as she begins her day in quiet prayer with her parents by her side.

“The whole world is asleep, but you’re here. You’re showing up for God,” she says. “You’re showing up to be better. That’s what Ramadan is all about.”

Then it is time for a meal of eggs or warm oats before sunrise.

Ramadan, the ninth and most sacred month for Muslims, began in March and runs until April 9 this year.

Zeinab Mourad in the prayer room of the Quba mosque in Craigieburn, which is under construction.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Observant Muslims mark it by fasting from dawn until sunset in an act of worship and spiritual discipline to feel closer to God, alongside religious contemplation, increased charity and prayer.

But this year, fasting during Ramadan has taken on deeper meaning, amid the Israel-Hamas war and catastrophic food shortages in Gaza.

“At the end of day, we can break our fast, but there are people in Gaza who have no food, who continue to starve,” Mourad says. “It is heartbreaking. For them, the suffering goes on, and we make prayers for them every day.”

An analysis of census data over the past decade shows the number of people identifying as Muslim in Victoria has soared from 109,369 in 2006 to 273,028 in 2021, as Islam cements itself as one of Australia’s fastest-growing religions.

Muslims now make up about 4.5 per cent of Victoria’s population, ahead of Hindus (3.5 per cent) and Buddhists (3.4 per cent). There are about 800,000 Muslims in Australia, with backgrounds ranging from Middle Eastern to South-East Asian, representing about 3.2 per cent of the country’s population.

Professor Cristina Rocha, a religion expert at Western Sydney University, says the rise of Islam in Australia follows globalisation and immigration from Asia and the Middle East.

“Australia is becoming increasingly secular, but it’s also more deeply multi-religious, so there is this religious complexity occurring, and we are seeing a growth in diverse religions like Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism,” she says.

In a series, The Age is exploring how Victoria’s religious communities are keeping the faith in an increasingly secular Australia.

Every night of the holy month, Mourad comes together with her family for a fast-breaking sunset meal called iftar. They feast on rice-stuffed zucchini, baked chicken and other delicacies, including her family’s favourite: a tomato soup made with eggs, noodles and butter, affectionately known as “Mourad soup”.

Prayers for Gaza

It’s just after 1pm on a Friday and Mohamed Mohideen, 63, is sitting on a chair in an empty sports hall at Monash University in Clayton.

Dressed in white and a cream Muslim skullcap, known as an aqiyah, the Sri Lankan-born microbiologist is reciting the call to prayer, or adhan, which is ringing out of speakers across the campus.

Under clear blue skies, the faithful come from all over Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs. Hundreds pour into the hall – university students, academics, scientists, healthcare workers and parents with young children in tow. The men slip off their shoes and walk to the front of the hall.

They lift up their hands to either side of the head, before lowering their heads to pray. It is compulsory for observant Muslim men, who must pray five times a day, to attend Friday prayers known as jummah.

Mohamed Mohideen leads Muslim prayers at Monash University.Credit: Joe Armao

The women arrive too, wearing colourful hijabs, and clutching patterned prayer rugs, which they lay out at the back of the sports hall.

While it is not obligatory for women to attend, Muslims believe attending Friday prayers is equivalent to an entire year of praying and fasting.

Among the faithful is Indian international student Laiba Khan, 21, who is wearing a fuchsia, yellow and black headscarf.

“Once a week we come here to be close to the community and feel the connection with God,” says Khan, who is studying a bachelor of actuarial science with a major in econometrics at Monash University.

Scholars explain that for many Muslims the practice of prayer helps them experience God. The 13th-century Persian Sufi poet Rumi spoke of his experience of prayer as a practice that opened the window of his soul.

A university sports hall is not your average mosque. But it has become a familiar place of worship for those in Melbourne’s south-east, where not all attendees can fit inside a mosque which holds 150 people.

Laiba Khan attends Friday prayers at Monash University.Credit: Joe Armao

Each Friday, an imam delivers a sermon addressing current events. When The Age visits, the faithful are being urged to stand up for justice, truth and peace for the people of Gaza and to respond with prayer, protest and support for victims of the conflict.

The Israel-Hamas war has so far killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, including thousands of children. In Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 last year, 1200 people were killed and 250 abducted.

Mohideen says many Melbourne Muslims have family and friends in Palestine.

“We hold the Palestinian people with so much love,” Mohideen says. “Every day I pray for peace. For this war to end. For people and children to be safe and for Palestine to be free from oppression.”

There is a saying in Islam, “to kill one person, you kill all of humanity, but to save a life is to save all mankind”.

“What I love most about our religion is compassion for everything living,” Mohideen says. “It is one of the most important principles of Islam. Life is most precious. It is God’s gift.”

The word Islam means “surrender” and Muslims strive to serve God and live according to his will.

There are more than 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, and for them, the prophet Muhammad is the most revered of all men.

Muslims belong to many different sects including Sunni and Shiite, but they all share fundamental beliefs known as the five pillars of Islam.

Fasting from sunrise to sunset, or sawm, in Ramadan is one of these core pillars. The holy month ends with Eid al-Fitr, a holiday dedicated to feasting with family and friends.

Other pillars of Islam include the verbal testament of faith; salat, the five daily prayers; and zakat, or charitable giving.

A pilgrim’s story

Muslims are expected to undertake the Hajj – which includes a visit to what is said to be the world’s first mosque, the Kaaba in the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia – once in their lifetimes if they have the means to do so.

Zeinab Mourad has made the pilgrimage to Mecca three times, including last spring. Alongside thousands of Muslims, she has circled the Kaaba walking counter-clockwise seven times while reciting prayers.

“I can’t speak the language of the person next to me, but we speak the universal language of being Muslim,” Mourad says.

Zeinab Mourad on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

She has retraced the steps of Hagar, a woman revered in Islam, who trekked through two desert hills, Safa and Marwa, searching for water for her son.

“I felt this incredible sense of spirituality walking up and down the mountains,” Mourad says.

Being Muslim shapes every aspect of her life.

“It’s a set of morals and values that guide my day-to-day interactions,” she says. “It gives me purpose in life. I have often wondered, if I didn’t have my faith, would the world have much to offer? You live and die and then what?”

But the 30-year-old, who is an academic mentor at the Islamic Sciences and Research Academy, says it can be hard being devout in an increasingly secular society.

“When you’re hanging around in mainstream communities, you can sometimes feel like the crazy people… the delusional one for believing in something that you can’t see,” Mourad says.

Mourad and her family during Ramadan.

“But people’s perceptions give me way less than what my religion offers. It makes it easier to navigate those circumstances and to think ‘hang on a second, that person’s perception belongs to them’ and I have this purpose that I’m working towards in this life.”

While the traditions of Islam have stayed the same for more than a thousand years, much has changed for Australian Muslims, like Mohamed Mohideen, who migrated to Melbourne in the 1990s.

The cultural diversity of Muslims in Australia has shifted. An influx of people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Bangladesh has led to Muslim South Asian migrants surpassing Muslims of Middle Eastern background, including Lebanese and Turkish migrants.

There has been a surge of migration from Australia’s closest neighbour, Indonesia, and a rise in Australian-born Muslims, reflecting the community’s higher birth rates.

“There is a beautiful sense of belonging when you come to a mosque. Because of the unique people of all different ethnic communities you break down barriers,” Mohideen says.

Shadow of Islamophobia

In the 1990s, Muslims in Australia were rarely the subject of suspicion or concern. This all changed on September 11, 2001, during al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on the United States, in which more than 2700 people were killed.

Etched in Mohideen’s mind is the voice of his brother, calling him from the US in the middle of the night to tell him about the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre.

He remembers the flashing of the television screen in the background as fire engulfed the towers. “It was horrifying,” he recalls.

After the attacks, life for thousands of Muslims in Australia changed.

Hundreds attend Friday prayers at Monash University.Credit: Joe Armao

“After 9/11, Muslims began to be looked at with suspicion, and it really affected the young people in Australia badly,” Mohideen says.

“Even now, the young kids growing up have always had to justify their loyalty to their country. It changed how the Western world saw Muslims forever.”

Australian Muslim children were bullied and discriminated against at school, some left so traumatised, they changed their names or concealed their clothing to hide that they were Muslim. Women were too frightened to leave their homes or wear their hijabs after being abused on the street.

“We said, ‘You don’t need to feel shame; you have done nothing wrong’,” Mohideen says. “It felt like the entire Muslim community was condemned.”

The shadow of September 11 lingers. Often, Mohideen’s first thought, whenever there is a tragedy, such as a car ploughing into three pedestrians in Bourke Street last September, is “please God, don’t let it be a Muslim”.

Earlier this year, a Muslim university student was physically attacked and had her hijab pulled, after she helped two Asians students who were being racially abused on a bus in Glen Waverley.

International student Laiba Khan wears her hijab every day, but several of her Muslim friends in Melbourne have stopped wearing theirs at university, following the attack on the bus, worrying they, too, could be targeted.

“For me, wearing it is a part of me. I feel proud to be Muslim,” Khan says. “But every time there is an incident like that, it creates another wave of fear.”

It is a fear, she says, worsened by war in the Middle East.

Islamophobia Register Australia data shows Islamophobic attacks have increased 13-fold compared to last year.

Since the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians escalated after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and Israel responded with a deadly bombing campaign, Mohideen says he has felt the same familiar sense of dread as that caused by September 11.

“This time it’s really different,” he says. “We are all watching this devastation unfold online, children being killed in front of our eyes. It makes me worried about how this violence could shape another generation of Muslim kids.”

But in any Muslim community, Mohideen says, there is unwavering resilience. A day after the 2019 terrorist massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which killed 51 people, he refused to let fear win.

Instead, he and other Victorian Muslim leaders opened the doors of mosques and welcomed hundreds of fellow Victorians. Together, they grieved.

It is inside a mosque where Muslims thank God for blessings. It is where the community gathers to rejoice or comfort each other in times of sorrow. Love lives there, too. It is celebrated at weddings and naming ceremonies for babies on their seventh day on Earth.

“The mosque, in its essence, is community. It is our constant,” Mohideen says. “It is our heart and it is our soul.”