Sydney Shards

Part 12 of stories inspired by the Muslim community of Sydney

Submitted 16/04/2007 By mariesa Views 61299 Comments 6 Updated 18/07/2007



Sydney Shards is a fiction in twelve-parts running over a 3-month period by by ActNow Member Lynda Ng. It's a scrapbook of stories inspired by young people from the Muslim community.

Join us and explore pieces of a city at http://www.sydneyshards.net/.

This week's story features: Cronulla

They met down on the beach at Cronulla, just the two of them.

They were awkward with each other at first. Seven days had made them strangers to each other. Zahara was taken aback by how different Narelle looked. She'd ironed her long hair flat and dusted her eyes with shimmering powder.

Zahara expected her to start complaining about how out of date her phone model was and how much she was looking forward to going on holiday in Vanuatu. But Narelle hung her head, and searched for the words that would re-connect them.

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Meli 17-May-2007

What a wonderful and captivating story, can't wait to read more!



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vish 16-May-2007

Interesting stories. I particularly liked the Parramatta episode. It seemed far more introspective and really started to show some of the Bashir's thinking. And it'll be good to see where that carries to in the coming weeks.

But aren’t these stories simply preaching to the converted?(No religious reference intended :) ) Stories in support of multiculturalism often are too quick to provide a moral judgement and miss out on exploring the thinking and perceptions leading to fear and misconceptions.

I mean, how do you create empathy for the "Cabbies (who) refuse to carry customers carrying booze" [ http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/01/25/oppenheim.cab... ] in a country like Australia or USA, where alcohol isn’t a religious taboo?

The CNN site also carried out an online a poll on the topic and of the 90 thousand votes, 88% didn't think cab drivers should refuse passengers on religious grounds. For the average Joe, this refusal is unacceptable. Could you or even would you, make this acceptable by exploring the cultural differences?

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szin 15-May-2007

Whenever you hear about Muslims on the televisions they're terrorists. The media simply presents their actions as because they are religious nuts, out to get the rest of the world because the rest of the world has something that they do not.

They ignore the fact that past actions have caused people of the Middle many deaths and unrest.

Without any deeper understanding of the people and their culture there will be no resolution to the events in the Middle East.

So it's good that we get stories about everyday things that people are around the world, so that people can see that they are not too different, and extremists are really just a tiny percentage of the population.

Bring on more stories.

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Mim 11-May-2007

Thanks for your comment, Nav. This page is a teaser to take people to the Sydney Shards Website, of which ActNow is a supporter. You can read all the stories at http://www.sydneyshards.net

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Nav 11-May-2007

Hey like the story so far. Can't wait for the other segments to come out.

Have a couple of comments but at work so something quick about the website I found irritating was with how each new page of the story segment is loaded. If you happen to read the story and stop in the middle it is not possible for you to bookmark and go to the page that you were reading later - instead you have to start from the beginning as you guys seem to be loading the content in the same page. If you can change that behaviour that would be great.

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