Muslim Secularism by Conduct: Attitudes of Young Australian Muslims to Legal Pluralism and Sharia

This article examines young Muslim Australians’ attitudes toward implementing Sharia in Australia using 64 semi-structured interviews conducted in Melbourne and Geelong, Australia. We found that although the attitudes can be grouped under the main typologies of Legal Pluralist and Muslim Secularist, there were a variety of responses within each category. While Legal Pluralist A wants Sharia to be officially implemented for Muslims in Australia, Legal Pluralist B thinks Sharia would be beneficial for everyone in Australia. The majority of our respondents (Muslim Secularist) think that Sharia is not suited for Australian state, legal system and politics. Muslim Secularist A does not think that Sharia offer any benefit to modern societies in any part of the world. Muslim Secularist B thinks that Sharia cannot be applied in Australia that has to remain secular because of the religious diversity of the population and Sharia is more useful for Muslim-majority countries. Religiosity does not predict any of these typologies in our participant group since, with few exceptions, all identified themselves as religious Muslims.