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There has been no shortage of explanations, from Muslim leaders blaming the radio jocks for summoning the mob to sociologists blaming Australian boozing, but it is impossible to disentangle the rioting from much larger social and political forces that have been building over many years. Muslim immigration to Sydney, beginning with the Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s, was sustained by waves of migration from Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. West Sydney is a transmuted Australian suburbia in which mosques outnumber churches, Arabic inscriptions decorate the shopping strips and many women wear burkas or hijabs.

Even in a city as multiracial as Sydney, absorbing these new arrivals was always going to be a challenge. Their teenage children have borne the brunt of high unemployment and a cultural conflict between the fierce morality of home and the hedonism outside. To young Muslim males in particular, the openly sexual nature of Australian society causes intense confusion and excitement. As one contributor to a Sydney Islamic internet forum commented this week: “From an early age they are taught by their parents that so-called ‘Australian’ girls are sluts and that the only girls worthy of respect are the Arab Muslim girls.”

From this has emerged the stereotype of the “Leb” — a swarthy, aggressive young male of Middle Eastern extraction, sporting a designer tracksuit, sneakers and haircut borrowed from American hip-hop culture. Like all stereotypes, it is crude but not entirely untrue. A disproportionate number of youths from Lebanese families fill the court system, and some are among the most feared drug criminals in western Sydney. “Leb boys” have acquired a reputation for coming to the beach in packs at weekends and harassing non-Muslim girls with crude sexual remarks.

In November 2000, Sydney police charged four Lebanese-Australian men with a series of gang rapes of “Aussie sluts”, and long-simmering resentment erupted into headlines. With details of these rapes still emerging ten months later, the terrorist attacks on America did nothing to reduce anti-Muslim sentiment. It was in the midst of this — and during a federal election — that John Howard, the Prime Minister, claimed that a boatload of Afghan refugees trying to enter Australia had thrown some of their children into the sea after being intercepted by the navy. In short order, Muslims supplanted Asians as the new aliens to be feared.

Mr Howard has since admitted that his claim about the children was mistaken, but it added to anti-Muslim sentiment, which grew further when police revealed that there had been other gang rapes in Sydney involving Muslim youths — several of whom laughed and jeered in court.

The phone-in airwaves have been swirling ever since with diatribes about terrorism, the rapes and Islam. The country’s most popular radio jock, Alan Jones, guffawed when one caller suggested that the answer to Lebanese beach thugs was “shoot one, the rest will run”. When a woman called in to protest against the racist remarks she had heard directed at Lebanese youth in Cronulla, Mr Jones scoffed: “Let’s not get too carried away, Berta. We don’t have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in western Sydney.”

An incident on Sunday highlighted how terrorism has scrambled Australians’ sense of safety and cultural cohesion. Among the 5,000-strong throng chanting “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” were two Lebanese-Australian teenagers who had travelled from the western suburbs to participate, possibly in an unwise spirit of irony. People demanded to know why they were there. As a crowd surrounded them, one white youth waved an Australian flag, proclaiming that his father and grandfather fought for it.

One of the besieged pair, an 18-year-old who gave his name as Issan, smiled and explained that he was born in Australia, so it was his flag too. When he reached out to touch the flag, however, the crowd punched and kicked him until he was rescued by two locals and police. He said later that he had heard people yelling: “Watch out, he’s got a bomb, he might blow himself up.”

“It all comes back on terrorism,” Issan concluded.

Mr Howard once said Sutherland Shire was “a part of Sydney which has always represented to me what middle Australia is all about”, a remark that will no doubt haunt him for some time. He has skilfully surfed the recent rising wave of Australian patriotism that is manifest in the huge crowds at the annual Anzac Day rallies.

The Cronulla mob, waving Australian flags and singing Waltzing Matilda while beating up “Lebs”, represented a dark side of that patriotism, but Mr Howard remained insistent this week that it did not demonstrate any underlying racism in Australia.

Perhaps the most surreal moment of the week was on Tuesday in Maroubra beach, 36 hours after the Lebanese youths had smashed windscreens and terrorised locals. Peace had been restored and Japanese tourists were back on the promenade photographing one another. Suddenly a posse of Lebanese men in biker T-shirts, Australian surf dudes and TV cameras appeared.

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