Word: lakemba
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...criminal rampage. With each new episode, it feels as if the gap between Muslims and their fellow citizens gets wider: hearts harden, fear seeps in, unreal stereotypes become set in concrete. But that's not happening in those communities where Muslims live in large numbers. The Sydney suburb of Lakemba is Australia's Islam Central; immigrants from the Middle East, Asia and Polynesia have transformed a place that was solidly Anglo-Irish and European (and obviously Christian) for most of last century...
...Lakemba is home to the country's best-known mosque and cleric, and also the place associated with Islamist extremists. Lakemba, where the police station was sprayed with gunfire in 1998, is also code for violent misfits in the fantasyland of the State's law and order politics. The Lakemba stigma, says Steve Conlon, principal of St. Therese primary, is evident in a decision by his Catholic school's P&F to scrub the suburb from its organization's name. Unemployment here is high, particularly among boys and men with low levels of education. Families live in small apartments; hope...
...days following the violence at Cronulla-trouble also spilled into other parts of the city-those in Lakemba sensed a strain as the image of the suburb was again being spoiled from outside. The people of Holy Spirit College, a co-educational Catholic high school, felt they needed to show solidarity with local Muslims and promote the area. "It was a tumultuous week," recalls Holy Spirit principal Frank Malloy, speaking a year after the school canceled end-of-year beach picnics to Cronulla and its evening of Christmas carols at the school. "We wanted to say to the people...
...Living in the same community and bearing goodwill toward one another, however, does not mean that young Christians and Muslims understand each other. "We're in the epicenter of Islam in Australia," says Holy Spirit science teacher David Gearin over a spicy lunch at a Lakemba caf?. "And I asked myself, and others, How much do we know about Islam?" Gearin, 41, has spent most of his life teaching, playing sport and growing up in the area. "It's like when you're in a group at a party. When someone new arrives, you invite them into the circle...