In the 19thC Australians knew their convict heritage as 'the stain' and did all they could to prove they were loyal to crown and above such social and genetic bottom-dwelling. For modern Australians the fear of 'the stain' is more curiosity than any deep cultural resentment.
Halily apparently said on Egyptian television:
Anglo-Saxons came to Australia in chains, while we paid our way and came in freedom. We are more Australian than them. Australia is not an Anglo-Saxon country - Islam has deep roots in Australian soil that were there before the English arrivedWhich is ignorance really and the same issue that conservatives face in trying to tie some Anglo-Briton history into the current Australian psyche. The modern Australian personality and state has little to do with such historical curiosities. Halily is making the same mistake that conservatives do and arguing that historical events inform the modern pysche such that a negative event is a permanent chain. This is obviously false. Recently my father in law gave me Thomas Keneally's A Commonwealth of Thieves . My father in law is American, and apologised when he gave me the book, meaning, he didn't intend to imply I was a convict or a thief. I laughed, Australia's modern founding is a curiosity for me, nothing more. It does not inform who I am, nor do I get upset if someone called me a convict and brought Australia's national honour into disrepute by slurring all Australians as the sons and daughters of whores and thieves - whatever. My father in law and I have more in common than Thomas Kenneally's book would suggest. His family came out from Wales to work in the coal mines of the Pennsylvanian Mountains. One side of my family came out at from Scotland about the same time to works the coal mines of Helensburg in the mountains surrounding Wollongong. Interestingly his family moved into New Jersey in World War II following the work that was available in the aircraft engine factories. The Scottish side of my family moved to Balmain during the depression. I cannot say I am very interested in the convict era of Australian history. Other than a rebellion and a coup, politically the first fifty years was more one of trying to establish European civilisation in an alien landscape, though in Keneally's book Arthur Phillip comes off as a man of the enlightenment. The relationship between Phillip and Bennelong, and the allegory its serves as the connection between European and Eora, is a fascinating narrative. Keneally is a fast paced and interesting read anyway. The 19thC is where Australian politics gets interesting as currency lads started plotting self-government: and many innovations as well as bad decisions were made. Two of the big currency lads of the 19thC, Dan Deniehy and William Wentworth were products of convicts and in the case of D'Arcy Wentworth - a free/bonded/acquitted transportee. Those two currency lads were to clash with highly competing views of what NSW Government should take - Wentworth a monarchist, and Deniehy a Republican. Wentworth and Deniehy both became respected statesmen in NSW and leaders of competing political movements. For them the stain probably was a deep chip on their shoulder and an affront to their desire to be seen as respectable and inherently moral. For me - it is a historical curiosity, it carries no personal weight. I think it is safe to say however, Halily is no republican. Update Irfan Yusuf has an article which documents early muslim convicts and sailors during the first few fleets of Australian settlement. The British were not too concerned who they sent to Australia as convicts, and it included native South Africans, Indians and even Canadians and Americans (America by that time was an independent nation, not a British colony!).
