What I am going to argue today is that there is a direct correlation between community activism, leading to the normalization of affairs and the environment in which discourse and analysis takes place and intellectual scholarly development in the Australian Muslim context.

Probably the most frustrating thing about being a member of the Muslim community in Australia is the sense of powerlessness and lack of accessibility to the so-called Muslim leadership.

We have over 5 decades of Muslim institutions in Australia.These institutions have been effective in establishing mosques and schools, but have not shared a wider vision for the future, particularly, in light of world events.

As in most migrant communities, problems are rarely foreseen or prepared for.The Muslim community is in fact a kaleidoscopic community of different ethnic groups and varying religious approaches to Islam. Many of the challenges were not effectively understood or dealt with and so for many of the first generation of Muslims, they acted as guinea pigs or some were more like sacrificial lambs.They paid for our sins and went through a rite of passage so that we could enjoy the benefits for the future.

However, today, new challenges replace the old.

How effective is the current leadership in dealing with these new challenges?As with all institutions, they acquire assets and with assets come wealth and influence and power.People in power do not like change, that would mean relinquishing power and without it, these leaders would become redundant, irrelevant and unimportant.

Only in recent years have we seen a challenge to that power-base.

In the second generation of leaders, there was an attempt to use the same positional leadership approach to change the system and to attempt some reform and to formulate a strategic plan and to work towards a vision.This was met with heavy resistance and after several confrontations, the lesser of the two thick skins lost out, leaving the power in the hands of the elders. Nothing changed.

However, a major catalyst which affected the development of thought leaders within the Muslim communities was the impact of September 11.

In Australia, after this date, we saw a sudden spike in activism and a shift in approach.It was based mainly on building partnerships and engaging in dialogue on every level.We have also witnessed a shift in proactive approaches within the Muslim communities relating mainly to leadership and self-empowerment.

A key issue that has arisen is the question of where Islam stands within the Australian context and how it can play a role in shaping the identity of this nation.

On a micro level thought leaders have emerged in various capacities.There has been more dialogue around the subject of change and the challenges of modernity. This has also occurred on a macro level.

Influential global thought leaders are thinkers like Tariq Ramadan, Abdul Hakim Murad, Abdul Feisal Rauf and Farid Esack,have led the discussion on revising our approach as Muslims in the West.The whole paradigm of the Muslim experience in the West has become a focal point for many analysts and intelligence agencies alike.This has been largely philosophical and the impact of their writings has both stimulated dialogue and debate as well as prompted action.

There are a number of theories around this phenomenon of the Muslim living in the West and there is no evidence that leads to any conclusive assertions or understanding.I believe this is because the communities in question are really still a work in progress and that it is more than likely that the situation will be more or less normalised within the next generation. Particularly as Muslims accept their Australianness and lose their cultural connections with the homelands of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

What we are finding is that many of the issues and challenges that are emerging in Australia facing Muslim communities, are centred around leadership, integration, values and social cohesion.

In Australia, we are now seeing a trend to become more research based and analytical.Exploring models outside the traditional approaches.

One of these approaches to leadership is adaptive leadership which aims to provide different solutions for challenges as they arise, strongly reliant on values-based solutions.

The other is thought leadership as already mentioned.This is essentially about creating innovative approaches to understanding the challenges and promotingnew ideas and a new direction.

Therefore,the most recent development of ideas within the Muslim communities has emerged from the third generation of leaders.

Instead of working with conventional leaders, they have decided to take their destiny into their own hands and embrace the tools of the day.

This has to a large extent been led by Muslim Students Associations or MSA’s, who have completely ignored the traditional leadership and began working within their own networks and generation to promote change and innovation.

The first phase of this movement, was for these youth who were feeling disengaged and disempowered by the established organisations, was the creation of causes and events.

These events have snow-balled to become regular features of the community and through social media such as Facebook they have produced a fast-paced and dynamic network of young and concerned people.This generation is not only the technological generation but it is also the self-righteous and overly-confident one. They have no inhibitions and will speak up for their cause at any cost.

The second phase of this thought leadership movement was to challenge the relevance of the established institutions and organisations, forcing them to reinvent themselves.Today, you will notice that some organizations have had to either rebrand or to widen their scope of activities to include interactive media such as web tools, the arts and incorporating youth into their leadership model. Today, what we are seeing is an acceleration of activism on-line, and this was evidenced after the Sydney protests/riots, when young people created FB groups condemning the violence and voicing their disdain for the actions of the protestors.One such group called itself “Violent protestors do not represent us”.

With the advent of social media, leadership is increasingly becoming cyber oriented and more abstract rather than conventional positional leadership.

In Islam, this is challenging in itself. It challenges our traditional authoritative approach and the dogma that accompanies it.

Thought leadership offers new ways of thinking.

In the past 20 years we have seen a dramatic shift in the attitude of the media towards the Muslim community.This came about as a result of lateral activism within the grassroots community, in building and nurturing a relationship with the media and in holding them accountable.

What is now occurring is that all our institutions are dedicating a large amount of energy into building relationships with the media.

However, it is the massive shift in embracing social media as a tool for change that has had the greatest impact on the ground.

In some respects, the traditional role of the councils, organisations, peak bodies and societies are more and more obsolete and mean very little to the average 20 something.

When there is a drought in Sudan or a genocide in Palestine, young people mostly unrelated only through their connection on FB or Instagram, will mobilise, find a venue, a snazzy title, print a flier and find a comedian and a spoken word artist and you have half a million dollars raised ready to be donated to their charity of choice.

In the area of dawah, Muslim youth have initiated FB groups dedicated to the dissemination of Islamic knowledge and Islamic propaganda.The phenomenon of Youtube has created a brand new and accessible platform for selling your a message.

In one example a young spoken word artist has gained 700000 hits of his Youtube video which compares Jesus as a prophet of Islam and Mary as a Muslim.

Speakers Corner and influencers like Lily J have recently emerged, placing Islam front and centre and in many respects re-directing the discourse on Muslim affairs in a positive light.

These young minds have challenged the status quo and as we are seeing, their influence begin to affect the way older leaders view the community.The conventional leaders recognized that they were not only disenfranchising a large part of their constituency, they were also in danger of becoming irrelevant,but they also recognized, to their credit, that they were not equipped with the skillsets to deal with the new challenges around engaging with the media, inter-agencies, interfaith and government.

This new generation of leadership have adapted to meet the changing times. Whilst the older generation try to grasp to the last vestiges of their old empires, which use the traditional top-down form of management.In Victoria, institutions like the Islamic Council of Victoria have become obsolete and struggling to be relevant.

These younger and more robust, technologically savvy thought leaders have begun to question the effectiveness of the existing structures and by-passed their processes and methods and taken calculated risks and the initiative themselves, providing innovation.

They have not had the accumulation of assets and power or status to lose or relinquish, and hence no inhibitions to take action and make a change, effecting positive outcomes.

On the more obscure side of the coin, the Islamic intellectual leadership in Australia, has also undergone a metamorphosis of Islamic Thought, experiencing a paradigm shift.

Up and till recently, Islamic intellectualism in the Australian context has to a certain degree been left to the influences of the more ubiquitous and traditional movements in the Middle East, including Turkey, and in the US, UK and in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.

What initially emerged was a rather disconnected stream of thought and analysis especially of the Muslim diaspora experience.

Also, in Australia, what has inevitably occurred over the past decade is a resurgence of Islamic thought that has a multiplicity of influences from Mohamed Abduh, Afghani, Sayid Qutb to Said Nursi, Hamza Yusuf andAbdal Hakim Murad.

Yet, Islam in Australia has taken on its own unique flavor and its natural evolution.The main problem was the lack of cohesion and disunity amongst a so-called Muslim scholarly movement, there was a general resistance to change and any acceptance of new ideas because essentially there was no consensus of opinion or even acceptance of one ummah.

There is really no single Islamic movement in Australia and the development of competing movements has stifled discussion and debate, and ultimately intellectualism.But in recent years, through the shift in status quo, between the Y-Z generation and older leaders there has been a stabilization ofcommunal concerns and a consolidation of objectives has occurred and in a symbolic sense a more cohesive community has been established.

Through, this period of growth, there are now emerging new institutions and departments within universities and NGOs that are now looking at joining global patterns as modeled in the UK and the USA.Centres for Islamic research and understanding, now in Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane as well as academic courses offered in Sydney.

It is only through this stabilization, which I like to call normalization that these intellectual poppies will blossom.It is through the work of the new thought leaders affectionately referred to as our youth, that will open up a way for focused and dedicated programs that return to the very tried and respected traditions of rhetoric and intellectual and philosophical debate and analysis leading to the return of traditional sciences here in Australia.What may occur in the next generation, is an Australian Islamic approach to ijtihad or reasoned interpretation of many far-ranging issues facing Muslims living in the West.