Articles de revues sur le sujet « Internet in higher education – Saudi Arabia – Case studies »

Cloud computing is a state of the art technology that provides services to individuals and organizations on demand via the Internet. Implementation of cloud services in an organization will lead to improved performance and reduced cost related to computing services. A number of previous studies suggest that there is a need to further investigate the role of gender on the adoption of cloud computing, especially in developing countries. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of gender in the adoption of cloud computing services by university students in KSA. To meet the research objective an SEM study was conducted using responses from 451 Saudi higher education students to determine the role of gender on could computing acceptance in KSA context. The findings of this research show that there is a settle difference between female and male students where trust was found to be a significant determinant of behavioural intention for female students but not for their male counterparts. On the other hand, image was found to be a significant determinant of PU for male students but not for female students.

Given that students’ level of preparedness for study abroad is malleable, this study aimed to assess Saudi students’ level of preparedness academically and socioculturally to enhance their overseas experiences and success in higher education. Using a mixed methods research design consisting of survey data, semistructured interviews, and case studies with undergraduate and graduate students in a predeparture Saudi context and those enrolled in U.S. programs, the study provides empirical data to understand students’ intent to study abroad, local institutions’ contributions to preparation, and challenges encountered. Findings across datasets corroborated that Saudi students are highly motivated, while articulating the need for substantive supports toward a better understanding of U.S. higher education, academic expectations, and sociocultural practices. Participants articulated the need for advanced English skills, especially academic literacies (academic writing and reading strategies) to cope with demanding workloads in graduate programs. The study discusses curricular implications for higher education in binational contexts.

The increased use of Twitter in Saudi Arabia has opened new opportunities in higher education teaching. However, there exists a lack of studies which examine academics' thoughts on Twitter use for teaching purposes. For this study, a questionnaire was distributed to academics in Saudi Arabian universities in order to explore their experiences and opinions regarding Twitter use in teaching. The results of the questionnaire indicated that the top three teaching activities Twitter was used for were: sharing resources, posting important information, and enabling students to ask questions. Positive experiences of using Twitter in teaching focused on: accessibility, the dissemination of important information, student engagement, and the sharing of opinions and ideas. Negative experiences highlighted issues such as a lack of Internet connections, the distracting nature of tweeting, privacy, the small size of tweets, and time management. What this study highlighted was the use of Twitter in higher education teaching was still in the experimental stages of implementation.

Mobile technology has influenced almost every aspect of our modern lives. The enhancement of learning in Saudi Arabia, as well as significant development in education overall, may be possible through mobile learning. However, the successful implementation of mobile learning in tertiary education profoundly relies on the acceptance of mobile learning from both students and instructors. Most mobile learning acceptance studies target higher education students. Therefore, this study aimed at examining the factors that affect university instructors’ intentions to use mobile learning at Hail University. Eighty instructors completed the online survey, and the results indicated that performance experience, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions altogether predicted the instructors’ use of mobile learning, as 67% of the variation was found to be affected by these variables in the multiple regression analysis outcome. The results also suggested that effort expectancy is the best predictor of instructors’ behavioural intentions to use mobile learning.

Dietary supplements are believed to enhance athletic performance and/or prevent/reverse pathological states. Despite the increasing use of dietary supplements in Saudi Arabia, systematic studies in this field are lacking. This study aims to assess the relation between demographic and social characteristics and dietary supplement use among adult males in Saudi Arabia. Demographic and dietary supplements data from fitness club participants were collected through a questionnaire, and the Pearson chi-square test was used to determine associations. A total of 448 apparently healthy adult males above 20 years of age, who were registered at fitness centers located in Saudi Arabia, participated in the study. The majority (275 [62%]) of the study participants were younger (20–30 years), of normal weight (189 [43%]), without health problems (332 [79%]), and obtained an undergraduate degree or higher (336 [77%]). The majority (58%) took supplements under the supervision of a professional and the rest depended on Internet (22%), friends (12%), or books (4%) for choosing supplement types. The main motives of the participants for visiting the fitness center were: weight loss (N = 149 [35%]), keeping fit (N = 101 [24%]), and muscle building (N = 151 [35%]). One hundred and fifty-five participants (44%) were taking supplements on a daily basis with 34 (10%) having taken it for a prolonged duration (>1 year). The most commonly used supplements were proteins (29%) and multivitamins (21%). Supplement use was not associated with the participants’ family income or level of education but was positively associated with younger age (<31 years), χ2(2, N = 443) = 4.96, p = .03.

The development of new E-learning technologies and the arrival of mobile learning systems have brought greater impact on the education sector especially towards higher education learning system. There is no doubt that it is extremely useful for all those individuals lacking sufficient time for their studies. They can use such electronic forms of learning to enjoy the anytime & anywhere learning environment. It has attracted the attention of big software industry owners as well as mobile technology based companies over the period. M-learning is able to provide the learners with learning opportunities with greater capabilities through the use of mobile phones or smart-phones. Northern Border University (NBU) in Saudi Arabia is already using several online and offline automated software’s & Blackboard LMSs in its various Deanships, Colleges and Departments for student’s self-learning purposes. This case study aims to assess the behavioral differences of students/faculty members using E-learning (Mobile Apps/ Web applications) to learn/teach the respective subjects. It discusses about the perceptions of students/faculty members about M-learning & E-learning including the modes and their maximum uses of certain mobile App/Web Application whether offline or online. There are five criteria and for each criterion questionnaires are designed to take the opinions from different groups. Likert scale method is used here. Statistical testing method T-Test is used here to calculate the results among the groups.

<p>English as a medium of Instruction in higher education institutions across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a debatable subject. The Ministry of Higher Education mandates English as the Medium Instruction (EMI) in all the higher education institutions across the kingdom. Since Arabic is the mother tongue of the natives and the only spoken language in the entire region, it is the only medium of instruction in all the schools up to the secondary level. English is formally introduced as the language of instruction in undergraduate level. This sudden shift in language produces a barrier which creates chaos and repulsive issues with the medium of instruction. All the universities have their separate English Language Centre (ELC) as well as Preparatory Year Program (PYP) where they intensively train and prepare students for the English language. Emphasis is laid upon improving students reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. However, many studies conducted to examine the issue of medium of instruction have revealed an existence of a huge gap between teaching and learning, knowledge acquisition, and overall understanding of the subjects using English medium of instruction. Arabization is also a major contributing factor in making the situation difficult. Students and instructors encounter high levels of challenges and obstacles during the course of classroom instruction. This paper identifies the gap between English medium instruction (EMI) and Arab medium instruction (AMI) and investigates the root cause of the issues taking into account the reports of other case studies. The paper concludes with recommendations to address these issues.</p>

The author conducted a systematic review of the perception of online learning among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The review included 21 studies from institutions in Asia (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, and The Philippines), Europe (Romania and Poland), Africa (Ghana and Algeria), and South America (Chile). The results indicated that students from Asia and Africa overwhelmingly had an unfavorable view of online learning during the pandemic. More than 75% of students in Nepal, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Algeria, and Ghana used mobile phones to access course material which brought challenges, such as the high cost of data bundles, unreliable network, and lack of adequate cellphone space to download the materials needed for class. Other than Poland, Romania, and United Arab Emirates, students from the rest of the countries reported unreliable internet access. Additional challenges reported include lack of prior experience with online learning, technical difficulties accessing materials online, high volume of assignments, poor communication between learners and educators, distractions from home environment, and lack of practical and clinical experience for students in medical schools. The findings from this systematic review could help administrators of higher education institutions acknowledge the online learning difficulties experienced by college students and prepare for future disruptions.

Although first-year seminars and experiences have been widely considered as a high-impact educational practice, which is used to enhance academic performance, retention, and acquisition of critical 21st Century outcomes, first-year seminars and experiences tend to be loosely defined and assessed in prior studies to highlight its importance in improving the education process as a whole; therefore, this study aims to assess the impact of highimpact educational practices (HIEPs) in preparatory years in Saudi Arabia and international universities, then proposing a plan for efficiently implementing HIEPs in higher education institutions. To achieve that, case-based analysis and the survey analysis method were used wherein qualitative examination of practices in University of California and Indiana University and quantitative assessment of (130) faculty members and students’ perception of Northern Border University was conducted. Case analysis revealed that international universities implement practices suited for their institution and not the stated one i.e., Health Professional Advising Center, undergraduate research programs, or Capital academic internship program in University California, while undergraduate research, service-learning practices, or learning community in Indiana University. Survey analysis on the other hand stated that consisting of the above (20_ years respondents, implementation of core competencies and HIEPs helps in exploring relevant issues and controversies, linking of knowledge and skills, and better students and faculty bond which raise teaching and learning experience. Results revealed that core competencies and HIEPs have a significant influence on the teaching and learning outcomes. As result, an efficient implementation the plan is proposed to activate HIEPs and core competencies in the preparatory year at Saudi universities.

Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine empirically the effects of certain key Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems on the comprehensive achievement of the crucial roles of Computer-Based Information Systems (CBISs) Background: The effects of the CSFSs were examined in the higher education sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) using a case study of the ERP adoption in Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University. Methodology: A theoretical model was proposed based on the literature written on the CSFs and the roles of CBISs in business. The model encompasses six key CSFs and their associations with the realization of the crucial roles of CBISs. To test the proposed model, a questionnaire was developed by considering the most frequently used measurements items in the ERP’s literature. The data were collect-ed from 219 key stakeholders. Contribution: This study acts as one of the few empirical studies in assessing the effects of the important CSFs for ERP implementation upon its successful implementation. Its outcomes provide more insights and clarifications about the effects of six key CSFs on the comprehensive achievement of the crucial CBIS’s roles. Particularly, the uniqueness of this study lies in addressing the effects of these CSFs on the achievement of the vital CBIS’s roles collectively rather than the achievement of each role individually. Moreover, the study examined these effects in the higher education environment, which is characterized by its own special business processes and services. Findings: The results reveal that the six key CSFs have a positive relationship with the comprehensive achievement of the crucial roles of CBISs. These findings are consistent with many previous studies on the effects of the CSFs on the realization of the expected benefits of the enterprise systems. Recommendations for Practitioners: The managers and other key stakeholders should carefully manage the vital aspects of the CSFs in order to realize the promised ERP’s benefits, including the CBIS’s roles. Future Research: Additional empirical examinations are needed to investigate the effects of the rest of the CSFs on realizing the roles of information systems.

The global spread of Salafism, though it began in the 1960s and 1970s, only started to attract significant attention from scholars and analysts outside of Islamic studies as well as journalists, politicians, and the general public following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda Central. After the attacks, Salafism—or, as it was pejoratively labeled by its critics inside and outside of the Islamic tradition, “Wahhabism”—was accused of being the ideological basis of all expressions of Sunni militancy from North America and Europe to West and East Africa, the Arab world, and into Asia. According to this narrative, Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Za- wahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and other Sunni jihadis were merely putting into action the commands of medieval ‘ulama such as Ibn Taymiyya, the eighteenth century Najdi Hanbali Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and modern revolutionary ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam. To eradicate terrorism, you must eliminate or neuter Salafism, say its critics. The reality, of course, is far more complex than this simplistic nar- rative purports. Salafism, though its adherents share the same core set of creedal beliefs and methodological approaches toward the interpretation of the Qur’an and hadith and Sunni legal canon, comes in many forms, from the scholastic and hierarchical Salafism of the ‘ulama in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim majority countries to the decentralized, self-described Salafi groups in Europe and North America who cluster around a single char- ismatic preacher who often has limited formal religious education. What unifies these different expressions of Salafism is a core canon of religious and legal texts and set of scholars who are widely respected and referenced in Salafi circles. Thurston grounds his fieldwork and text-based analysis of Salafism in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and home to one of the world’s largest single Muslim national populations, through the lens of this canon, which he defines as a “communally negotiated set of texts that is governed by rules of interpretation and appropriation” (1). He argues fur- ther that in the history of Nigerian Salafism, one can trace the major stages that the global Salafi movement has navigated as it spread from the Arab Middle East to what are erroneously often seen as “peripheral” areas of the Islamic world, Africa and parts of Asia. The book is based on extensive fieldwork in Nigeria including interviews with key Nigerian Salafi scholars and other leading figures as well as a wide range of textual primary sourc- es including British and Nigerian archival documents, international and national news media reports, leaked US embassy cables, and a significant number of religious lectures and sermons and writings by Nigerian Salafis in Arabic and Hausa. In Chapter One, Thurston argues that the Salafi canon gives individ- ual and groups of Salafis a sense of identity and membership in a unique and, to them, superior religious community that is linked closely to their understanding and reading of sacred history and the revered figures of the Prophet Muhammad and the Ṣaḥāba. Salafism as an intellectual current, theology, and methodological approach is transmitted through this can- on which serves not only as a vehicle for proselytization but also a rule- book through which the boundaries of what is and is not “Salafism” are determined by its adherents and leading authorities. The book’s analytical framework and approach toward understanding Salafism, which rests on seeing it as a textual tradition, runs counter to the popular but problematic tendency in much of the existing discussion and even scholarly literature on Salafism that defines it as a literalist, one-dimensional, and puritani- cal creed with a singular focus on the Qur’an and hadith canon. Salafis, Thurston argues, do not simply derive religious and legal rulings in linear fashion from the Qur’an and Prophetic Sunna but rather engage in a co- herent and uniform process of aligning today’s Salafi community with a set of normative practices and beliefs laid out by key Salafi scholars from the recent past. Thurston divides the emergence of a distinct “Salafi” current within Sunnis into two phases. The first stretches from 1880 to 1950, as Sun- ni scholars from around the Muslim-majority world whose approaches shared a common hadith-centered methodology came into closer contact. The second is from the 1960s through the present, as key Salafi institutions (such as the Islamic University of Medina and other Saudi Salafi bodies) were founded and began attracting and (perhaps most importantly) fund- ing and sponsoring Sunni students from countries such as Nigeria to come study in Saudi Arabia, where they were deeply embedded in the Salafi tra- dition before returning to their home countries where, in turn, they spread Salafism among local Muslims. Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north, as with other regions such as Yemen’s northern Sa‘ada governorate, proved to be a fertile ground for Salafism in large part because it enabled local Muslims from more humble social backgrounds to challenge the longtime domi- nance of hereditary ruling families and the established religious class. In northern Nigeria the latter was and continues to be dominated by Sufi or- ders and their shaykhs whose long-running claim to communal leadership faced new and substantive theological and resource challenges following the return of Nigerian seminary students from Saudi Arabia’s Salafi scho- lastic institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Chapters Two and Three, Thurston traces the history of Nigerian and other African students in Saudi Arabia, which significantly expanded following the 1961 founding of the Islamic University of Medina (which remains the preeminent Salafi seminary and university in the world) and after active outreach across the Sunni Muslim world by the Saudi govern- ment and Salafi religious elite to attract students through lucrative funding and scholarship packages. The process of developing an African Salafism was not one-dimensional or imposed from the top-down by Saudi Salafi elites, but instead saw Nigerian and other African Salafi students partici- pate actively in shaping and theorizing Salafi da‘wa that took into account the specifics of each African country and Islamic religious and social envi- ronment. In Nigeria and other parts of West and East Africa, this included considering the historically dominant position of Sufi orders and popular practices such as devotion to saints and grave and shrine visitation. African and Saudi Salafis also forged relationships with local African partners, in- cluding powerful political figures such as Ahmadu Bello and his religious adviser Abubakar Gumi, by attracting them with the benefits of establishing ties with wealthy international Islamic organizations founded and backed by the Saudi state, including the Muslim World League. Nigerian Salafis returning from their studies in Saudi Arabia actively promoted their Salafi canon among local Muslims, waging an aggressive proselytization campaign that sought to chip away at the dominance of traditional political and religious elites, the Sufi shaykhs. This process is covered in Chapter Four. Drawing on key sets of legal and exegetical writ- ings by Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and other Salafi scholars, Nigerian Salafis sought to introduce a framework—represented by the canon—through which their students and adherents approach re- ligious interpretation and practice. By mastering one’s understanding and ability to correctly interpret scripture and the hadith, Salafis believe, one will also live a more ethical life based on a core set of “Salafi” principles that govern not only religious but also political, social, and economic life. Salaf- ism, Thurston argues, drawing on the work of Terje Østebø on Ethiopian Salafism, becomes localized within a specific environment.As part of their da‘wa campaigns, Nigerian Salafis have utilized media and new technology to debate their rivals and critics as well as to broad- en their own influence over Nigerian Muslims and national society more broadly, actions analyzed in Chapter Five. Using the Internet, video and audio recorded sermons and religious lectures, books and pamphlets, and oral proselytization and preaching, Nigerian Salafis, like other Muslim ac- tivists and groups, see in media and technology an extension of the phys- ical infrastructure provided by institutions such as mosques and religious schools. This media/cyber infrastructure is as, if not increasingly more, valuable as the control of physical space because it allows for the rapid spread of ideas beyond what would have historically been possible for local religious preachers and missionaries. Instead of preaching political revo- lution, Nigerian Salafi activists sought to win greater access to the media including radio airtime because they believed this would ultimately lead to the triumph of their religious message despite the power of skeptical to downright hostile local audiences among the Sufi orders and non-Salafis dedicated to the Maliki juridical canon.In the realm of politics, the subject of Chapter Six, Nigeria’s Salafis base their political ideology on the core tenets of the Salafi creed and canon, tenets which cast Salafism as being not only the purest but the only true version of Islam, and require of Salafis to establish moral reform of a way- ward Muslim society. Salafi scholars seek to bring about social, political, and religious reform, which collectively represent a “return” to the Prophet Muhammad’s Islam, by speaking truth to power and advising and repri- manding, as necessary, Muslim political rulers. In navigating the multi-po- lar and complex realm of national and regional politics, Thurston argues, Nigerian Salafi scholars educated in Saudi Arabia unwittingly opened the door to cruder and more extreme, militant voices of figures lacking the same level of study of the Salafi canon or Sunni Islam generally. The most infamous of the latter is “Boko Haram,” the jihadi-insurgent group today based around Lake Chad in Nigeria, Chad, and Niger, which calls itself Jama‘at Ahl al-Sunna li-l-Da‘wa wa-l-Jihad and is led by the bombastic Abubakar Shekau. Boko Haram, under the leadership first of the revivalist preacher Mu- hammad Yusuf and then Shekau, is covered at length in the book’s third and final part, which is composed of two chapters. Yusuf, unlike mainstream Nigerian Salafis, sought to weaponize the Salafi canon against the state in- stead of using it as a tool to bring about desired reforms. Drawing on the writings of influential Arab jihadi ideologues including Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and the apocalyptic revolutionary Juhayman al-‘Utaybi, the lat- ter of whom participated in the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Yusuf cited key Salafi concepts such as al-walā’ min al-mu’minīn wa-l-bara’ ‘an al-kāfirīn (loyalty to the Believers and disavowal of the Disbelievers) and beliefs about absolute monotheism (tawḥīd) as the basis of his revival- ist preaching. Based on these principle, he claimed, Muslims must not only fulfill their ritual duties such as prayer and fasting during Ramadan but also actively fight “unbelief” (kufr) and “apostasy” (ridda) and bring about God’s rule on earth, following the correct path of the community of the Prophet Abraham (Millat Ibrāhīm) referenced in multiple Qur’anic verses and outlined as a theological project for action by al-Maqdisi in a lengthy book of that name that has had a profound influence on the formation of modern Sunni jihadism. Instead of seeing Boko Haram, particularly under Shekau’s leadership, as a “Salafi” or “jihadi-Salafi” group, Thurston argues it is a case study of how a group that at one point in its history adhered to Salafism can move away from and beyond it. In the case of Shekau and his “post-Salafism,” he writes, the group, like Islamic State, has shifted away from the Salafi canon and toward a jihadism that uses only stripped-down elements from the canon and does so solely to propagate a militaristic form of jihad. Even when referencing historical religious authorities such as Ibn Taymiyya, Thurston points out, Boko Haram and Islamic State leaders and members often do so through the lens of modern Sunni jihadi ideologues like Juhay- man al-‘Utaybi, al-Maqdisi, and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, figures who have come to form a Sunni jihadi canon of texts, intellectuals, and ideologues. Shekau, in short, has given up canonical Salafism and moved toward a more bombastic and scholastically more heterodox and less-Salafi-than- jihadi creed of political violence. Thurston also pushes back against the often crude stereotyping of Af- rican Islamic traditions and movements that sees African Muslims as being defined by their “syncretic” mix of traditional African religious traditions and “orthodox” Islam, the latter usually a stand-in for “Arab” and “Middle Eastern” Islam. Islam and Islamic movements in Africa have developed in social and political environments that are not mirrors to the dominant models of the Arab world (in particular, Egypt). He convincingly points out that analysis of all forms of African Islamic social and political mobi- lization through a Middle East and Egypt-heavy lens obscures much more than it elucidates. The book includes useful glossaries of key individuals and Arabic terms referenced in the text as well as a translation of a sermon by the late, revered Salafi scholar Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani that is part of the mainstream Salafi canon. Extensive in its coverage of the his- tory, evolution, and sociopolitical and religious development of Salafism in Nigeria as well as the key role played by Saudi Salafi universities and religious institutions and quasi-state NGOs, the book expands the schol- arly literature on Salafism, Islam in Africa, and political Islam and Islamic social movements. It also contributing to ongoing debates and discussions on approaches to the study of the role of texts and textual traditions in the formation of individual and communal religious identity. Christopher AnzaloneResearch Fellow, International Security ProgramBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University& PhD candidate, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

This study aimed to explore the perceived barriers to physical activity among college students Study Design: Qualitative research design Eight focus group discussions on 67 college students aged 18-24 years (48 females, 19 males) was conducted on College premises. Data were analysed using inductive approach. Participants identified a number of obstacles to physical activity. Perceived barriers emerged from the analysis of the data addressed the different dimensions of the socio-ecological framework. The result indicated that the young adults perceived substantial amount of personal, social and environmental factors as barriers such as time constraint, tiredness, stress, family control, safety issues and much more. Understanding the barriers and overcoming the barriers at this stage will be valuable. Health professionals and researchers can use this information to design and implement interventions, strategies and policies to promote the participation in physical activity. This further can help the students to deal with those barriers and can help to instil the habit of regular physical activity in the later adult years.

Objectives: Diabetes mellitus is a public health concern worldwide. TeleHealth technology may be an effective tool for empowering patients in the self-management of diabetes mellitus. However despite the great impact of diabetes on healthcare in Saudi Arabia, no research has investigated diabetic patients’ willingness to use this technology. This study investigates diabetic patients’ willingness to use tele-technology as a tool to monitor their disease.Methods: Data were collected from diabetic patients attending the diabetes education clinic at the Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs (MNGHA) in the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia over a three month period. A survey was developed which measured patients’ willingness to use tele-technology in the self-management of their diabetes as well as their perceived expectations from the technology.Results: The study found that the majority of patients were willing to use tele-technology to self- monitor their diabetes. However, a minority (11.3%) indicated willingness to use the system daily and only half indicated preference to use it once a week (53.8%). Patients who were younger, had higher education levels, were employed, had internet access and had Type II diabetes were significantly more likely to report willingness to use the technology.Conclusions: Diabetic patients could be ready to play a more active role in their care if given the opportunity. Results from this study could serve as a baseline for future studies to develop targeted interventions by trialing tele-technology on a sample of the diabetic population. Patients with diabetes need to be in charge of their own care in order to improve health outcomes across the country. Keywords: diabetes, self-management, tele-technology, willingness.Abbreviations: Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs (MNGHA), Kingdom of Saud Arabia (KSA)

PurposeThis paper provides an exemplary systematic conduct of post‐occupancy evaluation (POE) on higher education facilities in Saudi Arabia.Design/methodology/approachThe research study utilized several qualitative and quantitative POE techniques which were systematically comprising (1) scoping and reviewing the facilities-related documents, (2) identification of performance indicators through the review of literature, (3) development and collection of questionnaire survey responses from stakeholders, (4) collection of physical measurements and (5) assessing the facilities by walk-throughs. Then, the data were analyzed and the findings were reported to representative samples of users through focus group meetings. Then, recommendations were drawn for improving the occupational conditions of the case study facilities.FindingsThe synthesis of literature led to three main categories of performance elements that are relevant for higher education facilities. These include technical, functional and behavioral elements, in which each of the elements has specific performance indicators, 97 in total. The research study exemplifies a systematic conduct of POE. The stakeholders' perspectives on the performance elements through surveys, measurements and walk-throughs were collected. The assessment led to recommendations toward satisfactory and quality occupation of the case study facilities.Originality/valueThis research aims to standardize POE by introducing its methods as a tool for evaluating higher education facilities and by elaborating the most prominent performance indicators for ensuring higher education core functions, namely, teaching, research and community collaboration.

Abstract Background Worldwide, most of educational institutions have moved to online electronic learning methods because of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 8, 2020, the Saudi Ministry of Education announced remote learning for public and private schools and universities as a preventive and precautionary measure to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The objective of this study was to explore the e-learning experience of the students of the colleges of health sciences with regard to the technical preparedness, academic achievements, e-learning advantages and limitations. A well-structured and validated questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale and open-ended questions about their e-learning experience was distributed to a heterogeneous purposive sample of the health sciences students in Saudi Arabian universities. Results Of the 1288 respondents, of various demographical features a relatively higher proportion of 58.2 % agreed that they had enough information about the online learning. However, the proportion who reported receiving adequate guidance, technical support, and having satisfactory hardware and internet access to online learning were 48.1 %, 42, and 35.4 %, respectively. Of all participants, 40.8 % agreed that they had gained a good understanding of their courses learning outcomes. Only 30.0 % agreed that the quality of the online teaching was similar to traditional classes and 56.1 % agreed that the online learning is unsuitable for the medical sciences studies. E-learning advantages mentioned were the flexible accessibility of the learning materials, time, effort, and money saving, acquiring and improving technical and self-learning skills, health safety, interaction without shyness, and better academic accomplishment. On the other hand, disadvantages and difficulties included inadequate tools to facilitate online learning, poor internet connection, lack of technological skills by the educators and students. In addition, there was inadequate or lack of practical classes, lack of a unified clear policy for the conduct of online classes and exams and grade distribution, limited online exam time. Conclusions The sudden shift to e-learning without prior preparedness has revealed some pitfalls that need to be adjusted. The initial findings were considered satisfactory for such a new experience for both learners and students. However, there is a great chance for improving and expanding the e-learning process.

Abstract Background Medical research is a central part of any residency training. In view of the new Saudi orthopedic committee promotion regulation that mandates each resident to participate in a research project, the challenges that stand in the way of completion of substantial research within surgical residency must be investigated. The aim of this study was to assess the practice, attitudes, perception, and limitations associated with research among residents in the Saudi orthopedic program in the central region. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted between June and July 2020 using an online-based survey. The total number of study participants was 128 orthopedic residents out of the 191 residents enrolled in the central region program. Data were analyzed, and descriptive statistics in the form of frequency and percentage were determined, analytical tests were performed with P < 0.05 being statistically significant. Results Most residents (95 %) participated in a research project during residency. Most projects (53.10 %) were case reports followed by retrospective studies (48.40 %). The majority (79.70 %) did not attend a research methods course during residency. Experience in research differed significantly (P < 0.05) by age, residency year, and center. The mean involvement score was significantly higher among males at 3 (± 1) than among females at 2 (± 0) (P < 0.001). Only 40.60 % have access to orthopedic journals, and the same percentage (40.60 %) knew how to Critique original articles. There was a statistically significant difference in the accessibility score according to the training center. Lack of faculty support and mentorship were the main barriers to medical research at 62.50 and 39.10 %, respectively. A total of 68.80 % reported that funding was not available through their institutes. Conclusions In Saudi Arabia, the level of meaningful clinical research and publications by orthopedic residents is still low. The results of this study should be taken into consideration before the implementation of the new promotion criteria in the centers under the umbrella of Saudi orthopedic committee.

This study aims to identify the impact of taxpayer’s realization of the determinants of applying value added tax on tax awareness in the Saudi Arabia and applied early in 2018. In the light of reviewing the related studies, VAT system, and VAT implementing regulation, a questionnaire about VAT determinants was designed and disseminated to 88 VAT payers in Tabuk region. After analyzing data, this study revealed that applying VAT can be affected by a group of determinants (tax rate, compulsory registration limit, fines, payments, accounting basis, payment method, tax self-censorship, organizational structure of tax administration, learning and training, voluntary registration. This study also revealed that there is a statistically significant effect of taxpayer’s realization of legislation determinants (tax rate, compulsory registration method, fines, payments) and technical determinants (accounting basis, payment method, tax self-censorship) on tax awareness. In light of study results, we recommend to increasing tax knowledge attention, expanding its tools at all school education stages, and increasing the expansion of tax knowledge and dissemination culture at the higher education stage to increase tax awareness.

Few epidemiological studies have discussed the gender-specific prevalence of ischemic heart disease (IHD). We aimed to investigate the gender-specific prevalence of IHD among Saudi patients visiting the emergency department and if it is affected by diabetes mellitus and/or hypertension. Three hundred patients were recruited from Prince Sultan Cardiac Center in Al Ahsa, KSA. Hypertension was identified as systolic pressure equal to or more than 140 mmHg and/or diastolic pressure equal to or more than 90 mmHg or by the patient currently being on antihypertensive medication, and coronary artery disease (CAD) was diagnosed by electrocardiogram, cardiac markers, cardiac exercise testing or coronary angiography. Hypertension was found in 80% of males and 72% of females. A significantly higher rate of diabetes was noted in females (62%) compared to males (48%) (p<0.012). Co-existing diabetes and hypertension was found in 70% of females as compared to 38% of males. The occurrence of IHD in males was significantly higher than that in females (p<0.001). However, the incidence of myocardial infarction was greater in females (52%) compared to males (38%) (p<0.035). Co-existing hypertension and diabetes may affect the gender prevalence of myocardial infarction among emergency department patients, with more infarctions being noted among females. This finding helps to guide the treatment strategy for both genders.

Introduction I am a transmigrant who has moved back and forth between the West and the Rest. I was born and raised in a Muslim family in a predominantly Muslim country, Bangladesh, but I spent several years of my childhood in Pakistan. After my marriage, I lived in the United States for a year and a half, the Middle East for 5 years, Australia for three years, back to the Middle East for another 5 years, then, finally, in Australia for the last 12 years. I speak Bengali (my mother tongue), Urdu (which I learnt in Pakistan), a bit of Arabic (learnt in the Middle East); but English has always been my medium of instruction. So where is home? Is it my place of origin, the Muslim umma, or my land of settlement? Or is it my ‘root’ or my ‘route’ (Blunt and Dowling)? Blunt and Dowling (199) observe that the lives of transmigrants are often interpreted in terms of their ‘roots’ and ‘routes’, which are two frameworks for thinking about home, homeland and diaspora. Whereas ‘roots’ might imply an original homeland from which people have scattered, and to which they might seek to return, ‘routes’ focuses on mobile, multiple and transcultural geographies of home. However, both ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ are attached to emotion and identity, and both invoke a sense of place, belonging or alienation that is intrinsically tied to a sense of self (Blunt and Dowling 196-219). In this paper, I equate home with my root (place of birth) and route (transnational homing) within the context of the ‘diaspora and belonging’. First I define the diaspora and possible criteria of belonging. Next I describe my transnational homing within the framework of diaspora and belonging. Finally, I consider how Australia can be a ‘home’ for me and other Muslim Australians. The Diaspora and Belonging Blunt and Dowling (199) define diaspora as “scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and the places”. Cohen emphasised the ethno-cultural aspects of the diaspora setting; that is, how migrants identify and position themselves in other nations in terms of their (different) ethnic and cultural orientation. Hall argues that the diasporic subjects form a cultural identity through transformation and difference. Speaking of the Hindu diaspora in the UK and Caribbean, Vertovec (21-23) contends that the migrants’ contact with their original ‘home’ or diaspora depends on four factors: migration processes and factors of settlement, cultural composition, structural and political power, and community development. With regard to the first factor, migration processes and factors of settlement, Vertovec explains that if the migrants are political or economic refugees, or on a temporary visa, they are likely to live in a ‘myth of return’. In the cultural composition context, Vertovec argues that religion, language, region of origin, caste, and degree of cultural homogenisation are factors in which migrants are bound to their homeland. Concerning the social structure and political power issue, Vertovec suggests that the extent and nature of racial and ethnic pluralism or social stigma, class composition, degree of institutionalised racism, involvement in party politics (or active citizenship) determine migrants’ connection to their new or old home. Finally, community development, including membership in organisations (political, union, religious, cultural, leisure), leadership qualities, and ethnic convergence or conflict (trends towards intra-communal or inter-ethnic/inter-religious co-operation) would also affect the migrants’ sense of belonging. Using these scholarly ideas as triggers, I will examine my home and belonging over the last few decades. My Home In an initial stage of my transmigrant history, my home was my root (place of birth, Dhaka, Bangladesh). Subsequently, my routes (settlement in different countries) reshaped my homes. In all respects, the ethno-cultural factors have played a big part in my definition of ‘home’. But on some occasions my ethnic identification has been overridden by my religious identification and vice versa. By ethnic identity, I mean my language (mother tongue) and my connection to my people (Bangladeshi). By my religious identity, I mean my Muslim religion, and my spiritual connection to the umma, a Muslim nation transcending all boundaries. Umma refers to the Muslim identity and unity within a larger Muslim group across national boundaries. The only thing the members of the umma have in common is their Islamic belief (Spencer and Wollman 169-170). In my childhood my father, a banker, was relocated to Karachi, Pakistan (then West Pakistan). Although I lived in Pakistan for much of my childhood, I have never considered it to be my home, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country. In this case, my home was my root (Bangladesh) where my grandparents and extended family lived. Every year I used to visit my grandparents who resided in a small town in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Thus my connection with my home was sustained through my extended family, ethnic traditions, language (Bengali/Bangla), and the occasional visits to the landscape of Bangladesh. Smith (9-11) notes that people build their connection or identity to their homeland through their historic land, common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions. Though Pakistan and Bangladesh had common histories, their traditions of language, dress and ethnic culture were very different. For example, the celebration of the Bengali New Year (Pohela Baishakh), folk dance, folk music and folk tales, drama, poetry, lyrics of poets Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindra Sangeet) and Nazrul Islam (Nazrul Geeti) are distinct in the cultural heritage of Bangladesh. Special musical instruments such as the banshi (a bamboo flute), dhol (drums), ektara (a single-stringed instrument) and dotara (a four-stringed instrument) are unique to Bangladeshi culture. The Bangladeshi cuisine (rice and freshwater fish) is also different from Pakistan where people mainly eat flat round bread (roti) and meat (gosh). However, my bonding factor to Bangladesh was my relatives, particularly my grandparents as they made me feel one of ‘us’. Their affection for me was irreplaceable. The train journey from Dhaka (capital city) to their town, Noakhali, was captivating. The hustle and bustle at the train station and the lush green paddy fields along the train journey reminded me that this was my ‘home’. Though I spoke the official language (Urdu) in Pakistan and had a few Pakistani friends in Karachi, they could never replace my feelings for my friends, extended relatives and cousins who lived in Bangladesh. I could not relate to the landscape or dry weather of Pakistan. More importantly, some Pakistani women (our neighbours) were critical of my mother’s traditional dress (saree), and described it as revealing because it showed a bit of her back. They took pride in their traditional dress (shalwar, kameez, dopatta), which they considered to be more covered and ‘Islamic’. So, because of our traditional dress (saree) and perhaps other differences, we were regarded as the ‘Other’. In 1970 my father was relocated back to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I was glad to go home. It should be noted that both Pakistan and Bangladesh were separated from India in 1947 – first as one nation; then, in 1971, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan. The conflict between Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and Pakistan (then West Pakistan) originated for economic and political reasons. At this time I was a high school student and witnessed acts of genocide committed by the Pakistani regime against the Bangladeshis (March-December 1971). My memories of these acts are vivid and still very painful. After my marriage, I moved from Bangladesh to the United States. In this instance, my new route (Austin, Texas, USA), as it happened, did not become my home. Here the ethno-cultural and Islamic cultural factors took precedence. I spoke the English language, made some American friends, and studied history at the University of Texas. I appreciated the warm friendship extended to me in the US, but experienced a degree of culture shock. I did not appreciate the pub life, alcohol consumption, and what I perceived to be the lack of family bonds (children moving out at the age of 18, families only meeting occasionally on birthdays and Christmas). Furthermore, I could not relate to de facto relationships and acceptance of sex before marriage. However, to me ‘home’ meant a family orientation and living in close contact with family. Besides the cultural divide, my husband and I were living in the US on student visas and, as Vertovec (21-23) noted, temporary visa status can deter people from their sense of belonging to the host country. In retrospect I can see that we lived in the ‘myth of return’. However, our next move for a better life was not to our root (Bangladesh), but another route to the Muslim world of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. My husband moved to Dhahran not because it was a Muslim world but because it gave him better economic opportunities. However, I thought this new destination would become my home – the home that was coined by Anderson as the imagined nation, or my Muslim umma. Anderson argues that the imagined communities are “to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6; Wood 61). Hall (122) asserts: identity is actually formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth. There is always something ‘imaginary’ or fantasized about its unity. It always remains incomplete, is always ‘in process’, always ‘being formed’. As discussed above, when I had returned home to Bangladesh from Pakistan – both Muslim countries – my primary connection to my home country was my ethnic identity, language and traditions. My ethnic identity overshadowed the religious identity. But when I moved to Saudi Arabia, where my ethnic identity differed from that of the mainstream Arabs and Bedouin/nomadic Arabs, my connection to this new land was through my Islamic cultural and religious identity. Admittedly, this connection to the umma was more psychological than physical, but I was now in close proximity to Mecca, and to my home of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mecca is an important city in Saudi Arabia for Muslims because it is the holy city of Islam, the home to the Ka’aba (the religious centre of Islam), and the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad [Peace Be Upon Him]. It is also the destination of the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islamic faith. Therefore, Mecca is home to significant events in Islamic history, as well as being an important present day centre for the Islamic faith. We lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for 5 years. Though it was a 2.5 hours flight away, I treasured Mecca’s proximity and regarded Dhahran as my second and spiritual home. Saudi Arabia had a restricted lifestyle for women, but I liked it because it was a Muslim country that gave me the opportunity to perform umrah Hajj (pilgrimage). However, Saudi Arabia did not allow citizenship to expatriates. Saudi Arabia’s government was keen to protect the status quo and did not want to compromise its cultural values or standard of living by allowing foreigners to become a permanent part of society. In exceptional circumstances only, the King granted citizenship to a foreigner for outstanding service to the state over a number of years. Children of foreigners born in Saudi Arabia did not have rights of local citizenship; they automatically assumed the nationality of their parents. If it was available, Saudi citizenship would assure expatriates a secure and permanent living in Saudi Arabia; as it was, there was a fear among the non-Saudis that they would have to leave the country once their job contract expired. Under the circumstances, though my spiritual connection to Mecca was strong, my husband was convinced that Saudi Arabia did not provide any job security. So, in 1987 when Australia offered migration to highly skilled people, my husband decided to migrate to Australia for a better and more secure economic life. I agreed to his decision, but quite reluctantly because we were again moving to a non-Muslim part of the world, which would be culturally different and far away from my original homeland (Bangladesh). In Australia, we lived first in Brisbane, then Adelaide, and after three years we took our Australian citizenship. At that stage I loved the Barossa Valley and Victor Harbour in South Australia, and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but did not feel at home in Australia. We bought a house in Adelaide and I was a full time home-maker but was always apprehensive that my children (two boys) would lose their culture in this non-Muslim world. In 1990 we once again moved back to the Muslim world, this time to Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. My connection to this route was again spiritual. I valued the fact that we would live in a Muslim country and our children would be brought up in a Muslim environment. But my husband’s move was purely financial as he got a lucrative job offer in Muscat. We had another son in Oman. We enjoyed the luxurious lifestyle provided by my husband’s workplace and the service provided by the housemaid. I loved the beaches and freedom to drive my car, and I appreciated the friendly Omani people. I also enjoyed our frequent trips (4 hours flight) to my root, Dhaka, Bangladesh. So our children were raised within our ethnic and Islamic culture, remained close to my root (family in Dhaka), though they attended a British school in Muscat. But by the time I started considering Oman to be my second home, we had to leave once again for a place that could provide us with a more secure future. Oman was like Saudi Arabia; it employed expatriates only on a contract basis, and did not give them citizenship (not even fellow Muslims). So after 5 years it was time to move back to Australia. It was with great reluctance that I moved with my husband to Brisbane in 1995 because once again we were to face a different cultural context. As mentioned earlier, we lived in Brisbane in the late 1980s; I liked the weather, the landscape, but did not consider it home for cultural reasons. Our boys started attending expensive private schools and we bought a house in a prestigious Western suburb in Brisbane. Soon after arriving I started my tertiary education at the University of Queensland, and finished an MA in Historical Studies in Indian History in 1998. Still Australia was not my home. I kept thinking that we would return to my previous routes or the ‘imagined’ homeland somewhere in the Middle East, in close proximity to my root (Bangladesh), where we could remain economically secure in a Muslim country. But gradually I began to feel that Australia was becoming my ‘home’. I had gradually become involved in professional and community activities (with university colleagues, the Bangladeshi community and Muslim women’s organisations), and in retrospect I could see that this was an early stage of my ‘self-actualisation’ (Maslow). Through my involvement with diverse people, I felt emotionally connected with the concerns, hopes and dreams of my Muslim-Australian friends. Subsequently, I also felt connected with my mainstream Australian friends whose emotions and fears (9/11 incident, Bali bombing and 7/7 tragedy) were similar to mine. In late 1998 I started my PhD studies on the immigration history of Australia, with a particular focus on the historical settlement of Muslims in Australia. This entailed retrieving archival files and interviewing people, mostly Muslims and some mainstream Australians, and enquiring into relevant migration issues. I also became more active in community issues, and was not constrained by my circumstances. By circumstances, I mean that even though I belonged to a patriarchally structured Muslim family, where my husband was the main breadwinner, main decision-maker, my independence and research activities (entailing frequent interstate trips for data collection, and public speaking) were not frowned upon or forbidden (Khan 14-15); fortunately, my husband appreciated my passion for research and gave me his trust and support. This, along with the Muslim community’s support (interviews), and the wider community’s recognition (for example, the publication of my letters in Australian newspapers, interviews on radio and television) enabled me to develop my self-esteem and built up my bicultural identity as a Muslim in a predominantly Christian country and as a Bangladeshi-Australian. In 2005, for the sake of a better job opportunity, my husband moved to the UK, but this time I asserted that I would not move again. I felt that here in Australia (now in Perth) I had a job, an identity and a home. This time my husband was able to secure a good job back in Australia and was only away for a year. I no longer dream of finding a home in the Middle East. Through my bicultural identity here in Australia I feel connected to the wider community and to the Muslim umma. However, my attachment to the umma has become ambivalent. I feel proud of my Australian-Muslim identity but I am concerned about the jihadi ideology of militant Muslims. By jihadi ideology, I mean the extremist ideology of the al-Qaeda terrorist group (Farrar 2007). The Muslim umma now incorporates both moderate and radical Muslims. The radical Muslims (though only a tiny minority of 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide) pose a threat to their moderate counterparts as well as to non-Muslims. In the UK, some second- and third-generation Muslims identify themselves with the umma rather than their parents’ homelands or their country of birth (Husain). It should not be a matter of concern if these young Muslims adopt a ‘pure’ Muslim identity, providing at the same time they are loyal to their country of residence. But when they resort to terrorism with their ‘pure’ Muslim identity (e.g., the 7/7 London bombers) they defame my religion Islam, and undermine my spiritual connection to the umma. As a 1st generation immigrant, the defining criteria of my ‘homeliness’ in Australia are my ethno-cultural and religious identity (which includes my family), my active citizenship, and my community development/contribution through my research work – all of which allow me a sense of efficacy in my life. My ethnic and religious identities generally co-exist equally, but when I see some Muslims kill my fellow Australians (such as the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005) my Australian identity takes precedence. I feel for the victims and condemn the perpetrators. On the other hand, when I see politics play a role over the human rights issues (e.g., the Tampa incident), my religious identity begs me to comment on it (see Kabir, Muslims in Australia 295-305). Problematising ‘Home’ for Muslim Australians In the European context, Grillo (863) and Werbner (904), and in the Australian context, Kabir (Muslims in Australia) and Poynting and Mason, have identified the diversity within Islam (national, ethnic, religious etc). Werbner (904) notes that in spite of the “wishful talk of the emergence of a ‘British Islam’, even today there are Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab mosques, as well as Turkish and Shia’a mosques”; thus British Muslims retain their separate identities. Similarly, in Australia, the existence of separate mosques for the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab and Shia’a peoples indicates that Australian Muslims have also kept their ethnic identities discrete (Saeed 64-77). However, in times of crisis, such as the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, and the 1990-1991 Gulf crises, both British and Australian Muslims were quick to unite and express their Islamic identity by way of resistance (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 160-162; Poynting and Mason 68-70). In both British and Australian contexts, I argue that a peaceful rally or resistance is indicative of active citizenship of Muslims as it reveals their sense of belonging (also Werbner 905). So when a transmigrant Muslim wants to make a peaceful demonstration, the Western world should be encouraged, not threatened – as long as the transmigrant’s allegiances lie also with the host country. In the European context, Grillo (868) writes: when I asked Mehmet if he was planning to stay in Germany he answered without hesitation: ‘Yes, of course’. And then, after a little break, he added ‘as long as we can live here as Muslims’. In this context, I support Mehmet’s desire to live as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world as long as this is peaceful. Paradoxically, living a Muslim life through ijtihad can be either socially progressive or destructive. The Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji relies on ijtihad, but so does Osama bin Laden! Manji emphasises that ijtihad can be, on the one hand, the adaptation of Islam using independent reasoning, hybridity and the contesting of ‘traditional’ family values (c.f. Doogue and Kirkwood 275-276, 314); and, on the other, ijtihad can take the form of conservative, patriarchal and militant Islamic values. The al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden espouses the jihadi ideology of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian who early in his career might have been described as a Muslim modernist who believed that Islam and Western secular ideals could be reconciled. But he discarded that idea after going to the US in 1948-50; there he was treated as ‘different’ and that treatment turned him against the West. He came back to Egypt and embraced a much more rigid and militaristic form of Islam (Esposito 136). Other scholars, such as Cesari, have identified a third orientation – a ‘secularised Islam’, which stresses general beliefs in the values of Islam and an Islamic identity, without too much concern for practices. Grillo (871) observed Islam in the West emphasised diversity. He stressed that, “some [Muslims were] more quietest, some more secular, some more clamorous, some more negotiatory”, while some were exclusively characterised by Islamic identity, such as wearing the burqa (elaborate veils), hijabs (headscarves), beards by men and total abstinence from drinking alcohol. So Mehmet, cited above, could be living a Muslim life within the spectrum of these possibilities, ranging from an integrating mode to a strict, militant Muslim manner. In the UK context, Zubaida (96) contends that marginalised, culturally-impoverished youth are the people for whom radical, militant Islamism may have an appeal, though it must be noted that the 7/7 bombers belonged to affluent families (O’Sullivan 14; Husain). In Australia, Muslim Australians are facing three challenges. First, the Muslim unemployment rate: it was three times higher than the national total in 1996 and 2001 (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 266-278; Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 63). Second, some spiritual leaders have used extreme rhetoric to appeal to marginalised youth; in January 2007, the Australian-born imam of Lebanese background, Sheikh Feiz Mohammad, was alleged to have employed a DVD format to urge children to kill the enemies of Islam and to have praised martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad (Chulov 2). Third, the proposed citizenship test has the potential to make new migrants’ – particularly Muslims’ – settlement in Australia stressful (Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79); in May 2007, fuelled by perceptions that some migrants – especially Muslims – were not integrating quickly enough, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test bill that proposes to test applicants on their English language skills and knowledge of Australian history and ‘values’. I contend that being able to demonstrate knowledge of history and having English language skills is no guarantee that a migrant will be a good citizen. Through my transmigrant history, I have learnt that developing a bond with a new place takes time, acceptance and a gradual change of identity, which are less likely to happen when facing assimilationist constraints. I spoke English and studied history in the United States, but I did not consider it my home. I did not speak the Arabic language, and did not study Middle Eastern history while I was in the Middle East, but I felt connected to it for cultural and religious reasons. Through my knowledge of history and English language proficiency I did not make Australia my home when I first migrated to Australia. Australia became my home when I started interacting with other Australians, which was made possible by having the time at my disposal and by fortunate circumstances, which included a fairly high level of efficacy and affluence. If I had been rejected because of my lack of knowledge of ‘Australian values’, or had encountered discrimination in the job market, I would have been much less willing to embrace my host country and call it home. I believe a stringent citizenship test is more likely to alienate would-be citizens than to induce their adoption of values and loyalty to their new home. Conclusion Blunt (5) observes that current studies of home often investigate mobile geographies of dwelling and how it shapes one’s identity and belonging. Such geographies of home negotiate from the domestic to the global context, thus mobilising the home beyond a fixed, bounded and confining location. Similarly, in this paper I have discussed how my mobile geography, from the domestic (root) to global (route), has shaped my identity. Though I received a degree of culture shock in the United States, loved the Middle East, and was at first quite resistant to the idea of making Australia my second home, the confidence I acquired in residing in these ‘several homes’ were cumulative and eventually enabled me to regard Australia as my ‘home’. I loved the Middle East, but I did not pursue an active involvement with the Arab community because I was a busy mother. Also I lacked the communication skill (fluency in Arabic) with the local residents who lived outside the expatriates’ campus. I am no longer a cultural freak. I am no longer the same Bangladeshi woman who saw her ethnic and Islamic culture as superior to all other cultures. I have learnt to appreciate Australian values, such as tolerance, ‘a fair go’ and multiculturalism (see Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79). My bicultural identity is my strength. With my ethnic and religious identity, I can relate to the concerns of the Muslim community and other Australian ethnic and religious minorities. And with my Australian identity I have developed ‘a voice’ to pursue active citizenship. Thus my biculturalism has enabled me to retain and merge my former home with my present and permanent home of Australia. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1983. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census of Housing and Population, 1996 and 2001. Blunt, Alison. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Cesari, Jocelyne. “Muslim Minorities in Europe: The Silent Revolution.” In John L. Esposito and Burgat, eds., Modernising Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East. London: Hurst, 2003. 251-269. Chulov, Martin. “Treatment Has Sheik Wary of Returning Home.” Weekend Australian 6-7 Jan. 2007: 2. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington, 1997. Doogue, Geraldine, and Peter Kirkwood. Tomorrow’s Islam: Uniting Old-Age Beliefs and a Modern World. Sydney: ABC Books, 2005. Esposito, John. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? 3rd ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Farrar, Max. “When the Bombs Go Off: Rethinking and Managing Diversity Strategies in Leeds, UK.” International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations 6.5 (2007): 63-68. Grillo, Ralph. “Islam and Transnationalism.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30.5 (Sep. 2004): 861-878. Hall, Stuart. Polity Reader in Cultural Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Huntington, Samuel, P. The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order. London: Touchstone, 1998. Husain, Ed. The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw inside and Why I Left. London: Penguin, 2007. Kabir, Nahid. Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural History. London: Kegan Paul, 2005. ———. “What Does It Mean to Be Un-Australian: Views of Australian Muslim Students in 2006.” People and Place 15.1 (2007): 62-79. Khan, Shahnaz. Aversion and Desire: Negotiating Muslim Female Identity in the Diaspora. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2002. Manji, Irshad. The Trouble with Islam Today. Canada:Vintage, 2005. Maslow, Abraham. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper, 1954. O’Sullivan, J. “The Real British Disease.” Quadrant (Jan.-Feb. 2006): 14-20. Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason. “The Resistible Rise of Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim Racism in the UK and Australia before 11 September 2001.” Journal of Sociology 43.1 (2007): 61-86. Saeed, Abdallah. Islam in Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Spencer, Philip, and Howard Wollman. Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage, 2002. Vertovec, Stevens. The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns. London: Routledge. 2000. Werbner, Pnina, “Theorising Complex Diasporas: Purity and Hybridity in the South Asian Public Sphere in Britain.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30.5 (2004): 895-911. Wood, Dennis. “The Diaspora, Community and the Vagrant Space.” In Cynthia Vanden Driesen and Ralph Crane, eds., Diaspora: The Australasian Experience. New Delhi: Prestige, 2005. 59-64. Zubaida, Sami. “Islam in Europe: Unity or Diversity.” Critical Quarterly 45.1-2 (2003): 88-98. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Aug. 2007) "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>.

07–562Al-Jarf, Reima Sado (King Saud U, Saudi Arabia; reima2000_sa@yahoo.com), Processing of advertisements by EFL college students. The Reading Matrix (Readingmatrix.com) 7.1 (2007), 132–140.07–563Alkire, Scott (San Jose State U, California, USA; scott.alkire@sjsu.edu) & Andrew Alkire, Teaching literature in the Muslim world: A bicultural approach. TESL-EJ (http://www.tesl-ej.org) 10.4 (2007), 13 pp.07–564Belcher, Diane (Georgia State U, USA; dbelcher1@gsu.edu), Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Second Language Writing (Elsevier) 16.1 (2007), 1–22.07–565Bell, Joyce (Curtin U, Australia; Joyce.Bell@curtin.edu.au), Reading practices: Postgraduate Thai student perceptions. The Reading Matrix (Readingmatrix.com) 7.1 (2007), 51–68.07–566Bndaka, Eleni (ebintaka@sch.gr), Using newspaper articles to develop students' reading skills in senior high school. The Reading Matrix (Readingmatrix.com) 7.1 (2007), 166–175.07–567Coiro, Julie & Elizabeth Dobler, Exploring the online reading comprehension strategies used by sixth-grade skilled readers to search for and locate information on the Internet. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 42.2 (2007), 214–257.07–568Cole, Simon (Daito Bunka U, Japan), Consciousness-raising and task-based learning in writing. The Language Teacher (Japan Association for Language Teaching) 31.1 (2007), 3–8.07–569Commeyras, Michelle & Hellen N. Inyega, An Integrative review of teaching reading in Kenyan primary schools. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 42.2 (2007), 258–281.07–570Compton-Lilly, Catherine (U Wisconsin–Madison, USA), The complexities of reading capital in two Puerto Rican families. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 42.1 (2007), 72–98.07–571Duffy, John (U Notre Dame, Notre Dame, USA), Recalling the letter: The uses of oral testimony in historical studies of literacy. Written Communication (Sage) 24.1 (2007), 84–107.07–572Dyehouse, Jeremiah (U Rhode Island, USA), Knowledge consolidation analysis: Toward a methodology for studying the role of argument in technology development. Written Communication (Sage) 24.2 (2007), 111–139.07–573Godley, Amanda J., Brian D. Carpenter (U Pittsburgh, USA) & Cynthia A. Werner, ‘I'll speak in proper slang’: Language ideologies in a daily editing activity. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 42.1 (2007), 100–131.07–574Guénette, Danielle (U du Québec, Canada; guenette.daniele@uqam.ca), Is feedback pedagogically correct? Research design issues in studies of feedback on writing. Journal of Second Language Writing (Elsevier) 16.1 (2007), 40–53.07–575Gutiérrez-Palma, Nicolás (U de Jaén, Spain; ngpalma@ujaen.es) & Alfonso Palma Reves (U Granada, Spain), Stress sensitivity and reading performance in Spanish: A study with children. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 30.2 (2007), 157–168.07–576Hu, Guangwei (Nanyang Technical U, Singapore; guangwei.hu@nie.edu.sg), Developing an EAP writing course for Chinese ESL students. RELC Journal (Sage) 38.1 (2007), 67–86.07–577Hunt, George (U Edinburgh, UK; george.hunt@ed.ac.uk), Failure to thrive? The community literacy strand of the Additive Bilingual Project at an Eastern Cape community school, South Africa. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 30.1 (2007), 80–96.07–578Jiang, Xiangying & William Grabe (Northern Arizona U, USA), Graphic organizers in reading instruction: Research findings and issues. Reading in a Foreign Language (U Hawaii, HI, USA) 19.1 (2007), 34–55.07–579Jin Bang, Hee & Cecilia Guanfang Zhao (New York U, USA; heejin.bang@nyu.edu), Reading strategies used by advanced Korean and Chinese ESL graduate students: A case study. The Reading Matrix (Readingmatrix.com) 7.1 (2007), 30–50.07–580Keshavarz, Mohammad Hossein, Mahmoud Reza Atai (Tarbiat Moallem U, Iran) & Hossein Ahmadi, Content schemata, linguistic simplification, and EFL readers' comprehension and recall. Reading in a Foreign Language (U Hawaii, HI, USA) 19.1 (2007), 19–33.07–581Kirkgöz, Yasemin (Çukurova U, Turkey; ykirkgoz@cu.edu.tr), Designing a corpus based English reading course for academic purposes. The Reading Matrix (Readingmatrix.com) 6.3 (2006), 281–298.07–582Kolić-Vehovec, Svjetlana & Iqor Bajšanski (U Rijeka, Crotia; skolic@ffri.hr), Comprehension monitoring and reading comprehension in bilingual students. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 30.2 (2007), 198–211.07–583Li, Yongyan, Apprentice scholarly writing in a community of practice: An intraview of an NNES graduate student writing a research article. TESOL Quarterly (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) 41.1 (2007), 55–79.07–584Marianne (Victoria U Wellington, New Zealand; m.marianne@vuw.ac.nz), A comparative analysis of racism in the original and modified texts ofThe Cay. Reading in a Foreign Language (U Hawaii, HI, USA) 19.1 (2007), 56–68.07–585Marsh, Charles (U Kansas, Lawrence, USA), Aristotelian causal analysis and creativity in copywriting: Toward a rapprochement between rhetoric and advertising. Written Communication (Sage) 24.2 (2007), 168–187.07–586Mellard, Daryl, Margaret Becker Patterson & Sara Prewett, Reading practices among adult education participants. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 42.2 (2007), 188–213.07–587Mishra, Ranjita (U London, UK) & Rhona Stainthorp, The relationship between phonological awareness and word reading accuracy in Oriya and English: A study of Oriya-speaking fifth-graders. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 30.1 (2007), 23–37.07–588Naq, Sonali (The Promise Foundation, India; sonalinag@t-p-f.org), Early reading in Kannada: The pace of acquisition of orthographic knowledge and phonemic awareness. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 30.1 (2007), 7–22.07–589Pretorius, Elizabeth & Deborah Maphoko Mampuru (U South Africa, South Africa; pretoej@unisa.ac.za), Playing football without a ball: Language, reading and academic performance in a high-poverty school. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 30.1 (2007), 38–58.07–590Pulido, Diana (Michigan State U, USA), The effects of topic familiarity and passage sight vocabulary on L2 lexical inferencing and retention through reading. Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press) 28.1 (2007), 66–86.07–591Purcell-Gates, Victoria (U British Columbia, Canada), Neil K. Duke & Joseph A. Martineau, Learning to read and write genre-specific text: Roles of authentic experience and explicit teaching. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 42.1 (2007), 8–45.07–592Rahimi, Mohammad (Shiraz U, Iran; mrahimy@gmail.com), L2 reading comprehension test in the Persian context: Language of presentation as a test method facet. The Reading Matrix (Readingmatrix.com) 7.1 (2007), 151–165.07–593Rao, Zhenhui (Jiangxi Normal U, China; rao5510@yahoo.com), Training in brainstorming and developing writing skills. ELT Journal (Oxford University Press) 61.2 (2007), 100–106.07–594Ravid, Dorit & Yael Epel Mashraki (Tel Aviv U, Israel; doritr@post.tau.ac.il), Prosodic reading, reading comprehension and morphological skills in Hebrew-speaking fourth graders. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 30.2 (2007), 140–156.07–595Rosary, Lalik (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State, USA) & Kimberly L. Oliver, Differences and tensions in implementing a pedagogy of critical literacy with adolescent girls. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 42.1 (2007), 46–70.07–596Suzuki, Akio (Josai U, Japan), Differences in reading strategies employed by students constructing graphic organizers and students producing summaries in EFL reading. JALT Journal (Japan Association for Language Teaching) 28.2 (2006), 177–196.07–597Takase, Atsuko (Osaka International U, Japan; atsukot@jttk.zaq.ne.jp), Japanese high school students' motivation for extensive L2 reading. Reading in a Foreign Language (U Hawaii, HI, USA) 19.1 (2007), 1–18.07–598Tanaka, Hiroya & Paul Stapleton (Hokkaido U, Japan; higoezo@ybb.ne.jp), Increasing reading input in Japanese high school EFL classrooms: An empirical study exploring the efficacy of extensive reading. The Reading Matrix (Readingmatrix.com) 7.1 (2007), 115–131.07–599Weinstein, Susan (Louisiana State U, Baton Rouge, USA), Pregnancy, pimps, and ‘clichèd love things’: Writing through gender and sexuality. Written Communication (Sage) 24.1 (2007), 28–48.07–600Williams, Eddie (U Bangor, UK; eddie.williams@bangor.ac.uk), Extensive reading in Malawi: Inadequate implementation or inappropriate innovation?Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 30.1 (2007), 59–79.07–601Yamashita, Junko, The relationship of reading attitudes between L1 and L2: An investigation of adult EFL learners in Japan. TESOL Quarterly (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) 41.1 (2007), 81–105.07–602Yi, Youngjoo (U Alabama, USA; yyi@ua.edu), Engaging literacy: A biliterate student's composing practices beyond school. Journal of Second Language Writing (Elsevier) 16.1 (2007), 23–39.07–603Zhu, Yunxia (U Queensland, New Zealand; zyunxia@unitec.ac.nz), Understanding sociocognitive space of written discourse: Implications for teaching business writing to Chinese students. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (Walter de Gruyter) 44.3 (2006), 265–285.

Refereed publications (also known as peer-reviewed) are the currency of academia, yet many PhD theses in Australia result in only one or two such papers. Typically, a doctoral thesis requires the candidate to present (and pass) a public Confirmation Seminar, around nine to twelve months into candidacy, in which a panel of the candidate’s supervisors and invited experts adjudicate upon whether the work is likely to continue and ultimately succeed in the goal of a coherent and original contribution to knowledge. A Final Seminar, also public and sometimes involving the traditional viva voce or oral defence of the thesis, is presented two or three months before approval is given to send the 80,000 to 100,000 word tome off for external examination. And that soul-destroying or elation-releasing examiner’s verdict can be many months in the delivery: a limbo-like period during which the candidate’s status as a student is ended and her or his receipt of any scholarship or funding guerdon is terminated with perfunctory speed. This is the only time most students spend seriously writing up their research for publication although, naturally, many are more involved in job hunting as they pin their hopes on passing the thesis examination.There is, however, a slightly more palatable alternative to this nail-biting process of the traditional PhD, and that is the PhD by Published Papers (also known as PhD by Publications or PhD by Published Works). The form of my own soon-to-be-submitted thesis, it permits the submission for examination of a collection of papers that have been refereed and accepted (or are in the process of being refereed) for publication in academic journals or books. Apart from the obvious benefits in getting published early in one’s (hopefully) burgeoning academic career, it also takes away a lot of the stress come final submission time. After all, I try to assure myself, the thesis examiners can’t really discredit the process of double-blind, peer-review the bulk of the thesis has already undergone: their job is to examine how well I’ve unified the papers into a cohesive thesis … right? But perhaps they should at least be wary, because, unfortunately, the requirements for this kind of PhD vary considerably from institution to institution and there have been some cases where the submitted work is of questionable quality compared to that produced by graduates from more demanding universities. Hence, this paper argues that in my subject area of interest—film and television studies—there is a huge range in the set requirements for doctorates, from universities that award the degree to film artists for prior published work that has undergone little or no academic scrutiny and has involved little or no on-campus participation to at least three Australian universities that require candidates be enrolled for a minimum period of full-time study and only submit scholarly work generated and published (or submitted for publication) during candidature. I would also suggest that uncertainty about where a graduate’s work rests on this continuum risks confusing a hard-won PhD by Published Papers with the sometimes risible honorary doctorate. Let’s begin by dredging the depths of those murky, quasi-academic waters to examine the occasionally less-than-salubrious honorary doctorate. The conferring of this degree is generally a recognition of an individual’s body of (usually published) work but is often conferred for contributions to knowledge or society in general that are not even remotely academic. The honorary doctorate does not usually carry with it the right to use the title “Dr” (although many self-aggrandising recipients in the non-academic world flout this unwritten code of conduct, and, indeed, Monash University’s Monash Magazine had no hesitation in describing its 2008 recipient, musician, screenwriter, and art-school-dropout Nick Cave, as “Dr Cave” (O’Loughlin)). Some shady universities even offer such degrees for sale or ‘donation’ and thus do great damage to that institution’s credibility as well as to the credibility of the degree itself. Such overseas “diploma mills”—including Ashwood University, Belford University, Glendale University and Suffield University—are identified by their advertising of “Life Experience Degrees,” for which a curriculum vitae outlining the prospective graduand’s oeuvre is accepted on face value as long as their credit cards are not rejected. An aspiring screen auteur simply specifies film and television as their major and before you can shout “Cut!” there’s a degree in the mail. Most of these pseudo-universities are not based in Australia but are perfectly happy to confer their ‘titles’ to any well-heeled, vanity-driven Australians capable of completing the online form. Nevertheless, many academics fear a similarly disreputable marketplace might develop here, and Norfolk Island-based Greenwich University presents a particularly illuminating example. Previously empowered by an Act of Parliament consented to by Senator Ian Macdonald, the then Minister for Territories, this “university” had the legal right to confer honorary degrees from 1998. The Act was eventually overridden by legislation passed in 2002, after a concerted effort by the Australian Universities Quality Agency Ltd. and the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee to force the accreditation requirements of the Australian Qualifications Framework upon the institution in question, thus preventing it from making degrees available for purchase over the Internet. Greenwich University did not seek re-approval and soon relocated to its original home of Hawaii (Brown). But even real universities flounder in similarly muddy waters when, unsolicited, they make dubious decisions to grant degrees to individuals they hold in high esteem. Although meaning well by not courting pecuniary gain, they nevertheless invite criticism over their choice of recipient for their honoris causa, despite the decision usually only being reached after a process of debate and discussion by university committees. Often people are rewarded, it seems, as much for their fame as for their achievements or publications. One such example of a celebrity who has had his onscreen renown recognised by an honorary doctorate is film and television actor/comedian Billy Connolly who was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by The University of Glasgow in 2006, prompting Stuart Jeffries to complain that “something has gone terribly wrong in British academia” (Jeffries). Eileen McNamara also bemoans the levels to which some institutions will sink to in search of media attention and exposure, when she writes of St Andrews University in Scotland conferring an honorary doctorate to film actor and producer, Michael Douglas: “What was designed to acknowledge intellectual achievement has devolved into a publicity grab with universities competing for celebrity honorees” (McNamara). Fame as an actor (and the list gets even weirder when the scope of enquiry is widened beyond the field of film and television), seems to be an achievement worth recognising with an honorary doctorate, according to some universities, and this kind of discredit is best avoided by Australian institutions of higher learning if they are to maintain credibility. Certainly, universities down under would do well to follow elsewhere than in the footprints of Long Island University’s Southampton College. Perhaps the height of academic prostitution of parchments for the attention of mass media occurred when in 1996 this US school bestowed an Honorary Doctorate of Amphibious Letters upon that mop-like puppet of film and television fame known as the “muppet,” Kermit the Frog. Indeed, this polystyrene and cloth creation with an anonymous hand operating its mouth had its acceptance speech duly published (see “Kermit’s Acceptance Speech”) and the Long Island University’s Southampton College received much valuable press. After all, any publicity is good publicity. Or perhaps this furry frog’s honorary degree was a cynical stunt meant to highlight the ridiculousness of the practice? In 1986 a similar example, much closer to my own home, occurred when in anticipation and condemnation of the conferral of an honorary doctorate upon Prince Philip by Monash University in Melbourne, the “Members of the Monash Association of Students had earlier given a 21-month-old Chihuahua an honorary science degree” (Jeffries), effectively suggesting that the honorary doctorate is, in fact, a dog of a degree. On a more serious note, there have been honorary doctorates conferred upon far more worthy recipients in the field of film and television by some Australian universities. Indigenous film-maker Tracey Moffatt was awarded an honorary doctorate by Griffith University in November of 2004. Moffatt was a graduate of the Griffith University’s film school and had an excellent body of work including the films Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1990) and beDevil (1993). Acclaimed playwright and screenwriter David Williamson was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by The University of Queensland in December of 2004. His work had previously picked up four Australian Film Institute awards for best screenplay. An Honorary Doctorate of Visual and Performing Arts was given to film director Fred Schepisi AO by The University of Melbourne in May of 2006. His films had also been earlier recognised with Australian Film Institute awards as well as the Golden Globe Best Miniseries or Television Movie award for Empire Falls in 2006. Director George Miller was crowned with an Honorary Doctorate in Film from the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School in April 2007, although he already had a medical doctor’s testamur on his wall. In May of this year, filmmaker George Gittoes, a fine arts dropout from The University of Sydney, received an honorary doctorate by The University of New South Wales. His documentaries, Soundtrack to War (2005) and Rampage (2006), screened at the Sydney and Berlin film festivals, and he has been employed by the Australian Government as an official war artist. Interestingly, the high quality screen work recognised by these Australian universities may have earned the recipients ‘real’ PhDs had they sought the qualification. Many of these film artists could have just as easily submitted their work for the degree of PhD by Published Papers at several universities that accept prior work in lieu of an original exegesis, and where a film is equated with a book or journal article. But such universities still invite comparisons of their PhDs by Published Papers with honorary doctorates due to rather too-easy-to-meet criteria. The privately funded Bond University, for example, recommends a minimum full-time enrolment of just three months and certainly seems more lax in its regulations than other Antipodean institution: a healthy curriculum vitae and payment of the prescribed fee (currently AUD$24,500 per annum) are the only requirements. Restricting my enquiries once again to the field of my own research, film and television, I note that Dr. Ingo Petzke achieved his 2004 PhD by Published Works based upon films produced in Germany well before enrolling at Bond, contextualized within a discussion of the history of avant-garde film-making in that country. Might not a cynic enquire as to how this PhD significantly differs from an honorary doctorate? Although Petzke undoubtedly paid his fees and met all of Bond’s requirements for his thesis entitled Slow Motion: Thirty Years in Film, one cannot criticise that cynic for wondering if Petzke’s films are indeed equivalent to a collection of refereed papers. It should be noted that Bond is not alone when it comes to awarding candidates the PhD by Published Papers for work published or screened in the distant past. Although yet to grant it in the area of film or television, Swinburne University of Technology (SUT) is an institution that distinctly specifies its PhD by Publications is to be awarded for “research which has been carried out prior to admission to candidature” (8). Similarly, the Griffith Law School states: “The PhD (by publications) is awarded to established researchers who have an international reputation based on already published works” (1). It appears that Bond is no solitary voice in the academic wilderness, for SUT and the Griffith Law School also apparently consider the usual milestones of Confirmation and Final Seminars to be unnecessary if the so-called candidate is already well published. Like Bond, Griffith University (GU) is prepared to consider a collection of films to be equivalent to a number of refereed papers. Dr Ian Lang’s 2002 PhD (by Publication) thesis entitled Conditional Truths: Remapping Paths To Documentary ‘Independence’ contains not refereed, scholarly articles but the following videos: Wheels Across the Himalaya (1981); Yallambee, People of Hope (1986); This Is What I Call Living (1988); The Art of Place: Hanoi Brisbane Art Exchange (1995); and Millennium Shift: The Search for New World Art (1997). While this is a most impressive body of work, and is well unified by appropriate discussion within the thesis, the cynic who raised eyebrows at Petzke’s thesis might also be questioning this thesis: Dr Lang’s videos all preceded enrolment at GU and none have been refereed or acknowledged with major prizes. Certainly, the act of releasing a film for distribution has much in common with book publishing, but should these videos be considered to be on a par with academic papers published in, say, the prestigious and demanding journal Screen? While recognition at awards ceremonies might arguably correlate with peer review there is still the question as to how scholarly a film actually is. Of course, documentary films such as those in Lang’s thesis can be shown to be addressing gaps in the literature, as is the expectation of any research paper, but the onus remains on the author/film-maker to demonstrate this via a detailed contextual review and a well-written, erudite argument that unifies the works into a cohesive thesis. This Lang has done, to the extent that suspicious cynic might wonder why he chose not to present his work for a standard PhD award. Another issue unaddressed by most institutions is the possibility that the publications have been self-refereed or refereed by the candidate’s editorial colleagues in a case wherein the papers appear in a book the candidate has edited or co-edited. Dr Gillian Swanson’s 2004 GU thesis Towards a Cultural History of Private Life: Sexual Character, Consuming Practices and Cultural Knowledge, which addresses amongst many other cultural artefacts the film Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean 1962), has nine publications: five of which come from two books she co-edited, Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and Cinema in Britain in World War Two, (Gledhill and Swanson 1996) and Deciphering Culture: Ordinary Curiosities and Subjective Narratives (Crisp et al 2000). While few would dispute the quality of Swanson’s work, the persistent cynic might wonder if these five papers really qualify as refereed publications. The tacit understanding of a refereed publication is that it is blind reviewed i.e. the contributor’s name is removed from the document. Such a system is used to prevent bias and favouritism but this level of anonymity might be absent when the contributor to a book is also one of the book’s editors. Of course, Dr Swanson probably took great care to distance herself from the refereeing process undertaken by her co-editors, but without an inbuilt check, allegations of cronyism from unfriendly cynics may well result. A related factor in making comparisons of different university’s PhDs by Published Papers is the requirements different universities have about the standard of the journal the paper is published in. It used to be a simple matter in Australia: the government’s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) held a Register of Refereed Journals. If your benefactor in disseminating your work was on the list, your publications were of near-unquestionable quality. Not any more: DEST will no longer accept nominations for listing on the Register and will not undertake to rule on whether a particular journal article meets the HERDC [Higher Education Research Data Collection] requirements for inclusion in publication counts. HEPs [Higher Education Providers] have always had the discretion to determine if a publication produced in a journal meets the requirements for inclusion in the HERDC regardless of whether or not the journal was included on the Register of Refereed Journals. As stated in the HERDC specifications, the Register is not an exhaustive list of all journals which satisfy the peer-review requirements (DEST). The last listing for the DEST Register of Refereed Journals was the 3rd of February 2006, making way for a new tiered list of academic journals, which is currently under review in the Australian tertiary education sector (see discussion of this development in the Redden and Mitchell articles in this issue). In the interim, some university faculties created their own rankings of journals, but not the Faculty of Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) where I am studying for my PhD by Published Papers. Although QUT does not have a list of ranked journals for a candidate to submit papers to, it is otherwise quite strict in its requirements. The QUT University Regulations state, “Papers submitted as a PhD thesis must be closely related in terms of subject matter and form a cohesive research narrative” (QUT PhD regulation 14.1.2). Thus there is the requirement at QUT that apart from the usual introduction, methodology and literature review, an argument must be made as to how the papers present a sustained research project via “an overarching discussion of the main features linking the publications” (14.2.12). It is also therein stated that it should be an “account of research progress linking the research papers” (4.2.6). In other words, a unifying essay must make an argument for consideration of the sometimes diversely published papers as a cohesive body of work, undertaken in a deliberate journey of research. In my own case, an aural auteur analysis of sound in the films of Rolf de Heer, I argue that my published papers (eight in total) represent a journey from genre analysis (one paper) to standard auteur analysis (three papers) to an argument that sound should be considered in auteur analysis (one paper) to the major innovation of the thesis, aural auteur analysis (three papers). It should also be noted that unlike Bond, GU or SUT, the QUT regulations for the standard PhD still apply: a Confirmation Seminar, Final Seminar and a minimum two years of full-time enrolment (with a minimum of three months residency in Brisbane) are all compulsory. Such milestones and sine qua non ensure the candidate’s academic progress and intellectual development such that she or he is able to confidently engage in meaningful quodlibets regarding the thesis’s topic. Another interesting and significant feature of the QUT guidelines for this type of degree is the edict that papers submitted must be “published, accepted or submitted during the period of candidature” (14.1.1). Similarly, the University of Canberra (UC) states “The articles or other published material must be prepared during the period of candidature” (10). Likewise, Edith Cowan University (ECU) will confer its PhD by Publications to those candidates whose thesis consists of “only papers published in refereed scholarly media during the period of enrolment” (2). In other words, one cannot simply front up to ECU, QUT, or UC with a résumé of articles or films published over a lifetime of writing or film-making and ask for a PhD by Published Papers. Publications of the candidate prepared prior to commencement of candidature are simply not acceptable at these institutions and such PhDs by Published Papers from QUT, UC and ECU are entirely different to those offered by Bond, GU and SUT. Furthermore, without a requirement for a substantial period of enrolment and residency, recipients of PhDs by Published Papers from Bond, GU, or SUT are unlikely to have participated significantly in the research environment of their relevant faculty and peers. Such newly minted doctors may be as unfamiliar with the campus and its research activities as the recipient of an honorary doctorate usually is, as he or she poses for the media’s cameras en route to the glamorous awards ceremony. Much of my argument in this paper is built upon the assumption that the process of refereeing a paper (or for that matter, a film) guarantees a high level of academic rigour, but I confess that this premise is patently naïve, if not actually flawed. Refereeing can result in the rejection of new ideas that conflict with the established opinions of the referees. Interdisciplinary collaboration can be impeded and the lack of referee’s accountability is a potential problem, too. It can also be no less nail-biting a process than the examination of a finished thesis, given that some journals take over a year to complete the refereeing process, and some journal’s editorial committees have recognised this shortcoming. Despite being a mainstay of its editorial approach since 1869, the prestigious science journal, Nature, which only publishes about 7% of its submissions, has led the way with regard to varying the procedure of refereeing, implementing in 2006 a four-month trial period of ‘Open Peer Review’. Their website states, Authors could choose to have their submissions posted on a preprint server for open comments, in parallel with the conventional peer review process. Anyone in the field could then post comments, provided they were prepared to identify themselves. Once the usual confidential peer review process is complete, the public ‘open peer review’ process was closed and the editors made their decision about publication with the help of all reports and comments (Campbell). Unfortunately, the experiment was unpopular with both authors and online peer reviewers. What the Nature experiment does demonstrate, however, is that the traditional process of blind refereeing is not yet perfected and can possibly evolve into something less problematic in the future. Until then, refereeing continues to be the best system there is for applying structured academic scrutiny to submitted papers. With the reforms of the higher education sector, including forced mergers of universities and colleges of advanced education and the re-introduction of university fees (carried out under the aegis of John Dawkins, Minister for Employment, Education and Training from 1987 to 1991), and the subsequent rationing of monies according to research dividends (calculated according to numbers of research degree conferrals and publications), there has been a veritable explosion in the number of institutions offering PhDs in Australia. But the general public may not always be capable of differentiating between legitimately accredited programs and diploma mills, given that the requirements for the first differ substantially. From relatively easily obtainable PhDs by Published Papers at Bond, GU and SUT to more rigorous requirements at ECU, QUT and UC, there is undoubtedly a huge range in the demands of degrees that recognise a candidate’s published body of work. The cynical reader may assume that with this paper I am simply trying to shore up my own forthcoming graduation with a PhD by Published papers from potential criticisms that it is on par with a ‘purchased’ doctorate. Perhaps they are right, for this is a new degree in QUT’s Creative Industries faculty and has only been awarded to one other candidate (Dr Marcus Foth for his 2006 thesis entitled Towards a Design Methodology to Support Social Networks of Residents in Inner-City Apartment Buildings). But I believe QUT is setting a benchmark, along with ECU and UC, to which other universities should aspire. In conclusion, I believe further efforts should be undertaken to heighten the differences in status between PhDs by Published Papers generated during enrolment, PhDs by Published Papers generated before enrolment and honorary doctorates awarded for non-academic published work. Failure to do so courts cynical comparison of all PhD by Published Papers with unearnt doctorates bought from Internet shysters. References Brown, George. “Protecting Australia’s Higher Education System: A Proactive Versus Reactive Approach in Review (1999–2004).” Proceedings of the Australian Universities Quality Forum 2004. Australian Universities Quality Agency, 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.auqa.edu.au/auqf/2004/program/papers/Brown.pdf>. Campbell, Philip. “Nature Peer Review Trial and Debate.” Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science. December 2006. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/> Crisp, Jane, Kay Ferres, and Gillian Swanson, eds. Deciphering Culture: Ordinary Curiosities and Subjective Narratives. London: Routledge, 2000. Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). “Closed—Register of Refereed Journals.” Higher Education Research Data Collection, 2008. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/online_forms_services/ higher_education_research_data_ collection.htm>. Edith Cowan University. “Policy Content.” Postgraduate Research: Thesis by Publication, 2003. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.ecu.edu.au/GPPS/policies_db/tmp/ac063.pdf>. Gledhill, Christine, and Gillian Swanson, eds. Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and Cinema in Britain in World War Two. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996. Griffith Law School, Griffith University. Handbook for Research Higher Degree Students. 24 March 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.griffith.edu.au/centre/slrc/pdf/rhdhandbook.pdf>. Jeffries, Stuart. “I’m a celebrity, get me an honorary degree!” The Guardian 6 July 2006. 11 June 2008 ‹http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1813525,00.html>. Kermit the Frog. “Kermit’s Commencement Address at Southampton Graduate Campus.” Long Island University News 19 May 1996. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.southampton.liu.edu/news/commence/1996/kermit.htm>. McNamara, Eileen. “Honorary senselessness.” The Boston Globe 7 May 2006. ‹http://www. boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/05/07/honorary_senselessness/>. O’Loughlin, Shaunnagh. “Doctor Cave.” Monash Magazine 21 (May 2008). 13 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/monmag/issue21-2008/alumni/cave.html>. Queensland University of Technology. “Presentation of PhD Theses by Published Papers.” Queensland University of Technology Doctor of Philosophy Regulations (IF49). 12 Oct. 2007. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.mopp.qut.edu.au/Appendix/appendix09.jsp#14%20Presentation %20of%20PhD%20Theses>. Swinburne University of Technology. Research Higher Degrees and Policies. 14 Nov. 2007. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/registrar/ppd/docs/RHDpolicy& procedure.pdf>. University of Canberra. Higher Degrees by Research: Policy and Procedures (The Gold Book). 7.3.3.27 (a). 15 Nov. 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.canberra.edu.au/research/attachments/ goldbook/Pt207_AB20approved3220arp07.pdf>.

Stand-up is a global phenomenon. It is Australia’s most significant form of advocatorial theatre and a major platform for challenging stigma and prejudice. In the twenty-first century, Australian stand-up is transforming into a more culturally diverse form and extending the spectrum of material addressing human rights. Since the 1980s Australian stand-up routines have moved beyond the old colonial targets of England and America, and Indigenous comics such as Kevin Kopinyeri, Andy Saunders, and Shiralee Hood have gained an established following. Additionally, the turn to Asia is evident not just in trade agreements and the higher education market but also in cultural exchange and in the billing of emerging Asian stand-ups at mainstream events. The major cultural driver for stand-up is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF), Australia’s largest cultural event, now over 30 years old, and an important site for dissecting constructs of democracy and nationhood. As John McCallum has observed, popular humour in post-World War II Australia drew on widespread feelings of “displacement, migration and otherness—resonant topics in a country of transplanted people and a dispossessed indigenous population arguing over a distinct Australian identity” (205–06). This essay considers the traditional comic strategies of first and second generation immigrant stand-ups in Australia and compares them with the new wave of post 9/11 Asian-Australian and Middle-Eastern-Australian stand-ups whose personas and interrogations are shifting the paradigm. Self-identifying Muslim stand-ups challenge myths of dominant Australian identity in ways which many still find confronting. Furthermore, the theories of incongruity, superiority, and psychological release re-rehearsed in traditional humour studies, by figures such as Palmer (1994) and Morreall (2009), are predicated on models of humour which do not always serve live performance, especially stand-up with its relational dependence on audience interaction.Stand-ups who immigrated to Australia as children or whose parents immigrated and struggled against adversity are important symbols both of the Australian comedy industry and of a national self-understanding of migrant resilience and making good. Szubanski and Berger hail from earlier waves of European migrants in the 1950s and 1960s. Szubanski has written eloquently of her complex Irish-Polish heritage and documented how the “hand-me-down trinkets of family and trauma” and “the culture clash of competing responses to calamity” have been integral to the development of her comic success and the making of her Aussie characters (347). Rachel Berger, the child of Polish holocaust survivors, advertises and connects both identities on her LinkedIn page: “After 23 years as a stand-up comedian, growing up with Jewish guilt and refugee parents, Rachel Berger knows more about survival than any idiot attending tribal council on reality TV.”Anh Do, among Australia’s most famous immigrant stand-ups, identifies as one of the Vietnamese “boat people” and arrived as a toddler in 1976. Do’s tale of his family’s survival against the odds and his creation of a persona which constructs the grateful, happy immigrant clown is the staple of his very successful routine and increasingly problematic. It is a testament to the power of Do’s stand-up that many did not perceive the toll of the loss of his birth country; the grinding poverty; and the pain of his father’s alcoholism, violence, and survivor guilt until the publication of Do’s ironically titled memoir The Happiest Refugee. In fact, the memoir draws on many of the trauma narratives that are still part of his set. One of Do’s most legendary routines is the story of his family’s sea journey to Australia, told here on ABC1’s Talking Heads:There were forty of us on a nine metre fishing boat. On day four of the journey we spot another boat. As the boat gets closer we realise it’s a boatload of Thai pirates. Seven men with knives, machetes and guns get on our boat and they take everything. One of the pirates picks up the smallest child, he lifts up the baby and rips open the baby’s nappy and dollars fall out. And the pirate decides to spare the kid’s life. And that’s a good thing cos that’s my little brother Khoa Do who in 2005 became Young Australian of the Year. And we were saved on the fifth day by a big German merchant ship which took us to a refugee camp in Malaysia and we were there for around three months before Australia says, come to Australia. And we’re very glad that happened. So often we heard Mum and Dad say—what a great country. How good is this place? And the other thing—kids, as you grow up, do as much as you can to give back to this great country and to give back to others less fortunate.Do’s strategy is apparently one of genuflection and gratitude, an adoption of what McCallum refers to as an Australian post-war tradition of the comedy of inadequacy and embarrassment (210–14). Journalists certainly like to bill Do as the happy clown, framing articles about him with headlines like Rosemary Neill’s “Laughing through Adversity.” In fact, Do is direct about his gallows humour and his propensity to darkness: his humour, he says, is a means of countering racism, of “being able to win people over who might have been averse to being friends with an Asian bloke,” but Neill does not linger on this, nor on the revelation that Do felt stigmatised by his refugee origins and terrified and shamed by the crippling poverty of his childhood in Australia. In The Happiest Refugee, Do reveals that, for him, the credibility of his routines with predominantly white Australian audiences lies in the crafting of himself as an “Aussie comedian up there talking about his working-class childhood” (182). This is not the official narrative that is retold even if it is how Do has endeared himself to Australians, and ridding himself of the happy refugee label may yet prove difficult. Suren Jayemanne is well known for his subtle mockery of multiculturalist rhetoric. In his 2016 MICF show, Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator, Jayemanne played on the supposed contradiction of his Sri Lankan-Malaysian heritage against his teenage years in the wealthy suburb of Malvern in Melbourne, his private schooling, and his obsession with hip hop and black American culture. Jayemanne’s strategy is to gently confound his audiences, leading them slowly up a blind alley. He builds up a picture of how to identify Sri Lankan parents, supposedly Sri Lankan qualities such as an exceptional ability at maths, and Sri Lankan employment ambitions which he argues he fulfilled in becoming an accountant. He then undercuts his story by saying he has recently realised that his suburban background, his numerical abilities, his love of black music, and his rejection of accountancy in favour of comedy, in fact prove conclusively that he has, all along, been white. He also confesses that this is a bruising disappointment. Jayemanne exposes the emptiness of the conceits of white, brown, and black and of invented identity markers and plays on his audiences’ preconceptions through an old storyteller’s device, the shaggy dog story. The different constituencies in his audiences enjoy his trick equally, from quite different perspectives.Diana Nguyen, a second generation Vietnamese stand-up, was both traumatised and politicised by Pauline Hanson when she was a teenager. Hanson described Nguyen’s community in Dandenong as “yellow Asian people” (Filmer). Nguyen’s career as a community development worker combating racism relates directly to her activity as a stand-up: migrant stories are integral to Australian history and Nguyen hypothesises that the “Australian psyche of being invaded or taken over” has reignited over the question of Islamic fundamentalism and expresses her concern to Filmer about the Muslim youths under her care.Nguyen’s alarm about the elision of Islamic radicalism with Muslim culture drives an agenda that has led the new generation of self-identified Muslim stand-ups since 9/11. This post 9/11 world is described by Wajahat as gorged with “exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslim [. . . ] and perpetuated by negative discrimination and the marginalisation and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life in western societies.” In Australia, Aamer Rahman, Muhamed Elleissi, Khaled Khalafalla, and Nazeem Hussain typify this newer, more assertive form of second generation immigrant stand-up—they identify as Muslim (whether religious or not), as brown, and as Australian. They might be said to symbolise a logical response to Ghassan Hage’s famous White Nation (1998), which argues that a white supremacism underlies the mindset of the white elite in Australia. Their positioning is more nuanced than previous generations of stand-up. Nazeem Hussain’s routines mark a transformation in Australian stand-up, as Waleed Aly has argued: “ethnic comedy” has hitherto been about the parading of stereotypes for comfortable, mainstream consumption, about “minstrel characters” [. . .] but Hussain interrogates his audiences in every direction—and aggravates Muslims too. Hussain’s is the world of post 9/11 Australian Muslims. It’s about more than ethnic stereotyping. It’s about being a consistent target of political opportunism, where everyone from the Prime Minister to the Foreign Minister to an otherwise washed-up backbencher with a view on burqas has you in their sights, where bombs detonate in Western capitals and unrelated nations are invaded.Understandably, a prevalent theme among the new wave of Muslim comics, and not just in Australia, is the focus on the reading of Muslims as manifestly linked with Islamic State (IS). Jokes about mistaken identity, plane crashes, suicide bombing, and the Koran feature prominently. English-Pakistani Muslim, Shazia Mirza, gained comedy notoriety in the UK in the wake of 9/11 by introducing her routine with the words: “My name’s Shazia Mirza. At least that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence” (Bedell). Stand-ups Negin Farsad, Ahmed Ahmed, and Dean Obeidalla are all also activists challenging prevailing myths about Islam, skin colour and terrorism in America. Egyptian-American Ahmed Ahmed acquired prominence for telling audiences in the infamous Axis of Evil Comedy Tour about how his life had changed much for the worse since 9/11. Ahmed Ahmed was the alias used by one of Osama Bin Laden’s devotees and his life became on ongoing struggle with anti-terrorism officials doing security checks (he was once incarcerated) and with the FBI who were certain that the comedian was among their most wanted terrorists. Similarly, Obeidalla, an Italian-Palestinian-Muslim, notes in his TEDx talk that “If you have a Muslim name, you are probably immune to identity theft.” His narration of a very sudden experience of becoming an object of persecution and of others’ paranoia is symptomatic of a shared understanding of a post 9/11 world among many Muslim comics: “On September 10th 2001 I went to bed as a white American and I woke up an Arab,” says Obeidalla, still dazed from the seismic shift in his life.Hussain and Khalafalla demonstrate a new sophistication and directness in their stand-up, and tackle their majority white audiences head-on. There is no hint of the apologetic or deferential stance performed by Anh Do. Many of the jokes in their routines target controversial or taboo issues, which up until recently were shunned in Australian political debate, or are absent or misrepresented in mainstream media. An Egyptian-Australian born in Saudi Arabia, Khaled Khalafalla arrived on the comedy scene in 2011, was runner-up in RAW, Australia’s most prestigious open mic competition, and in 2013 won the best of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for Devious. Khalafalla’s shows focus on racist stereotypes and identity and he uses a range of Middle Eastern and Indian accents to broach IS recruitment, Muslim cousin marriages, and plane crashes. His 2016 MICF show, Jerk, was a confident and abrasive routine exploring relationships, drug use, the extreme racism of Reclaim Australia rallies, controversial visa checks by Border Force’s Operation Fortitude, and Islamophobia. Within the first minute of his routine, he criticises white people in the audience for their woeful refusal to master Middle Eastern names, calling out to the “brown woman” in the audience for support, before lining up a series of jokes about the (mis)pronunciation of his name. Khalafalla derives his power on stage by what Oliver Double calls “uncovering.” Double contends that “one of the most subversive things stand-up can do is to uncover the unmentionable,” subjects which are difficult or impossible to discuss in everyday conversation or the broadcast media (292). For instance, in Jerk Khalafalla discusses the “whole hating halal movement” in Australia as a metaphor for exposing brutal prejudice: Let me break it down for you. Halal is not voodoo. It’s just a blessing that Muslims do for some things, food amongst other things. But, it’s also a magical spell that turns some people into fuckwits when they see it. Sometimes people think it’s a thing that can get stuck to your t-shirt . . . like ‘Oh fuck, I got halal on me’ [Australian accent]. I saw a guy the other day and he was like Fuck halal, it funds terrorism. And I was like, let me show you the true meaning of Islam. I took a lamb chop out of my pocket and threw it in his face. And, he was like Ah, what was that? A lamb chop. Oh, I fucking love lamb chops. And, I say you fool, it’s halal and he burst into flames.In effect, Khalafalla delivers a contemptuous attack on the white members of his audience, but at the same time his joke relies on those same audience members presuming that they are morally and intellectually superior to the individual who is the butt of the joke. Khalafalla’s considerable charm is a help in this tricky send-up. In 2015 the Australian Department of Defence recognised his symbolic power and invited him to join the Afghanistan Task Force to entertain the troops by providing what Doran describes as “home-grown Australian laughs” (7). On stage in Australia, Khalafalla constructs a persona which is an outsider to the dominant majority and challenges the persecution of Muslim communities. Ironically, on the NATO base, Khalafalla’s act was perceived as representing a diverse but united Australia. McCallum has pointed to such contradictions, moments where white Australia has shown itself to be a “culture which at first authenticates emigrant experience and later abrogates it in times of defiant nationalism” (207). Nazeem Hussain, born in Australia to Sri Lankan parents, is even more confrontational. His stand-up is born of his belief that “comedy protects us from the world around us” and is “an evolutionary defence mechanism” (8–9). His ground-breaking comedy career is embedded in his work as an anti-racism activist and asylum seeker supporter and shaped by his second-generation migrant experiences, law studies, community youth work, and early mentorship by American Muslim comic trio Allah Made Me Funny. He is well-known for his pioneering television successes Legally Brown and Salam Café. In his stand-up, Hussain often dwells witheringly on the failings and peculiarities of white people’s attempts to interact with him. Like all his routines, his sell-out show Fear of the Brown Planet, performed with Aamer Rahman from 2004–2008, explored casual, pathologised racism. Hussain deliberately over-uses the term “white people” in his routines as a provocation and deploys a reverse racism against his majority white audiences, knowing that many will be squirming. “White people ask me how can Muslims have fun if they don’t drink? Muslims have fun! Of course we have fun! You’ve seen us on the news.” For Hussain stand-up is “fundamentally an art of protest,” to be used as “a tool by communities and people with ideas that challenge and provoke the status quo with a spirit of counterculture” (Low 1–3). His larger project is to humanise Muslims to white Australians so that “they see us firstly as human beings” (1–3). Hussain’s 2016 MICF show, Hussain in the Membrane, both satirised media hype and hysterical racism and pushed for a better understanding of the complex problems Muslim communities face in Australia. His show also connected issues to older colonial traditions of racism. In a memorable and beautifully crafted tirade, Hussain inveighed against the 2015 Bendigo riots which occurred after local Muslims lodged an application to Bendigo council to build a mosque in the sleepy Victorian town. [YELLING in an exaggerated Australian accent] No we don’t want Muslims! NO we don’t want Muslims—to come invade Bendigo by application to the local council! That is the most bureaucratic invasion of all times. No place in history has been invaded by lodging an application to a local council. Can you see ISIS running around chasing town planners? Of course not, Muslims like to wait 6–8 months to invade! That’s a polite way to invade. What if white people invaded that way? What a better world we’d be living in. If white people invaded Australia that way, we’d be able to celebrate Australia Day on the same day without so much blood on our hands. What if Captain Cook came to Australia and said [in a British accent] Awe we would like to apply to invade this great land and here is our application. [In an Australian accent] Awe sorry, mate, rejected, but we’ll give you Bendigo.As Waleed Aly sees it, the Australian cultural majority is still “unused to hearing minorities speak with such assertiveness.” Hussain exposes “a binary world where there’s whiteness, and then otherness. Where white people are individuals and non-white people (a singular group) are not” (Aly). Hussain certainly speaks as an insider and goes so far as recognising his coloniser’s guilt in relation to indigenous Australians (Tan). Aly well remembers the hate mail he and Hussain received when they worked on Salam Café: “The message was clear. We were outsiders and should behave as such. We were not real Australians. We should know our place, as supplicants, celebrating the nation’s unblemished virtue.” Khalafalla, Rahman, Elleissi, and Hussain make clear that the new wave of comics identify as Muslim and Australian (which they would argue many in the audiences receive as a provocation). They have zero tolerance of racism, their comedy is intimately connected with their political activism, and they have an unapologetically Australian identity. No longer is it a question of whether the white cultural majority in Australia will anoint them as worthy and acceptable citizens, it is a question of whether the audiences can rise to the moral standards of the stand-ups. The power has been switched. For Hussain laughter is about connection: “that person laughs because they appreciate the point and whether or not they accept what was said was valid isn’t important. What matters is, they’ve understood” (Low 5). ReferencesAhmed, Ahmed. “When It Comes to Laughter, We Are All Alike.” TedXDoha (2010). 16 June 2016 <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxDoha-Ahmed-Ahmed-When-it-Co>.Aly, Waleed. “Comment.” Sydney Morning Herald 24 Sep. 2013."Anh Do". Talking Heads with Peter Thompson. ABC1. 4 Oct. 2010. Radio.Bedell, Geraldine. “Veiled Humour.” The Guardian (2003). 8 Aug. 2016 <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/apr/20/comedy.artsfeatures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other>.Berger, Rachel. LinkedIn [Profile page]. 14 June 2016 <http://www.linkedin.com/company/rachel-berger>.Do, Anh. The Happiest Refugee. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010. Doran, Mark. "Service with a Smile: Entertainers Give Troops a Taste of Home.” Air Force 57.21 (2015). 12 June 2016 <http://www.defence.gov.au/Publications/NewsPapers/Raaf/editions/5721/5721.pdf>.Double, Oliver. Getting the Joke: The Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.Filmer, Natalie. "For Dandenong Comedian and Actress Diana Nguyen The Colour Yellow has a Strong Meaning.” The Herald Sun 3 Sep. 2013.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of a White Supremacy in a Multicultural Age. Sydney: Pluto Press, 1998.Hussain, Nazeem. Hussain in the Membrane. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 2016.———. "The Funny Side of 30.” Spectrum. The Age 12 Mar. 2016.Khalafalla, Khaled. Jerk. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 2016.Low, Lian. "Fear of a Brown Planet: Fight the Power with Laughter.” Peril: Asian Australian Arts and Culture (2011). 12 June 2016 <http://peril.com.au/back-editions/edition10/fear-of-a-brown-planet-fight-the-power-with-laughter>. McCallum, John. "Cringe and Strut: Comedy and National Identity in Post-War Australia.” Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference. Ed. Stephen Wagg. New York: Routledge, 1998. Morreall, John. Comic Relief. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.Neill, Rosemary. "Laughing through Adversity.” The Australian 28 Aug. 2010.Obeidalla, Dean. "Using Stand-Up to Counter Islamophobia.” TedXEast (2012). 16 June 2016 <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxEast-Dean-Obeidalla-Using-S;TEDxEast>.Palmer, Jerry. Taking Humour Seriously. London: Routledge, 1994. Szubanski, Magda. Reckoning. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2015. Tan, Monica. "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Allahu Akbar! Nazeem Hussain's Bogan-Muslim Army.” The Guardian 29 Feb. 2016. "Uncle Sam.” Salam Café (2008). 11 June 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeQPAJt6caU>.Wajahat, Ali, et al. "Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.” Center for American Progress (2011). 11 June 2016 <https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/report/2011/08/26/10165/fear-inc>.