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Neither invited nor welcomed, people from the Middle East began arriving in Australia in noticeable numbers in the 1890s. Most were from modern Lebanon. 1 The dramatic increase in the number of Syrian/Lebanese arriving in Australia coincided with a period of economic decline, drought and high unemployment. 2 In these circumstances, non-Europeans were increasingly perceived as a threat, and anti-Chinese legislation was extended to all Asiatic and coloured persons. 3 This broadening of legislative discrimination included Syrian/Lebanese, who, based on the location of their homeland, were officially classified as Asian. However, eventually, Syrian/Lebanese were treated differently to other Asians, and, by 1920, were granted access to citizenship. Although this change in status appears to be an act of tolerance, a close study of documentary sources suggests quite the opposite. Indeed, the evidence shows that Syrian/Lebanese were judged to be suitable candidates for citizenship because due to their physical appearance and religion they were considered more likely than other Asians to be assimilated. 4 Hence, the experience of Syrian/Lebanese immigrants in Australia illustrates the fundamental importance of race and religion in determining acceptability. According to Samir Khalaf, there is ‘virtual consensus’ that in the 1890s there was a ‘sharp and sudden’ increase in emigration from Syria and Lebanon. 5 The arrival of increasing numbers of Syrian/Lebanese in Australia in the last decade of the nineteenth century was part of this mass emigration from the Syria/Lebanon region, and these newcomers were soon recognised as a distinct, non-European group within Australian society. In 1892, for example, the article ‘Syrians in the South: a Colony at Redfern’, appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News. 6 Syrians were described as ‘Eastern immigrants’ who entertained visitors in their homes ‘with Arabic hospitality’. 7 Patronisingly tolerant in tone, the article clearly differentiated between these immigrants, ‘from the Eastern land, where life is more natural and less constrained by conventionalities than in the Western World’, and ‘their European neighbors’, ‘our own people’. 8 References to Syrians as an identifiable group were appearing in Queensland newspapers by the late 1890s. In 1897, for example, newspaper reports regarding a set of Customs prosecution cases clearly identified the defendants as Syrians. 9 In

Religion Matters: The Experience of Syrian/Lebanese Christians in Australia from the 1880s to 1947