If Adelaide is known as the city of churches, Kyabram Street in Coolaroo could come to be dubbed the spirituality strip of Hume’s city of all faiths.
If plans become projects, Christian crosses and Muslim minarets could co-exist along a stretch of a couple of kilometres – beacons of higher realms among car yards and industrial lots.
The Weekly understands Hume council is likely to receive another planning permit application for a second mosque, 100 metres along the same block as the Shia Muslim Al Sadiq Foundation mosque planned for next door to St Mary’s Ancient Church of the East.
In August, this first application sparked emotional protests at the council’s town planning meeting from the Iraqi Christian congregation of St Mary’s, many of whom are still in grief from their displacement from Iraq at the hands of cross-factional fighting among their Muslim neighbours.
Their cause has been taken up by Broadmeadows Progress Association (BPA)stalwarts John and Sonya Rutherford. A date has not yet been set for the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal’s hearing into their challenge, but the group is busy fund-raising to underwrite the VCAT appeal.
RMIT’s intercultural studies professor Desmond Cahill believes this will be “an extremely interesting case” and one which will test VCAT’s role to treat all faiths as equals.
“I’d like to see the Victorian Multicultural Commission called in to help sort this out,” he said. “I would hope that, in association with the interfaith groups, they could bring the various parties together in the interests of religious freedom, social cohesion and inter-religious harmony.”
But Professor Cahill is less confident the BPA will achieve the conflict resolution required.
“They would be ill-equipped to play a role in dealing with the issues of religious freedom and inter-religious harmony that are at stake, nor have the techniques of conflict resolution,” he said.
