The Sound of Pluralism

Interior of St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Lakemba (Photo: Daniel Alex)

I circled the church looking for a park, the hum of Lakemba morning traffic hangs in the air. My watch creeps past 9:10am, 9:11am – I’m late. Two grey-haired women sit in the driveway between the back of a church and a yellow, flat-roofed house.

I squint beyond the fly-screen door of the yellow house, eyes adjusting to the dark – no one. I step back into the sun. I’ve come to interview the Reverend Matthew William Dodd at the only Anglican Church in Lakemba.

Earlier this year the Lebanese Muslim Association submitted a request to Canterbury-Bankstown council to broadcast what would be the country’s first permanent public call-to-prayer.

Political theorist Geoffrey Levey notes that fights over audible faith circle the same assumption: that the majority culture has precedence. Church bells are routine, the Adhan, not quite. “Both are audible. One is heard, and one isn’t – figuratively.”

It’s a civic moment, a test case trying to find its feet – and I’m walking the street between two religious leaders a few hundred metres apart. Only 700 metres away is the country’s largest mosque, the Imam Ali bin Abi Taleb Mosque – the nation’s Islamic spiritual centre.

And so, I enter St Andrew’s, the Reverend wears grey cargo shorts, worn in, thongs and a hoodie. He directs me away from what he calls “the new ugly house” to “the old beautiful church” – topped with a belfry.

He leads me into an office, half gestures to a room laden with religious artefacts, relics, and stained-glass windows – the morning sun emboldening their ghostly glow.

The Reverend sits crossed-legged, clothes clung to a light frame. “Our night church has five languages” he tells me. I look surprised. “They’re eager to hear the simple English message and have it integrated with their language”.

He tells me his congregation meet mostly in the ugly house, and so “you beautify it with the relationships and the people”. On worship, he tells me, “Every Sunday we have a meal together for an hour – meal time is our worship”. Afterwards I’m invited to toll the bell – I grab the lever, tug it once, gently, then six or seven times with vigour, “it’s fun for the kids”, he says – I smile.

Public expression doesn’t equal embodiment, I think to myself. The professor reminds me, “we don’t hear church bells when they ring because we are so used to them.” I wonder how the adhan might sound, the four new speakers perched atop the minaret, “both are audible, one is heard, and one isn’t – figuratively”.

Outside I look up to see the belfry against the sky, taller and further away than I expected, us two paused a moment. “What do the bells mean to the faith?” I ask, he answers, droll, “very little, very little”. “Do you see much of other faiths?” I ask, pushing a little. He reveals, “we have hundreds of connections to local Muslim people”.

After our interview I realise, I’m late—again. “Is the mosque far?” I ask, “a brisk walk down the street”, he assures me. A car drives towards me, I cross the road, wave my hand to say thanks, but don’t see anyone wave back. The air smells like roasting meat.

Down Wangee Road it’s bright, warm, and cars are constant. Some people glance from porches mid-conversation. I lock eyes with a man on the phone talking Arabic, a sign above reads: “GP: Dr. Mustapha Alameddin”. In a shop window I catch myself: camo hat, black shirt, goatee—I wonder if I looked like a threat?

The crackle of a motorcycle fades behind me as I pass the Wangee Park School. A sign on the fence reads, “you are being watched”, further down I see a Telstra phonebooth with an ad for SHEIN on it showing an oversized Caucasian baby. I make a bee-line for the mosque. A crow calls.

When you come upon the mosque by foot, your eyes are drawn to the dome perched by a crescent moon. It makes you feel as though you were in another place entirely. The sun seems hotter here, the traffic noise softened by the dome. Above the steps to the doorway are security cameras—it’s 11:33am, and I’m a few minutes late.

I rush to enter the prayer hall before realising my shoes are still on. I hop back down the stairs, look left then right, and find no one. I walk towards the Lebanese Muslim Association building. Suddenly a door opens and a small figure in a crisp white thawb steps out briskly.

I recognise his face from their website. “Sheikh Jamal?” I ask, extending my hand. “Yes”, he replies, shakes mine, gestures towards the steps, and hops up them with vigour. Street-facing and side–by–side we remove our shoes. When I booked a mosque tour, I hadn’t anticipated the Sheikh himself.

The prayer hall is empty, large, and still. Across the room, a few men sit chanting over an opened Qur’an on a small bookstand. The tour is brief—the Sheikh points to a wall-mounted television displaying prayer times, then to the men’s and women’s area. One time reads 4:44am—I don’t claim to understand the calculus.

“Could I ask you a few questions?”, “Sure”, he replies, unsurprised. We sit in the corner; I look up to see the sky through the dome. I open broad: tell me about the adhan?

“It’s intended to announce the beginning of the time for a specific prayer,” he explains. Then, a soft pause, as though warming the air:

“Allahu Akbar—God is greatest.
Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah—I bear witness that there is no true god but Allah.
Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah—I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.
Hayya ‘ala-s-salah—hasten to prayer.
Hayya ‘ala-l-falah—hasten to success.
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, la ilaha illa Allah.”

I recall the chain of the cross under my black T–shirt, not purposefully hidden, but not unintentionally either. 

 “So, do you personally give the call to prayer?”, I ask. “Yes, absolutely” he says energetically. I struggle to sit still, tight hips begging my body to shift while he sits still. I’ve memorised the whole Qur’an,” he says. I clarify “That’s called hafiz, right?” “Yes” he replies. I tell him it’s impressive and he smiles, looking down.

As we leave back down the stairs, incomers greet the Sheikh, “salaam.” Later, he conceded, “The first prayer of the day in summer is around 4am, so there are complaints about disturbance, that sort of thing.”

I recalled what the Reverend had said: “If I was pressured to stop [ringing the bell] as a Christian… I’d say, sorry, we’re a free, pluralistic society here.”

Across the street the hydraulic hiss and beep of a construction truck cautiously backs up, the driver watching the foreman’s signal.

Democratic equality, the Professor says, means while the ringing of the bells is allowed, there isn’t much to disallow the call to prayer. Simply put:

“When you moved into an area, you hear every train, right? But after a few years, it’s white noise”. Some sound simply is, I think.

Outside the mosque a council waterway meanders past, a discarded stuffed octopus’ toy slumps in the moss and rainwater. The sun bears down, and I need a bathroom. A guy on a bicycle flies by, his black polyester jacket trailing behind him like a cape. At the bottom of the street sits an Ampol gas station on the ever-busy Punchbowl Road.

Inside my head the Reverend’s line returns: What is this Australia? No one knows what it is. Then the Sheikh’s: there is recognition and some shared ground, even though there are differences. Then the Professor: Australia is a melting pot – literally the opposite of multiculturalism. I turn it over as I walk.

On the Ampol door: “need a drink” and “toilet inside”.

The sliding doors part and suddenly I’m swimming in aircon – another place entirely. No attendant at the desk. I make a beeline for the bathroom, close the door; the hum of air vents rises: a 5×5 slice of nowhere. A coffee cup on the safety rail, a tampon bin too far from the toilet.

At the counter a woman calls, “hello?” she asks. A man emerges from the back, jazz leaking from a telephone speaker—a saxophone on hold for no one. I grab a Coke Zero from the fridge and join the queue.

Across from the Ampol, I spot plastic lawn chairs—the kind found in any Australian backyard. Sheikh Jamal had told me earlier, “In the Middle east you’ll often see a church and a mosque next to each.” Here, the suburb is galvanized by smaller signs of togetherness.

I recall the Reverend’s gratitude for local interfaith dialogue – not “debates”, he corrected—“we’re talking about real stuff in a shallow world of meaningless talk… it’s refreshing.”

“There is recognition,” the Sheikh had said, “some shared ground, even though there are differences, especially over theology.” Their words seemed to mirror each other: “At entry level,” the Reverend told me, “The shopfront is common ground. When you go inside, you realise they’re not the same.” Difference becomes the shared suburban ground.

Walking back up Wangee Road, a Porsche idles outside the café attached to the LMA. A sign above reception reads, “our community, our future”. Across from me, a mother and child negotiate the terms of getting into a pram.

I wonder whether the Sheikh thought me genuine when I asked, “If I wanted to read the Qur’an, where would I start?” He had paused, “You could start with an English translation,” he’d said, gently.

The Reverend’s caution returns: “We’ve got to be careful that as a community we work together, so no Australian feels they have come under the influence of a religion without their consent.” He added, “Our singing and our bell is heard outside of this building.” My left shoulder aches, the laptop bag feels heavier. The Coke in my right hand still cold.

Past the school, my watch reads 1:31pm—lunch time. Kids swarm the yard. An indigenous-style mural decorates a wall. Balls fly and dust kicks up, laughter floats above the noise. The Reverend’s words echo: “I absolutely believe that every person is precious beyond imagination.”

Since he was a boy, Sheikh Jamal has lived in Lakemba. I had asked him, “What’s changed?” “The expansion of Muslim services and utilities in the area,” he’d said.

I pass the Muslim Women for Australia Centre. A Muslim woman in hijab steps out, glances up the street, then back to her phone. Sweat drips down my forehead, I wipe it away. The sun is still hot, the road still long. 

Then the Sheikh’s voice, steady and unguarded: “The bigger concern is the far-right, neo-Nazis. That’s a real threat. Their perspective is very intolerant, and doesn’t fit Australia’s multicultural identity.” I had been surprised by his frankness—the clarity with which he named something others only gesture at.  

I return to St Andrews and notice a rock-sized hole punched through one of the stained-glass panels. Above two benches, a surveillance camera angles down at the unkempt lawn. I remember the Reverend’s comment about their budget and wonder whether the cameras are even real.

He had told me earlier, almost offhand: “If the bell broke, I would not replace it. It’s just a thing to make us smile, especially the kids—they get to ring it.”

Then the harder line: “The church does not own the surrounding suburb and so we don’t have an innate right to send sound over it. Are we going to fight for our rights, or fight to live together?”

I pass a woman in hijab carrying a newborn. Its baby hairs barely enough to shade its head from the sinking sun. The baby’s hand twitches towards me— almost a wave.

“What changes now?” I asked the Professor over Zoom days earlier, his background an Alexandrian library hall, books rising behind his pixellated silhouette. “Nothing changes,” he said. Two words, cutting through the noise. “Culture reforms slowly,” he continued. “Adjustments happen imperceptibly, but ineluctably, with the passage of time.”

Walking back to my car, I think: every house here would have an opinion—the ones being built, the ones being lived in, the ones simply enduring. On the footpath, ants parse thin lines—to them, deep cracks. Another climbs a hill of bird droppings. My old silver Mitsubishi Lancer sits dented on the street, blending into Lakemba, as ordinary and unremarkable as every other object in the soundscape.

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