A life shaped by migration, public service and community leadership offers a quiet rebuttal to claims that Muslim Australians do not belong – and a reminder that belonging is built through contribution, not fear.

If I were to draw the line of my life, it would not be straight. It would bend across countries, cultures and identities. Yet running through it is a single, unbroken thread: the search for belonging.

Belonging has not always come easily. Sometimes I inherited it. Sometimes I lost it. Often, I had to build it.

I was born in Bangladesh into a society shaped by humility, service and responsibility, but also by political instability. From an early age, I learned that leadership was not about privilege but duty, and that trust, once broken, takes generations to restore.

After college, I was awarded a Malaysian government scholarship to study economics at the International Islamic University Malaysia. That experience taught me a lesson I have carried ever since: belonging is often created through hospitality and shared responsibility, not through sameness. Later, postgraduate study took me to Canada, first to Ontario, then to Montreal, another migration, another adjustment, another encounter with uncertainty, in a faraway place that few from my generation had ever experienced.

In 1992, I migrated to Australia, beginning what would become my longest and most formative chapter.

Like many migrants, I arrived with qualifications but without certainty. I briefly taught at the University of Sydney and TAFE before joining the Australian Public Service in 1993. Over more than three decades, mostly in Canberra, I worked as an economist, educator and public sector leader across multiple agencies. I served on advisory councils, government boards and community organisations. I stood for public office in the ACT election, believing participation itself is a form of belonging.

In time, I was humbled to receive the Order of Australia Medal for service to the community. I do not see this as a personal accolade. I see it as recognition of what is possible when migrants are given the space to contribute fully to Australian civic life.

Migration is not simply movement across borders. It is the slow rebuilding of identity. It is learning new systems, new accents and new assumptions. It is contributing quietly while knowing you are still being observed.

For visibly Muslim Australians, belonging is sometimes negotiated rather than assumed.

In recent weeks, public debate has again turned to Islam, sparked by remarks from Pauline Hanson questioning whether there are “good Muslims” in Australia. Such statements do not reflect the lived reality of Muslim Australians. They erase the daily contributions of people who serve in hospitals, schools, emergency services, universities and public institutions. They volunteer, pay taxes, raise families and participate fully in civic life.

To dismiss an entire faith community as incapable of goodness is not only factually wrong. It contradicts a foundational Australian principle: that individuals are judged by their conduct, not by their religion.

Islam teaches responsibility to neighbours, honesty in trade, care for the vulnerable and accountability in leadership. These values are not foreign to Australia’s civic foundations of fairness, rule of law and democratic participation. For many Muslim Australians, these principles are lived instinctively, not defensively.

I know this not as theory, but as lived experience in Canberra.

One defining chapter of my life was helping establish the Gungahlin Mosque in north Canberra as President of the Canberra Muslim Community. At the time, there was no mosque in the region and the community itself was fragmented. Leadership was demanding and, at times, lonely. Yet together we united more than 40 ethnic communities, raised over $3 million dollars and completed the mosque within two years.

From the beginning, the mosque was never intended to be just a place of worship. We opened our doors to neighbours, schools, media, interfaith groups and local leaders. We hosted open days and community iftars. Our non-Muslim neighbours saw not isolation, but engagement. Not withdrawal, but contribution. Through that process, belonging was not asserted. It was demonstrated.

Public debate often reduces Muslims to headlines. Security concerns and cultural difference dominate discussion. What receives far less attention is the daily reality of Muslim public servants shaping policy in Canberra, Muslim doctors in regional hospitals, Muslim tradespeople building homes, and Muslim volunteers responding to bushfires and floods.

Belonging is more than citizenship. It is the confidence to participate without apology. It is being visible without being treated as suspect. It is contributing without being asked repeatedly to prove loyalty.

When rhetoric frames an entire faith community as suspect, it does not strengthen Australia. It narrows it. Fear may be politically powerful, but it is socially corrosive.

Australia’s multicultural success did not emerge by accident. It was built by successive generations of migrants who worked hard, contributed quietly and insisted through service that they belonged. Muslim Australians are part of that continuing story.

My own journey has included vulnerability: arriving alone in foreign countries, rebuilding professional pathways, standing for public office as a visibly Muslim candidate, knowing that visibility brings scrutiny. Yet I have also experienced profound generosity from colleagues, neighbours and fellow Australians who judged me by my actions. That generosity reflects the Australia I believe in and have served for more than 30 years.

Belonging grows through encounter, not suspicion. It grows when communities open their doors, when Australians of different backgrounds share schools, workplaces and neighbourhoods, and when we move from parallel lives to shared lives.

The question is not whether Muslim Australians can belong. We already do.

The real question is what kind of Australia we wish to cultivate: one defined by anxiety about difference, or one confident enough to integrate it.

The line of my life bends across borders. At each bend, someone made space for me. In return, I have tried to make space for others.

Belonging received.

Belonging created.

Faith lived through service.

That is not a slogan. It is the quiet, everyday story of countless Muslim Australians who call this country home, and who are helping to shape its future.