Highlights
- The World Day of Muslim, Culture, Peace, Dialogue and Film on March 11 is designed to raise awareness of Islamic life among the wider community.
- Tarek Chamkhi pioneered the International Muslim Film Festival, first held in Perth and Melbourne in 2019.
- Mr Chamkhi encouraged all faiths and cultures to enjoy the day's creative program.
The World Day of Muslim Culture, Peace, Dialogue and Film is celebrated globally with events such as exhibitions, art festivals, film screenings, discussions, and other educational events.
Begun in 2010 by California-based producer and writer, Javed Mohammed, events are organised by community centres, libraries, schools and places of worship.
As for his role, Mr Chamkhi, with his partner Joanne Mckeown, founded the annual International Muslim Film Festival held in Perth and Melbourne in 2019 as part of the day’s Australian offerings.
Perth-based film maker Tarek Chamkhi Source: Tarek Chamkhi
Camel drivers helped to open up the outback
This inaugural event showcased 27 films and was very well attended. Mr Chamkhi himself is the writer and director of a documentary entitled in which four Muslim boys embark on a 25-day, 14,000km round trip to pay homage at the outback gravesites of Afghan camel drivers.
Also known as “cameleers”, these men helped early explorers open up central and remote Australia from the 1860s through to the 1920s.
They led hundreds of camel trains throughout inland Australia with remote communities and road and rail work sites dependent on them for carting mail, water, food and equipment before roads and railway systems were even built.
According to the Powerhouse Museum, 2008 & National Archives of Australia, 2007, it is estimated that some 20,000 camels were brought to Australia during the second half of the nineteenth century from all different parts of the world to work in the vast inland swathes of the continent.
Camels being used to carry tourists in the Australian outback. Source: AAP Image/AP Photo/Mark Baker
Nowadays, feral camel numbers have swollen to almost 1 million with some domesticated for use in tourism and others harvested for meat products and milk.
Interestingly, the cameleers were not all Afghan, instead hailing from a host of different countries and provinces including Kashmir, Sind, Rajasthan, Egypt, Persia, Turkey, Punjab, Baluchistan, and former provinces of Afghanistan, now modern-day India and Pakistan.
Collectively, they were known as ‘Afghans’, although very few were actually of Afghan descent, (Australian Government: Culture Portal, 2009 & Camilleri 2009).
Within just six years of the arrival of the first camels, the cameleers had built the overland telegraph from Adelaide through to Darwin that would connect Australia directly with London and effectively the rest of the world.
Islam absorbed and was enriched by other cultures
Mr Chamkhi said while early forms of Islamic culture were predominantly Arabic, the spread of Islam throughout the world meant the faith had absorbed elements of many other cultures such as Persian, Bengali, and Urdu, especially in literature. 
The World Day of Muslim Culture, Peace, Dialogue and Film focuses on sharing and discussing the culture and using various art forms to create bridges and dialogue of understanding, he says.
Film maker Tarek Chamkhi believes art crosses cultural and religious barriers Source: Tarek Chamkhi
Its core aim was to contribute to a better understanding of the diversity inherent in Muslim culture and initiate dialogue with people of other faiths.
“Islamic culture can refer to both religious and non-religious issues,” Mr Chamkhi said.
“We should say that Muslims number about 1.7 billion around the world and the commonalities among them might be very small except for uniting under one religion. Therefore, Islamic culture is different between one country to another."
Speaking at a recent Mosque Open Day, Sheikh Alaa Elzokm, Imam of Elsedeaq Mosque In Heidelberg in Melbourne, agreed that the Day and Islamic faith and practice in general were about "... opening the doors and the hands of peace and love to everyone."
"That's what Islam has taught us... getting everyone together from all religions, establishing that treaty with them, how to respect people, how to respect their beliefs, how to respect their places of worship," Sheikh Elzokm said.
Sheikh Alaa Elzokm, Imam of Elsedeaq Mosque In Heidelberg in Melbourne (centre) with visitors at a recent Open Day. Source: Iman Riman
"Islam has taught us always to bring everyone, to unite everyone, to share human values and to celebrate our diversity and we do this through the Mosque Open Day.
"The Islamic culture is definitely welcomed in the western communities because Muslims are there to spread the love and peace and millions of them are living here peacefully and they participate in building these societies and helping everyone there to establish that brotherhood."
Art not defined by religion
“Art is a universal expression … when I founded the International Muslim Film Festival in Australia, I used to say and still say that film has no religion, and this applies to arts in general that are not defined by religion,” Mr Chamkhi said.
Islamic arts and culture was not necessarily religious arts or expressing or confined to the Islamic religion but that it was based on the members of the Islamic communities.
"Likewise, the Islamic film and its producer will not necessarily produce a religious film, but rather a universal film that anyone from wherever they are can watch,” Mr Chamkhi said.
“They will discuss various issues such as marriage, divorce and other issues within the framework of the life of a Muslim family.”
He said the reactions of other cultures and faiths to the films were sometimes surprising.
"When some members of different communities attended the festival, some told us that for the first time they (were) watching films inspired by Islamic culture and traditions, and for the first time they (met) Muslims,” he said.
"With this, they broke the barrier of fear of the unknown and found and were amazed by the common human denominators between us and them after they watched the films, and some of them cried and sympathized with the different issues presented.
"So, I think that the arts in general build bridges between the cultures of civilizations and their peoples and bring them closer to each other, and this applies to the arts of Islamic culture too."
