25 April is the day for paying tribute to all Australian comrades-in-arms who served and died in all wars: ‘Lest we forget’. In the Great War 20 soldiers of Muslim background also fought for Australia while in the Second World War about 200 of them. With many other Australians Muslim minority groups fought for common cause as ‘One for All, All for One’. From a multicultural angle, the following is a story of one of forgotten soldiers who can be a good example for many young Muslims in Australia.
Story about Australian Muslim soldier and Islamic scholar: Dr Salah Al-Samman
25 April is the day for paying tribute to all Australian comrades-in-arms who served and died in all wars: ‘Lest we forget’. In the Great War 20 soldiers of Muslim background also fought for Australia while in the Second World War about 200 of them. With many other Australians Muslim minority groups fought for common cause as ‘One for All, All for One’. From a multicultural angle, the following is a story of one of forgotten soldiers who can be a good example for many young Muslims in Australia.
Dr Salah Al-Samman [Salah-Al-Din Mohammed Khalil Al-Samman] is among those Australian soldiers whose contribution waiting to be added in updated military files. Until now, no single pen wrote about this Australian Muslim soldier and Islamic scholar.
Private Salah Al-Samman
Dr Salah, an Australian-born Arab whose father, Mohammad Khalil Al-Samman, was from Damascus, Syria, and his mother was an English Christian who migrated to Sydney around 1860. He was commonly known as ‘Salah’ or the ‘White Wog’. ‘It is Salah as in galah’, or ‘Just call me Salah, to rhyme with galah’, he said. He was a man of an interesting personality, described as a ‘short, well-set-up man with fair hair and light blue eyes. Others saw him as of ‘British appearance, sports coat with a ‘down-under’ accent that went oddly with his name’. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ records indicate only the name, ‘Salah’.
Private Salah Al-Samman is a forgotten Australian Muslim soldier who served throughout the Second World War in the Australian Army with the 2/1 Infantry Battalion. He joined the Australian Army in Sydney at l8’. He was also one of the ‘Rats of Tobruk’. During the war, Private Salah ‘first went to Egypt in 1940 with the AIF, fought in the Western Desert battles’, in which Australian soldiers were surrounded by German and Italian forces for eight months, bearing the brunt of it. In bitter desert fighting, the Australian soldiers of the Tobruk garrison, resisted tank attacks and artillery bombardments. While fighting there, Salah and his comrades also endured the desert’s ‘baking heat, the chilliness of cold nights, and the beastliness of dust storms’. After the combat in North Africa, Salah fought for the duration of war in other overseas battlefields, including New Guinea. He was discharged in Australia in 1946.
When the war was over, Salah spent the following three years touring the Middle East. In Egypt, he lived and worked with the farmers in the fields, digging ditches and picking cotton, also with the Bedouins in the desert. Later, he found that he could do better by teaching English; so, he taught English in Cairo for a living, writing articles for various Muslim publications and editing the Standard of Islam at al-Azhar University. It is remarkable that at that time, this Australian Muslim worked at one of the oldest universities in the Middle East and the world. In Egypt, Salah obtained his PhD in divinity and psychology from the Ecumenical University in Cairo. He intended to publish a book of facts about Muslim communities, followed by a series of pocket books explaining the Muslim religion. After his studies in Cairo, he returned to Australia where he continued to live and work.
Dr Salah Al-Samman, an Islamic scholar
In Australia, Dr Salah Al-Samman was remembered as an Australian serviceman wearing a porkpie hat, a neat business suit in public life, sometimes also wearing his Arab tarbush and robes and having a charming smile. The Australian Army left a profound impact upon him, as he cooperated with servicemen from various ethno-religious backgrounds. As a Islamic scholar, he dedicated his life in Australia to promoting interfaith understanding through the similarities of different religions. As a 33-year-old ex-serviceman living in Auburn, New South Wales, he met young friends of the three religions – Christian, Jewish and Muslim – to find out the commonalities of these religions.
Dr Salah, as a practising Muslim, commented that people are different in body only. He pointed out, in continuing the Golden Rule (‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’), equally relevant to Muslims, Christian, Jews, and the followers of other faiths. ‘I love my neighbour as myself, this do I pledge’ too, he said. Through invitations, he spoke to Christians of various denominations in Australia on international racial and religious goodwill. Salah was a guest speaker at Apex Clubs, the Methodist Hall convened by the Taree Ministers’ Association and at the Taree Rotary Club.
The outcome of my research/book gradually rising awareness about Muslim military contribution, their contribution at universities, among scholars, students and Muslim community members. I am glad that my work inspires Australian Muslims to share with non-Muslims Anzac commemoration. It is a vital component for social, cultural-religious cohesion in the future of this wonderful nation, concluded Dr. Haveric.
Source: Dzavid Haveric, ‘A History of Muslims in the Australian Military from 1885 to 1945: Loyalty, Patriotism, Contribution’, Cambridge Scholars’ Publishing, London, 2024.
