As the sun set over North Canberra last weekend, I stood at the back of the prayer hall at Gungahlin Mosque and watched several hundreds people settle onto the carpeted floor.

Dates were passed from hand to hand. Water glasses were lifted. The quiet murmur of conversation filled the room.

When the fast was broken, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists sat shoulder to shoulder and ate together.

For me, that moment was not just another community iftar. It was deeply personal.

Twenty five years ago, when Muslim families first began settling in Gungahlin, there was no mosque in North Canberra. During Ramadan we drove across the lake for nightly prayers that often finished close to midnight. I still remember parents carrying sleeping children back to cars in the cold. Elderly uncles leaned on walking sticks after long evenings of worship.

In 2001, a small group of us gathered in a living room and formed what became the Canberra Muslim Community. We were teachers, public servants and small business owners. We were not developers or political activists. We were parents who wanted our children to grow up confident in both their faith and their Australian identity.

It took sixteen years to turn that hope into bricks and mortar.

There were planning complexities, financial hurdles and court challenges. A small but vocal fringe group attempted to frame the project as something alien and threatening. Anti immigrant slogans surfaced online and occasionally at public meetings. At times the language was harsh. At times it was hurtful.

Those were difficult days.

But what I remember most clearly is something else. Quiet support.

Neighbours who said we may not share your faith but you have every right to build your place of worship. Local residents who wrote submissions defending religious freedom. Ordinary Canberrans who understood that equality before the law is not negotiable.

That steady support carried us through.

When the mosque finally opened in 2017, I felt relief, gratitude and pride, not only as a Muslim but as an Australian. The building was not a symbol of separation. It was a declaration of belonging.

From the beginning, we made a deliberate choice. The mosque would not turn inward. It would open outward.

We host school visits, community tours and interfaith gatherings. During Ramadan, our weekend iftars are open invitations. You do not need to be Muslim to attend. You simply need goodwill.

Last weekend, a local Christian pastor attending for the first time told me that sharing a meal like this dissolves assumptions and reveals how much people of faith have in common.

A rabbi who joined us observed that strong communities are built through encounter and that sitting together sends a powerful message about who we are as Australians.

Their words mattered. But what mattered even more was the ordinary ease in the room. Children played between families. Conversations moved easily from faith to cricket, to football, to local schools. Laughter rose naturally.

This is the Australia I know.

It is not the caricature sometimes painted by those who rely on division as a political device. It is not the dystopian narrative pushed by fringe voices who trade in suspicion of migrants and Muslims alike. Those slogans may generate noise. They do not reflect the lived reality in suburbs like Gungahlin.

Here, integration is not an abstract policy term. It is neighbours sharing food. It is parents volunteering at local schools. It is small businesses serving diverse customers. It is friendships that quietly disprove prejudice.

Australia’s Muslim community now numbers close to one million people. In Canberra, more than 20,000 Muslims live across the city, many in the north. We are doctors, tradies, teachers, public servants and entrepreneurs. We barrack for the same teams. We worry about the same mortgage rates. We stand in the same supermarket queues.

Gungahlin Mosque now sits unremarkably among townhouses, Gungahlin Uniting Church, Salvation Army stores, local clubs and town centres. That normality is significant. It reflects a city that has grown more diverse and more confident in its understanding of identity and belonging.

When I enter the mosque today, I see more than walls and carpet. I see perseverance through challenge. I see young families who no longer have to drive across the lake for nightly prayers. I see neighbours who once had questions and now have friendships.

Social cohesion is often spoken about in policy documents and parliamentary speeches. In Gungahlin, it is practised on the floor of a mosque, over shared plates of food.

If Australia’s strength lies in its ability to hold difference without fear, then places like this matter.

Every weekend this Ramadan, in a quiet corner of North Canberra, that work continues.

Not through slogans.

Not through division.

But through hospitality.

Author bio

Mainul Haque OAM is a former President of the Canberra Muslim Community and led the development and delivery of Gungahlin Mosque, which opened in 2017.