Opening Statement - Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee

Thank you Chair and thank you for accommodating me.

Since we last met, the Muslim community is experiencing a time of profound anxiety. I regret to inform the committee that there has been a clear and concerning escalation of incidents targeting Muslim Australians, with violence becoming more pronounced and deliberate.

• We saw the thwarted mass terror plot in Perth that included the targeting of mosques
• A man casually walking into a mosque in Brisbane, threating worshippers, claiming to have an AK-47 in his car
• Mosques in Sydney, increasingly receiving messages and letters with murderous intent
• Muslim women in Adeleide, being chased and allegedly threatened to be killed
• During a Ramadan iftar gathering in Ballarat, Victoria, an alleged white supremacist stormed into a community dinner, threatened children, assaulted attendees and directed hateful anti-Islamic abuse toward those present.

These incidents do not include reports of daily Islamophobia, harassment and intimidation experienced by children at schools, professionals in the workplaces, or Muslims simply going about their daily business.

These experiences are not isolated. They are cumulative and deeply destabilising.

Each individual act is outrageous, but collectively, they form a pattern.

Only last week, the world witnessed the horrific attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego, where three Muslim men were killed while protecting worshippers and children inside a mosque.

Investigators have linked the attackers to online extremist ecosystems and transnational white supremacist ideologies inspired by previous attacks, including Christchurch; an attack carried out by “Australia’s worst mass murderer.”

For many Muslim Australians, the attack was not experienced as a distant American tragedy. It was experienced viscerally and personally, as part of a global continuum of anti-Muslim violence that communities here recognise all too well.

The transnationalisation of Islamophobia means Australia cannot view itself as insulated from these developments.

Extremist ideologies, conspiracy networks, online hate cultures and political narratives circulate globally with unprecedented speed.

Christchurch was live streamed across continents. San Diego drew from the same ecosystem. Muslim communities here, understand these connections intuitively because they live with their consequences, socially, psychologically and physically.

Let us not forget, the Christchurch mass killing of 51 Muslim worshippers and the attempted murder of 40 others, was not a New Zealand hate problem: that hate was Australian raised and nurtured, then exported.

Tarrant does not emerge in a vacuum. He is the inevitable result of an individual exposed to the ongoing dehumanisation of Muslims that occurs in society and across media platforms, and where political speech reinforces that:

• Islam is culturally incompatible with Australian values
• Islam is violent
• Muslims are a threat
• Islam is monolithic

Senators, as I have been stating for the past 18 months, language has real-life consequences.

As we have seen with the 740% increase in Islamophobic incidents in the fortnight following the Bondi terror attack, Muslims find themselves in a double bind.

Not only are they blamed for acts of terror, but they also bear its consequences.

Thank you.

Aftab Malik
Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia