Australian Muslim women wearing headscarves are being attacked in public in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre, while a mosque that was vandalised is now being threatened online after reporting the incident to police.Those are just some of the incidents documented by Muslim leaders who are warning of an “alarming surge” of attacks against members of their community, saying the community as a whole is unfairly being blamed for the 14 December terror attack.Sajid and Naveed Akram allegedly killed 15 people on the iconic Sydney beach, targeting a Jewish Hanukkah festival gathering in an attack that federal police say was inspired by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) group. The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), the peak body representing Muslim leaders, has denounced IS as an “evil terrorist organisation” and said shortly after the attack that the the ANIC stood in solidarity with the Australian Jewish community, the victims and their families.
On Monday, it said Muslims were being “unfairly scrutinised and implicitly linked to acts of violence they categorically reject”.
‘She threw raw eggs at me’
Sibat Sheikh, a solicitor based in Sydney, says she was on her way to work on 22 December when she was pelted with raw eggs by a group of girls riding on bikes heading towards her on the footpath.”One of the three came really close to me; I could touch her face. That’s how close she was,” Sheikh told SBS News.”She called me a ‘dirty Muslim’. She said some other things under her breath, but I didn’t hear her. ‘Dirty Muslim’ was what I heard. And then she threw raw eggs at me.”I heard two more eggs sort of crush on the floor. Because there was nobody between me and them, I’m assuming that those other two eggs were directed towards me.”Sheikh said she was initially stunned, standing on the footpath.”I was a little bit like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?’ It was shocking to me that something like this could actually happen.”Sheikh went to a nearby cafe to clean herself up, after which she reported the incident to a local NSW Police station.
After initially being told it was not going to be recorded as a hate crime, Sheikh says she was later called by a police officer to notify her it would be.
Sibat Sheikh says she was attacked by a group of women while walking to work. Credit: Supplied
SBS News has contacted NSW Police for comment.
‘Shameful act’: NSW Premier condemns attacks
ANIC said in the past week, Muslim communities have faced “an alarming surge in hate-driven incidents”, including graffiti at the Islamic College of Melbourne, dismembered pigs’ heads thrown onto graves at a Muslim cemetery in Narellan, NSW, and Muslim women in headscarves being spat at, abused and threatened in Perth.ANIC has recorded a 200 per cent increase in anti-Muslim hate incidents since 14 December, while police have been called on reports of security incidents and vandalism towards nine mosques and Islamic centres.Worshippers fear a Christchurch-style attack targeting them, it added.
Australian Islamic House, a mosque in Sydney’s west, has been on the receiving end of a barrage of online threats since reporting an alleged break-in by individuals who they say vandalised an education centre.
The comments below its post include calls to destroy mosques around the country and “wipe the Muslim scum from the earth”. Others praised the alleged vandals and called for further attacks.ANIC senior adviser Bilal Rauf says the attacks have been “distressing” and “confronting”. “There’s a heightened anxiety and distress,” he told SBS News.”Young girls are being accosted, being abused, and it’s very hard for them to face up to such behaviour and such abuse.
“It is very confronting and traumatic.”
NSW Premier Chris Minns has described the reports as “horrific” and incidents of attacks against visibly-Muslim women and girls as “a shameful act”.”It is disgusting to think that anyone could blame a young person, a young member of our community, a young Islamic girl, for the actions of two people in Bondi a couple of weeks ago,” Minns told reporters on Tuesday.”That is appalling. It’d be like blaming Ahmed Al-Ahmed for the actions of those terrible terrorists on the 14th of December, when we all know he is an absolute hero.”
Sheikh said she mostly fears for other visibly-Muslim women in the community, and said comments from political leaders since the Bondi attack have emboldened perpetrators.”It’s completely unjust and ridiculous that regular Muslims have to bear the brunt of what happened on the 14th of December,” she said.
“We’re just regular people. We go to school, we go to work … why are we being targeted when we’re just trying to lead our everyday lives?”
Alleged killers aligned with terrorist group, not a religion: police
Last week, Australian Federal Police (AFP) commissioner Krissy Barrett said the alleged gunmen behind the Bondi Beach massacre had “aligned themselves with a terrorist organisation, not a religion”.
The comments were the focus of subsequent pieces and commentary in News Corp outlets that focused on criticism of that remark.
The founder of the Islamophobia Register, Mariam Veiszadeh, places flowers outside Bondi Pavilion at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, to honour the victims of the terror attack that killed 15 people. Source: AP / Mark Baker/AP
Last week, ANIC issued a press statement denouncing IS and its ideology, saying it “unequivocally condemns ISIS as an evil, dangerous terrorist organisation whose actions and ideology stand in complete opposition to the teachings of Islam and the values upheld by Muslims worldwide”.IS has killed more Muslims than any other group, it said.”The Muslim world has suffered firsthand at the hands of ISIS, with the overwhelming majority of its victims being Muslims. “Communities across the Middle East, Africa, and beyond have endured mass killings, displacement, and the destruction of places of worship, including mosques.”
Source
