Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly has warned that former prime minister Scott Morrison and Liberal senator Andrew Bragg have risked inflaming community tensions and fuelling fear with remarks that single out Australian Muslims in the aftermath of last month’s Bondi attack.
Her rebuke was reinforced by Islamophobia envoy Aftab Malik. He said that extremism must be confronted, but cautioned that conflating criminal activity with the Muslim faith would undermine trust and compromise genuine counter-extremism efforts that keep the community safe.
Both are Muslims who worked in counter-extremism before their current roles – Aly was a professor while Malik ran programs in the NSW Premier’s department.
Their comments responded to a fresh rift that Morrison opened with Australian Muslims when he gave a speech in Israel on Tuesday (AEDT) that called on Australian Islamic leaders to enforce stronger standards within their own communities.
Morrison said Muslim leaders should start licensing preachers, translating all sermons into English and setting up a board to police radicals.
“Their radicalisation did not take place in a madrasa in South-East Asia or an Iranian hawza, but in the suburbs of southwest Sydney,” he said of the Bondi shooters.
His comments were backed by Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, a moderate, who said the Australian Muslim community needed to take some responsibility for extremist behaviour.
“Unfortunately, it has been a pattern of behaviour that some of these smaller incidents – and now we’ve had a significant terrorist incident – have emerged from these communities,” he told ABC radio.
Their remarks were met with fury and exasperation by a cross-section of Muslim organisations, who labelled them divisive and inflammatory at a time when there have been escalating incidents of violence directed at mosques and Muslim people. The latest example included an anonymous letter sent to a Sydney mosque threatening co-ordinated violence against minority groups on Australia Day.
In his speech, Morrison said his proposed reforms were not about “policing faith” but “responsibility and accountability in a free society”.
“Treating these issues as taboo serves only those who thrive in darkness,” he said.
But one former south-west Sydney Liberal councillor, Mazhar Hadid, described the former prime minister as a “hypocrite” for going to Israel to make his remarks – where he was hailed by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “terrific, terrific champion of our people” – rather than speaking locally.
“To go overseas to a foreign country and attack his own people of Muslim faith – he shouldn’t do that. If he has something to say, he should come to Australia, meet with the community, talk to them, see how you can handle things. Don’t go overseas and attack your own people,” said Hadid, who sat as a Liberal on southwest Sydney’s Liverpool Council until late last year.
“We educate that we have to live in peace and harmony; that there are common interests we have to concentrate on; that there are issues in Australia but we need to focus on the good things. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Aly said that the comments of Morrison and Bragg must be understood “in a broader and troubling context; one where Muslim Australians are repeatedly expected to account for violent acts they neither committed nor condoned”.
“Muslim communities repeatedly and unequivocally condemned terrorism, including being among the first to condemn the Bondi attack. Yet they are still asked to prove their national loyalty and innocence in ways no other community is. This is unfair and deeply damaging,” she said.
“This kind of commentary carries real risk. It fuels fear, entrenches division and unfairly blames entire communities for the actions of individuals who have embraced a distorted and violent ideology.”
Malik has previously said that effective counter-extremism efforts relied on precision, evidence and trust. “When entire communities are treated as suspects, this trust erodes, and with it, the effectiveness of security policies designed to safeguard Australians,” he said last week.
In a statement on Wednesday, he said extremism must be countered but should “never be used as a pretext to curtail freedoms, police faith or cast suspicion over an entire community”.
“Doing so provides a social license to hate,” he said. “Those who promote violence do not represent Islam. They are criminals who sit on the margins, disconnected from mainstream community life.
“Effective counter-extremism measures must be precise. It must target criminal behaviour, not beliefs. Conflating criminality with the lived faith of Australian Muslims undermines trust and weakens genuine efforts to keep all Australians safe.”
Australian Federal Police chief Krissy Barrett said security forces were combing the words of radical preachers’ sermons “line by line” for any red flags, as new hate speech laws passed with the support of the Coalition allow the home affairs minister to ban any group that promotes hatred.
Islamic leaders, who asked not to be named, last month said they had been sounding the alarm about Wissam Haddad, the hate preacher connected to one of the shooters, for 10 years.
Muslim groups were torn this month over their support for new hate laws targeting Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group regarded warily by many in the Muslim and broader community due to its hardline views.
On Wednesday, Muslim representative bodies were scathing of Morrison’s intervention. Imam Shadi Alsuleiman, president of the Australian National Imams Council, said it was “deeply concerning and disappointing that someone who has held the highest office in the country would make such divisive remarks”.
Dr Rateb Jneid, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said the rhetoric “inevitably creates a divide between so‑called ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ Muslims, with politicians positioning themselves as arbiters of our faith”.
“That is not leadership. It is dangerous, and history shows us exactly where it leads,” he said.
The secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association, Gamel Kheir, said it was “offensive and grotesque that Scott Morrison would lecture Australians about social cohesion while speaking from Israel” as the conflict wore on in Gaza.
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Natassia Chrysanthos is Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via X or email.