Australian imams push for home-grown training amid Islamophobia surge

CANBERRA, Australia (MNTV) — One of Australia’s most senior imams wants religious leaders trained at home rather than abroad, so they better fit the country’s culture and language, telling a national inquiry that Islamophobia has surged, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Sheikh Shadi Alsuleiman, president of the Australian National Imams Council, told the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that a registry his organization runs had recorded a rise of more than 600 percent in anti-Muslim incidents since 2022. The hostility, he said, falls hardest on the most visible and vulnerable — women who wear the hijab, the elderly, and the young.

Alsuleiman said the council is building an Islamic Institute of Higher Education to train imams “born or raised in Australia,” addressing what he called a gap in cultural and linguistic understanding among leaders brought from overseas.

The current options, he said, are importing imams or sending Australian Muslims abroad to study — neither of which prepares leaders for the Australian context.

He also described standing “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Jewish leaders after the Bondi Beach attack, meeting rabbis to show solidarity.

And he tied the climate of hostility to the genocide in Gaza, describing the territory — under an Israeli blockade since 2007 that the UN and rights groups have widely characterized as unlawful collective punishment — as “the largest open-air prison,” saying the Palestinians’ suffering resonated with him “as a human being,” not only as a Palestinian.