Australia’s response to Islamophobia disappointingly predictable
Labor acknowledges the problem while rejecting key recommendations on anti-Palestinian discrimination and religious protections
CANBERRA, Australia (MNTV) — Human rights advocates are questioning Australia’s commitment to confronting Islamophobia after the federal government declined recommendations for an inquiry into anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian discrimination and for stronger legal protections against religious discrimination.
Labor accepted 35 of the special envoy’s 54 recommendations, backing them with nearly $42 million for mosque security, community grants, an Islamophobia Education Taskforce, leadership programs, and research.
Those are real investments that will make Muslim communities safer, writes Najma Sambul for deepcutnews — but, she argues, what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not accept proved the most telling.
Special Envoy Aftab Malik had called for an inquiry into anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian discrimination.
Despite repeated reports of people abused, vilified, or fired for supporting Palestine or wearing a keffiyeh, the government did not treat it as a priority.
It also declined to strengthen legal protections against religious discrimination, and rejected Malik’s call to review whether Australia’s counter-terrorism framework has unfairly targeted Muslim communities — Albanese citing his “confidence” in the security agencies, a response that offers little to those whose lives have been upended by over-securitisation and that leaves Muslim leaders expending hours on counter-terrorism work that fails their communities anyway.
The legal gaps are concrete. Religion is not protected under the federal Racial Discrimination Act, and the Australian Human Rights Commission has called for laws expressly barring religious discrimination; Malik urged clarifying that Muslims are protected as an ethno-religious group under that Act, as Jews and Sikhs are.
The contrast with the government’s fuller embrace of the antisemitism envoy’s recommendations has not been lost on Muslim communities — Australian National Imams Council spokesman Bilal Rauf called the absence of legal consequences and enforcement “one glaring omission,” leaving many to ask whether Islamophobia is treated with the same urgency as antisemitism.
The deeper failure, advocates argue, is one of transparency and honesty.
The government gave no specific reasons why individual recommendations were accepted, rejected, or merely noted — a disclosure the Islamic Council of Victoria has demanded — making it impossible to tell whether they were dismissed on merit or because they raised questions the government preferred to avoid.
Against rising Islamophobia, Sambul argues, this was the moment for an honest reckoning with whether Australia’s laws and institutions protect Muslim communities; instead, Labor acknowledged the problem while largely declining to confront the systems that sustain it.
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