Muslims raise concerns over Australia’s new antisemitism laws
“What exactly is the law trying to do here? Is this about tackling hate consistently, or is it about creating a special, selective category?”
MELBOURNE, Australia (MNTV) – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Jan. 8 announcement of a federal Royal Commission into anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion, alongside a series of incidents and policy debates affecting Muslims, prompted Melbourne-based commentator Jalal Kassab to speak out in more depth on issues he has long raised publicly, reports AMUST.
In a conversation, Kassab reflected on identity, law and the implications for Muslim communities.
“Imagine a legal landscape where ‘Islam’ and ‘Jew’ are treated as interchangeable categories under the Royal Commission, as though the complexities of identity, ancestry and lived experience can be collapsed into a single political definition. Israel, Palestine, Iran, Lebanon – these are all societies with Semitic peoples. Arabs are Semites. Many Muslims are Semites.
“I am a Muslim and a Semite; my DNA can testify to that. Yet a Jewish convert from New Zealand, with no Semitic ancestry at all, is still legally treated as a Semite, while an Arab Muslim from Yemen or Lebanon is not.
“What exactly is the law trying to do here? Is this about tackling hate consistently, or is it about creating a special, selective category?” he asked.
“The recent hate crime against a Muslim Imam and his wife makes this even clearer. They weren’t attacked for their Bosnian ancestry. They were attacked because they were visibly Muslim.
“Line them up with Muslims from Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq or Palestine, and the attacker wouldn’t have known the difference,” Kassab added.
“The slurs weren’t about ethnicity – they were about Islam. Yet the Prime Minister recently announced a federal Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, not a Commission into religious hatred more broadly, and certainly not one that centers the Muslim experience.
“When a Royal Commission is framed around antisemitism alone, it risks creating a hierarchy of whose pain matters. And when hate-speech laws start protecting political narratives instead of vulnerable communities, they stop looking like justice and start looking like blasphemy laws in secular drag.
“It’s not framed as ‘heresy,’ but as ‘hate speech,’ ‘extremism’ or ‘community safety’ – anything that makes censorship sound humane and progressive.
“My concern is simple: when speech is weaponized to shield illegal or questionable behavior from scrutiny, and when criticism becomes criminalized, it’s dangerous for a free and open society.
“Hate speech from grubs who want to incite violence should absolutely be dealt with – and we already have laws for that. Intent is paramount. But when the nation begins to elevate one group’s suffering as uniquely sacred while treating others as politically inconvenient, the result is not cohesion. It’s a two-tiered system of protection.”
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