Table of Contents
It was the most startling imagery of an Australian prime minister since Julia Gillard was hustled out of a restaurant besieged by Aboriginal activists banging on windows and waving spears. Once again, a Labor PM has been heckled and bullied by the very people he’s spent so long and so much political capital pandering to.
Not to mention unintentionally vindicating Pauline Hanson barely a fortnight after sneering at and vilifying her.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was heckled and booed on Friday while attending Eid al-Fitr prayers at the Lakemba Mosque in New South Wales, as protesters voiced anger over his government’s stance on Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
The incident unfolded about 15 minutes after Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke joined worshippers at the mosque in western Sydney to mark the end of Ramadan, Reuters reported.
There is so much to unpack, here, that it’s hard to know where to start.
Firstly, not many non-Muslims will understand the significance of this, in the context of Islamic practice. Eid is the culmination of Ramadan, a period in which Muslims are commanded to not only physically fast, but ‘fast’ in behaviour and thought as well. As one Muslim acquaintance once said to me, she couldn’t even scold her kids for misbehaving, because it was contrary to the spirit of the season.
In that context, the violent, abusive behaviour of the mosque crowd is even more shocking. Not just the handful who threatened the PM and his minister, but the rest who simply sat and watched it all unfold. The admonition that the ‘peaceful majority are irrelevant’ comes to mind.
It didn’t escape the notice of some, either, that the chaotic, violent scenes unfolded just two weeks after One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was sneered at for suggesting that many non-Muslims would feel unsafe in Lakemba. Albanese, for all his self-righteous posturing, proved her right, as police were called and the PM and his minister were escorted to safety by security.
Hanson also has every right to feel that her questions about ‘where are the “good Muslims”?’ has been vindicated. Lakemba mosque is the largest in Australia. If there’s a ‘mainstream Muslim’ place anywhere, it’s there. Yet, the PM was still heckled and threatened. Try to imagine the same happening in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne at Easter, for instance. Even when Albanese finally put in a show at Bondi following the anti-Jewish massacre, beyond some shouting and booing, the PM was never in the least threatened.
The incident also gives the lie to Albanese’s blatherskite about ‘social cohesion’. Not to mention exposing the dangerous folly of endlessly pandering to a Muslim community that remains implacably hostile to not just the West, but Jewish citizens especially.
Following the infamy of 7 October, Albanese’s government presided over a surge in anti-Semitism that is a huge and indelible stain on Australia’s international reputation and moral character.
The government’s policies on the Israel-Gaza conflict were designed to appease Australia’s significant Muslim minority – which, uncomfortably for Albanese’s Labor party, largely is concentrated in a sizeable cluster of Labor federal seats in the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. Labor’s foreign policy progressively abandoned any pretext of support for Israel’s campaign to defend itself from the nest of terrorist vipers on its doorstep. Domestically, the government paid lip service to condemning anti-Semitism, but mostly stood by anti-Semitic incident after incident.
Not to mention the shameful false equivalence of never, ever, even mentioning anti-Semitism without reflexively adding “…and Islamophobia”. As if Muslim Australians are having to live their public lives under almost non-stop armed guard. As if Muslim homes are being regularly fire-bombed, or mobs of thousands, lead by prominent celebrities and activists, weekly scream for genocidal violence against Muslims.
Having been seen as pro-Muslim for so long, Albanese’s advisers must have felt confident he could visit the largest mosque in Sydney to mark the end of Ramadan this morning. So the prime minister went to the western suburb of Lakemba to join a thousands-strong Muslim congregation as they celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr.
How wrong they all were.
Even as he tried, ludicrously, to pretend that there was nothing to see, Albanese tacitly let the camel out of the tent.
Some people don’t like the fact that we’ve outlawed extremist organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir.
In the largest mosque in Australia, the epicentre of mainstream Islam in this country, Albanese admits that the ‘moderate’ Islamic community is furious that an extremist group, listed as a terror organisation in even many Muslim countries, has finally been proscribed here?
What does that tell us about the mainstream Muslim community in Australia?
Some might say Albanese’s experience at the Lakemba mosque did him a favour by highlighting a dark well of Islamist hate that still dwells within Australia’s Muslim community. Perhaps that’s true, but the episode still more is a reminder that Albanese responded to 7 October and its aftermath by studiously avoiding any Australian foreign policy position on Israel, Gaza, and now Iran that could antagonise Muslim Australian voters. Today was a humiliating demonstration of the political reality that in trying to please everyone, you please nobody.
Or that, in trying to appease a crocodile, you merely hope that it will devour you last.
