Power and protest: Why Muslim leaders have left the table

There are two tables in two different parts of Melbourne which tell the story of what the war in Gaza – the most socially corrosive conflict Australia has experienced since Vietnam – is doing to Australia’s Muslim leadership and the communities they represent.

The first, the head table at a parliamentary Iftar dinner held this week inside the five-star Sofitel Hotel on Collins Street, was snubbed by invited guests from the Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV) and Australian National Imams Council. This Ramadan, they have no appetite to break their fast with politicians from either major party.

The second was a trestle table draped in a Palestinian flag, set on a stage inside a western suburbs mosque on Sunshine Road, Tottenham. This is where ICV president Adel Salman took a seat the week before Ramadan, alongside prominent figures in the Palestinian protest movement, to denounce Israel as a criminal regime and repeat his inflammatory description of Hamas’ October 7 attack which killed 1200 Israelis as a legitimate act of resistance. Salman has repeatedly said he does not justify the killing of civilians.

Max Kaiser (left), Nasser Mashni, Janet Rice and Adel Salman address a forum in Tottenham, in Melbourne’s west.Credit: Eddie Jim

The Tottenham event, titled “Understanding Cries for a Free Palestine”, was hosted by HobsonsBay4Palestine, a newly formed off-shoot from a self-seeding, protest movement which every Sunday for the past five months, has organised mass rallies in central Melbourne and Sydney.

Seated alongside Salman were Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni sporting a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt, Greens Senator Janet Rice and Max Kaiser, a member of the Jewish Council of Australia, a nascent, non-representative Jewish group critical of Israel.

Near the culmination of two-hours of passionate discussion about the war, the history of Israel and the plight of Palestinians, Egyptian-born Salman, an electrical engineer turned corporate manager who for the past three years has led the peak representative body for 270,000 Muslims in Victoria, told the keffiyeh-clad crowd that although the current picture was grim for Palestinians, the war had also unleashed an unprecedented campaign of grassroots activism which he believes, will speed the “liberation” of Palestine from Israel.

“The Zionists are losing, they are losing,” he declared. “They’re losing on so many fronts, and they’re certainly losing the fight for public opinion.

“If there is one issue that unites the hearts of 2 billion Muslims, one quarter of humanity, one quarter of the people that walk this earth, it’s Palestine.″⁣

Islamic Council of Victoria president Adel Salman.Credit: Eddie Jim

Australian Muslims are used to horrendous events from elsewhere in the world reaching deep into their communities. In the first two decades of this century, they absorbed a surge in Islamophobia triggered by al-Qaeda’s attack on New York’s World Trade Centre, the deadly outreach of Islamic State into our suburbs, and from Christchurch, the live-streamed, mass murder of people gathered at a mosque for Friday prayers by an Australian-born white-supremacist. Closer to home they’ve felt the venom of the Cronulla race riots and the sting of bumper stickers telling them “F--- off, we’re full.”

Despite their resilience through these previous trials, the war in Gaza is having an isolating impact.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry estimates that more than 31,000 people have been killed, many of them children. Australia’s Muslim leaders, faced with this horrific loss of life and what they see as a failure of the Australian government to call out Israel’s excessive response to October 7, are disengaging from government and shunning multi-faith forums.

Salman accuses mainstream media outlets and journalists of either wilfully ignoring, misrepresenting or suppressing the truth about the conflict to promote a Zionist agenda which he says creates further hatred. He declined to be interviewed or answer questions for this story.

In the meantime, Australia’s Muslim leadership is supported by a radical protest movement which prosecutes the case for Palestinian self-determination through the prism of race and settler colonialism and, at its extremes, seeks to minimise or rationalise Hamas’ October 7 atrocities. In this narrative, Israel is cast not as a liberal democratic state recognised under international law, but the occupier of stolen lands and evil oppressor of 4.5 million people.

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess, delivering his annual threat assessment earlier this month, said his agency was carefully monitoring the implications for domestic security.

A pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne in December.Credit: Wayne Taylor

“We have seen heightened community tensions that have translated into some incidents of violence connected to protest activity,” Burgess said. “We have also observed an increase in rhetoric encouraging violence in response to the conflict. Hateful rhetoric has targeted Israel and the Jewish community, as well as Muslim and Palestinian communities.”

An expert in radicalisation, who spoke to his masthead anonymously to preserve their relationship with Muslim communities, said they were struck by how quickly supporters of Palestine reframed October 7, when Hamas militants broke through Gaza’s northern fence into southern Israel, killed 1200 people and captured 250 hostages.

“Regardless of where you stand on the long-standing Arab/Israeli issue, you start going down a very slippery slope when you start justifying any type of violence,” the expert said. “That is really problematic.”

Nasser Mashni, a Palestinian activist whose father lived through the Nakba, the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, says the “just right” of Palestinians to resist occupation extends to armed resistance.

Despite the nightmarish scenario confronting Palestinians living in Gaza, Mashni believes all Palestinians are closer to realising their end goal than they were on October 6.

“With Israel’s atrocities being livestreamed 24/7 into every home on the planet, the past six months have given civil society and community a heightened sense of just how gross that injustice is and an elevated understanding that there is no other solution to it other than Palestinian self-determination,” he told this masthead.

Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni outside the Tottenham forum.Credit: Eddie Jim

“We’re seeing an advocacy constituency that is not just broader in its make-up but also more engaged, more aware of what is at stake and how to work in allyship with Palestinians, more galvanised in its resolve, better equipped with the tools of our democracy, and with enormous capacity to challenge this injustice wherever people have influence – in academia, politics, the media.”

The next step, Mashni says, is for the pro-Palestinian movement to harness its power at the ballot box. During last week’s forum in Tottenham, he urged fellow Muslims not to reflexively vote Labor at the next federal election. “Make sure you get what your vote is worth,” he said.

The opportunity Mashni sees is reflected in Australia’s electoral rolls. At the time of the 1981 census, the year before the Israeli’s invasion of Lebanon, 30,346 people living in Australia identified as Jewish and 41,328 as Muslim. When the most recent census was conducted in 2021, 99,956 people identified as Jewish and 813,392 as Muslim.

Iftar dinners, the nightly breaking of fast during the holy month of Ramadan, serve as a sit-down centrepiece for Muslim engagement with politicians, business leaders, universities, journalists and senior figures in the civil service. This year they are emblematic of the Muslim withdrawal.

Australian Intercultural Society executive director Ahmet Keskin, the organiser of countless Iftar dinners over the past 20 years, says this is being driven not only by the leaders of peak bodies but the communities they represent.

The Victorian and NSW governments, at the request of Islamic organisations, cancelled their signature Iftar events. Those still going ahead are being largely boycotted by the community whose faith and culture they are meant to celebrate.

Dr Rateb Jneid, the president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, in announcing the federation’s decision to cancel its Iftar dinner, took direct aim at NSW Premier Chris Minns. “Given the present political landscape, we find it impossible to engage in communal meals with leadership that exhibits duplicity, notably the NSW premier’s stance.”

The ICV publicly withdrew its support for the Victorian premier’s Iftar event three days after the state Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Ingrid Stitt, met with Muslim community leaders at an open mosque event. A government source said the premier’s office was blindsided by the move. When the government eventually cancelled the dinner, the ICV issued a conciliatory statement.

Keskin, whose Australian Intercultural Society hosted Tuesday night’s parliamentary dinner at the Sofitel, says his organisation had a “robust discussion” about cancelling the event but decided it was important to keep talking. “You need to be at the table,” he said. “You need to have a voice to raise your views. If we withdraw, we are further isolating ourselves.”

The dinner was attended by Jewish and Christian faith leaders, Victorian Deputy Premier Ben Carroll and other state government ministers, Opposition Leader John Pesutto and federal parliamentarians from both sides of the political aisle and the cross benches. The only Muslim faith leader in the room was Ibrahim Karaisli, the newly appointed imam at Quba Mosque in the northern suburb of Somerton. He recited the call to prayer.

Jamal Rifi, a Lebanese-born doctor who for many years ran his practice in the heart of Sydney’s Muslim community in Lakemba, wants his fellow Muslim leaders to re-engage with government but blames the estrangement on a lack of political leadership. He says that from the first days of the conflict, Muslims have felt ignored. In response, Muslims have taken their arguments out of the corridors of power and into the streets.

“People felt they haven’t been listened to, given a chance to sit down across a table to express their feelings, their political views and give the politician a chance to explain and debate,” Rifi said. “They have been demonstrating and sending messages through the media day after day.

“We have seen the corrosion of social cohesion to the point where the Muslim community leadership made the decision to disengage, uninvite and non-attend events at a time when we really need to engage more. They felt there is no more point.”

In Melbourne, the Muslim withdrawal can be traced back to a week before Christmas when the chair of Victoria’s Multicultural Commission, Vivienne Nguyen, and Stitt invited the commission’s Multi-faith Advisory Group, which includes representatives from the ICV and Victorian Board of Imams, to parliament to discuss the impact of the war on their communities.

The meeting, moderated by Anglican Bishop Philip Huggins, was notable for the no-show by both major Islamic organisations. ICV deputy president Mohamed Mohideen attended the meeting with a Palestinian flag pinned to his jacket but told the room he was there as a VMC commissioner and not representing the ICV.

Mohamed Mohideen leads Muslim prayers at Monash University in September 2023.Credit: Joe Armao

Religious and community leaders who have spent the past two decades building multi-faith dialogue to preserve social cohesion in difficult times are dismayed. In 2014, Ralph Genende travelled with Mohamed Mohideen to Israel, visiting holy sites in Jerusalem and the West Bank, as part of a Jewish Christian Muslim Association delegation. Now the association has collapsed and Genende, a Yiddish-speaking, progressive rabbi, has turned his back on the ICV.

“I hope the leaders will recognise we won’t solve or even help the conflict in the Middle East here in Australia,” Genende says. “Multiculturalism is a delicate fabric. Let’s not tear it apart.”

Adel Salman and Nasser Mashni have consistently maintained their grievance is with the Israeli government not Jewish people.

Salman’s defence of October 7 as a justified Palestinian uprising rather than a terror attack, a stance he first took during an ABC Radio National interview, prompted the Jewish Community Council of Victoria to sever its remaining ties with the ICV and led to a political backlash against Salman and his organisation.

Addressing a pro-Palestinian rally in central Melbourne two weeks ago, Salman reiterated his position. “I said that October the 7th is a legitimate act of resistance. I did not say that the killing of innocent civilians is an act of legitimate resistance, but I said very clearly, that for the Palestinians to rise up on October the 7th to break their siege, which is a form of occupation – a brutal occupation – is legitimate and cannot be denied.”

Liberal Senator James Paterson believes this position – opposing the killing of civilians while defending an ‘uprising’ which killed more than 1000 civilians – is untenable. On March 1, he wrote to federal Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil urging her to withhold from the ICV any funding it was due to receive under a $25 million grant scheme announced last October by the federal government to support Palestinian and Muslim communities affected by the conflict.

On Friday, the ABC revealed that only $3 million from the scheme had been granted to Islamic organisations and no money earmarked for the ICV, which relies on government for its primary source of funding. Salman told this masthead he was surprised and concerned about the distribution of grants. The decision will only add to the sense of isolation felt by a frustrated Muslim leadership.

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