By Michael Koziol
On July 21, 2021, in front of a video camera at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in locked-down Wakeley, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel delivered a sermon that would capture global attention.
“This is an absolute mass slavery,” he said of the pandemic lockdowns gripping western Sydney at that time. “As a bishop, as a leader in the church, I hear and I see what people are going through. They are suffering mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially.”
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.
Such speeches would catapult Emmanuel to online stardom. He was dubbed “the TikTok bishop”. He gathered followers around the world. He supported Donald Trump, said the US election was rigged by “secret societies”, and railed against vaccines for the “so-called coronavirus”.
These remarks resurfaced this week after Emmanuel was stabbed at the pulpit in live-streamed footage that also ricocheted around the globe. But they also provide a window into an ultra-conservative Christian world where honour is at a premium, mistrust of the government is high, conspiratorial streaks aren’t uncommon and tensions can be quick to inflame.
Having watched in horror as Emmanuel was set upon, by a 16-year-old now charged with a Commonwealth terrorism offence, it is not surprising up to 2000 people rushed to the church to aid the bishop or check on friends and relatives.
But the ensuing riot, during which dozens of police officers were injured, nearly 100 cars were damaged and six paramedics had to seek shelter in the church, has shocked faith leaders and left authorities fearful of large-scale unrest.
Police fought to contain the riot that erupted outside the Christ the Good Shepherd Church at Wakeley after a large crowd gathered on Monday night.Credit: Wolter Peeters
As of early Friday, 19-year-old Dani Mansour, of Doonside, half an hour’s drive from Wakeley, was the only person arrested and charged in connection with the violence. He is alleged to have kicked two police cars. Outside court, he said he was “pissed off about the stuff happening in the church”.
On Saturday morning, police said they had charged another man, 45, from Fairfield Heights, with rioting and threatening violence. He was refused bail to face Parramatta Bail Court on Saturday.
Strike Force Dribs is sifting through 600 hours of footage, and NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb has vowed to find and arrest as many as 50 people over their involvement in the riot.
Experts say while the behaviour was unacceptable, there is a complex confluence of factors at play that ought to inform our understanding of what happened outside the church, and why it happened.
The long history of Assyrian persecution in the Middle East makes the community “incredibly protective of their institutions, but also of their religious leaders”, says Josh Roose, an associate professor at Deakin University who specialises in political and religious violent extremism.
“Coming from what they’ve come from ... to be directly targeted by someone with a knife has an extra resonance,” he says. “Their response is not to shy away, it’s to front up and man up and fight.”
The stabbing footage reportedly circulated in Assyrian, Maronite, Catholic and Coptic Christian communities via group text messages, and people began arriving in their cars within minutes. Footage shows people chanting “bring him out”; at some points, bricks and rocks were thrown.
But why were the police set upon? We do not yet know how events unfolded, and NSW Police declined an interview, citing the ongoing investigation. One plausible theory is that people felt police were protecting the alleged perpetrator, or at least preventing them from taking revenge.
“It’s an honour-based culture,” says Roose. “Honour-based cultures are typically more of an approach of an eye for an eye, [rather] than other cultures that might go and take legal action.”
One Coptic Christian, Monica Gayed, told this masthead on Tuesday: “The majority of people in our community have parents or are parents that have fled from war crimes. This is what we get now. It has come into our back door, and we’re just so over it.”
Police make a first arrest over the Wakeley public order incident. Dani Mansour, 19, later appeared in court.Credit: NSW Police
But it is not just fleeting anger at a senseless act of terror. Middle Eastern Christians come from countries where distrust of the police and the government makes perfect sense. This has been exacerbated by lingering resentment and anger over COVID-19 lockdowns in western Sydney. “That’s not an acceptable outcome, but it’s certainly not without context,” Roose says.
Basim Shamaon, a Chaldean Catholic who has lived in Sydney’s Fairfield since 2005 and who is involved in Labor politics, tried to get to Wakeley himself on Monday night but found the roads blocked.
In his view, the crowd’s anger was triggered by the stabbing, foremost. But he says memories of lockdown, and how people in the west were treated, would have come to mind during the event. Some people would have just been desperate to see if their friends and loved ones were safe.
Referring to a video captured as the attacker was pinned down by parishioners, Shamaon says: “He made it worse when he spoke in Arabic because that’s a trigger to so many people.”
But Shamaon says the mob’s actions are a mystery to him. “I’m from that community; it’s not us. I was shocked to see that kind of behaviour, especially toward police officers. They were there to help minimise the harm and minimise the risk, and they were treated in a way that is unacceptable.”
The crowd outside the church was dominated by men, as was the group that clashed with LGBTQ protesters outside a Mark Latham event at St Michael’s Church in Belfield last year. The same goes for past rallies organised by conservative religious rights group Christian Lives Matter, for whom Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel is a favourite preacher.
Roose says Christian Lives Matter “doesn’t appear to be as active as it was previously”, although “these movements tend to revolve around events [and] mobilise in reaction to a perceived slight”. But an element of hypermasculinity runs through the community, he says.
“It is part of the dynamics of a community that has been oppressed and persecuted, and it is a way of emphasising a protective barrier and buffer against that,” he says.
Another observer says the boilover is not complicated to explain: there were a lot of “hotheads” around who were bored and who spent a lot of time in the gym or letting off flares at Western Sydney Wanderers games.
NSW Premier Chris Minns met with religious leaders on Tuesday, and again on Thursday evening.Credit: Louise Kennerley
But Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone says most people in the crowd were simply there to help relatives who were at the church service. If police ended up arresting 50 people, that would be a small fraction of those present. “Unfortunately, it seems like some idiots from outside the area came and used it for other reasons,” Carbone says.
There is unrest in the Muslim community over police rapidly declaring the Wakeley stabbing as religiously motivated terrorism, as opposed to Saturday’s mass murder in Bondi Junction, where mental health issues of the killer were highlighted. A court heard on Friday the Wakeley attacker had a history of behaviour consistent with mental health troubles.
NSW Premier Chris Minns has stressed the need for calm. On Thursday night, he convened another meeting with religious leaders and senior officials, including Deputy Police Commissioner Peter Thurtell and his predecessor, Nick Kaldas, now chair of the Multicultural NSW advisory board.
Roose says the government is rightly concerned about the situation escalating. But the religious leaders with whom it engages cannot necessarily reach or influence the people on the fringes who might exploit these events.
“It only takes one individual seeking to enhance their own status or standing,” he says. “Western Sydney has an abundance of men who hold conservative religious views across the spectrum, many of whom — not all — are socio-economically marginalised and bound by an honour culture to their communities.”
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