Hate preacher Wissam Haddad defiant in defeat

Jihadi preacher Wissam Haddad has shared a court ordered corrective notice addressing his anti-Semitic hate speech alongside statements saying his defeat in court was ‘not a loss’ and ‘you can’t make us apologise’.

Wissam Haddad was found by the Federal Court to have breached racial hatred laws in a series of anti-Semitic speeches. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

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Jihadi preacher Wissam Haddad has shared a court ordered corrective notice addressing his anti-Semitic hate speech alongside statements saying his defeat in court was “not a loss” and “you can’t make us apologise”.

The Western Sydney cleric was earlier this month found to have knowingly breached racial hatred laws in a series of lectures and sermons that asserted Jews were “vile” and “treacherous” people.

Judge Angus Stewart ordered he post a series of corrective notices on all his social media pages admitting he broke section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, upholding a complaint by the nation’s Jewish body that Mr Haddad broadcast anti-Semitic rhetoric to his congregation and online. The speeches were the “racist project” of a self-proclaimed “masjid (mosque) shock jock” indiscriminately targeting those of Jewish faith and ethnicity, the court heard.

Mr Haddad, who is also known as Abu Ousayd, had tried to escape the full impact of the orders, arguing that he should not be required to “pin” the corrective notices at the top of his social media pages. But Justice Stewart said such posts could quickly disappear from view ordered they be displayed prominently.

Mr Haddad on Tuesday posted the corrective notice, but bookended it with two other social media posts in which he said his case “exposed” how the “accusation of anti-Semitism is often used to cover injustice”, saying it was “fair and necessary to clarify and emphasise a few points” from the trial.

“You tried to shame us. Silence us. Make us bow. But one thing you couldn’t do: you couldn’t make us apologise,” one of the posts reads.

“We remain unapologetically Muslim. Faith is not a flaw. Islam is not a crime. We will not dilute our deen to make you comfortable.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief Peter Wertheim — the primary applicant in the case against Mr Haddad — was scathing of the social media posts.

“The Federal Court found that three speeches by Mr Haddad made perverse generalisations against Jewish people as a group, which were fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic,” he told The Australian. “The court swept aside the defence that he was only citing religious texts. Mr Haddad and the Centre have also been ordered to pay our legal costs.

“If that is what Mr Haddad regards as a victory, I can only wish him many more such victories.”

The corrective notice acknowledges the trial’s outcome and that the speeches were “reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate Jewish members of the Australian community and which were made and published because of the Jewish race or ethnic origin”.

Paradoxically, a lengthier press release by Mr Haddad was titled “a victory for the truth” and begins by saying the outcome was “not a loss”.

“Although on the papers it appears that we have ‘lost’, the real loss would have been to remain silent and not defend these proceedings in the face of injustice. We stood, we spoke and we defended our right to teach the truth of Islam in the context of the global genocide that is still occurring in Gaza,” the statement reads. “This is not defeat nor will it ever be.”

“While the court did not accept every element of our defence, it did accept expert evidence that Islam, as a faith, does not promote racial hatred or vilification against Jewish people based solely on their ethnicity.

“This is a vital truth that is often distorted in the public debate, particularly by Zionists, and we are pleased it was formally recognised.

“What this case demonstrated is that we must be wiser and mindful in how we present our deen in a public setting including when they are being recorded, especially with the rise in technology.

“What we see online isn’t always true and things can become very easily edited, formatted and misinterpreted, especially by the media.

“This is not about hatred. This was about standing up for the right to speak, to teach, and to resist oppression … The accusation of anti-Semitism is often used to cover injustice. This court case exposed that tactic for what it is.”

Justice Stewart also granted an application by ECAJ for a muzzle order on Mr Haddad that would find him in contempt of court should he racially discriminate against Jewish Australians in future.

He ordered Mr Haddad not facilitate “words, sounds or images (being) communicated otherwise than in private, which attribute characteristics to Jewish people on the basis of their group membership and which convey any of the disparaging imputations identified as being conveyed by the lectures”.

Mr Wertheim earlier this month said he would call Mr Haddad back to court for potential contempt should he breach the court orders against him, saying the outcome “vindicated” months of community action against anti-Semitism.

“Common decency should dictate that free speech and freedom of religion do not include the right to racially vilify other people. Common decency should tell us that that is where to draw the line,” Mr Wertheim said.