Election 2025: Radical cleric Wissam Haddad in ‘don’t vote’ push

Fundamentalist Sydney preacher Wissam Haddad has accelerated his ‘stay Muslim don’t vote’ campaign by seemingly enlisting the help of Omar Bakri, the founder of outlawed terrorist network al-Muhajiroun.

Wissam Haddad, also known as Abu Ousayd, spruiks an upcoming campaign video apparently including British cleric Omar Bakri.

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Fundamentalist Sydney preacher Wissam Haddad has accelerated his “stay Muslim don’t vote” campaign by seemingly enlisting the help of Omar Bakri, the founder of outlawed terrorist network al-Muhajiroun.

Mr Haddad, also known as Abu Ousayd, has littered southwest Sydney and parts of inner-city Melbourne with campaign posters, a movement he first spruiked in mid-2024 and which was revealed by The Australian.

The radical preacher’s anti-democracy push stands in stark contrast to the community’s growing political participation, whether that be supporting one of the parties and running as a candidate, or the dual “Muslim vote” movements that emerged in 2024.

Those two campaigns – The Muslim Vote and Muslim Vote Matters – are separate and distinct but both seek to help elect pro-Palestine candidates and to increase political participation in the wider Muslim community. Australia’s peak Muslim body has also encouraged community members to vote, saying it aligned with Islam’s “moral and communal duty”.

But since the start of April, Mr Haddad has littered his social-media channels with his “campaign”, urging Muslim Aus­tralians to shun the ballot box on May 3. “This (not voting) is our opportunity to disassociate ourselves from that which contradicts our faith,” he said, encouraging followers to download the campaign’s poster and put up “as many as possible”.

“Even if we argue that there may be various benefits from participating in democracy, the harm upon one’s religion by committing this act of shirk (the sin of polytheism, or idolatry) is far worse than possible benefits.”

However, it is Mr Haddad’s enlisting of al-Muhajiroun founder Bakri to his cause that is perhaps most significant.

Election campaign posters in western Sydney vandalised in a campaign to encourage the Muslim community not to vote.

On Tuesday, Mr Haddad – who has previously boasted of his friendship with Bakri and co-led events with another of al-Muhajiroun’s leaders, Anjem Choudary – “teased” an as-yet released YouTube video with the terrorist network’s founder titled “the shirk of the Muslim vote”.

The exact nature and contents of the video is unknown, as is the extent of Bakri’s involvement in it.

Mr Haddad – who is defending allegations in the Federal Court that he vilified Australia’s Jewish community in a raft of sermons at his southwest Sydney centre – has longstanding links with Bakri and Choudary.

In August 2023, he published a YouTube video that included a lengthy personalised audio message from Bakri, who addressed Mr Haddad as his “dear brother”, and in 2022 he headlined multiple online conferences alongside Choudary.

Choudary was sentenced by British authorities in July 2024 to life imprisonment for terror offences while Bakri was released from a term of imprisonment in Lebanon in mid-2023.

Al-Muhajiroun has been described as a more radical offshoot of Hizb ut-Tahrir and some of its British members have committed terrorist attacks in London.

The Australian is not suggesting Mr Haddad is part of any group, rather reporting his own denials of any alleged links.

Mr Haddad’s views are not shared by the wider Muslim community, with the Australian National Imams Council urging its members to vote, saying it offered an “essential opportunity" to help “shape the future direction” of the country.

“For Muslims, this responsibility also aligns with our moral and communal duty to uphold justice, support truth, and offer sincere counsel to those in positions of political representation and authority,” ANIC’s statement said, co-signed by the Alliance of Australians for Muslims

“It (voting) includes the obligation to support those who act in the interests of the common good and to oppose those who promote harm, injustice, or division within society — while standing firmly for human rights and principled foreign policy.”

ANIC, a non-profit charitable organisation, also urged Muslim Australians to consider issues outside of domestic borders when engaging in the political process, pointing to the Israel-Hamas conflict and adding that voters should “carefully examine” candidates’ stances on a range of issues, including – but not limited to – Palestinian rights, foreign policy, multicultural inclusion, cost of living, and immigration and family reunion.